Does anyone know of a product that will help remove moisture from the inside of a car?
I have heard charcoal does the trick, however I wonder if there is something commercially available, like the stuff that comes in those silica dessicant packages you often see in electronic devices and clothing.
I have had to scrape the inside of my windshield a number of times already this winter, and using a towel to wipe up the bits of ice each time has not removed any significant amount, as each cold morning, the ice returns.
I have checked the car for standing water and damp carpets, and have found nothing. I am not sure if this is a one-time thing, where somehow moisture was introduced during the warmer months and I am now seeing it, or if I have a different problem. But this has been occurring on and off all winter.
I do not smell any mildew in the car either.
In any event, I am looking for the best way to remove moisture from a car, not the cause of the moisture (at least for now)
I’ve seen cat litter recommended, along with charcoal. I’ve tried the charcoal, when I had a diesel fuel spill in the trunk, and it did seem to work, albeit slowly, at least as far as removing odor.
Run your AC as said above & make sure it is on recirculate & not getting outside air. Temp setting in about the middle.
Should be done in the cool months on a regular basis anyway to keep the AC components from getting stiff muscles & loosing juice over the winter.
You live near the sea judging by screen name, unusually moist there now? Is your car cool & then parked in a warm damp area?
Aren’t there products you can buy from auto stores that you put on your interior windows that prevents fogging? If so, what are they and do they work? I have this problem too.
Try turning the heat off and rolling your windows down a couple of blocks before reaching your destination and empty out your floor mats if they have water in them from melted snow.
Warm air holds moisture and as soon as your windows cool off, the moisture condenses onto them.
If you park in a garage leave the windows open. That will let the warm moister air mix with the colder air in the garage rather than having the moisture condense out on the cold windows.
Everyone, thank you for the great suggestions. I have to say, this product linked to by Aspenglow seem to be exactly what I think I need to do the trick.
Any experience with these, and if so, how many would I have to use for my car and how much water does each container pull out of the air?
I am going to check tomorrow to see if my local Home Depot has these in store. If not, I will be ordering a case (I guess) from the website.
Just out of curiosity, do you or the dope get a small kick when someone either selects that link or buys from that link? I noticed a number of redirections happening in my url field and was wondering what I had actually clicked on after seeing all the activity from the link.
To answer some other questions, briefly… No, I don’t live too close to the ocean. I am over an hour + drive away, which may not sound like much if you live in the midwest, but it is. And we have had a relatively mild winter (thank you, Mr. Cold Miser!), so there hasn’t been a noticeable rise in rain vs. snow. Rarely are my shoes covered with snow, and I always clean them off before getting all the way into the car anyway, minimizing the snow melt into my carpets and floor mats.
I did read somewhere that I should run my AC on while running the heat at the same time, with the recirculate button pushed in. The theory goes that this will turn your AC into a dehumidifier, and it will remove the water by taking it out of the car and letting it drip underneath the car, forming a puddle that you can often see in the summertime.
Don’t know if this will work, however. I like the reviews on this HD product.
I’ve used this before. It was quite a while ago though. I put one under the sink in the hall bathroom because there’s no AC vent in there, and the fan wasn’t working. Strange stuff. Didn’t really notice much difference, but when I took it out it was full of water so it was obviously doing something. I wish I could remember how long I used it but that was 10 years ago. Also, since a bathroom isn’t exactly a closed environment like a car will be, I can’t swear that any clearing of moisture wasn’t also just that the door was open to the rest of the house most of the time.
In checking the car for water\moisture, don’t forget the bottom of the doors. They should have drainage holes on very bottom to let water through, but these can become blocked, retaining water or mud into the door.
Well there might be circumstances to require recirculate. Don’t want actual snow being pumped in right ? If recirculate is on, then air conditioner should be on … perhaps set climate control systems to “de-fog” to get air con and heat at same time ? …
What happens then is that the air con cools the air, making it drop water ( which drips down to the road ) and then the heater heats the air back up again… making it nicely dry air…
The device, if you want to call it that, is just a small plastic bucket with a smaller slotted bucket inside that holds calcium chloride crystals and leaves room to collect water underneath. As the calcium chloride draw moisture out of the air, it collects as water and leaves the crystals as kind of a solid mass. The calcium chloride is not reusable but it’s pretty cheap if you buy it as ice-melt instead of as moisture remover. DampRid is the name brand that I’m familiar with, but it’s all just calcium chloride crystals suspended in a sieve above a catch container.
The air conditioner will only remove so much moisture from the incoming air.*
So the less water in the air going into system the drier the warm air will be.
Cold fresh air will have less water in it than the warm moist air if you have the system on recirculation.
If you doubt this check your car’s owner’s manual for what happens when you go to defrost, the system is forced to fresh air, no recirculation allowed.
In fact if the outside is cold enough the AC system won’t even engage.
