Why Do Corroded Corrugated Iron Roofs Have a Striped Appearance ?
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Why do corroded corrugated iron roofs have a striped appearance ? Dirk HR Spennemann Techniques in Historic Preservation Why do corroded corrugated iron roofs have a striped appearance ? Dirk HR Spennemann Albury November 2015 Dirk HR Spennemann, Why do corroded iron roofs have a striped appearance? © 2015. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication are copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne Convention. No parts of this report may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, in existence or to be invented, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the authors, except where permitted by law. Cover: Photograph © Dirk HR Spennemann 2015 Preferred citation of this Report Spennemann, Dirk HR (2015) Techniques in Historic Preservation: Why do corroded corrugated iron roofs have a striped appearance ? Institute for Land, Water and Society Report nº 93. Albury, NSW: Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University. ii, 17 pp.; ISBN 978-1-86-467276-3. Disclaimer The views expressed in this report are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Charles Sturt University. Contact Associate Professor Dirk HR Spennemann, MA, PhD, MICOMOS, APF Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury NSW 2640, Aus- tralia. email: [email protected] — ii — Dirk HR Spennemann, Why do corroded iron roofs have a striped appearance? Contents Background ...................................................................................................................................................... 1 The Production of corrugated galvanised iron .......................................................................................... 1 Galvanised Iron .......................................................................................................................................... 1 The hotdipping process of zinc coating iron .................................................................................... 2 Corrugated Iron .......................................................................................................................................... 7 Arrangement Pattern of the Sheets .............................................................................................................. 9 Corrosion Processes (simplified) ............................................................................................................... 10 Corrosion of corrugated iron ................................................................................................................ 12 References ..................................................................................................................................................... 15 — iii — Dirk HR Spennemann, Why do corroded iron roofs have a striped appearance? — iv — Background Historic corrugated iron, some of which is over 100 years old, poses a range of conserva- tion challenges to heritage managers and property owners.1 Many of the roofs are corrod- ing with an increasing tendency to leak. Rusty iron roofs are a common sight in many rural areas and older industrial estates. It is frequently asserted in heritage literature that the striped appearance of many his- toric roofs (e.g. Fig. 1) is caused by sheets that were laid in an alternating fashion.2 The fol- lowing quote may serve as a representative example: “The single-sheet system [of galvanising, ed.] often produced uneven coatings and generally the coating was thicker on one surface than the other. The common practice of laying alternate sheets upside down (to save on overlap, if not watertightness) has left us with many old roofs with a striped appearance resulting from the more extensive rusting of the more thinly coated surface” (NSW Heritage Office, 1998). To examine the nature of corrosion of corrugated iron roofs, this document first ex- amines the hot-dipping process to zinc coat iron products from its invention by Stanislas Sorel in 1837 and traces the manufacturing method in the nineteenth century. While the hand dipping, and later the machine dipping process (see below), tended to result in une- venly coated sheets, the above stated reasoning is flawed on several fronts: the assumption that one side of the sheet metal will consistently be thinner coated than the other during the hot dip process; and that the sheets of flat iron are consistently fed through the rollers of the corrugating machine with the same side up. The second part of the study explains the principles of corrosion that cause the phenomenon why corroded corrugated iron roofs have a striped appearance. As will be shown, the striped appearance is caused by differen- tial corrosion, the processes of which will be explained in this technical note. The production of corrugated galvanised iron During the first half of the nineteenth century two technological developments occurred that gave rise to corrugated galvanised iron: the discovery that corrugated metal sheets had a much greater strength and load bearing capacity than flat sheets, and the discovery of a commercially viable process to make iron more rust resistant by coating it with zinc. Galvanised Iron During the mid-nineteenth century, galvanisation (the application of zinc on ferrous met- als) became a wide spread method of slowing down the corrosion of products made from sheet iron. True galvanisation is the electrochemical coating of one metal with another. While these processes were developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, they 1 . For general, by-and-large unreferenced overviews on corrugated iron and its conservation in Australia see the publications by the various state heritage offices (Heritage Branch [Qld], 2014; Heritage South Australia, 1999; Heritage Victoria, 2001; NSW Heritage Office, 1998; WA State Heritage Office, 2013) as well as guidelines by lo- cal councils (Brisbane City Council, 2014; Brooks & Loveys, 2014).—see also Warr (1992); Wright (2000); Historic Scotland (2008); and the General Services Administration (2014).—For corrugated iron see also Gayle, Look, and Waite (1992) and Walker, McGregor, and Stark (2004).—For recording of historic corrugated iron see Spennemann (2015e). 2 This study forms part of broader research focus into rural vernacular architecture in south-eastern Australia (Spennemann, 2015a, 2015b) and the use and preservation of corrugated iron (Spennemann, 2015c, 2015d, 2015e). Dirk HR Spennemann, Why do corroded iron roofs have a striped appearance? required ready access to electricity and were not really cost effective for large volume pro- duction of commonplace objects. In addition, the coating was only thin and thus not suita- ble for sheet iron for construction purposes (Downs, 1976). Setting aside true electro-galvanic processes, the common process until the end of the nineteenth century was hot-dipping, that is dip (at first hand-dip and later machine-dip) the iron sheets in a pot of molten zinc (at about 450°C)(Davies, 1899, p. 60ff). Even though utterly misleading, by the early 1860s the usage of the term ‘galvanised iron’ had become so widespread that it was retained (Strauss et al., 1864, p. 48) even though all zinc- coated iron, and later zinc-coated steel, was produced by the hot dipping process or a ver- sion thereof.3 Fig. 1. Example of a corroding corrugated iron roof, showing the ‘classic’ striped appearance (54 Wallace Street, Holbrook, NSW). The hot-dipping process of zinc coating iron The original patent application filed by Stanislas Sorel in France, and soon after in the USA, included five versions of hot and cold galvanising of iron (Ledru & Sorel, 1837; Sorel, 1837). Commercialisation of the hot-dipping process soon commenced in France and other countries, aided by the fact that minor modifications to the Sorel’s process al- lowed other manufacturers to circumvent the patent (Spennemann, in prep). The original patent application filed by Stanislas Sorel included the following descrip- tion of the hot-dipping process that, with minor variations, remained fundamentally the same until mechanisation in the late 1900s: The first process-that of coating the articles to be protected ·with metallic zinc-is to be effected much in the same manner in which tinning is performed: that is to say, the articles to be coat- 3 . Hot-dipped galvanised iron shows a surface colour with a characteristic broken pattern, the ‘spangle’ (GalvInfo Center, 2015). — 2 — Dirk HR Spennemann, Why do corroded iron roofs have a striped appearance? ed must be rendered clean and free from oxide by processes analogous to those followed in pre- paring them for ordinary tinning, such as immersing them in diluted sulphoric or muriatic ac- id, scouring them, &c which processes, being well known, need not be described. The zinc in like manner must be poured in proper crucibles or other convenient vessels adapted to the na- ture and size of articles to be operated upon, special care being taken to keep the metal cov- ered with sal-ammoniac or other proper flux, and to regulate the heat in such way as is re- quired by the volatile nature of the metal. The articles to be coated, after being dipped into the melted zinc, are to be withdrawn slowly, that too much of the metal may not adhere to them. They are then to be thrown into cold water, rubbed with a sponge or brush, and dried as quickly as possible, as otherwise they may be injured by