Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have two recent purchases, a car and a small home. Both of them came with water issues - stains on the ceiling, inexplicably wet floorboards. Finding and fixing the leaks is great - but then you have a water-tight space that's clammy inside. Enter DampRid Hi-Capacity. I made faces at it on the computer screen. RV-size? But I live here, I don't vacation here! Give me something that works. My secondary concern was that I have pets - wouldn't they get their snouts in there and eat the stuff? I took a chance, seeing as it was less expensive than buying 200 pairs of shoes with those little silica gel packs to absorb moisture. I bought two buckets. I'm SO happy I did. Why? 1. The bucket is full of calcium chloride, a kind of salt (not table salt! that's sodium chloride.do not eat this.) which does, in fact, absorb moisture. You know how humidity makes your salt shaker clog up? This is based on that property, but on a much larger scale. 2. Once you take off the plastic lid, there's paper sealing the bucket. That stays in place during the whole time you use it! The crystals in the bucket absorb moisture through it. So, no spill, no risk for kids, no pets foraging. 3. The bucket has an indicator for when the crystals have reached capacity. Just look at the dots on the bucket to see if it needs to be replaced. 4. It worked in my car and in my house. I set one bucket in each space, and all of the funky wet spots cleared up. I don't have to worry about mold anymore, or sagging ceilings. (As I said above, I fixed the sources of the leaks. DampRid helped extremely well in the drying process. I will still have to paint over the water stains, but I'm confident they aren't wet.) A couple of novice recommendations. I have no scientific proof that these suggestions work, but I believe they were true for me: 1. If using DampRid in your car, check the "vent/circ" button. While you're driving, you may have your vehicle set for fresh air ventilation, and that's fine. But when you park for the night or a long period, it seems to me, it's better to switch the setting to recirculate the air within the car and the dehydrating bucket, closing off the vents. Maybe you could leave the ventilation system open, but that feels to me like turning on the air conditioning while the windows are open. Why waste the bucket dehydrating outside air? Let it suck up only the internal moisture. 2. Don't buy these to store for later use. The bucket and the lid, eh, they match up in a seal that seems tight. But they're probably not made specifically by this company for this purpose. A little at a time, the bucket contents will crystallize with moisture. It's that good. Buy them only when you need to open them. 3. This is an odd one. There's another thing that I found uses the buckets fast: proximity to cat litter boxes. Sure, the cat litter is going to absorb the moisture eventually, but the DampRid is better at it. So, you have two choices ... use the DampRid in the cat area to multiply the work of the kitty litter, or let the litter do its own job and place the bucket where you need other moisture absorbed. Personally, I'm doing both - I've dried out the closet, the bathroom with the vent that leaked, and with the remainder of the bucket I can keep unsavory smells from leaching out of the cat area. There are all sizes of this stuff, but for me, it was cheaper to buy the big one and move it from room to room until it was done. You don't need to move it - I didn't touch the one in my car - but it's common sense to apply the solution to the problem area. I highly recommend it.