Lancia Motor Club

Hi All

This just happened to me and I cannot recall having it happen in previous years, but thought it may be useful for others to take a look at their garage.

My garage is part of a building which has a flat above it. It was built 4 years ago and is normally 'dry'. I sealed the floors a while ago with a couple of layers of PVA and there has never been an issue with damp etc, other than the doors are standard garage doors which obviously are not air/water tight.

With normal rain etc there is never an issue of water getting in.

All through the cold snap again no issue inside.

So the freezing weather has now been gone for a few days here (hooray!) and all looked fine (I normally go in everyday to get something out/put in, so would notice changes).

Yesterday, I went in and the floor was absolutely dripping with surface water in one area and this increased during the day. The temp here was pretty mild (10 degree?), so I looked for an obvious leak from the flat above, no joy and then it dawned on me it was the delayed warming of the ground and it had reached that point/temp where condensation forms on a surface out of the water vapour in the air. At the end of the day the whole floor was wet and had also formed on the lower part of the car cover.

The solution was to let the warmer external air in and get it circulating to dry out and warm the floor with this mild weather.

So the point of this is post is to suggest if you have your garage all safely locked up for winter, do not leave it, go open it and get some air around it now as the condensation and warmer air temp will do your car no good if just stood there.

Peter

I went into my garage to check on "Fay" yesterday and I had the same situation but although my airchamber  was covered in condensation on the outside, she was lovely and dry inside, Thinks? I wonder if I can get a very small airchamber for my Raleigh moped ;D which wasn't inside the airchamber and it's cover was wet.

Brian
8227 8)

I've got a couple of fans continually running in both garages. It seems to do the trick.

And there speaks a man of substance! Two Garages ;D

Brian
8227 8)

There was me feeling a bit smug that I hadn't got a problem with the condensation with the airchamber in a previous posting to this thread, that was until this morning :o
I went to changeover the battery that run the fans for the airchamber to find that the garage floor was wet, which in itself wasn't a problem, but the floor inside the airchamber which is more or less the same as the groundsheet in a tent was also wringing wet, although the air from the fans hadn't been enough to dry out the condensation, "Fays" bodywork was dry to touch with no signs of damp on her.
I shall have to find myself an old carpet.
Years ago friends used to laugh to see my garage floor was carpeted, but I certainly never had a damp problem, and it was a darned sight more comfortable when working on the car as well.

Brian
8227 8)

Just been to my car to prepare for the engine removal to find the lower half of the bodywork, the engine and the engine bay wet through, this is in a very dry and well vented building, I think the temperature change has been so great and sudden that unfortunately it's going to happen to anything unless you're fortunate to have a heated climate controled garage.
Never mind, I think all our cars will survive, i've just put some nice warm carpet under mine to crawl around on for the next few days1