Silica gel and food storage

[Prepper_Ed]

Hello everybody,

After my initial topic was moved to the introduction forum (where I should have introduced myself in the first place, how rude of me...) I re-post this here again as I feel that besides my introduction this is the place for this subject:

Living in Ireland, a big problem here is the dampness. We live in an old farmhouse, and even though we made some efforts insulating it the humidity in the house is quite high. Ventilation and a dehumidifier (which doesn't work without power obviously) help a bit, but I am a bit worried about stocking up dry food in this environment.

So I've been thinking: Would it be at all helpful to use those little silica gel sachets to absorb the moisture that could get (or be) in the food? And obviously I am also wondering if this could be harmful for the food.

And even though you can buy these bags fairly cheap on ebay, I've been looking at other options. One thought came about when I spotted a dumped diaper that some *£&&$&*" left somewhere because they don't care about the environment or how disgusting it is for other people to find a used diaper! Beside certain content that I won't be telling you about, the diaper was spilling little balls that looked a lot like the balls inside the silica bags. Obviously they have the same function, to absorb moisture, but are they exactly the same thing? You would get a lot of these balls from a pack of (unused) diapers, so it might work out cheaper to put these in pouches than to buy them online...

Looking forward to hear what your thoughts are on this.

(preppingsu already posted a link to oxygen absorbers in the introduction topic. Many thanks for that! I am aware of these oxygen absorbers and their uses, right now I am just wondering about the moisture absorbers)

[KalPrep]

Howdy Ed.

I have only ever seen the silica type pouches in electronic equipment and given the nature of the substance I would be very suspicious of using it in or near food stuffs.

It all depends what you are storing. Using the Mylar bags and some oxygen absorbers would be fine. I have food grade sealable 20ltr buckets with Mylar bags inside storing things like rice and pasta. Done right, these could last 10years. If you search for "self sufficiency shop" I got one of their starter packs to get going. (PS, I am in no way affiliated with the shop but got good service). Using some of the smaller bags you could easily store whatever you needed dryly and safely. The food bucket is good for keeping out the pests

For smaller packages, I have seen a few vids etc where you would store say 4 5ltr mylar bags inside one of the 20 ltr ones, each with oxy absorbers in. Seems a bit excessive to me but there are obviously reasons for doing it.

If you don't want to go the Mylar route, I would suggest sealable food bags inside sealable plastic containers to keep the moisture out. Don't store anything in the original cardboard or non-plastic containers and try to keep perishable things away from cold walls or areas where damp is most prevalent.

[the-gnole]

A useful link

http://chemistry.about.com/od/makechemi ... licate.htm

[nickdutch]

Just something to get your mind turning: I saw a program about food storage and it said that some oxygen absorbers was in fact iron filings in sachets. They absorb the oxygen as they turn into rust.
Maybe there is a way of macgyver-ing up some oxy absorbers from old nails? However, there would also be safety issues with that too.

[the-gnole]

(preppingsu already posted a link to oxygen absorbers in the introduction topic. Many thanks for that! I am aware of these oxygen absorbers and their uses, right now I am just wondering about the moisture absorbers)

If the moisture absorbers aren't in contact the the produce then Silica gel sachets should be OK I wouild have thought.

Time for google to do the walking

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/52843 ... d.html?s=p

[Ogre]

Hokay, Mrs Ogre and myself have used Silica Gel a LOT in our preps. My gran has a biscuit tin with Silica Gel in the lid and just used to dry the lid on top of the gas fire every few months to prevent damp.

So, with things like bulk storage of dried foods (sugar/rice/flour/teabags/etc), we split the load into 1Kg packs, vacuum seal the pack, pop this into another bag with a few sachets of gel, then vacuum and seal that one. So far everything treated in this fashion seems to do well.

They get a LOT of small silica gel packs in the clothing sections of supermarkets. It's worth asking them to hang on to a weeks worth for you. If you get any damp ones, a short spell in a low heat oven on a baking tray will take care of that.

[Moony]

You'll probably notice alot of these packets have "do not eat" on them, theres probably a good reason for that. For food use it is now recommended to use packs using Tyvek rather than cotton as it is more puncture/tear resistant, these are only slightly more expensive, worth it IMO.

http://silicagelpackets.co.uk/silica-gel-packets/

[the-gnole]

Does that mean if you see the local roofing firm or timber framed house building firm and ask them for a few feet of tyvek that you could make your own pouches to put small bags of Silica gel in.

http://construction.tyvek.co.uk/Tyvek_C ... index.html

[Moony]

Well that might be a bit fiddly tbh

On a side-note, from my ultralight camping research, Tyvek is actually the best material you can get for making tarps (waterproofness - weight rating), apart from spinnaker (sail) material thats 10x the price....sorry to go off-topic abit...

[the-gnole]

So how does it absorb moisture if it is waterproof and the Silica gel is on the inside of the packet