Looking for ideas to keep moisture out 7

[dicer]

To store books etc.
Also like when using a box or van trailer to store things, how to design to keep out the moisture.

 

[unclesyd]

To protect individual books you could use a vacuum sealer for the rarely used books or a vacuum/gas sealer, normally a commercial machine. You can find a lot of the commercial vacuum/machines on the surplus market. With this machine you could backfill with any dry gas.

This is just one variation of these machines.

http://www.foodsaver.com/index.aspx?promo=G8FPALL&gclid=CJuIpPnLlKQCFcHr7QodrHCACA

 

[Twoballcane]

Seal unit, purge air out and backfill with nitrogen...

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."

 

[chicopee]

Freeze books at let's say 20dF and put books in a depressurized container--moisture will be removed and kept out as long as partial pressure is maintained.

About 30 years ago, the Town of Glastonbury,Ct. sustained water damaged on documents following a fire loss. Documents were then stored in refrigerated trailers and taken to a nearby altitude chamber at Hamilton Standard for drying.

 

[unclesyd]

In line with some of the above suggestions you may want to consider the following.

When I went to my shop a moment ago one of them brain things hit me. My shop is very well insulated and nearly hermetically sealed. Due to our high humidity and temperature swings rusting of tools becomes a problem. To ameliorate the problem I use a small portable dehumidifier from big box store set on a timer with the condensed water being carried by tubing to a drain. I have the unit on a timer but have a humidistat ready to install. The unit not only dries the air but uses the reject heat to normally keeps the air in the shop above the dew point.

 

[vpl]

In reading through these threads, my observation is that a lot of people have provided good solutions based on the sparse information given. The original poster appears somewhat dismissive of the practical solutions and doesn't appear to have checked on those he implemented:

I have some literature that some years back did the vaccum pack deal haven't looked in a while I think they are still sealed up.

He also hasn't been very forthcoming about his actual situation. No information on size and conditions of the storage area (such as whether there is heat, electricity, insulation,etc.) or whether the books need to be readily accessible or are being preserved for some other reason.

My impression is that this is a non-engineer who dumped a bunch of books in his travel trailer over the winter and when he cleaned it out, found mold on some of them. I don't mind being corrected if the impression is erroneous.

Patricia Lougheed

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[dicer]

"hasn't been very forthcoming about his actual situation"
Wow! Just asking some questions. No there is nothing in a trailer now, there was at one time, for storage when I had to travel. Some books would need to be readily accessible, mainly I was looking for ideas for storage, and protection for books.

 

[cloa]

Use Spacebags just need a vacuum cleaner

 

[Warpspeed]

Vacuum is just going to encourage very slow moisture entry through osmosis. Most plastics are not totally impermeable.

 

[jmw]

I like questions which start with a solution and not the problem.
The problem is to protect books and documents from moisture.
The first approach is to exclude moisture which, on a planet like this, is pretty tricky but of all the solutions

For this approach, I like Uncle Sid's idea best because it is low cost.

This is actually the solution we used in our underground observation post where we had to keep clothes etc. stored against some future time.
Polythene bags, tape to seal them and a household vacuum cleaner. It also tends to compress the contents which is no bad thing.
It also means that if you want access to any one book or document you only compromise the protection on one small part of the stored material and it is easy enough to re-protect the package when done.

The other approach is to protect the individual documents not just against moisture but to a whole range of other problems and yet have them all accessible without having to follow some complex procedure to access them and re=protect them afterwards.
Quite a number of very important documents, including of historical importance, is to protect them with parylene (sic).

http://www.igb.fraunhofer.de/

http://www/gf/grenzflmem/plasma/anlagen/en/Parylene.en.html

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com