The autumn storms begin to blow…

Rainfall in Northern Europe and elsewhere at this time of year can involve over four gallons of water pouring onto a roof every hour on its way down to the drains. This places permanent stress on the building’s gutters.If they also contain damp autumn leaves, these will restrict free flow and cause build-ups of water in the curved sections. A gutter can easily cope with these stresses – if it has been galvanized.

Matched to the bath

Sheet steel, which is used to make items like gutters, is galvanized in a bath of molten zinc at the continuous-strip stage, before being subjected to further processing. This entails heating the bath up to a temperature of approximately 400°C in order to give the sheet metal a uniform zinc coating, thereby making it highly resistant to damaging rust and corrosion – even in heavy rain.

But galvanizing has its own problems. Molten zinc (as opposed to its solidified counterpart) is in fact highly corrosive, and it attacks the zinc bath’s components while it is in this liquid state. For this reason, the materials of the installed components, such as Kuhn Special Steel’s sink and stabilising rollers, which transport the sheet metal through the bath, must be particularly corrosion-resistant. The material composition of components supplied by us is specifically matched to the zinc bath concerned in order to withstand the action of molten zinc over extended periods of time. This considerably extends the service life of the components used in the bath, while minimising the downtime needed for equipment maintenance purposes.

The result: the galvanized sheet steel does not suffer from rust or corrosion, and nor do the resulting sections of guttering. There is an old German saying that goes, roughly translated, “A stormy November this time round means a laughing farmer next year.” We endeavour to deliver a version that includes an equally amused home owner, sleeping safe and sound.

Photos: © plazaccameraman – stock.adobe.com, Kuhn Edelstahl