Humidity in basement

[JERRYS.]

dehumidifier is the only way to go because it makes the basement livable for other things such as an extra party room.....

[ninosdemente]

I ended up buying a bag of desiccant packs from amazon and put two pack per containers. Hopefully this will buy me some time for the dehumidifier to works it magic.

[Kevin Rohrer]

A couple comments:

1. You can avoid using abrasives on small metal parts and remove rust safely and easily. I use a solution of citric acid and water. Just throw the parts in the solution and let them set there for couple days; the rust falls off w/o metal damage.

Here is a scale artillery shell machined from tool-steel and bronze. I bought it at a tag sale earlier this year. The owner had allowed it to become covered with a thin layer of rust. I dunked it in the solution for only 4-hours, and this is how it came out.



Here are a couple before-and-after pics of a Hollywood Senior Turret that had not been cared for by the previous owner. Two days in the solution and you see the end-result. Any brown you see on it is oil.






My basement varies in humidity from 30% (Winter) to 65% (Summer when the dehumidifier is not running). Here are some Hollywood shell holders that have been setting there for 10-years. I take no special care of them and most have never been oiled.




If anyone has a rust problem in their basement, the humidity must be VERY high, and a dehumidifier is a must.

[ninosdemente]

What a difference!

[disseminator]

Get a dehumidifier.

[Unclenick]

It seems to me that Hatcher reported it required something like 68% to 72% RH for corrosive primers to cause rusting to commence. A little lowering of the RH goes a long way toward preventing rust.

[JeepHammer]

I hope this doesn't start the insane crap fight it did on a different forum...

I patrol the local appliance dealer, he calls me when he has an upright fridge/freezer come in to be disposed of. Particularly in stainless...

Once compressor is removed, you simply seal up any openings for lines with expanding foam.
I keep the cord, door switches, lights in place, wired, and add a 'Golden Rod' inside.

Since they pretty much all have magnetic door seals, and most are still available, it's easy to seal the door back up no matter how bad of shape the seal is.

These make GREAT low humidity places to store equipment!
Lighted, shelving, active humidity control, with a padlock, reasonably secure.

It's a big metal box that's sealed, with properly grounded cord, it's static proof, it costs little to nothing depending on what shape the seal is in.

I can't ever recommend storing very large quantities of powder/primers in living quarters.
I've done exactly the same thing with a locking stainless version out in the yard barn for powder/primers. If lightening strikes it or the lawn mower burns it down, it's far enough from the house I won't be looking for new living accommodations.
Since there are ZERO federal regulations (sometimes local regs, you need to check) about home reloading quantities of powder/primers, this is a pretty good compromise between safety & security.
Locked yard barn, locked fridge, motion sensor camera/light.

I have a VERY large commercial fridge with 'Golden Rods' inside I keep raw metal projects in while waiting on tooling/final specifications for completion.
Nothing in the world I know of rusts faster than raw/bare tool steel (raw dies will tell you this very quickly!) and it's big enough for larger pieces & tooling.

This is a VERY old shop 'Trick', welders & machine shops have done this for many decades, they simply wired the light on full time to reduce humidity.
'Golden Rods' require MUCH less power and are very safe.

[hounddawg]

why in the world would that start a crap fight Jeep ? that trick out dates me which puts it at damn near pre historic

[JeepHammer]

Morons.
It went into a full scale blowout because some idiot couldn't differentiate between federal large scale/construction explosives storage requirements & storage for tools, dies, even machines and a few packages of primers/powder.

Then his idiot friends jumped in and decided that using a fridge was building a bomb (like 6 or 8 sheet metal screws holding the entire back on wouldn't blow out, and the magnetic door seal wouldn't give).

I don't recommend more that a very few pounds of powder in the home simply because it does need reasonable handling & storage. In the home, not everyone there understands this, from wives/children to pets... Out to the rat that ate through a plastic powder can in the shop...

Then there are the guys that don't understand static electricity, an electrically grounded metal box is about the safest place to kill static electricity... You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you can't teach a stupid dog anything!

[hounddawg]

/shakes head

if my next house has a damp basement I will keep the refrigerator idea in mind

[Mike Irwin]

"Then his idiot friends jumped in and decided that using a fridge was building a bomb..."

I've advocated using old fridges for storing stuff like this for years.

Just not one of the earlier ones with a mechanical door latch. That would be a problem.

[Unclenick]

Refrigerators are actually great for numerous things. When I worked at YSI we had 75 Watt heaters (incandescent light bulb would work, but proper heaters last longer) and a temperature controller attached to turn them into 150°F epoxy curing ovens for casting oxygen probe bodies.

