Breathable construction is your friend, if you have solid stone walls. Gas diffusion through solid materials is significant. Also insulations like woodfibre, covered with dense vapour-permeable sheets such as clay boards are brilliant as they not only provide thermal mass and insulation, but act as a moisture buffer. Dampness is absorbed at periods of high humidity and released as the vapour gradient changes. It might be a long shot as the single form of protection in a draughty garage, but if you're insulating already then it'll certainly be a great help to a dehumidifier. This humidity buffering technique is a common alternative in Europe to the ceramic tiles we like over here in bathrooms, as condensation is drastically reduced.
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Theblackbox
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Interested to hear which make/model you are using.
today all the condensation seemed to disappear guess the machines had warmed up a bit!
Smouser
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My double garage is not insulated and fairly 'leaky'. I can see air gaps around both garage doors.
I don't think a dehumidifier or even two will work for me. I really don't know what the solution is.
Oil and a fan is the best I can do at the moment.
I don't think a dehumidifier or even two will work for me. I really don't know what the solution is.
Oil and a fan is the best I can do at the moment.
Jelly_Sheffield
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
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I find insulation makes a surprising difference to stabilising the temperature against rapid swings, pushing back the time of year that you need to start putting energy in.wont make any odds unless you heat it as well
I have noticed that with the extended bursts of relatively clement weather the internal temp of the workshop has held for a pretty long time, and the dehumidifier has not had to kick in all that much this year.
The dehumidifier is on a controller with a couple of temperature sensors attached to heavy metal items, and a humidity sensor, so that it will cut in just enough to ensure that the dew-point is below the temperature of the machine tools.
I only heat the space when it's occupied, and I have had zero issues with rust since the dehumidifier went in, which is superior results to when I heated it for a tiny fraction of the energy consumption that required.
Im using these: https://www.meaco.com/products/meaco-dd8l-zambezi-dehumidifier
They do the job, but they do seem rather fault prone popping up errors on a regular basis. Switching on and off gets them going again.
In my experience all these cheap units are exactly that cheap. Not built to last.
At the moment, with a single skin roof, and hence no insulating effect to speak of, its my only option. The quote for a new roof was just shy of 50K! Wont be doing that any time soon!
Seal the gaps.
Trying to heat is just as fultile with gaps. Worse than trying to dehumidify it it, as moist air will continue to come in regardless.
This^^^^ To say you need to heat it as well is to misundertand the problem.
Jelly_Sheffield
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
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Exactly the bottom line is that as humidity goes up, and the temperature goes down... You will have to put energy in to either:
• increase the enthalpy to the air keep the water as vapour, or
• do work to physically remove it from the air
I think it's forgivable to make heat the default assumption though.
Most dehumidifiers are the refrigerant type which rapidly loses effectiveness in single digit temps, so you still need to add at least a bit of heat to use them.
I am quite fortunate to have stumbled on a big Munters desiccant type dehumidifier that will remove 1kg of water per hour (at 100% RH and 20°C there's about 17g of water per cubic metre).
It takes a minute to wrap your head round all the moving parts of how you use pure dessication to prevent rust, but it is the single most effective solution.
As it happens there's a guy selling off five MH300M desiccant dehumidifiers (about twice the rated capacity of mine) on eBay at the moment...
He wants £199 each, but when you consider they're £1,976 new it's a bit of a steal.
mark roberts
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I just got a military tent heater to try and prevent rust, also make it bearable to be in the shed when its cold
MattF
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That's my approach.
Looks a good deal. But all he needs to do to test them is get a 110V transformer. Then they are worth much more. Im not convinced all is as it seems.
Morrisman
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My bungalow has solid concrete floors throughout, when we first moved in, early one March, it had been empty for 6 months, no heating apart from frost stat.
It took 3 days with the central heating running constantly to get the inside temp up to a reasonable level. It was just chilled to the core.
The previous owner spent his life in a wheelchair, so the floors have a basic thin layer of carpet, no shag pile and thick underlay.
Jelly_Sheffield
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
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If you look at his other items, it appears he just sells random secondhand stuff... So probably just wants to shift these 5 big objects at a profit to him for minimal effort.
I do agree that if I was selling it would be worth the effort to test and then sell for market value... But I also have a transformer & cables and understand what they're worth.
The best deals always come from sellers who don't really understand what it is they have, but so does the highest risk!
MattF
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It is. It was a toss-up for me as to which type I went with.
Looks like weather conditions are setting up over parts of the UK for another rusting session, though a lot less dramatic than the last one. Ireland and the very west will see it first, early hours of tomorrow, and it will spread eastwards, with eastern parts of the UK getting it Saturday or Sunday. The Midlands and south Pennines may well be less affected, than other areas, but central areas north of there (north Pennines and Scotland) could be affected quite significantly. Sticking my neck out there a bit with this forecast, as it does depend on the accuracy of the main weather forecasts, and on my ability to assimilate the information. I could be wrong, and frequently am.
brightspark
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dreading it happening again. took ages to clean dry and spray all my gear last weekI have not yet recovered from the first rust session
This time, my lathe and mill will be oiled. I still need to get to dividing heads, chucks, rotary tables et.al to remove the rust and oil them up.
was a hard frost this morning . will have to keep an eye open the next few days
40mm timber walls will have insulating properties, to a degree, but adding a decent amount of "proper" insulation will help greatly.
