Iron and its alloys make an excellent choice for outdoor furniture in the home setting. However, you need to find ways to overcome iron’s susceptibility to rusting.
From rain chains, wind chimes, and spinners, you have a range of garden art to give your home a unique appeal. Modern technology provides a variety of steel products to help create a dream garden and improve the curb appeal of your home. After putting your best foot forward to create a beautiful garden complete with plants and steel ornaments, you can’t let the elements burst your effort. After prolonged exposure, metallic objects become susceptible to rust. However, with the right approach, you can stop rust from destroying your precious items.
What is rust?
Despite making an excellent material for the outdoors, iron and its alloys react to water and oxygen. The metal reacts to oxygen to form iron oxide. All derivatives of iron are susceptible to rust but to a lesser degree than pure iron.
The biggest culprit is water since the molecules pass through the tiny gap in the metal to initiate the process from below. That’s why the rusting bits are brittle and flaky, exposing the underlying surface to the elements.
In the presence of salt, the corrosion process occurs more rapidly. Once the rusting process starts, you need to act quickly to keep it from spreading and weakening the entire structure.
Can you defeat rust?
Naturally, the best way to combat rust is to eliminate the trigger, but that is anything but feasible or practical. That means that fighting corrosion is a never-ending battle. However, that doesn’t mean that using steel ornaments in your garden and home sentences you to a life of servitude.
With the right approach, you can reduce this to an occasional scuffle. That means that you can keep your planters, railings, fences, and gates in great shape without pulling your hair.
How do you espouse preventive maintenance?
To avoid being locked in a perpetual war with rust, a good offense is the best defense. Stainless, galvanized, and weathered steel has great ability to resist rust, giving you an upper hand from the get-go. Aside from the prefabricated solutions, coating metallic objects drastically lowers their susceptibility to rust.
Organic coatings such as paints are a cheap way to protect metal from rust by reducing the exposure of the iron to the elements. A coat of 15-25 micrometers is ideal in preventing water penetration.
Powder coating, a process that entails applying a layer of dry powder on a clean metal surface then heating it to form a thin film, is also quite useful. These powders include polyester, epoxy, polyester, acrylic, and urethane.
In the end, for outdoor fixtures and ornaments, iron is matchless as it is robust and impervious to insects. However, you must overcome its mortal enemy to reap all the benefits that it can bring to your home. By defeating rust, you can maintain your metallic items without pulling out your hair or incurring huge losses.
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