It’s cold outside; sometimes you are even snowed in and cannot leave your house. It is boring, cold and it’s not fun at all to look into the dreary grey landscape! And when you walk down the slippery street – careful not to fall – you yearn for summer.
And with Trotec it will come sooner than you think! With our campaign “In the winter, already looking forward to summer”. Read More
If there’s one thing that most musicians have in common – apart from their passion for music of course – it’s the love they share for their instruments. It comes as no small surprise then that they are prepared to go to great – sometimes even bizarre – lengths to conserve and protect those instruments that are so dear to them and that they are forever keen to ensure that they are well-treated and also well-kept. This, however, is not always as easy as it may at first seem, as the instruments’ well-being depends significantly on their immediate environment and the indoor climate.
The indoor climate in certain rooms in both older and outlying buildings, as well as the room climate in many cellars and basements where bands or budding musicians practise and hone the skills they have acquired or are still desperate to develop, is not just bad for either the instruments they are playing or the electronic equipment they are using, like amplifiers, speakers and synthesizers for example, it is quite simply downright damaging. And the main reason for this situation is high levels of humidity.
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Which thoughts cross your mind when you think about horse riding? In my mind I see little girls who dream about winning ribbons in equestrian tournaments, or I picture Europe’s royalty wearing ridiculously huge hats and feverishly watching the world-famous horse race at Ascot, or I even think of the lonesome cowboy from a renowned cigarette commercial galloping through the American prairie… Despite – or probably because of all these clichés about it, the popularity of horse riding as a hobby doesn’t seem to wear off… But one thing is sure: horse riding is, without doubt, quite a time-consuming and costly hobby.
One of the most important pieces of equipment a rider needs is a saddle. But don’t let yourself be fooled… Finding the right saddle for your horse and your specific discipline seems like an almost impossible task to me. After an extensive research on the internet, it becomes obvious that you can easily spend a small fortune on a saddle made from the finest leather and decorated with fancy silver clasps and ornaments which are typical for a western style saddle for example.
But these valuable saddles are often stored in draughty, unheated and easily accessible tack rooms where not only thieves have a walk-over but also moisture and mould. Musty smells and mould spots are a sure sign for too much humidity in the ambient air. All the metal pieces of a saddle can start to rust with a relative humidity of only 60 %, and when the relative humidity tops 70 %, mould begins to form on your saddle. Yet when the relative humidity is too low, the leather of your saddle can become brittle and chapped.
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An Englishman’s home is his castle. And his car his most-loved toy. This would be a rather crude assessment of what is more, much more, than just a fleeting fancy or a child-like fantasy – it is a deep, ingrained passion for fantastically-engineered and beautifully-crafted motorcars which stir emotions and – yes, it must be admitted – pluck at the strings of the heart. The beauty, the power and the elegance which veteran, vintage and classic cars embody can cause grown men – and of course women – to tremble with excitement and pleasure and to bemoan a bygone age of glamour and style as they look back on slowly-fading but fond memories. Which is why these wonderful vehicles need to be protected, not only against carjackers and car thieves, but also against the ravages of time, the elements – and the indoor climate.
The effect that the wrong indoor climate can have on the car in your garage:
As any real car enthusiast knows, the indoor climate plays an extremely important role when it comes to preserving the car of your dreams and to protecting it against moisture and the effects which moisture can have on the bodywork, the chassis and the fittings of your prized possession. High humidity levels provide the ideal breeding ground for rust and corrosion. In fact a relative humidity of only 60%, which, depending on where you live, what time of year it is and what the weather is like, is quickly reached can eat at the metal and the spotlessly shiny chrome and cause damage that not only spoils the aesthetic value of your car, but can also transform what was once a dazzling gem into a rough diamond. That’s why you can’t just park your car in the drive or leave it to rust at the kerb, what you need is a proper garage for your car so that it retains its value and you retain the pleasure you get from it.
But there more hidden dangers lurking in your garage than you might think:
Moisture is not only present in the ambient air, it can also work its way through walls and penetrate seemingly solid or leak-proof brickwork. And not only that: if you’ve been out for a spin and been caught in the rain or if you have been unlucky enough to end up in a snowdrift during the harsher winter months, then there will be more than enough moisture on your wheels, tyres and the car’s undercarriage to cause corrosion and considerable damage to your car when you drive it back into the relative warmth of your garage. In such cases, the moisture contained in the relatively warm air can also settle on the paintwork of your car or seep into tiny cracks between the various body parts where it can quickly become a serious and costly problem. And that’s only on the outside. The material or leather upholstery and the trimmings in the interior of your car do not take kindly to moist air and can in some cases adopt a musty smell which is a sure sign of mould. Cars have always been wonders of technology. They can be packed with motors which power the windows or adjust the seats and seemingly miles of cable. Moisture is not just bad for the electrics in your car, it is Enemy No.1. When the electrics don’t work and your car doesn’t start, then the cause could well be moisture.
How to make sure that you and your car remain together a life-time:
You can ensure that you get the most out of your Morgan Plus, your E-Type Jaguar, your Porsche 911 or quite simply the car you are proud to call your own by following a few simple steps:
Make sure that your car is dry before you close the garage door. This way the excess moisture can escape to the outside rather than condense on your car in the inside.
