Completed inspection and compliance paperwork being handed over on site

Buying guide

Choosing a water tank

Name: Lion Yard Trading
Address: Al Quoz 4, Warehouse No. 3, Dubai, Dubai, AE
Telephone: +971 54 303 3119

Four different products sit under one heading, and they are not interchangeable. This is how to tell which one your job needs, what it will cost to run, and what the municipality expects of you once it is installed.

Buying guide

Choosing a water tank

Which material suits the job

Composite tanks and steel tanks are effectively two different industries that happen to share a word. They use different materials, different plants, different standards and different customers. Picking between them is the first decision, and it is usually settled by where the tank is going rather than by price — a bolted steel tank is the one that can be carried into a finished plant room and built there, and the one that goes well past the volume a moulded tank can reach.

	GRP moulded	GRP panel	HDPE plastic	Bolted steel
Best for	Rooftop and ground storage up to 20,000 gal	Plant rooms, basements, any awkward footprint	Smaller domestic and site storage	Large volume, fire reserve and industrial duty
Capacity	Up to about 318 m³	Built to the volume required	Small domestic sizes	3 m³ to 580 m³ standard, larger engineered to project
Delivered as	One piece — needs crane access	Flat panels, built in position	One piece — light enough to handle	Flat-pack panels, bolted together on site
Gets through a doorway	No	Yes — that is the point of it	Small sizes only	Yes — panels are carried in and bolted in position
Shape	Fixed mould sizes	Any footprint that meets the volume	Fixed moulds	Cylindrical — diameter and height chosen to suit the space
Base needed	Level plinth or beams	Level concrete plinth or steel beams	Flat level ground	Reinforced concrete ring or slab, engineered to the tank
Refurbished available	Yes	Yes	Yes	New only

Capacities are US gallons throughout this site. 1 m³ = 264.172 US gallons.

If it will not fit through the door, you need a panel tank

This is the single most common reason a job changes specification late. A moulded tank arrives in one piece and has to be craned into position. A panel tank arrives flat and is bolted together where it stands, so it will go into a basement plant room or up a stairwell. If access is tight, decide this before you price anything else.

Working out the size you need

Tanks are sold here by US gallon, but plans and pumps are usually specified in cubic metres or litres. The conversion is fixed, so you can work between them without asking anyone.

US gallons	Cubic metres	Litres (approx.)
500	1.89	1,893
1,000	3.79	3,785
2,500	9.46	9,464
5,000	18.93	18,927
10,000	37.85	37,854
20,000	75.71	75,708

Derived from the fixed conversion 1 m³ = 264.172 US gallons — not rounded marketing figures.

Measure the space before the volume. A 5,000 gallon requirement in a 2.5 m high plant room is a different tank from the same volume on an open roof.
Panel tanks are quoted by the footprint that meets your volume, so send us the length, width and height you have available and we will work back to the capacity.
Allow for the full tank weight on the structure. Water alone is 1,000 kg per cubic metre — a 5,000 gallon tank is close to 19 tonnes when full, before the tank itself.

What the law expects after it is installed

Storing potable water in the UAE comes with a maintenance obligation that falls on the building owner, not on the supplier. Most buyers do not find this out until an inspection. The requirement differs by emirate, so the relevant instrument is named below and you can check each one yourself.

Emirate	Instrument	What it requires
Dubai	DM-HSD-GU17-DW2, drinking water guidelines	Clean and disinfect at least twice a year with 50 mg/L chlorine, and inspect internally at least monthly. The cleaning company must be approved by the DM Food Safety Department.
Abu Dhabi	ED/R01/102, Code of Practice (2015)	Frequency depends on the tank. Concrete and GRP underground or ground tanks bi-annually; roof tanks annually. Plastic, FRP and GI tanks annually in both positions.
Sharjah	Sharjah Municipality, Health Control Section	Hotels, private schools and nurseries must hold a contract with a cleaning establishment licensed in Sharjah emirate. No public frequency is published — confirm with the Public Health Department directly.

