S Bengi wrote:
Thermal Buffer
If you add more thermal mass to your house it will help
Insulation
If you add more insulation, then your AC will not have to work as hard
Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:Some caution should be used in this--not sure what materials will hold calcium chloride, but it seems it eats through metal.
Also, if it is boiled, it melts and then forms a solid block on cooling, so it will be useless.
I think air drying is better. It could in fact buffer and act as a humidifier in winter?? If not, is there some other substance that would work better (and not mold)?
Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:Well I always trust someone on the internet, especially with the name Swindler (just kidding and sorry, I'm sure you get that all the time, but for the rest of us it's the first).
Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:Wow, score one for Reddit:
"Calcium chloride, which you can buy as a ice melt product in many places, was used in bulk as desiccant/dehumidifier before A/C and electrical dehumidifiers were common. Application of it for this purpose was often as simple as having a 55 gallon drum filled with the salt placed in the area that needed dehumidifed (warehouses, silage silos, cold rooms, etc.).
Completely dry calcium chloride will absorb about 3 times its weight in moisture at 90% relative humidity - in which it can literally become a wet slurry, being so effective in absorbing water from the air. In comparison, common silica gel only absorbs about a 1/3 of its weight in moisture before being too saturated. Heating the salt at 212'F+ will drive off the trapped moisture and make the salt reuseable again.
Given a room with 1000 cubic feet air volume at 80'F and 80% relative humidity, there's about 1.4 lbs of water moisture present. So about half a pound of dried calcium chloride will absorb most of that moisture.
Do note, calcium chloride generates heat as it absorbs water. Whether this effect will be great enough to affect attempts to cool a space, I'm not sure."
--https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/1340iot/anyone_have_experience_using_rock_salt_as_a/
they recommend calcium chloride, about 1.5 lbs will be enough for a room 10x10x10 at 80% humidity.
But a drafty barn?? is the draft more helpful or more harmful? is it condensation that harms photographs or just humidity??
May Lotito wrote:Freshly prepared biochar can sequester nutrients making them not available for plants. I tried charging charcoal in compost tea for hours prior to making potting mix. The plants with biochar added actually were smaller than control without biochar. That makes me wonder how to effectively charge the charcoal so it is not inhibitory.