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HillJilly
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 09:58
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Hi Everyone, I am new to the form and have a new very small cabin. I am afraid to leave the bedding at the cabin because I am afraid that when I get there after a couple of weeks in the cold damp weather, the blankets will all be cold and damp. I have asthma and mustiness smells trigger breathing problems with me.... I am wondering if anyone has any ideas about keeping things fresh at a cabin that is not heated for weeks on end?
Many thanks for your thoughts and suggestions!
Kindest Regards, Hill-Jilly
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MtnDon
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 10:25
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It probably depends a lot on local weather conditions. We have an off grid mountain cabin in northern NM for a number of years. Never had a musty or other odor problem. No mold or mildew problems anywhere. Our place sits vacant and unheated for a month or so at a time throughout the winter; fall and spring it gets used pretty much every weekend but remains unheated in between. G/L
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HillJilly
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 10:36
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Thanks for your reply MtnDon
Yes, the cabin is in very humid and damp area.
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MtnDon
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 10:54
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Then a method to encourage natural ventilation would be a big help.
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MtnDon
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 11:04
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Somewhere I've seen large sealable plastic bags that are fitted with a port for a vcuum. Place the linens inside, seal and draw the air out with a vacuum. Voila! Linens sealed against the humidity.
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HillJilly
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 11:30
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Hey MtnDon
- I like that idea! Off grid and no vacuum, although I do have a hand air pump called an 'Air Hammer' wonder if I could reverse it?
I bet they would have bags like that at a linen store or a storage store, I will definitely look into that idea.
Not sure how to encourage natural ventilation...
Many thanks for your thoughts!
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dk1393
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 15:18
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I have bought the large vacuum bags at Walmart
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MtnDon
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 18:03
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Thinking more about this I wonder if some large silica gel dryer packets should be inserted in the bag. If the linens were already full of humidity, sealing in a bag might be counterproductive. Just theorizing.
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NhLiving
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 18:44
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I think you are on to something MtnDon.
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BaconCreek
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 18:47
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You can roll the air out of space bags. Roll the bag tight while lifting up the rubber gasket in the vent and then cap it. Works great.
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skootamattaschmidty
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 19:42
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We keep our linens in an old cedar chest. Always come out smelling like cedar, no mustiness at all.
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Steve_S
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 20:45
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Bag them, squeeze all the air out you can and toss into a Cedar Chest which keeps things fresh & critter free. Do make sure the linens etc are good & dry first before bagging. The silica packets work only to a certain & limited extent.
One thing to ponder, is lining your closets with Red Cedar at your cabin, you'd be surprised at how effective that is.
Hope it helps
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HillJilly
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 21:57
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Hi everyone, many thanks for your suggestions... I am going to see if I can find any Cedar Chests and the bags from Walmart!
When I get closets, will see if we can line them with the red cedar - not at that point as yet - still building...
Many thanks again to all for your suggestions!
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HillJilly
Member
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# Posted: 26 Nov 2014 22:13
Reply
Hope it is OK to ask another question...
I am wondering what sort of mattress would be most suitable to use at a cabin and how to keep it fresh and free from mustiness?
Have been using an air-mattress, not great. Would like something else, but worry about mustiness...
Many thanks again for your thoughts and suggestion!
Kindest Regards to all...
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FishHog
Member
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2014 08:23
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add some decent vents as high up as you can in the cabin, maybe one low, and keep them open when your not there. Will go a long way to avoid the mustiness. Last thing I do when I leave is open the vents. Up to 6 months later, everything was dry and fresh when we returned. Closed up (when I forgot), not so much.
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SandyR
Member
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2014 08:42
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I use tote bins to keep my bedding in. So far so good.
We have bunk beds and a futon at our cabin to sleep. Brand new futon mattress is great!
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bobrok
Member
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2014 14:07
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Don't laugh at this, please! My wife heard about this and does it all the time. Dryer sheets! She will buy a box of scented dryer sheets at the dollar store and put them everywhere when we close up. She hangs them all over. They're supposed to absorb musty smell. I'd say they work.
Another suggestion I know works is cut open one or two bags of charcoal briquettes. This will absorb dampness and make the air smell cleaner also.
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HillJilly
Member
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# Posted: 28 Nov 2014 10:04
Reply
Wow, you guys are awesome! Thanks for these suggestions...
I will be looking for some of the anti-must gear this weekend and hope to get some good black Friday deals!
