Saw this when I was in Halfords earlier
www.halfords.com/car-seats-travel-equipment/camping-caravanning/caravanning/air-dry-car-dehumidifier
are they any good does anyone know?
Missus' Fiesta always seems to have moisture in it, most likely due to the fact that there is a black lab carried in it at some point every day.
Would something like this make a difference especially to the rear windscreen that he breathes over?
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If the problem is wet carpets and boot liners then possibly.
It won't deal with dog snot on the rear screen though.
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Reacts in a strange way to tobacco smoke too. Useless gizmo.
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I sell exactly those devices. From customer feedback they do seem to work.
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They do work, but have to be 'dried out' regularly.
I had a couple for the caravan. The destructions said to put them in a warm oven. I put them in the Rayburn, then somebody turned it up and incinerated them. The Rayburn has a flue so there was no smell of burning, on the other hand at least it didn't stink the house out.
Does the Fiasco have aircon? Run that all the time and it might improve.
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Doesn't just putting some cat litter in a tray under the front seats act as a moisture absorber?
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>> Doesn't just putting some cat litter in a tray under the front seats act as
>> a moisture absorber?
only if you like the cat issing on your carpet at home...
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We sell Kontrol Krystals where I work. Available loose in different sized bags, or in a ' moisture trap'. Lots of repeat business at this time of year from customers who put them in their caravans and static homes. Also people with motor homes. The majority come in and ask for the product by name, so assume it works otherwise they would not be repeat purchasers.
Might be worth a consideration
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someone I know used to put a bowl of dishwasher salt in her car overnight. I guess anything absorbant will work and is best placed in a gauze so that it can be removed and dried out as previously suggested.
On a similar note, do these ceramic plug in car-heaters work? I'd like to be able to warm my car up before the engine has warmed sufficiently just to help dry out the inside. The recent moisture laden cool November and December days leave more water inside my screen than outside. Aircon doesnt seem to clear it fast enough.
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If your car is parked near a power supply a mains fan heater placed in the car de-ices and warms it rapidly.
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As with condensation problems in a house the answer is always heat and ventilation. Easily achieved in a car with the heater and air conditioning switched on high. No need for cat trays, magic crystals or fan heaters.
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Wifes Fiesta has air con and it is always on as Ford automatically put it to come on when you have the direction aimed at the windscreen.
It is this same car that has the condensation problem.
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The air con may be switched on and the light shining brightly but is it working ?
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Yeah it is - very quickly demists the front windscreen.
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Might be seen as one those ironies of car ownership that come from the irritation that the less you use them the less they seem to like it.
A car which regularly travels long distances doesn't seem to suffer from condensation problems probably because everything, carpets, upholstery air ways etc gets the chance to properly dry out. Exhausts seem to last better under those circumstances too.
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I have a 60 mile daily commute so my car doesn't ever seem to be damp inside, but sometimes in the winter if I have been getting in the car with wet shoes & clothes a lot or have trodden snow in on the mats etc I put a fan heater on the parcel shelf for a couple of hours at the weekend with the windows cracked open slightly to make sure that it is totally dry inside.
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If it's the dog steaming the car up just stick a squirrel in with him. The windows will stay lovely and clean, at least until he catches it.
;-)
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Thu 4 Dec 14 at 21:54
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Actually, that's a bad idea at all sorts of levels.
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At this time of year any car has potential for some level of condensation problem.
Weak December sunshine will still have enough power to raise inside temperature of car to 15 degrees C - even if it's not much above 5 outside. As soon as sun goes air temperature plummets to near freezing. Moist air inside car will condense onto inside glass.
Even if carpets etc are bone dry there will be some steaming of internal glass. Water on carpets/seats from previous wet weekend will make it worse.
Add in a water leak round tailgate or under floor or some wet clothing in car and windows will stream with condensation - it might even freeze in droplets.
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I'm with Humph on this. The 12-year-old S60 still dries out faultlessly during a decent run. Just use it and leave the AC on.
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>>Wifes Fiesta has air con and it is always on
Could be the problem. What's her average journey time? If it's only short, then the condensate from the A/C could be 'pooling' and supplying a nice, wet supply of moisture that doesn't have time to evaporate.
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Dehumidifiers? Tsk. My car has fairly small-scale rubble all over the floor. And after today, when I put a lot of miles on it going to London, getting comprehensiel lost there, and being unable to get out of it easily owing to something horrible and perverse going on at Hammersmith roundabout, which I thought I knew like the back of my hand, but which seems to have been abolished. So (Humph note) I couldn't find Castelnau or Weightman Road and got comprehensively lost again trying to find my way round the abolished Hammersmith. I'm not kidding, just try it you Londoners. Of course it could all be normal again tomorrow.
Anyway I had to take some other Bridge, Chelsea I think, and waddled moronically around trying to find some southerly route I would recognize. This stuff used to be second nature to me, for decades. In four years in the country I've become a moronic yokel. I'm afraid there may really be a few chipped marbles actually. Not looking forward to telling the quack about it. They are pretty lousy at the psych stuff, and don't accept help.
No way could I find the A3, an important part of the dyed-in-the-wool route. After much slack-jawed mimsing in South London (mimsing was default today) I was overjoyed to find A24Worthing. I knew that would put me somewhere near here and it did, after what seemed like interminable 63mph mimsing on the M23BrightonCrawleyohthankGodWorthing empty sub-motorway. But I nearly missed the turn into our lane and even the turn into our drive.
London was logjammed all over except for a couple of bits. I lost the car too. It's covered in pale buff mud up to window level, blingy wheels included. Even had the fuzz round to a friend's pad in Bayswater. A boy and girl, both six inches taller then me. As usual he was the nice cop and she the nasty, although she was actually very pretty. It's been an expensive day too as a result of all that. Two taxis, 35 quid, raaaaaasclaaat.
