Anyone have success reusing Boveda packs? I have a couple in Tupperware with a dish of distilled water. We'll see if they'll recharge themselves. Anyone else try this before?

I'm testing this. Put a little 69% dry, hard pack into a zip log bag with a little bit of distilled water in it. Put the pack directly in the water. Forgot about it for a couple of days. Pulled the pack out of the zip lock bag and it is back to feeling normal'ish... squishy. And the outer brown part of the bag feels dry'ish...
I put it in my little travel humidor briefcase. I reckon I should put it into a dry bag with a hygrometer and see where it reads, eh...

I do it all the time using the same method as bs_kwaj. Small CI Ziplock baggy, distilled water to about 1/2 way, a few Boveda packs, and about 3 days. I dump any excess water and let the packs sit in the baggy for another day.

Put them in a sealed container along with an open container of distilled water and place in a warm spot . Within just a few days they're good as new.

Never tried putting them directly in the water bit it doesn't sound like a good idea to me......but that's just me. To each his own.

SRH1, I'm trying that now. I'll give it a couple of days and see how they turn out. Thanks.

+1 on both statements.
Have found that they will only re-charge so many times.

Yes......been using some of my packs for years.I use a lock tight Tupperware bowl with a shot glass of water inside.Don't waste your distilled water using this method tap water works fine.All the contaminants and scale will be left in the container being used to house the water.You'll get years of use out of them using this method.

I personally have never submerged a Boveda pack and I do not recommend it.


Ron

I'm sure there is a shelf life so to speak on these but I haven't found it yet.Some of my Boveda packs are easily 8-9 years old.I even found a couple that had been tossed in my dresser drawer for GOD only knows how long.They were dried up and stiff as a board.I tossed them in my bowl checking them a few weeks later,I recharged my shot glass with tap water they had sucked it dry.Couple weeks later I checked them again and they were full and ready for use.To date I cannot remember ever having to toss one.


Ron

Dammit.

I chucked a couple the other day that were crunchy. I figured the water would ruin the paper, so I didn't even bother trying to rejuvenate them. At least they were the little ones...

The two I put in yesterday are noticeably softer today. So far so good.

As previously mentioned, you can recharge them. Something to keep in mind when recharging them is that it is possible to overcharge them. Being a salt solution, it doesn't actually hurt them, they just cease to regulate at the advertised humidity levels and will run high RH until they've given off enough water to drop back to the proper water : salt ratio. According to the manufacturer, the small packs are 8 gram and the larger packs are 60 gram. I've tested these elsewhere and found that you can go about 20-30% over and still hit target RH. Additionally, you absolutely can submerge the packs in water to recharge them, although with the white packs the outer label will tend to fall off (brown packs didn't seem to suffer this problem), aside from that, it's fine. The salt solution can't pass through the membrane because the molecular size is too large, by this same token, only water is going in, so, in theory, you don't even have to use distilled water because all the other crap in the water has a larger molecular size, although, if you use the submersion recharge method, bear in mind that "the other stuff" can be deposited on the outside of the pack. I have found no limit to the number of times the pack can be recharged as the salt has no way of getting out.

^^^

=d> =d> =d>

My method seems to have worked for me... this time. YMMV

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/74346508/IMG_2183.JPG 



Edit: The A/C in my room is set to 4. That's Full Blast. Ambient humidity in the room is about 43%.

Put them in a sealed container, cover with distiled water, forget about them for two weeks and done. Dry them before use. I find that they can be recharged about 3 times.

I just put the dry ones in a sealed container with a dish of water and let them recharge over a couple weeks time. I bought a package of the 60 gram ones and rotate them through. I actually gave up on using HF beads when I threw some in separate mesh bags into the same container and only one of the sets actually charged, even though they were all %65 beads and should have absorbed equally. The one that charged was older beads, so I think their accuracy must have dropped off in recent years.

Topped for M.

I thought that was Marcus up there (same avatar). Was wondering how he managed time travel

they'll reabsorb water but as to how accurate they'll be after doing that I'm not sure. It's all based on the salt inside.