21 Oct
2004
21 Oct
'04
5:58 a.m.
At 10:51 AM 10/21/2004, chris wrote:
ULine sells them. Although I seem to recall when I
looked into them they
weren't super cheap. But that might have been because they make you buy
them by the case (per packet cost is probably dirt cheap, they just make
you buy 2000 packets at a time or something like that). Its been a while
since I looked at them.
If it's just silica gel you're looking for, it's cheap by the
pound in the craft section : people use it for drying flowers.
Make your own.
If you're just looking for a few handfuls, just walk through the
cheap shoe section at your local discount mart (Shopko, K-Mart,
Target, etc.) They put packets in shoeboxes these days, and
there will be many scattered on the floor. Bribe an employee
and I bet they'd collect them for you.
Either way, if you get the color-changing kind then you'll
know if they're saturated or not. Otherwise, put it all in
a low-temp oven for a while to really dry it out.
Not that I've solved all my own dehumidifying problems. My main
storage area, my office basement, has old rock foundation walls.
They can be a bit too moist in wet seasons. The air gets moist
enough to let mildew grow on items like leather if it is in
an enclosed space, but not so bad that it would do that if it
were out in the open.
I have a fridge-based dehumidifier, but it's not too smart in
terms of not running when the basement air is too cold to melt
its frost. It happily fills its condenser coils with frost and
adds dollars to my electric bill as it runs unnecessarily.
- John