Storage Hazards

From: Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com>
Date: Fri Oct 8 16:21:45 2004

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Jules Richardson wrote:

Never store printed matter in horizontal stacks, store it
vertically. The crap on the bottom always seems to suffer
from something, I think even the most microscopic channels
for air let moisture equalize, even if it takes years, it's
better than compressed. Besides you can't really see anything,
so piling and re-piling damages things.

Never never store anything on the floor! Raise it up at least
an inch. Concrete floors are POROUS, and usually have dirt under
them, and anywhere outside of desert regions will have moisture
below the concrete, which will wick it up, guarenteed. A cheap
solution is to lay 2x4's (or EU equiv) on the floor, and put boards
across them, leaving gaps for air circulation.

Leave space around things for air circulation. Moisture content
of the air changes seasonally everywhere, clay paper is a bit
hygroscopic, you want it to be able to dry out, albeit slowly.

I've not had a problem with rodentia here, yet anyways, but
there are a lot of pill bugs (so-called, little gray centipedes)
that seem to like dark moisture, they scurry at night. I think
they'd love to lve under a magazine laying on the concrete. They
don't climb.

Temperature extremes aren't good, but mainly they accellerate
the workings of moisture-related processes.

I'm not an expert, but I've got some stuff, and have
pawed through a lot of stuff untouched for decades, and the
bottom-of-the-pile is either utterly choice or a complete ruin,
depending on the environment. And much of the bottom-is-good
stuff I've seen is due to surplus hounds and kids not getting
access to ruin it.

My lab is an unheated converted garage, concrete floor, in Los
Angeles, though it's insulated, proper ventilation. Books are
stored on shelves, upright, and the lowest shelves (about 4"
from the floor) get low-value stuff only.

All electronic goodies are on metal shelves.

The LGP-21 is in the house.

> Won't *any* batteries cause corrosion over time? E.g. anything in pocket
> calculators etc.

Batteries simply cannot be left in devices in storage, period,
nor of course removable media in drives.

The few things I own with internal batteries, that aren't
temporal PC hardware, I've moved the battery packs off the
PC boards and onto the chassis. I generally solder a stack of
NiCds together, wrap in fish paper, cable tie it to the chassis
somewhere inocuous, and run two-conductor ribbon cord to the
original location. I often get to then use AA instead of AAA
size, etc.
Received on Fri Oct 08 2004 - 16:21:45 BST