Is your Cerbera ready for winter?
You wouldn’t store you cherished Chippendale table out in your cold damp garage, so why your cherished P&J car?
So how do you keep rust at bay?
Do you just stick a heater in the garage and hope for the best?
Everything I describe below, cost less than £400 – a small price to pay I think you’ll agree 🙂
First job is to keep the rain out, I managed this as I wrote earlier with one of these
coupled with some strategically placed rubber flaps screwed in place around the gaps in the main door, and you’re pretty much weather-tight.
So now it’s dry – great, but what about damp?
Humidity is your enemy – get ready for winter!
A garage doesn’t necessarily have to be warm and cosy, it just needs the right relative humidity (RH) level.
over 60% and dew drops can form and rust occur
less than 40% and leather can dry out and crack
so ~50% is the sweet spot.
I recently purchased one of these dehumidifiers
set to to 50% and switched it on.
before I switched it on, my humidity gauge was reading 60+ (rust territory)
12 hours later and now it reads ~50 relative humidity
and the little tube that drains outside, has removed 6 litres of water out of the air – in 12 hours!
a by-product of this is the dehumidifier vents warm air out into the garage, so over time the temperature should rise.
and a final touch, I installed one of these trickle chargers which I routinely keep plugged in. It plugs into the 12v socket and the door closes with wire attached
My Cerbera isn’t a garage queen.
True, I don’t use it in the rain, but any day it’s not raining I am out in it.
But when I’m not, I know it’s being cherished just like a Chipendale.