Dehumidifying a room ideas

[GilpinGuy]

Cross posting here from the S+P thread.

I have a roughly 10 x 12 shed that is pretty well insulated that I started an aquaponics system in. It's a 100 gallon water tank with fish in it that feeds growing beds for veggies.

Anyway, the shed has two windows and a sliding glass door. They are constantly covered in heavy moisture, obviously, and I need a solution to dehumidify the room.

I can vent through a window with a fan or buy a dehumidifier. Any other ideas?

[GilpinGuy]

Mostly likely a stupid idea... this is NOT my area, but what if you put the tank/bed within some kind of clear cover (I don't even know, mini-greenhouse like), which would help to isolate and condense the humidity inside the mini "greenhouse" for lack of a better description, within the shed?

Thats a pretty damn good idea actually. I'll look into that for sure. Occam's Razor. It would help at least.

[Irving]

Isn't that what I said? Are you thinking just the fish bed, or the grow bed as well? You could tent the whole unit, or partition the room like TheRealMartian does with his set-up.

[DenverGP]

Anything you do to reduce the humidity will just increase the rate of evaporation from the open top tank.


For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.

[DFBrews]

Exterior venting will be the cheapest and most energy efficient dehumidifiers are just a/c units with a heating element to heat the air back up after its has condensed all the vapor out

[GilpinGuy]

Isn't that what I said? Are you thinking just the fish bed, or the grow bed as well? You could tent the whole unit, or partition the room like TheRealMartian does with his set-up.

When you wrote "covering the tank" I thought you meant insulating it, not really covering it. Oops. I suppose rafting most of the surface of the water would do the same thing.

[Irving]

I'm trying to think outside the box if there are other ways to utilize the moisture in the air, like having more plants or something. Something that wouldn't just end up creating more work. If the collected water from a dehumidifier is safe, which it should be, you could use it to fill the water for your birds. How are the birds dealing with the additional moisture?

[Great-Kazoo]

Tent it to collect moisture. But.. Have an exhaust fan to pull any condensation collecting in the roof area. Come spring & summer you could run in to mold issues up there, if not the walls.

[rjr6150]

Look into a air to air heat exchanger.

[GilpinGuy]

I'm trying to think outside the box if there are other ways to utilize the moisture in the air, like having more plants or something. Something that wouldn't just end up creating more work. If the collected water from a dehumidifier is safe, which it should be, you could use it to fill the water for your birds. How are the birds dealing with the additional moisture?

The birds don't seem to mind a bit. In fact they probably enjoy the additional heat. I used to keep it 40F in there all winter. Now it's in the mid-high 60s.

[GilpinGuy]

Look into a air to air heat exchanger.

These look interesting, but probably not in the budget.

[SamuraiCO]

pics please

[Ah Pook]

Grow op too moist? [Coffee] <just kidding>

Interior tenting? Window venting seems easiest but then there is temp control. How to minimize moister in the system?

[Walker2970]

A/C only unit tied to a humidistat to control humidity and a A/C- Heat unit to control the climate or look at a pool dehumidifier
as a example https://www.dehumidifiercorp.com/vertical-dehumidifiers

[Wulf202]

When you wrote "covering the tank" I thought you meant insulating it, not really covering it. Oops. I suppose rafting most of the surface of the water would do the same thing.

Look up floating hot tub covers. Basically industrial bubble wrap you cut to fit. You can use just about anything that floats though.

[GilpinGuy]

I'm trying this:
73498
It ain't pretty. Just an $18.00 50 CFM bathroom fan, a 3" elbow, some scrap wood and an old pillow to fill the gap. If it works out, I'll do a more finished job on it all.

I've had this running for about 24 hours - got it running late last night. The fan ran 1/2 hour on/off all night last night with no space heater on. The temp dipped to about 57F when I checked this morning and there was still quite a bit of moisture on the windows. I expected a temp drop but was a bit disappointed with the moisture. I left it all day today and lo and behold, I went in there late afternoon and the windows were completely free of any moisture. Of course daylight helped, but it is a huge improvement. There used to be heavy moisture 24/7.

