Protecting Your Garage From Excess Moisture

In your garage you might have all sorts of bits and pieces that are important to you or your family but are susceptible to damage by moisture. Excess moisture in the air can attack a wide range of materials including metal, wood, paper, cardboard, fabrics and photos.

This means that everything from cars, bikes, tools, lawnmowers, tents, boxes, clothes and old family photos could be damaged, and in extreme cases, destroyed by high relative humidity.

This is especially likely to happen in the winter when we close our garages up more, and drive in a wet car to cool down inside allowing it to transfer all of that moisture in from the outside.

The materials that garages are made from can also be an issue soaking up the rain and transferring the moisture from outside to inside.

If your garage is unheated and you live in a part of North America where the temperatures drop below 60℉ in winter, then you would be better off using a desiccant dehumidifier to protect all of your belongings than the traditional compressor dehumidifiers.

A dehumidifier like the Keystone DD7L Junior will keep the relative humidity below 60%rh, which should ensure that your belongs are safer from damage. A compressor dehumidifier will not like running at below 60°F, and if the temperature drops even lower towards 50°F then using the compressor dehumidifier makes absolutely no sense at all.

As it gets colder compressor dehumidifiers struggle to operate efficiently as they have to be several degrees colder internally than the room they are sitting in. This can cause a build up of ice inside the dehumidifier, and this is why they spend so much time in defrost mode.

A desiccant dehumidifier on the other hand will not care at all what the temperature is inside the garage, it’s performance will be the same at 50°F as it would be at 80°F. As well as a more reliable performance it also has the added advantage of adding a small amount of heat to the space as it uses a small heater internally to regenerate it’s drying process. In a normal garage this will add 330 watts of heat to the room.

Once the water has been removed from the air you then have the choice as to whether to use the internal tank and to pore it away when the tank is full, or to use the hose and let the water drain away on a continuous basis.

The built in humidistat will ensure that the dehumidifier turns on and off as required and that the garage is controlled to a level of humidity that is safer for your belongings.