Looking for tips on converting a closet for storing several guns. The issue is with it being on an outside wall that gets pretty warm and humid. What would be the best way to dehumidify the space without breaking the budget?

Thanks

Don't want to have "steal" in the sentence with gun safe. Damn spell check

thank you, Gunny

https://www.gallowtech.com/

This is who I used for racks and such in my gun closet. It's a little pricey, but high quality and awesome.

Thanks for the replies on the different organizers. I will look into them for sure.

I am most concerned about the climate and humidity issues. The room where the closet is located is above my detached garage and the closets get pretty warm. Other than a blanket dehumidifier, does anyone have a brand/type the recommend?
Thanks

Where are you located? Is the surrounding space air conditioned?

AgEng98 said:

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Where are you located? Is the surrounding space air conditioned?

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Outside of Memphis, TN so humid as all get out. The space is conditioned just not the closet. Not terribly worried about theft, more so keeping them out of harms way.

If the space is air conditioned, and just not the closet, might it make sense to consider a vented or louvered door to the closet?

I'm not far from Memphis and I am in the process of building a closet around my safe in the garage. I will be doing single pass conditioned air by tapping into the existing ductwork with flex.

In your situation, I'd get a cheap duct booster fan, and exhaust into the conditioned space so it circulates air through the closet. Shoot for cfm that gives you 5 changes per hour.

Since the closet is on an outside wall, add a small 45 pt dehumidifier with an external drain inside the closet and plumb the drain to the outside.

You are going to need a return air drop in the closet as well. Otherwise, the conditioned air will not go into the closet.

I would assume that most closet doors have enough gap at the bottom and perimeter cracks to avoid the need for any type of return.

As for my setup, the positive pressure from the air handler will push air through the closet and into the garage.

And make the rest of your house negative by whatever amount of air "leaks" through the closet and into the garage.

Average humidity for Memphis runs in the mid to low 70% through the year - not all that bad.

As others have stated, install a vent fan at the top of the door or wall entering the closet and a return vent towards the bottom to get conditioned and dried air into the closet on a regular basis. If you have a normal air conditioned environment outside of the closet, you really don't need anything beyond that as an AC system keeps relative humidity in the 50%-60% range through normal operations and that is exactly where you need or want to keep the RH for storage.

Get a hydrometer to measure the closet before and after installing the air circulation vents, make adjustments from there with dessicant or a powered humidity control device.

Average RH means absolutely nothing. Zip. Nada. Pointless statistic. As an associate editor for an engineering journal, I will reject papers that use it as a statistic. Average dewpoint, absolute humidity, humidity ratio, wet-bulb, or vapor pressure are all suitable alternatives.

What you want to know is what the design dehumidificaton number is. For Memphis, the 1% dewpoint is 76 F with a coincident dry bulb of 86. That's an equivalent RH of 72%. So 99% of the time, your moisture load will not exceed .0196 lbh2o/lbda.

TOM-M said:

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And make the rest of your house negative by whatever amount of air "leaks" through the closet and into the garage.

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So what? That piddling "leak" is a rounding error when you account for all the door traffic and other infiltration losses. It's not like I'm taking a 16" branch duct and letting it eat. A 4" flex with a butterfly damper to meter it won't make a bit of difference in the grand scheme of things.

Beg your pardon. It thought it was probably an 8" based on the other thread (which could easily be the equivalent of a roughly 10% leak for a 5-ton system):

"I am building a "cabinet" in my garage that will have A/C from the house. Our garage shares a wall with the dining room. I am essentially building around the safe and then putting a run of small (8" probably) flex duct from the nearest A/C branch into the cabinet."

Or was that not you?

At any rate, knock yourself out. If infiltration isn't a concern, I doubt anything I'd ever offer would be of consequence anyway. A supply leak is a leak, doesn't matter if it's a hole a squirrel chewed in the attic or dumped in your garage via the closet, and will get made up by paths of least resistance.

LoudestWHOOP! said:

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So beautiful

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Paging Agrams

AgEng98 said:

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Average RH means absolutely nothing. Zip. Nada. Pointless statistic. As an associate editor for an engineering journal, I will reject papers that use it as a statistic. Average dewpoint, absolute humidity, humidity ratio, wet-bulb, or vapor pressure are all suitable alternatives.

What you want to know is what the design dehumidificaton number is. For Memphis, the 1% dewpoint is 76 F with a coincident dry bulb of 86. That's an equivalent RH of 72%. So 99% of the time, your moisture load will not exceed .0196 lbh2o/lbda.

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AgEng98 said:

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Average RH means absolutely nothing. Zip. Nada. Pointless statistic. As an associate editor for an engineering journal, I will reject papers that use it as a statistic. Average dewpoint, absolute humidity, humidity ratio, wet-bulb, or vapor pressure are all suitable alternatives.

What you want to know is what the design dehumidificaton number is. For Memphis, the 1% dewpoint is 76 F with a coincident dry bulb of 86. That's an equivalent RH of 72%. So 99% of the time, your moisture load will not exceed .0196 lbh2o/lbda.

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In the words of Calvin Parnell... "I love it!"