Tonight I set the timer for the vent to be on 1/2 hour every hour and a half instead of on/off every half hour. Plus I set the space heater to go on for a half hour when the vent is off during the "reduced rates" times from the elec. company. We'll see how this works.

It'll take some tinkering but I think I can get this to work. If not, you'll hear about it.

[GilpinGuy]

pics please

Go HERE (www.raisingquail.net) and you'll find all of my videos on this stuff.

[Irving]

Today was pretty warm (at least down here). I'd be interested in how much the temp drops if you don't run a heater at all, just to see what the difference is. If the birds were used to colder, then you may not need to heat at all.

Wulf202 turned me onto a Wyoming homestead channel today. I checked out some videos and they are gardening in the winter, in soil, in an unheated green house. Might be interesting to check out, even if it doesn't translate completely to what you're doing.

[GilpinGuy]

Send me the name of that channel would ya? I did a search and there's a ton out there.

[Walker2970]

instead of a timer if you a concerned about humidity wire in one of these
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Broan-Dehumidistat-Wall-Control-in-White-DH100W/203504318?cm_mmc=Shopping%7cVF%7cG%7c0%7cG-VF-PLA%7c&gclid=Cj0KCQiA_JTUBRD4ARIsAL7_VeXmYj1BUc1QpyoD3XyA 4C4UtcOJQM5e7oDG4tIE1jYcO8NtpRkoSXIaAjmoEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CM_8idz7p9kCFc_YwAodlXMNsA

set it and forget it at what ever humidity you want and now your are automatically controlled by humidity level

[GilpinGuy]

instead of a timer if you a concerned about humidity wire in one of these
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Broan-Dehumidistat-Wall-Control-in-White-DH100W/203504318?cm_mmc=Shopping%7cVF%7cG%7c0%7cG-VF-PLA%7c&gclid=Cj0KCQiA_JTUBRD4ARIsAL7_VeXmYj1BUc1QpyoD3XyA 4C4UtcOJQM5e7oDG4tIE1jYcO8NtpRkoSXIaAjmoEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CM_8idz7p9kCFc_YwAodlXMNsA

set it and forget it at what ever humidity you want and now your are automatically controlled by humidity level

That's bad ass. And $26. Gotta try it

[Irving]

Send me the name of that channel would ya? I did a search and there's a ton out there.

Our Wyoming Life
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDz_dmieFd0neB_VClG8PzA

The Real Martian, is another one that deals with moisture issues. Haven't seen his channel in a while though.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd8t8Dq8oZeAjGDx_87azBw

[GilpinGuy]

Thank you. I saw some of The Real Martian stuff a while ago too. He was pretty hard core.

[Irving]

Yeah, I pretty much checked out when he started doing a bunch of Adrino stuff because that is one of the areas where I'm too dumb to appreciate/keep up with what he's doing.

[Ah Pook]

Very kewl! Have you thought about adding trout to the bottom tank?

[Irving]

Very kewl! Have you thought about adding trout to the bottom tank?

That might be illegal since it is a local game fish. I'm not certain though.

[Ah Pook]

Watched a vid that had trout in the bottom tank. Thought it was a great idea for future eating. Not in CO though.

[GilpinGuy]

There are trout farms you can buy fish from. I don't think it's illegal. I was sort of planning on going with rainbows like a lot of folks do. I just have goldfish in there for now to balance things out.

Here's one place. There are a few others around.
https://coldspringstroutfarm.com/activities/live-fish-sales/

[Irving]

That's good to know, especially if you like trout!

[GilpinGuy]

instead of a timer if you a concerned about humidity wire in one of these
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Broan-Dehumidistat-Wall-Control-in-White-DH100W/203504318?cm_mmc=Shopping%7cVF%7cG%7c0%7cG-VF-PLA%7c&gclid=Cj0KCQiA_JTUBRD4ARIsAL7_VeXmYj1BUc1QpyoD3XyA 4C4UtcOJQM5e7oDG4tIE1jYcO8NtpRkoSXIaAjmoEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CM_8idz7p9kCFc_YwAodlXMNsA

set it and forget it at what ever humidity you want and now your are automatically controlled by humidity level


That's bad ass. And $26. Gotta try it

Just ordered the same one from Amazon for $15.