Protecting Valuables from Environmental Damage
Keeping Your Valuables Safe by Monitoring and Maintaining Proper Environmental Conditions.
Perhaps you’ve spent good money on musical instruments, firearms, an art collection, fine wines, baseball cards, and comic books, or maybe you’re into cigars. Maybe you keep important documents in your home, or enjoy photo albums and scrapbooking. And what about that classic car or motorcycle lovingly tucked away in your garage?
Whatever your passion, it makes sense to protect your investments. A big part of preserving valuables and collectibles is storing them in a safe environment and striving to maintain conditions that are stable. That means keeping close tabs on conditions like temperature and humidity that can have a negative impact on sensitive items. And if your valuables stay in a storage area like a basement, attic, or garage, it also helps to strategically install leak detectors. That can help provide warning in time to move things to safety in the event of flooding or water leaks.
Make Gun Safe Dehumidifiers More Effective with Humidity Monitoring
Problem
Firearms - even when properly cleaned, oiled, and maintained – can be vulnerable to damaging corrosion if exposed to prolonged periods of high humidity and possibly extreme temperatures. Wooden stocks, meanwhile, can dry out and crack if exposed to non-optimal conditions for prolonged periods.
Solution
For storage of guns and ammo in a gun safe, gun vault or gun cabinet, many recommend using desiccates and/or gun safe dehumidifier (such as a dehumidifier rod). It's also recommended to monitor humidity and temperature. Many say that a 50% relative humidity and temperature of 70°F is generally safe for the storage of guns and bullets but always check with the manufacturer of your handgun or rifle for specific conditions.
AcuRite Solutions & Tips
- Monitor Gun Storage Conditions: Place an AcuRite Monitor in the room where you store firearms, to measure ambient room conditions and ensure safe, controlled temperature and humidity.
- Install a Temperature and Humidity Sensor (optional) inside the gun safe or gun cabinet to measure conditions specific to where the firearms are stored.
- Use a Home Environment Display for convenient viewing of conditions measured by Monitors and Sensors in multiple rooms around your home.
- Set alarms to alert you of undesirable conditions. These can include:
- Undesirably low or high temperatures
- Undesirably high or low humidity
- Set alarms to alert you of undesirable conditions. These can include:
There are many great resources on keeping valuables safe. Here are a few options we recommend:
- Wine Spectator offers wine storage basics, including wine storage temperature
- Cigar World provides some basics on caring for cigars, such as using a humidor hygrometer in a cigar humidor
- Hagerty Classic Vehicle Insurance offers these steps for proper car and motorcycle storage, including winterization and long-term storage
- Bikebandit.com has 10 steps for winterizing and long-term storing a motorcycle
- Premiere Guitar offers these tips on guitar storage and using a guitar humidifier
