What are you using to monitor humidity in gun safe?

Sharpshooter3

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Feb 10, 2018
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What is the best thing you have found that works, to monitor humidity/temperature in your gun safe that you can view with out opening it? I am on my second one of those golden rod wireless temp/humidity censers and they only seem to hold up for about 6mo to a year then they stop working and won't read the inside censer anymore.
 
My safe is not in a climate controlled area. So it is not possible to keep the whole room at a stable temp/humidity year around. I do use a 36” golden rod dehumidifier in the safe. And in the past few years it has been able to keep the humidity level around 30-40% and the temp some what constant. It was just kinda nice to have a visual piece of mind when I walked by it and could check in on the numbers.
 
My safe is not in a climate controlled area. So it is not possible to keep the whole room at a stable temp/humidity year around. I do use a 36” golden rod dehumidifier in the safe. And in the past few years it has been able to keep the humidity level around 30-40% and the temp some what constant. It was just kinda nice to have a visual piece of mind when I walked by it and could check in on the numbers.

When I was living in central Arkansas I ended up having to keep my safe in the garage.
Very hot humid weather there and was worried at first about it but saw zero issues without even plugging in my desicant type dehumidifier and never saw any signs of rust or problems.
 
I don't monitor, but I have a Golden Rod at the bottom of the door, and two of the desiccant canisters below. When the silica beads turn pink I put them on a baking pan @ 200 degrees till they turn back to blue and then put them back in the safe.

I figure between these two it stays really dry in there but there's still airflow.

I Renaissance Wax all my firearms that I don't regularly shoot, but I'm pretty sure there would be no rust or corrosion on any of them even without doing that.

https://www.amazon.com/Dry-Packs-Gr...TF8&qid=1549904342&sr=8-16&keywords=dessicant
 
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this blew my mind
 

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I've never used the wireless units, as you said I've always heard they don't last/work long. We used to use some higher quality Omega/Monnit weather stuff for field monitoring that was wireless but you needed to have their receiver/software for it etc. There are lots of wifi "tags" now for temp/humidity but not sure any of them would function in a safe.

That said I've used these putting one in each safe and also in the room it's in. It's mostly just curiosity, to see how different the safes are from the room itself. It is interesting to see how two different safes in the same room and with the same dehumidifier setup differ in interior humidity as much as 3-5% but both still stay lower than the room by a couple points. I think the bigger deal is that you have some warming source in the safe that basically is stimulating airflow.

I can say that while cheap all of them have been within 2-3% of each other and within that of my kestrel, and much more accurate than my dehumidifier is, which can be off 10-15%. They also don't seem to vary much whenever I open the safes, even when the room does which leads me to believe the humidity in the safe is much more consistent compared to the swings in the room. So I don't really worry about it needing to monitor it wirelessly. That said I do have a dehumidifier in the room to ensure it never gets above a maximum humidity too.

https://www.amazon.com/AcuRite-Humi...=UTF8&qid=1550017493&sr=8-4&keywords=humidity

I also use an EvaDry 333 in each safe I recharge whenever it indicates it, which is usually 3-4 weeks, they are pretty cheap and seem to do the job well. Costco used to have 2 packs of them for about $20.

Also remember that a lot of people think you need it super dry in a safe, which isn't true at all, if I remember right the National Firearm Museum shoots for 70 degrees and 55% humidity. My guess is they are concerned about wood drying out/cracking if they go much lower. I'm sure if you had no wood guns you could go much lower.
 
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If your safe isn't sweating, and isn't in the laundry room you should never have any issues with rust. If it is, you have larger issues...
 
Mine goes from ~40% ambient room to 20% internal with desiccant packs, measured with an external digital hygrometer from Amazon. For the guns, I clean and re-lube them every 0.5 - 1 years, but any spare parts and whatnots that are rainy day items I put in labelled double ziplock bags and drown them in oil. I do the same thing with car and motorcycle engine parts.

Given that my EDC withstands ball swamp humidity well with only a weekly barrel cleaning, I figure my safe is ok. I don't have any older guns that would really take to rust, though.
 
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My previous house had a walkout basement and in the winter I used a wood stove to heat the upstairs. The temp swing in a day could be 40-50deg. The humidity would be drastically higher in the safe and I had an issue with brass turning green and had a cooper 22lr bolt rust shut so bad I sent it back to cooper to be refinished. I had 2 lightening rods and bought one of the Remington rechargeable desiccant dehumidifiers that was supposed to last 30-60 days and it would need plugged in after less than a week.After that I bought a small ceramic heater and set it to approx 80deg. and haven’t had any problems since. I also bought a indoor/outdoor weather station to monitor temp and humidity. Humidity stays in the high 30’s now.
 
I have a big desiccant pack in mine with one of those Blue/Pink spot indicators lying under it, when over half of the little blue spots turn pink I dehydrate my desiccant pack for a day and I'm good to go. I keep a desiccant pack in with my ammo as well.