Calcium chloride dessicant for storage shed?

Posted by shesaysImdone@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 13 comments

Hello The humidity in the storage room that is attached to my apartment where I store my canned food has been hovering at 75% this May. I have tried using this product:Eva-dry E-333 Renewable... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000H0XFCS?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share To reduce but it is not working. All the dehumidifiers I have seen need to be plugged in or renewed pretty frequently but I want something I can just leave there to only check maybe once a month because we are headed for June which is wasp and hornet season and they camp outside the door of my storage room. I searched humidity on this sub and Calcium chloride kept popping up(the other suggestions of using a dehumidifier with a water hose that drips outside is not feasible for me). Has anyone had experience with this drastically reducing humidity? And please don't say I need to get my food out of there. I know. It just can't be done right now.

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13 Comments

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No_Pop_3894@reddit

Old weed farmers trick the cardboard paper rolls from Home Depot basically line the inside of the shed. The people I knew wink wink would do that when they were drying a crop. They are purple in the painters section or the brown thinner stuff works too. It soaks up humidity because it’s designed to soak up paint.

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shesaysImdone@reddit (OP)

Thanks for the tip. Will check it out

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OnTheEdgeOfFreedom@reddit

Put your cans in a plastic bag with a dessicant in it. Seal the bag. Problem solved. You're trying to dehydrate a whole room with one little device. It won't ever work, the devices saturate but more moisture keeps entering the room. The only solution is to seal up a small space with your stuff in it so new moisture can't get in, and put a desiccant in that small space. Or ignore the problem; it takes cans awhile to rust, and if you're cycling through your supplies and replacing with new ones, the cans won't have time to rust enough to matter.

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TheRealBunkerJohn@reddit

\^This. To my knowledge, the only way to keep the humidity down with regularity is a plugged-in dehumidifier. That's the price of living in a high-humidity environment.

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grektyu@reddit

Technically you could also completely seal off the room with plastic.

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shesaysImdone@reddit (OP)

Plastic bag? What kind of plastic bag? But the idea of putting them in flat underbed totes with a dessicant in it has merit. There is no air flow in that shed unless you open the door

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OnTheEdgeOfFreedom@reddit

Moisture is getting in somehow or the humidity would never change. It's either airflow or it's wicking in through the floor or walls and either way, you want to get a barrier between it and your cans. If it's your shed, maybe adding a vent to it would reduce the humidity inside, but that depends on your climate. Any plastic bag will do as long as you can seal it shut. A big ziplock bag would do it. So would a trash bag if you can heat-seal the opening, but that's messy. Fancy mylar food bags would certainly work but they're overkill here. Totes would work as long as they are waterproof - they'd have a rubber or foam seal around the edge, but cheap ones don't.

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Telemere125@reddit

Seal the cans in a smaller plastic container and use a desiccant as has been suggested. But unless the outside humidity is super high, increasing the airflow into and out of the shed should drastically reduce both heat and humidity. A solar powered vent fan should draw air and humidity out. A screened vent near the floor should let cooler air in

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carltonxyz@reddit

Use plastic drums and use silicon dioxide for a desiccant. Crystal cat litter is silicon dioxide at about $2 a pound which is less expensive than bulk silicon dioxide desiccant at $9 a pound. Half a sock full per drum is what I use with good results.

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YardFudge@reddit

Rusty cans? Mitigate by covering metal with petroleum jelly. Far cheaper than dehumidifying a shed

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SherrifOfNothingtown@reddit

What's the airflow? If humid air is moving into the space, no amount of dessicant is going to make the space permanently more dry. An electric dehumidifier of the sort designed for crawlspaces, with its condensate line plumbed to a drain, will be your best bet if you can't fix the constant incursion of damp air.

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shesaysImdone@reddit (OP)

I don't think there is any airflow into the storage unit unless you open the door. I was reading reviews on the product I linked and they said for this product to really work there needs to be air flow.

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DwarvenRedshirt@reddit

Humidity isn't going to cause swelling in the cans. It could cause rusting, but you would notice that. It's heat that would be the bigger danger. Check your local Home Depot/Lowes for a 2lb tub of DampRid they have and see how long it takes to fill.