I have been considering this for quite some time now. I have significant ammo stored and at the prices things are now it adds up to a small fortune. Plus its tough to replace things with all the shortages.
My safe is located in the basement and I have been noticing the humidity lately has been in the mid 60’s, which is too high for long term (24/7 humidity and temp meter running inside) storage. I bought the size rod for my safe that predicts to keep the humidity in the 48-52 % range if not a little better. Lifetime warranty and pennies a month to run it 24/7 365. Rod stays about 150 degrees to the touch. I am letting it run on my kitchen counter for 3 days to keep and eye on it since its new.
Anyone else here using one of these. Things to watch out for that I may not have considered? Obviously no Ammo on the rod itself, LOL!
Went to install this GoldenRod earlier today. When I opened the safe to start the inside humidity was 52% with mid 60’s for temp. I was working in the basement on something else and left the safe door open while doing so. When I came back the humidity was 47% with 66 temp. This means the air in the basement was drier than what was in the safe. Hmmmmm. I keep the safe in a locked closet to keep it out of view of visitors. I don’t see any moisture on the floor or walls, but clearly I need to open the closet door a little more. It was easy to position/install the humidifier rod since the safe already has electric in it and when I built the closet I placed electric plugs on the wall making life easy!
I am going to keep the safe closed for 2 days and then see what results the Rod produces. I may even need to place a small bathroom like exhaust fan high on the closet wall and pull the other basement air in under the closet door. Hope it doesn’t come to that. I will not leave the closet door open when I am absent.
I already ordered a meter yesterday to keep outside the safe. They are really cheap so Amazon will get it here in a couple of days. BTW - its been two days and I opened the safe today and it showed 45%, so its going down. Lots of reading shows that is an acceptable number but I am still going to keep tweaking to shoot for 38-42%. Dry as a bone in this location, but we get some major spring storms. Humidity has a way of sinking into basements, even those that never show any signs of water invasion at all.
I checked my supplies and I am about 600 rounds short of 9mm. Other than that I am good to go.
I have had a golden rod in my safe since I bought it. My old safe had a large desicant pack. it worked, but don’t forget to dry it out when it gets ‘full’.
I keep a dehumidifier in the basement by the ammo. I have started putting all my reload in plastic containers (the arborio rice ones are nice) with desicant packs I save from various purchases. So far so good (about 10 years of this practice).