oh hey everybody this is gonna be DIY
off-grid not electric dehumidifier it's
like 90 degrees today and almost 100%
humidity it's the first day of fall by
the way a little bit ironic thought it
reminds me of living here in the RV the
camper last winter and I had in the
middle of winter I had water literally
running in streams down my windows and
walls on the inside when it got real
cold I had sheets of ice on the inside
walls right at the headboard of my bed
so I'm running on solar
I can't run a dehumidifier because it
takes a huge amount of electricity what
do I do
well do like everybody and I search for
an answer on the Internet and whether it
works good or not I don't know but I'm
gonna try it this is very simple and I
guess a couple key things to make it
have a better chance of working is air
flow and surface area so I looked into a
lot of different ways of doing this and
this is what I came up with what I have
are these seed starter trays that I used
for starting my tomatoes and stuff
indoors and also the little seedling
cups I put two of those together to give
them a little bit of strength don't know
if it's gonna be enough I have two of
these seed starter trays on the bottom
here
so it'll be a little sturdier because
this is what's going to hold the water
that gets dehumidified taken out of the
air so I have two four six twelve of
these little 3-inch four-inch cups to
support this one on top which is going
to hold the calcium chloride now you can
get this is just calcium chloride from
the hardware store a 50-pound bag for
like 17 bucks all this stuff was
purchased online very inexpensively from
a greenhouse store online so it's very
inexpensive let's open up the bag here
I want to mess the bag up too much
because this calcium chloride is
anhydrous and basically what that means
is it rattled readily absorbs liquid
which is the humidity in the air so if I
leave it exposed it's just gonna get
used up before I have a chance to
actually use it I wanna make sure my
bottom tree doesn't have any holes in it
because that's gonna hold water but I
want to cut some slits in this top tray
and that's going to allow the moisture
that gets drawn in to the calcium
chloride a place to escape now the
reason I use these plastic trays as
number one versus a five-gallon bucket
or a two-liter pop bottle I'm gonna get
a lot of surface area just like when I
was making that maple syrup and I wanted
to evaporate the water out I needed
those big wide steam table pans so I
could get a lot of surface area and a
shallow amount of substance liquid same
thing applies here I just cut like some
four-inch slits right in the center now
I'll sit this on top of here I think
that's going to bear the weight I'll
just fill it up with this calcium
chloride
I'm not gonna fill it way up maybe like
a half an inch or an inch deep because I
believe only what's exposed to the air
is going to actually function and do
anything so if I make it too deep I'll
just be kind of defeating the purpose
nice thing about doing this is if it
works I'll end up with a brine a liquid
with the calcium chloride in it in this
bottom pan and I can take that and boil
it just like I did the sap and instead
of having maple syrup at the end or
sugar what I'll have is calcium chloride
because all the water will boil off and
then I can just reuse the calcium
chloride over and over and over so it's
somewhat of a sustainable system oh and
the reason I use plastic is because from
what I understand
makes perfect sense this is basically a
salt you're dealing with here and it's
gonna be very corrosive that's actually
warm on my hands I can feel it working
it creates heat but it would create it
would corrode like a stainless pan or
something so I just use these plastic
grow trays that I had laying around and
that's it it's done what I'll do is I'll
set two or three of these up in the
camper and then see if it works I'm
gonna put one in the closet where my
clothes are because all my clothes and
sheets and blankets got moldy last
winter because of all the moisture so I
have one in that small area dedicated to
hopefully keeping my clothes and stuff
from all of them and then I'll have two
more somewhere in the camper I don't
have any fans or anything because I'm
off-grid and I'm just unlimited solar
power no electricity so I'm just gonna
have to rely on the movement of air from
me walking back and forth or the heat
flow from the space heater to send some
air over there and see if it reduces the
humidity I got to try something because
I had a lot of my blankets and clothes
get ruined
over the winter because of mold and
hopefully this DIY non-electric
dehumidifier will do the trick and again
all you need is calcium chloride some
plastic grow trays a knife to cut a
couple slits in the bottom of the grill
tray and you're you're good to go that's
it thanks for watching