Many thanks again, Kindest Regards, Hill-Jilly
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Don_P
Member
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# Posted: 29 Nov 2014 10:03
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Passively with building design you can probably affect things enough to tip the balance between dampening and drying conditions. If the building is oriented so that the sun "washes" all the walls daily, it is a great sanitizer. If you align on the cardinal points there is often a green wall and that is often telling you how that wall performs all the way through to the inside, the moisture is never driven out of it. Examine low on north side interior walls of houses and you can often see mold in my climate.
Which gets to elevation, if you store sensitive stuff higher rather than lower it will be dryer. A few degrees warmer than ambient is all it takes to be in drying rather than condensing conditions most of the time. Higher in the building is usually warmer.
Heat and vent is how a dry kin works. We need to invent an off grid dehumidifier for when a cabin is sitting. Maybe a hot box window type solar collector with a photovoltaic panel to drive a fan and some vent shutters via a humidistat in the building?
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HillJilly
Member
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# Posted: 29 Nov 2014 20:20
Reply
Hi Don_P
thanks for your thoughts, thankfully my cabin has a sleeping loft - put in the 2nd floor last weekend...
I was toying with this idea for keeping some heat in the cabin in the winter:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2007/04/26/almost-free-garage-heat-just-drink-a-lo t-of-soda/#more-3769
Do not know if it would work, but am curious... if it happens will be down the road...
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Don_P
Member
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# Posted: 30 Nov 2014 09:30 - Edited by: Don_P
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I made a solar window heater unit years ago by building a ~4'x8' box of 2x6's, ply on the back and a sheet of fiberglass glazing. I insulated the inside with foil faced foam. Then a layer of cheap 5v roofing metal was hung at mid thickness in the box. It ran about 8" short of each end and was dammed at the top on the backside. Air entered in the back behind the metal, was pulled down, across the bottom and up the front face of the metal back to the top where a "duct and fan pulled it into the house. Everything inside the glazing was painted with stove black. It would peak under good conditions at about 150 degrees.
I remember an aluminum can model in Mother Earth back in the '70's that used cans cut in half standing on end on a sheet of metal in a box collector. Any of these will get you a few degrees if you can move the air in the daytime and not re-radiate from the box back out to the dark sky at night... so somewhere it probably needs a damper to shut down in the dark...soo, I said passively but actually I'm talking about an active system, an old adage from a solar design prof back then comes to mind "Passive systems require active people"... to operate insulation or shutters, etc, absent that there needs to be some active control of those through fans, dampers, pumps, etc. That's where a small photovoltaic and control system probably needs to be there for an unmanned setup.
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HillJilly
Member
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# Posted: 1 Dec 2014 07:22
Reply
Hi Don_P
Thanks for this - hope you have a great week!
Kindest Regards, Hill-Jilly
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PA_Bound
Member
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# Posted: 2 Dec 2014 15:44 - Edited by: PA_Bound
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I want to add my $.02 on the original question about how to keep a "mustiness free" cabin. I've been down this road, and the solution is ventilation- particularly when nobody is there and the cabin is buttoned up.
I participate in a joint hunting property that includes a small cabin. One particularly humid summer a few years ago, the cabin interior absorbed moisture from the air and because the doors and windows were closed it never had a chance to exchange the air and dry out. Mildew got started, and when we opened the place up in the fall the interior air was moist, a grey fuzz covered almost everything and the smell made the cabin uninhabitable. We immediately opened all the windows, fired up the woodstove to dry the place out, washed all the hard surfaces with bleach water, and over the next few days removed and either washed or replaced every textile product in the cabin. That mostly resolved the immediate issue and at least made the cabin inhabitable again (but, to this day, you can still smell the mildew a bit). To prevent it going forward we leave the top of each double-hung window, which is protected by the roof over-hang, open a few inches. Doing this has prevented any further occurance.
In the new cabin I'm building now, I have built a vent into the wind-ward wall of the cabin and put a vent into the ceiling of each room. The vents can all be closed to retain heat when I'm there, but when I leave I open up all the vents and leave the interior doors open. When the wind blows (which it does with some frequency) it creates positive air pressure in the cabin which pushes the interior air out each ceiling vent- creating a near-constant exchange of potentially stale air for fresh.
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1300_stainless
Member
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# Posted: 4 Dec 2014 12:56
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I keep my linens stored in Tupperware totes with tight lids. I also threw a few dryer sheets inside. They help keep the linens fresh and the smell of them is also supposed to discourage bugs and small pests. My mother had a camper at a seasonal campground and stored her linens like this every winter for years. The cabin itself has windows cracked for ventilation almost always.
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