I'm currently using the top shelf of the fridge and that is running at a temp of 9-10 deg so thats OK but the humidity is a problem. a Salt pan in there with it helped but it was obviously still a problem.
I got a new hygrometer with a digital min/max temp and humidity monitor. This confirmed my fears. It actually went off the scale... it went 99% to HH, whatever that meant but I assume it isnt configured to read 100....
So I tried to set up a cooler box. Once I put a couple of cheeses in which are of course damper than they should be it hit 98% very quickly.
Tried a wide range of things, fans, cracking the lid, moved it out of kitchen etc. No dice. So in true experimentation mode decided to find out what the ambient humidity was. Aha 85% indoors and outdoors. That explains it, with anything vaguely damp around in any form of box its going to go higher.
(We've had appalling weather for about 8 weeks where it has rained every day, heres the local weather read out for today from the meteorolical office for my location
13°C
Current:Rain
Wind: SE at 11 km/h
Humidity: 94%)
So I popped one of these non electric dehumidifiers (see at the bottom of page) in the bottom of the ice box. It contains a tablet of some salt or other in it, still trying to find out, to check whether its going to cause any other problems.
The humidity with no cheeses in the box dropped to 50%, with three 500g cheeses it went to 70%, with all the cheeses in (5 X 500g + 1 X 1kg cheeses) its stabilised at 83% and 12.5 deg temp with a 2l bottle of frozen water. 4l of frozen water dropped it to 9 deg.
But this is not a long term solution.
There are these, which I thought might be safer (as it states they are safe)
http://shop.telegraph.co.uk/item-MM.D2421/But i'd like to do the chest freezer thing like CH. However CH is having difficulty controlling humidity so I'm looking for a more complete solution.
You can buy little electric dehumidifiers like this and sit them in the freezer controlling them by turning the power to them on and off using an iButton that measures humidity and a piece of home built electronics...(ya ya i know not for everyone but my husband and I are programmers)
(An iButton is a computer chip enclosed in a 16mm thick stainless steel can. Because of this unique and durable container, up-to-date information can travel with a person or object anywhere they go. The steel iButton can be mounted virtually anywhere because it is rugged enough to withstand harsh environments, indoors or outdoors. It is small and portable enough to attach to a key fob, ring, watch, or other personal items, and be used daily for applications such as access control to buildings and computers, asset management, and various data logging tasks. Information is transferred between your iButton and a PC with a momentary contact at up to 142kbps.)
But I dont really like the idea of sitting the device inside the freezer so now thinking about some form of air extraction and return from a dehumidifer sitting outside the freezer running off a sensor inside the freezer. Anyone know of a dehumidifier that also works with pipes and is as cheap of these domestic types?
And then I found this which at £350 is a bit expensive but might make making a nice cool room easy.
http://www.solarventi.co.uk/?gclid=CKTg1oXK25UCFQEq1AodfRmzYSolar powered air conditioning and dehumidification.
This might be good as we are looking to put in solar water heating which a bigger unit of these also does.
So stll a work in progress but anyone any thoughts on this?
Sal