The Abu Dhabi Code of Practice dates from 2015 and was issued by the Regulation & Supervision Bureau, since absorbed into the Department of Energy. Confirm the current edition before you rely on it for a contract.

We clean tanks as well as sell them

Our own crew does this work rather than a subcontractor. If you would rather the cleaning schedule was somebody else's problem, ask us for it at the same time as the tank and we will price both together — see the tank cleaning page for what each emirate requires and what a proper clean involves.

Standards — the straight answer

You will see certifications quoted heavily in this market. Some are real requirements, some are tender preferences being sold to you as law, and some are neither. Here is where each one actually stands.

Claim	What is actually true
WRAS approval	A UK scheme, frequently written into UAE tender documents and consultant specifications. Holding it is a genuine commercial advantage — but no UAE regulation mandates it. Treat it as a tender requirement, not a legal one.
Dubai Central Laboratory certification	DCL runs building-product certification schemes, but water tanks are not among the published categories. Whether it is mandatory for GRP or plastic water tanks is not established.
Civil Defence Certificate of Compliance	Covers fire detection and life-safety electrical equipment — alarms, emergency lighting, call points. Water tanks are not in its scope, including fire reserve tanks. What applies to a fire reserve tank is the UAE Fire and Life Safety Code; Civil Defence approval is obtained by the contractor on the installed system, not on the tank.
ECAS / MOIAT conformity marking	ESMA's functions now sit within MOIAT. The current regulated-products list is not public in a form we can cite, so we do not assume tanks are exempt — we check per product.

We do not publish a standard we cannot evidence

If a certification matters to your specification, ask us for it on the specific unit and we will either produce the supplier's documentation or tell you plainly that we cannot. A supplier who answers that question instantly, for every product, is guessing.

Questions

Straight answers.

What is the difference between a GRP tank and a GRP panel tank?

A moulded GRP tank arrives in one piece and has to be craned into position. A panel tank arrives as flat sections and is bolted together where it stands, so it will fit through a standard doorway and into a basement plant room. Panel tanks can also be built to any footprint that meets your volume, which matters when the space is an awkward shape.

How many litres is a 5,000 gallon tank?

About 18,927 litres, or 18.93 cubic metres. All capacities on this site are US gallons, converted at the fixed rate of 1 m³ = 264.172 US gallons.

How often does a water tank have to be cleaned in the UAE?

It depends on the emirate. Dubai's drinking water guidelines require cleaning and disinfection at least twice a year plus a monthly internal inspection, and the cleaning company must be approved by the DM Food Safety Department. Abu Dhabi's Code of Practice sets it by tank type — concrete and GRP underground or ground tanks bi-annually, roof tanks annually, plastic and FRP annually. Sharjah requires certain premises to contract a Sharjah-licensed establishment but does not publish a frequency.

Do you supply refurbished tanks, and are they safe for drinking water?

Yes, we supply refurbished tanks across every material, and they are cleaned and checked before they leave the yard. Whether a specific refurbished unit is suitable for potable water depends on its condition and lining, so ask us about the actual unit rather than the category — we will tell you what we have.

Is WRAS approval required for water tanks in the UAE?

No UAE regulation mandates WRAS. It is a UK scheme that is frequently specified in UAE tender documents and consultant specifications, so it is often a commercial requirement on a particular job — but it is not the law, and anyone telling you otherwise should be asked to name the instrument.

What base does a water tank need?

Moulded tanks need a level plinth or steel beams. Panel tanks need a level concrete plinth or a steel beam base prepared before delivery. In all cases the base carries the full weight of the water — roughly 1,000 kg per cubic metre — plus the tank, so it should be designed for the filled weight, not the empty one.

Now the prices

Water Tanks

GRP fibreglass, custom-built GRP panel and HDPE plastic tanks — from a 500-gallon rooftop unit to sectional panel tanks built on site.

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Get in touch

Ready to get your quote?

Tell us the size, quantity and delivery emirate — we'll come back with pricing and availability.

Mon–Sat, 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM · +971 54 303 3119 (Operations Director) · +971 54 241 0599 (Managing Director)