On Sun, 5 Jan 1997, Ross Overcash wrote:
> At 02:36 AM 1/5/97 GMT, you wrote:
> >Happy New Year to all! Best wishes for happy times and LBC miles!
> >I'm here in Cleveland Ohio and we're having an indian summer. Yesterday,
> >Jan. 3. it was 56 degrees out, and today Jan. 4. it was 64. This you might
> >think is ..... GOOD but this has caused a BIG problem in my garage.
> >My garage is un insulated, unheated, constructed of brick, poured cement
> >floor and a frame roof. It has a SMALL bit of ventilation and everything in
> >it including the walls have been soaking wet for the last two days. Imagine
> >going into your garage with a spray bottle, opening every drawer in your
> >tool box and spritzing everything inside! Then go to your favorite LBC and
> >do the same to the engine, body, interior, everywhere. I can write my name
> >in the condensate, and I KNOW my LBC's don't like living underwater. I had
> >to hang up the nylon car covers to dry out. This is amazing!
> With weather like that put the top down and cruise. Seriously it sounds
> like a ventilation problem. If this is not a regularly occuring phenominone
> I suggest a ventilation fan. Don't know what tyype of roof you have (gable,
> Ross Overcash, 74B, NAMGBR 2-1172, Ayer, MA.
I have to disagree with Ross; I don't think a fan or more ventilation
would help much. It might very well make the problem worse. Somebody
else, forget who, nailed the cause IMHO. The car, tools, and masonry
surfaces in the garage are cold, and you have a sudden warm spell with
high humidity. The cold surfaces are below the temperature at which water
condenses from the air (the dew point), so everything is getting wet
from water condensing out of the air. It won't last forever; if it stays
warm the surfaces will warm up, and if it gets cold, the air will have
less moisture in it. Either way, it will stop. A fan would only deliver
more humid air to the cold surfaces, condensing more moisture. A
dehumidifier would help if you can close the garage tightly enough. It
would also help to force the surfaces to warm up faster by heating the
garage (if you do it with a vented heater that doesn't add even more
moisture to the air).
If you want to experiment, next time it happens, you can try this (dunno
if it will work). Put a 150 watt bulb in a drop light, put that in a
metal bucket, and sit it in your car (turned on). Best to put the whole
thing on a cake cooling rack or something to space it away from any
flammable surfaces. It *may* warm the interior enough to at least keep
the interior from getting soggy. Be sure the hot light can't touch
anything flammable.
Ray Gibbons Dept. of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics
Univ. of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT
gibbons@northpole.med.uvm.edu (802) 656-8910
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