Moisture in the tool box - again!

[Grandpa Chuck]

I bought some new rather expensive hand tools and decided to clean out my Craftsman 12 drawer tool box and another six drawer one in order to rearrange tool and get rid of those that are no longer used.

A few months ago after asking about rust on some of the tools I was advised to wrpe they down with gun oil. I did so after wiping all the moisture out of the drawer. I also covered the tools in each drawer with a paper towel that I sprayed oil on.

Well, tonight I discovered every single drawer had moisture in the front left corner. I had each drawer lined with rubber. When I picked it up each and every one of them was covered with water on the under side.

Our basement is dry, especially this time of the year. There are no water pipes anywhere near the tool boxes.

We have taken every tool out of them and wiped them down with gun oil. We also have wiped the drawers dry with paper towels. Right now the tool boxes are setting with the drawers empty and pulled part way out to make sure they are completely dry before putting any tools in them.

I am wondering if the open waffle type rubber mats might work better since they should not collect moister.

Most importantly, I am wondering what I can do in order to prevent this from happening again, especially since I bought some pretty expensive hand tools this time.

Suggestions please?

Thank you all so much for all of the help you have given me before.

[G. Morgan]

[X-posted to alt.home.repair]

Have you ever noticed when hand tools get wet in the box they smell like vomit?

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Yeah...vomit.

The OP needs a dehumidifier, no matter how dry he thinks his basement is. He's obviously wrong.

[Leroy]

Correct. Another possible solution is to keep the box in a small enclosed space with a heat source to keep the tools above dew point. A 100 watt bulb works wonders in a small enclosure.

Leroy

[Grandpa Chuck]

No, there is no odor.

[Grandpa Chuck]

So you are saying to run the dehumidifier even though we are running a humidifier on the first and second floor?

The dehumidifier is normally run near the washer, the drier and the floor drain. Do I need to run it near the tool boxes at the opposite end of the basement?

[Grandpa Chuck]

What exactly are you calling a small space. The main toolbox is approximately 6' tall and 3' wide. The smaller one sets on a set of shelves at a right angle. They are close enough that I cannot open the drawer of one while the upper drawers of the top one are open. If I build a tiny room around them it will interfere with being able to use my table saw or my band saw at all angles. It also will make it very difficulty to get tools when I am working on the adjoining workbench. I even put small containers of moisture absorbing pellets in plastic containers in each drawer, except for the very small ones where they won't fit. Here in Iowa the winter weather is notoriously dry and in the summer exceedingly humid.

[VanguardLH]

Is there actually a heat duct feeding *into* your workroom AND a cold-air return duct (which is available even with the door closed) so that there is air movement through that room? Try leaving open the door to that room and put in a floor-standing fan pointed at the top of the door to keep the air circulating through that room. We had a similar problem: running a dehumidifier at one end of the basement did not help to keep a storage room at the other end from getting damp until we put a fan in the doorway to keep the air moving through that far room.

If you are using a standing dehumidifier (i.e., not built into your furnace/vent system), have you connected a hose to its drain pan to continually let any collected water get drained (into a floor drain)? Until we did that so the humidifier would keep running, it would fill up the drain pan inside and then stop after which the humidity went back up. It would run a few hours and then be off for a week so it really wasn't doing much. I then punched a hole in the bottom side of the drain pan and connected a garden hose that ran to the floor drain.

Although it is winter, do you ever hear the dehumidifier turn on that is down in the basement? Have you checked its pan is drained and that the floater is free to move? Tried turning it on at full reduction (but not in a constant-on mode) and moved the floater to check the unit does indeed turn on and off?

[Nate Nagel]

This topic got me thinking... instead of using rubber drawer liners for my toolbox I was thinking of using oil soaked cardboard. good idea/bad idea? only possible downside I can think of is "possible fire hazard..."

nate

[Grandpa Chuck]

Yes, kind of.

There are no doors. Our basement is all open with the furnace near the center and the washer and drier at the other end of the basement.

A quiet slow running fan either on the floor or ceiling might be a good idea. Gee whiz, we just donated two ceiling fans to the Salvation Army, but they would have hung to low for anyone over 5'8".

It is into our sump pump pit. That makes sure there is enough water in the pit to keep it from drying out during the dry months.

No and it does have a PVC pipe hooked to the bottom of the pan.

Yes. Thanks for the suggestions.

[VanguardLH]

Kind of? Does that mean you have leave the door at the head of the basement stairs open to get any heat into the basement?

There is probably a cold-air grill at a vent that leads into the furnace to pickup from near the basement floor. But you would still need a warm-air feed into the room to get some circulation in that big one-room basement. If the warm-air inlet is close to the cold-air return, there won't be much circulation through the rest of the room.

