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.