I've seen refrigerators used for storage of paints and solvents. The magnetic latches pop open under pressure, which is what commercial explosion-proof storage cabinets do. I suppose one could argue the door has more inertia and that will slow its opening and increase peak pressure, but we've all seen videos of cans of smokeless rifle powder lit and burst at their seams without explosive force and the same would happen with the refrigerator door. Black powder is the only things I'd not keep in one, as that would likely send the door and its hinges flying pretty hard.

Since a refrigerator box is insulated, its heat gain will be high. That is, the number of degrees the inside temperature goes up for each watt of heater input will be larger than in a non-insulated box. For that reason, it would be worth taking the temperature a Goldenrod raises it to just to be sure the RH doesn't get too low and speed up your powder burn rate more than you want.

This calculator is easy to use for this. You just select the button to have it work in the temperature scale of your choice, enter the temperature and relative humidity of your basement, click on Calculate and let it work out the dew point temperature for you, then you leave that dew point temperature alone for the rest. Clear the temperature and change the RH to the highest you will accept and click on Calculate again and the temperature result will be the minimum temperature inside the refrigerator box. Clear the temperature and change the RH to the minimum you want and click on Calculate again to get the maximum temperature the inside of the box should get to.

Example: Suppose my basement is 70°F and has 80% RH. I select the option to use degrees Fahrenheit. Enter those values with the dew point temperature left blank and click Calculate. The dew point comes up as 63.55°F. Leave that alone. Clearing the temperature and entering my maximum acceptable RH of 60%, I click calculate and it tells me I need 78.59°F inside as a minimum, so 8.59°F temperature rise. Next, I clear temperature and put in my minimum RH of 45%. I click on calculate and it returns 91.24°F, or 21.24°F temperature rise. The average temperature rise is then about 15°F, so that becomes my target value, but I can accept anything in between for powder.

Clearly, a refrigerator and Goldenrod heater would make a good die storage cabinet, too. Everything inside will be warmer than the outside, so condensation won't occur when you take things out of it to use them.

[HWS]

Great idea! A big unused refrigerator with a chain/lock around it and you would have a poor man's safe.

[JeepHammer]

If you want a safe, find a big old soda machine. Built sold, a lock that beats most cheap safe locks, easy to add a big padlock or bar lock, and no one looks twice at a soda machine.
No one looks twice at a soda machine with an 'Out Of Order' sign on it and a 1/4" layer of dust on top of it...

The appx. 24" tall x 18" wide safe on rollers in my office weighs a ton, is cabled to the floor.
The idea is, some idiot sees safe, breaks in, tries to make off with safe, hindered by cable, but if they work hard enough they are going to make off with it.
I bought it at a yard sale, no combo, the door is held shut with torx screws from the back.
I keep booze in it (not good booze either).

You won't find the actual safe, over 6' tall & nearly 4' wide, since it doesn't look like a safe.
There are no 'Secret' spaces in the building, you can walk the entire building and not see an intrusion or dead space.
Robbed 3 times in the last 20 years and exactly ZERO actual safe break-ins.
They did nearly get the decoy off the cable the last time... Broke a bottle of Early Times and Absloute vodka, but the Jack survived and I got GREAT video of the idiots (which live about a mile down the road)...

As for refridgator/freezer, I never pass a stainless version up.
With the cost of stainless, and the sides being PERFECT size for bench tops...
If it's wide/tall enough, and some freezers have built in locks, I use it for what we discussed.

The wife's computer desk top is stainless, I cut plywood to fit inside a door, mounted flexible neck lights in the handle pull holes and the short shelf under the table top is the freezer door off the same side by side fridge.
Some plywood, some thin wall stainless tubing to cover iron pipe legs and it looks all for the world like a custom length stainless desk.
I got the rest of the stainless for my benches, shelves and I even have a stainless mailbox from fridges...

[JeepHammer]

The next one is a second hand story...
The guy gutted a single door standing freezer, built his own concrete board inside which he covered with 'Flocking' (looks like velour drapes/car seats) and poured refractory cement around his custom inside box, filled the door with some kind of flexible fire resistant batting (used in kilns) and stored his guns in it.
The house burned down with this big old freezer in the garage against the kitchen wall (where the fire started) and when they opened the box, not one firearm was damaged.
I know about the house fire, I heard the story from his brother, and I have no reason to doubt it, the guy is a square shooter.
His insurance documents & important papers were in there also, and survived.

I can't recommend pouring a fridge full of refractory cement, but in this case it worked...