Zinc plated steel over a propane burner. Dangerous?

My friend was over today watching me work on my brew stand. He's done some welding and he brought it to my attention that when welding galvanized steel you need to wear a respirator. We weren't sure if a) zinc plated has the same issue or b) the propane burner would get it hot enough to matter. I know we have someone here who will know.

I don't know the exact answer to your question, but please at least read the information in these links and do some additional research before you brew again. From what I see here, it appears that the Zinc is the problematic part and that if it does get hot enough while you're brewing, it could make you quite sick and maybe even kill you. There's some contradictory info in the links below about just how dangerous it is, but it doesn't look like a good thing regardless. I'm certainly not trying to scare you or anything, but please be careful and try to find out for sure if this is OK before you fire up the brew rig again.

Welding/Burning galvanized steel

Here's some more safety information that may help.

Welding galvanized safety info

FWIW, galvanized steel is zinc plated steel.

My stand is wood, but my kettle supports are unistrut and I'm pretty sure they are galvanized and/or chromate plated. They peeled quite a bit on first usage, but that was outdoors so I doubt fumes was an issue.

FWIW...If you find yourself puking your guts out from breathing the yellow smoke off of galvanized metal....Milk WILL prevent a trip to the emergency room.

All good info. Thank you BK. Being lactose intolerant, I'm sure that would make for an especially fun evening.

I haven't fired it up yet; it's almost built. I also don't plan on using it indoors. I'm pretty sure it would be very easy to switch out the parts over the burners to mild steel. I'll probably do that.

Dustin_J said:

Welding/Burning galvanized steel

Here's some more safety information that may help.

Welding galvanized safety info

Click to expand...

Yikes, thanks for the links. Sounds like serious stuff.

put it outside....Put some plate steel on it to reflect as much heat as possible...and let it go at full blast for an hour....anything that's going to come off....will....then you're good to go.

That's what I was thinking. Sweet.