I mean to write to those fuzz or their bosses to praise their comportment. Naturally they were full-on Met-style contemptuous, but they talked a bit like human beings. I was charmed, when I could stop thinking about all those twenties I'd been peeling off the wad.
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Don't modern cars have heaters any more? I can't say I have ever found condensation any more than a minor passing problem. Open the window a fraction to start with to give a bit of ventilation and forestall steaming, then after half a mile turn the heater on full blast.
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And heated screens make it even quicker!
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>>> I mean to write to those fuzz or their bosses to praise their comportment. Naturally they were full-on Met-style contemptuous, but they talked a bit like human beings. I was charmed, when I could stop thinking about all those twenties I'd been peeling off the wad.
I called the Met on 101 to find their identities or nick, and the phone operator looked up the stuff from this morning and said he would pass the message on, getting my mobile number for good measure 'in case they wanted to get in touch with me'. They won't of course, probably a dozen cases on since the small hours of this morning, water under the bridge and forgotten.
Yesterday until I reached home finally at six with the first light seemed at times to be the second or third worst day in my life. Everything, almost, that could go wrong did. My 6.50am post doesn't tell more than the half of it. Is no one interested? Of course you're all a bit curmudgeonly about London, but this was me, a Londoner born and by choice, screwing up royally all over the accursed Great Wen and outside it until I really did fear for my marbles. I lost my goddam car for heaven's sake! And passed everything three or four times...
Had a couple of good conversations with sympathetic cab drivers though (if you got the bread, they sympathise). These modern cabs are pretty refined and warm inside (anyone who remembers early FX4s let alone FX3s will know what I mean), with auto and quiet torquey big diesels. I wouldn't mind one myself. Those remote control sliding doors are a bit fussy.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Fri 5 Dec 14 at 19:21
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>>My 6.50am post doesn't tell more than the half of it. Is no one interested?<<
I think we're all interested AC, but probably just a little embarrassed remembering the times it's happened to us.
We all have an odd day in our past that we'd love to forget, but the memory takes a while to fade.
One simple error is all it takes, and then nothing we do seems to go right and the day just get's worse and worse.
It's not old age, although at the moment nothing will convince you it isn't, it happens to the young as well
Banish those thoughts of 'time to give up driving in London' and get back in the car, with a clear head and go back in daylight and have another go.
Find where you went wrong initially and then laugh about it!
In my early days of lorry driving I made some horrendous cock ups but someone once explained to me that every lorry driver does that, but no-one else ever told anyone about them;)
So, AC, there all sitting here reading your post, wondering if they dare recite the time it happened to them......and deciding not to!!
Pat
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>> It's not old age, although at the moment nothing will convince you it isn't, it happens to the young as well
How sweet of you to say so Pat, and what a benevolent post.
I haven't quite come round to the idea of giving up driving in London or anywhere else though. That might easily make life seem not worth living.
I note that busybody safety wonks have been banging on about older drivers again following an accident involving a guy of 90 in, I think, a large automatic car. I so hope that their jobsworthish scheme to make everyone take a full written and practical driving test every five years will be as impossible to administer and colossally expensive as it sounds. What utter prats people can be.
I don't fancy that at all, having to learn all the correct answers by heart. My memory (cough) isn't what it used to be.
:o}
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>> their jobsworthish scheme to make everyone take a full written and practical
>> driving test every five years will be as impossible to administer and colossally expensive as
>> it sounds.
>>
Never happen, the more senior members of the population use their votes, and the politicians value their jobs and perks above all else.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sat 6 Dec 14 at 17:07
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>> If it's only short, then the
>> condensate from the A/C could be 'pooling' and supplying a nice, wet supply of moisture
>> that doesn't have time to evaporate.
>>
The air con only dries the incoming air unless the system is in recirc mode, and any condensate goes down the drain, makes a puddle under the car, and causes some to panic because their car is "leaking".
Last edited by: Old Navy on Fri 5 Dec 14 at 08:34
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Yes, Bromp, but modern CC systems (and include those in both my cars, whose designs date from the early 00s) select recirc automatically. They each have a button to select a mode but it's never been touched.
Even without that, though, if you have a steady stream of dried air coming in, it will replace the damp air inside before you've got very far. So we're back to wet feet, wet dogs and soggy pollen filters as likely causes in underused cars.
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>> Yes, Bromp, but modern CC systems (and include those in both my cars, whose designs
>> date from the early 00s) select recirc automatically. They each have a button to select
>> a mode but it's never been touched.
It was somebody else (ON?) who introduced subject of recirc. IIRC the Xantia's basic CC required recirc to be set manually but it didn't make much difference. My 05 Berlingo has no a/c at all.
The winter condensation I described due to solar gain/cold air was a bane when it was parked at the station all day. Much better once I'd sorted the leaking tailgate but I could sit there for ten or more minutes before it cleared enough to drive safely. Tends to happen on drive at home now where either a fan heater or warm water on outside of glass will sort it.
My coffee flask filled with warm water before leaving work would have sorted the Xantia but too much faff to be a precaution.
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I don't know if my cars CC selects recirc when it feels the need but the only time I use the recirc button is to keep unpleasant stuff like diesel smoke out of the car. The CC systems on my last few cars have worked well without intervention from me, set the temp required and leave it to do its job with a rare prod of the demist button.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Fri 5 Dec 14 at 10:39
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Jazz has a "Front demist" button which sends a jet of warm air (takes about 20 secs to work if the engine is cold) to the front screen.. and heats the wing mirrors electrically at the same time.
Takes about 30 seconds to clear the screen from cold.
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Exactly - old technology re-invented to cope with a largely non-existant problem.
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Car De-humidifiers - Bromptonaut
