I've got boxes of books, papers and personal effects which need to be stored in the garage for a year or so. The garage is unheated and cold/damp in winter. The stuff needs to be kept dry to stop mildew and mould, so I need something airtight.
The only thing I've seen is the 'Vac Bag'
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but this looks a bit clumsy. (From what I can tell it's just a very large plastic bag with replaceable drying-agent; it appears to be sealed with a cable-tie and doesn't use vacuum at all!)
Has anyone got any ideas for not-too-expensive suitable storage?
I've got loads of stuff in storage in an outbuilding at the moment. We just wrapped it up using pallet wrap (like industrial size clingfilm) taking care not to leave holes.
If you're still worried about damp you can buy silica gel type stuff in large quantities from caravan suppliers. Or cat litter might be a cheaper alternative.
Have you considered the proper vacuum bags designed to be filled with clothes, bedding etc. where you then use a vacuum to draw all/ most of the air out? I would imagine they must self seal and hold the vacuum, just add some silica gell to make sure it stays dry.
Any form of vacuum bag will fail in that sort of environment and draw moist air into the goods. If you can pack them in the summer when they are naturally quite dry then double bagging them tightly in good quality black binbags (seal the first bag with tape then wrap again and sea again) and placing them in cardboard boxes will be fine. Make sure you don't put the boxes directly on the floor or directly against a wall. Put them on pallets to keep them off the floor and use something such as pallets on their side or sheets of polystyrene or kingspan to prevent them pushing up against the wall.
If the items were carefully loaded into the vacuum bag (The bags wouldnt need to be vacuumed out, we just need a sealed bag here), then boxed up and stored off the ground, what would make the bags fail in a way that a standard, thinner bin bag will be better?
Because vacuum bags are not perfectly sealed and slowly leak. When they leak in the damp atmosphere of a garage they draw moist air into the package to fill the low pressure in the bag. In this respect they can be worse than a leaky conventional ambient pressure bag.
If you don't use them as vacuum bags then they just become normal bags and will do nearly as well as bin bags albeit at significantly greater expense. I had rather assumed that talking about vacuum bags presumed they would be used as such.
The bin bag advantage, apart from cost, is that they conform to shape well and you can double or triple bag them at negligible cost but minimising the potential for a small leak compared with a single heavier gauge bag.
You can't achieve airtight, so instead aim for moderately airtight and pack with silical gel socks inside. Use enough so that the small amount of damp that does inevitably get in there will be dealt with and absorbed. NB - NOT calcium chloride dessicators!
Rubble sacks are better than black binliners, as those just tear in no time. Clear also lets you tell which bag is which. Polythene isn't impermeable to moisture over a year though. If something _must_ be dry, pack it into biscuit tins and wrap insulation tape over the lid seal.
Vacuum bagging is good. The pressure inside a vacuum bag is the same as atmospheric pressure, so there's no leakage problem. The only time there's a vacuum (and a paltry vacuum at that) is when they're first being pumped down, and they crush in and compress the duvet or whatever is inside there. Afterwards they soon equalise to atmospheric pressure, less a small amount that compensates for the spring effect of the bouncy duvet.
It's useful to pack bundles onto small pallets. This allows you to move the pallet, without disturbing (and almost certainly tearing) the packages.
Ammo boxes are also your friend. Big ones are cheap, as few people want them, and there are several sorts around with good rubber seals. A handful of fuller's earth (grey catlitter) inside avoids everything acquiring the smell of old squaddies.
Er, no. Warmer air holds more moisture, colder air less, air at 0C none at all. That's why you get chaped hands and static shocks in the winter but not summer.
If you pack in the summer you will include some moisture in the air. When the weather gets colder that moisture will tend to condense out on surfaces which is exactly what you don't want.
Close but the vapour pressure of water is not zero at zero centigrade, i.e. there will still be some water vapour in the air. The rest sounds about right.
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