Humidity

In the Pacific Northwet, er, Northwest we tend to get a lot of rain. Well, that is, ever since the plywood was delivered we have had a lot of rain. In addition, we had had some extraordinarily humid days and nights.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, most lumber is dried in a kiln or in an air environment where moisture is drawn from the wood and brought to a more or less uniform level. This makes the wood consistent from piece to piece and makes it a bit lighter as well.

In my house and especially my garage where I have been putting together unsealed thin wooden panels, the high humidity and dry wood combine to make high humidity and not-quite-but-almost damp wood. This is not good.

1. The wood weighs more than it did from the factory. This means the boat weighs more.
2. When the wood is finally sealed with resin and cloth, that moisture is sealed in with the wood.
3. When the wood is exposed to summer time temperatures that moisture will be expelled from the wood and it needs to go somewhere. This can cause problems with the glass.

What really brought this to a head was when I had made the skirt for the seat from sheets of copy paper. The next day the paper was limper than cooked spaghetti - and the unsealed seat panels had been exposed to this air for days. The stabilizers were exposed for even longer.

While not quite so bad, the rest of the boat panels were in my family room. With the arrival of fall and the turning on of the forced air furnace, the interior humidity of the house was somewhat less than that of the garage and the outdoors.

What is the solution?

Buy a dehumidifier, or wait until the middle of winter.

Yes, the problem would eventually fix it self as the weather got colder and the difference between the heated indoor air and the cold, humid outdoor would bring down the humidity. Still, I wanted to get working on the boat sooner than later. A controlled environment makes quite a bit of difference as there is no guarantee that it will get dry enough until well into winter.

I did some research and bought a high capacity GE dehumidifier. It was purchased online as the local stores either couldn't be bothered to call me back or the models offered were rated as unsatisfactory by Consumers Reports. The price of $218, including shipping, was also the quite reasonable. It arrived last Friday, and has been on for a couple of days in the family room.

At first the humidity in the room measured 75%. Wow! I didn't know it was so high - and this was on a less humid day!

Overnight and one tank of water drained later, the humidity was down to 55%. There was definitely more of a crispness to the air and the cardboard on which the panels sat.

On Sunday and another tank drained, the humidity was down to 45%. The weight of one of the stabilizers was down to 3 pounds, 14 oz. The other was down to 13 pounds, 15 oz. This was a drop of at least 1 oz, as I forget which was the one I had originally weighed.

I'll let things continue to dry out for a week or so and proceed once the moisture level stabilizes.