Do you only heat the room when you are using the workroom?

If it is just one big room, a table fan pointing at one wall in the corner might be enough to draw air across that corner. It would probably help even at lowest speed.

Do the toolboxes sit directly on the concrete floor, or are they atop a wood plank or shelf to get them off the concrete floor?

What is the type of construction for the basement walls? Concrete blocks? Stones with mortar? Concrete plaster over stones and mortar? I'm wondering if ground moisture is getting wicked into the basement.

[DanG]

This is sounding more like a condensation problem to me. Do you keep the basement conditioned? I suspect the box and the basement are allowed to get fairly cold and then you open or turn on a register that warms the box on one end while you are down there or there is a fresh air intake or draft causing a cold end on the box.

Circulation, dehumidification, moving the box out of the path of the register could all help.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

These desiccant packets will fit. They're only 1/2" thick.

But, tool boxes aren't sealed, so in effect, you're trying to absorb moisture from the whole basement with these things. Couldn't hurt, but probably not the idea solution.

[Grandpa Chuck]

Question: Most newsgroups I participate in advertising is considered spamming and is forbidden. Is this newsgroup different?

[Grandpa Chuck]

Not at all. There are two registers in the main duct in the basement that we normally leave open only a little or not at all.

Since you asked there is a cat door in the door between the main floor and the basement.

Not really, but I did leave one open at chest height where I took out the whole house humidifier after it stopped working. The heating/air conditioning contractor that installed the furnace said the just throw it away and leave an opening as an added cold air return.

It is 25' X 27'' or close to it.

Usually we have them part way open. However, when the outdoor temperature gets below 10º we open both all the way. It's quite cozy down there.

The large one is on wheels. The smaller one is on a plastic shelf. The problem is the same in both.

Stone City stone covered with mortar and paint. We are at the top of a hill and it takes one hell of a lot of rain for us to get any water. Even then it comes in under the cement slab 3 1/2" thick I poured for the washer and drier to set on. When I do see it there is only a trickle and it lasts for no more than two days.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

I gave you a link to a product I use. You confused it with an advertisement. Desiccant in skinny metal containers like that is NOT easy to find.

Now, say "thank you".

[Grandpa Chuck]

Mia culpa Thank you Joe.

[HeyBub]

Buy a hygrometer and find out exactly how much humidity you have and where it's coming from.

[VanguardLH]

"Grandpa Chuck" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

A chest-high opening means there is no cold-air return. That would be a return but with warmed air. From the furnaces that I've seen, the basement cold-air return is at ankle height in the return duct to the furnace just before the bend in the duct where it goes into the furnace. Sounds like you are warming the air (with the humidity added by the flame) which makes it comfy for you but might not have adequate air flow. Without an adequate cold-air return to also act as a combustion air opening for the furnace, carbon monoxide could be a problem. Hopefully there are combustion openings in the furnace to direct air under the burners that you aren't aware off. Might not be a problem now but restricted air flow over the burners can get them dirty and burn less efficiently which will raise the CO level. In one house, I fainted (just once but that was enough) because of CO, I put in an electronic CO detector and found the level somewhat high, and found the cold-air return had been plugged by a severe accumulation of dust over the grill. Once cleaned, the CO level went down. The furnace needs a cold-air return or combustion opening near floor level.

My mother had the stone & mortar construction for the basement. We had to run the dehumidifier and a fan down there to keep mold from growing on the walls, even in winter. The dehumidifier did run less during the winter but it did run. Another problem with her, though, was that the backyard sloped toward her house instead of away from it. Her basement extends further than the frostline which means ground water is not frozen and can still wick through the mortar. For many years she couldn't use her basement because of the mold and her asthma and she even took her laundry to her sister's until I repeatedly bleached & vinegared the walls and then put the fan and dehumidifier down there. If you see water trickling on the walls during heavy rainfall, it is also wicking the ground water below the frostline but you probably won't see the damp spots. From my mother's experience, I would never buy a house with that basement construction. One house tried to hide it by layering concrete over the stone & mortar but after years the concrete started crumbling away and it didn't stop the seepage, anyway.

[Whiskers]

[...]

I'm not familiar with the way north-Americans heat their houses, so I can't comment on that (beyond agreeing that getting a properly qualified heating engineer to install, maintain, and check the efficiency and safety, is a Very Good Idea - particularly if the heating system involves combustion; 'handymen' and DIYers lack the training to spot and correct potentially troublesome or dangerous mistakes or failures).

As for damp leaky basements, here in the UK I think it's a legal requirement that any part of a dwelling that's below ground level must be 'tanked', ie given a water-proof shell or lining. Of course that does nothing to prevent condensation, which is down to the way the heating, ventilation, and insulation, are managed. We do know a bit about damp, in these islands :))