I refuse to pay the ludicrous middleman markup on the silica beads that that one guy charges, and while you can instead use a certain kind of kitty litter which is reportedly the same substance without that guy's giant markup (yay!), I instead choose to use a different substance - dirt-cheap superabsorbent polymer crystals (see Amazon for a bulk bag of them big enough for five lifetimes for a tiny amount of money).
You soak the polymer in 50/50 to initially expand it, house it in any open-top container (glass jar formerly containing jam, whatever you have laying around, if worried about tipping and spilling just use the original lid and poke holes in it, etc.) and toss it in a container (cooler, plastic tub, etc.) with some Boveda packs. Then you periodically recharge the polymer crystals with distilled water, and rarely more 50/50 when needed, but mostly just distilled. The Bovedas do two-way supplemental "trim" of the humidity to the target, and they last FOREVER, and you never have to even touch them... they auto-recharge from the humidity from the crystals.
In a container with a good deal (e.g. a cooler), you will have to recharge with distilled water incredibly rarely (maybe once every 6 months), and with 50/50 even more ludicrously rarely, probably once every 5 years or less.
Ongoing costs - A gallon of distilled water is 99 cents at any supermarket and will last for years. A big container of 50/50 is very cheap (if you're not dumb enough to buy the high-markup middleman-branded versions) and will last probably a decade or two. Total yearly cost - so close to zero it's essentially zero. Repeat Boveda purchases after initial purchase - ZERO EVER.
It's a very nice and cheap and low-maintenance system.
No, to make the Boveda last FOREVER so that we do not BECOME continually poorer while the Boveda patent holders become richer by charging us $4 per pack for something it probably cost them 12 cents to make and that is NOT disposable, despite what they'd like you to believe.
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Pudding Mittens wrote:
