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Most Effective Ways To Prevent Rust

Most Effective Ways To Prevent Rust

Rusting is a pain to deal with and not something you can fix. Anything made of metal can develop rust through its natural deterioration process—but did you know there are ways to slow and prevent the formation of rust? Check out some of the most effective ways to prevent rust.

Use an Alloyed Metal

Alloyed metals are often designed to be resistant to rust. For example, in a household application, stainless steel is often the preferred metal alloy because of its natural corrosion resistance and clean look. Alloyed metals are basically just metals fused with other types of metal to make a hybrid.

This rust prevention method requires preplanning. The appliances you purchase or metal items you install should be made of an alloyed metal, as there’s no way to change the metal makeup once it’s in your home.

Apply a Sacrificial Coating

This may sound grim, but applying a sacrificial coating to your high-risk of rust metals can prolong the formation and even prevent it entirely. The coating is easy to apply and is a similar process to painting. You simply paint on the coating, which acts as bait to lure the rust to it so that your metal is left alone.

Sacrificial coating is a rust-prevention method that even pipelines and large underwater tankers use to prevent deterioration.

Cathodic Protection

This is a more extreme form of corrosion prevention that is more common in large applications such as ships, tanks, pipelines, and much more. This is a heavy-duty type of rust prevention because it works continuously to prevent the formation of corrosion. This method is effective against most forms of rust, regardless of application or metal type.

It’s unlikely anything in your home will need this kind of rust prevention, but you never know what kind of prevention the city is using for your plumbing and other liquid delivery systems, so it’s best to be informed.

There are many more effective ways to prevent rust. Avoid exposing metals to water and other liquids, keep them away from soil with low resistivity, and consider applying a topical coating to prevent the formation of rust in order to lengthen the life span of your metal items.


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