We currently use an electric dehumidifier in our city home’s basement and I can really tell when we’re using it during the summer months, because I see a significant spike in our electric bills (even when we’re not using the air conditioner).
Our new property’s basement doesn’t have the dampness that our current basement has and that’s probably because there are lots and lots of windows on the basement’s south wall and a south walkout sliding glass door.
Nevertheless, there is still some dampness that we want to address. The way I’m doing this is both simple and cheap.
I’ve taken four 5-gallon buckets and four old pillowcases. I’ve filled each of the pillowcases about 1/3 of the way full with calcium chloride (commonly used for deicing sidewalks in the winter). From here, you can set things up in one of three ways: You can either tie the tops of the pillow cases and hang them over the buckets (1 pillowcase over 1 bucket), or, you can set the pillowcase within the bucket and then wrap the excess pillowcase down the sides of the bucket to have the calcium chloride sitting elevated above the bottom of the bucket without having the pillowcase tied and hanging from the ceiling. You can also set a large colander on top of each bucket and put the calcium chloride filled pillowcase on top of the colander; this is the method that I selected as it seemed to be the easiest.
Calcium chloride is great at pulling moisture from the air. As it does this, the water filters through the pillowcase and into the bucket, which can be emptied as necessary. The calcium chloride can continue to be used until it no longer seems to be effective, at which point it just gets replaced with new pellets. You can also save the spent pellets for winter deicing.
Comments