Replacing my heating elements

A couple things going on that prompted me to replace the elements - my 50A service seems to be stretched to the max when running both 5500W elements and two pumps on 220. It wasn't tripping the breaker, but things were smelling pretty hot in the spa panel. Second, it's been over a year since I brewed and the elements were starting to get ugly before I left when it came to the rust around the base.

Without checking, I just grabbed two 4500w elements on Amazon and they showed up as LWD units and they appear to be zinc plated with shiny silver finish. I hear soaking in Starsan will allow that to wipe off. I know the ULWD is recommended for the BK, so I'm looking to grab one for a brew session this weekend. Any reason one should avoid the zinc finish for the HLT when that water doubles as my heat for the HERMS as well as the sparge water?

Has anyone cracked the nut on preventing the element bases from rusting? None of my beers I brewed on this system tasted funky, but I can't imagine the rust is a good thing.

How often do you replace your elements? $11-$25 each isn't expensive, but if there is a way to maintain/preserve them, $50 gets me a couple batches of the smaller beers rather than new hardware.

IMO, the rusty element base issue is causing too many electric brewers to lose way too much sleep.

A small amount of rust on an element base is not going to affect the beer you brew. Yes, it may be unsightly, but it won't taint your beer.

You can always buff it off with a wire brush if it bothers you though.
Boiling in a PBW solution will leave your elements looking spiffy.

Reducing your elements to 4500 watts should also help keep from running your panel so close to red-line.

Say what you will, but I bought the stainless base elements from brewmation.com and am totally happy with them. I have an elevated HLT so, being a bit lazy, I rarely take it down and drain it fully after a brew. Unless I know I'm not brewing for a while.

After 6 brews in on the HLT, being left up on the shelf with ~1/8" water in the concord HLT for over 2 months, I pulled it down and popped out the triclover element. Clean. Totally clean. I put my water in the night before when I brew so it is ready for flipping a switch to turn it on before I make my coffee in the morning, so probably the worst possible scenario for element rust. The elements I pulled out of the triclover adapters were pretty rusty on the faces (never affected the beer to my taste) and it took a week of cleaning up the adapters to get the rust off them.

If I were building new, it is probably a wash at $55 per element since you don't have to put in the extra fitting for installing the anode that you also have to buy.

For me, a small downside is they only come in 5500 ripples (unless you want REALLY long 6000 watt straight elements) which took some serious convincing to get installed in my stilldragon adapters. I would also prefer to run a 4500/5500 rig but it is working out fine as it is.

Good luck.

Cheers.

BSD