Stopping everything from rusting.

Pete,

Just a warning to everyone today.

Same here Pete, in central Scotland.

My shed has been 0-3C for about a week but this morning (- outside temp was about 10-12C and humid) I went in to the shed and saw that everything was covered in condensation....even the undersides of wooden shelves!

It would seem that my reasonably well insulted shed had remained very cold inside. Meantime outside, the air had quickly become warm and humid. As soon as I opened the shed door the damp air entered.

I've never had bad condensation before so I think this is a rare event due to the large and sudden temperature delta. But I've now bought a small bar heater for 'next time'. I'll turn it on a day or two in advance when I see large temp rises predicted.

Ches

I've had the de-humidifier running for 2 hours it's pulled a litre of water out of the air. I've left it running in there for the night.

I'm so glad that I caught this in time I have a lot of scraped stuff including straight edges and reference squares that would all need re-scraping if I hadn't. Not to mention the machine tools themselves.

Put my dehumidifier on yesterday afternoon for a couple of hours thinking it would do the trick, checked just after lunch and there was lots of moisture on anything big and metallic so wiped all the moisture off and set the dehumifier for three hours. Just checked humidity down to 60% and about 2l of water in the tray. My workshop is sectioned off in a corner of a large double garage, fortunately the car in there was fine.

In anticipation of the cold spell I had wiped way oil (forget the actual brand) on anything metalic I could find in the shed, so the condensation was sitting on the oil this morning.

About noon I reckoned the only way to get the condensation off the metal was to aim a hot air blower at the lathe, mill etc to try to bring them up to ambient temperature. That seemed to have worked somewhat, as most (but not all) of the condensation was gone - the shed has four vents so hopfully the gentle flow of air through the vents would carry out the evaporated moisture in the warm air.

I'll check tomorrow for any rust patches and treat them.

Ches.

I had condensation in my newish garage for the first time yesterday. About nine large pots of paint were standing together under a table, each of which was covered in heavy condensation. A car engine that I am building had a much lesser amount on it, but everything else was dry. Odd.

James.

Judicious use of a chinese diesel-fired air heater, and running my dehumidifier on low power for one hour each night, has kept my workshop above 5 degrees and below 60% humidity throughout the cold snap.

It has required about an hour run on a fairly low setting on the 4(?)kW heater once or twice a day. Far cheaper, for me, than running the dehumidifier(s) for longer, or on high power.

Sometimes warmed while I am in residence and sometimes just started and left to shut itself down after a one hour run.

Back to just the dehumidifier at present. So costing about 7p per day again - for a few days at least!

After me bragging that my unheated draughty shed never gets my tools rusty I got a shock yesterday when I found the lathes on one side of my shed covered in condensation.

The side joined to the house towards the door was the worst. the lathe farthest from the door unaffected.

The opposite side of the shed with an Emco miller and South Bend lathe had no condensation whatsoever! Never seen anything like it in the 22 years I have had the shed.

Vic, the wall by the house would be warmer so a very slight rising air movement pulls any damp new air to that side of the garage. Sounds like the condensation inside a jar we were discussing a few weeks ago.