Sunday 13 November 2016

Reducing condensation in a car using silica cat litter and nylon tights.

The windows, and especially the windscreens, in my S-reg MX5 and 51-reg MR2 started getting terrible condensation when the weather turned colder/wetter last month.

Having Googled around, I thought I'd give the cat litter/tights method a go.

You need a bag of Bob Martin's Felight and a pack of 5 nylon tights (they are official "denier" tights, I'm surprised the AGW people haven't shut them down yet). Total material cost about £9. You cut the legs off the tights and pull one inside the other to make double thickness stockings, tip 450g of the cat litter crystals into each double thickness-stocking, tie up the ends and put one on the rear shelf and one on the dashboard.

With the newer MR2 it has worked a treat, there was barely any condensation at all this morning, even though it was raining all day yesterday. The windscreen in the slightly older MX5 is still misted up, but nowhere near as badly as before. The downside is, some of the finer powder makes it way through the double-stocking and there's white powder sprinkled across the dashboard.

So now we know!

UPDATE: after a week or so I doubled up, so I have 1.8 kg of cat litter crystals split between four stocking leg/bags in each car.

I'll just have to find some use for the last pair of tights (wrong size for Mrs W)…

9 comments:

Bayard said...

Just don't get stopped by the police and have to explain why you have white powder sprinkled across your dashboard.

You could try sieving the cat-litter first to get the powder out of it.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B: "You could try sieving the cat-litter first to get the powder out of it."

True, maybe I'll try that next time. By shaking the crystals in a sieve, it will get rid of some powder but the sieve/shaking will just rub off more powder which will stick to the crystals (as like as not) so I am not sure it will reduce the overall power-to-crystals ratio in the finished mix.

ThomasBHall said...

bank robbery as a use for the unused tights?

Mark Wadsworth said...

TBH, good one, "… and the masked robber then made his escape in a condensation-free getaway car".

Bayard said...

How about, instead of shaking the crystals, applying a vacuum cleaner nozzle to the underside of the sieve?

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, good idea!

Lola said...

Buy a newer car?

ThomasBHall said...

@Lola- ouch!

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, TBH, I like old cars with an 80 -90% discount off list price. Plus it takes me 10 years to get used to the styling and decide whether I like it. And older cars aren't stuffed full of stupid electronic shite like sat nav and Bluetooth etc.