Use of hot dip galvanize in coastal area

How safe is hot-dip galvanizing, as far as rust is concerned, when we will be building in a coastal area?

Gerrit Snyman
- South Africa

Hot dip galvanizing is very safe for humans. Every person in the world intakes zinc every day as part of the diet. You have zinc in your pockets if you have American pennies.

As a rule of thumb hot dip galvanizing will protect the life of a steel product for 3 to 10 times the life of steel and paint. WE have highway bridges here in the USA OHIO that will last 100 years to first maintenance. Defination of first maintenance is 95% rust free and 5 % rust.

NASA our space program uses Hot Dip Galvanizing on most all of the space antennas located around the world. Sometimes they apply a duplex system of applying a special paint over galvnaizing to extend the life even more.

Paul Williams
- Naperville, IL, USA