Install a dehumidifier. This may sound a little drastic or over the top, but a dehumidifier like the ones in the TTK S Series from Trotec can monitor and control the climate in just about any room – or garage –and regulate the relative humidity so that the problems described above do not occur and you can be sure that the next time you fetch your car out of the garage all you have to do is turn the key for the motor to gun into life and then purr contentedly as you appreciatively let your eyes and fingers glide over the exquisitely designed, sleek interior and soak up the pleasure of owning your very own personal dream car.
Like we said before. A car can last a life-time. And you can decide if it does.
Trotec. The name in dehumidifiers and climate conditioning.
There are a few fundamental facts of life which you learn at a very early age: eat your greens, they’re good for you (although this is a known fact, it takes some powers of persuasion to convince a four-year-old that you aren’t just trying to trick him into polishing off his Brussels sprouts); don’t cheek your elders (which is obviously meant to teach young children respect although it is another well-known fact that age and wisdom do not always go hand in hand); that burping is bad manners and that you should apologise (whereas back in good ol’ Henry VII’s day it would have been considered a stinging insult if you didn’t belch after a meal) – and that one and one is always two.
Well not in our world it isn’t! Read More
There are many people who think that there is only one species to blame for the alarming and mind-boggling weather phenomena, the melting ice caps, the disappearing glaciers and the steadily rising sea levels which we have experienced over the past decades and years. For these people there is only one possible culprit who is responsible for global warming brought on by the build-up of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (from transport, tourism and industry), methane (from factory farming) and CFCs (from spray aerosols) in the earth’s atmosphere, and that is man. Man may have succeeded in landing on the moon and creating genetically engineered life, but at the same time he has also succeeded in polluting the planet and bringing the world as we know it to the brink of an ecological disaster.
And yet there are also those who say that this would all have happened anyway …
The opinions on global warming are divided. There is a broad phalanx of experts and millions above millions of people especially in the so-called civilised western industrialised world who defy the theory that it is mankind who has caused the Earth to heat up by 0.74C degrees over the past century and that despite the almost universal ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (the United States has yet to sign the treaty), which has as its goal the stabilisation of the levels of said greenhouse gases in order to prevent more far-reaching climate changes from occurring, they staunchly say that global warming is all part of a natural geological process and that we should not be attaching so much significance to man’s role on the planet.
And the opinions are equally split on humidifiers. Read More
Most of the time people don’t give much thoughts about how to air their house or apartment. During the cold and frosty months of winter at least you mind to keep the doors and windows closed to keep the valuable and costly heating energy inside the house, don’t you? But as soon as the temperature rises again no one really cares anymore… Because if it is warm outside I can open up all windows and doors to let fresh air into my apartment, so there is no problem anymore with damp basements or moist walls, right? Read More
What do a 120 metre luxury yacht and a dehumidifier have in common? Not a lot you might think. And in many respects you would be right. You won’t find many front rooms, basements or cellars large enough to accommodate a class II super yacht with three decks, two Monets and a celebrity chef on board, and only an intrepid explorer – or a fool perhaps – would even consider attempting to cross the channel on a dehumidifier (we’re not even sure if they would stay afloat – here’s another experiment which our dedicated and highly creative social media team might wish to contemplate carrying out– see “Cooking pasta and saving energy: A Test”).
Yet although there would seem to be little or nothing which these two very differently-priced objects – one costing anywhere upwards of a million dollars a month just to charter and the other only a mere 82 euros to buy – may have by way of similarity, there is a much stronger tie that unites the two than first meets the eye…
Dehumidifiers don’t necessarily come top of many people’s shopping lists. Why should they? There are probably dozens of more desirable things that you would sooner spend your money on and there are scores of far more urgent purchases which you or your family think you should make.
Or are there?
Perhaps you first need to know what a dehumidifier can do and what affect it can have on your indoor climate in order to understand why you and every home or office should have one.
A dehumidifier is more than just an electrical appliance. It can transform the climate of your home, workplace or office – almost instantly. This may seem like a mild exaggeration, but you would be surprised to see just how much moisture a dehumidifier like the TTK 30 S can extract from the air in your room, bathroom, cellar, walk-in wardrobe, basement or holiday home in the short space of only 24 hours. A bucketful. That’s right – up to 10 litres of water in only one day. It is this excess moisture that lingers in the air which can not only damage your possessions and property, it can seriously affect your feeling of well-being and even your health. Read More
Ballerinas, sneakers, boots, sandals, peeptoes, stilettos – the women among our readers will know the problem: whether they are intended to be comfortable, practical or quite simply stunningly beautiful, if there’s one thing you can never have enough of it’s got to be shoes! Yet once you’ve bought them, there never seems to be enough closet space to accommodate the whole collection. Maybe that’s because in the course of a life-time the average woman will accumulate around 200 pairs of shoes – and that’s only a rough estimate!
And of course these little treasures will want to be stowed away properly …
First of all, it is important to not just pile up all your shoes into an enormous heap or simply chuck them into a huge cardboard box. This is not only a rather confusing and messy way to store your shoes, it also inevitably leads to ugly marks and bumps, especially with the most sensitive models. Wooden shoe stretchers are a great help when it comes to preserving the original form of your favourite shoes as long as possible, especially if they have been neglected over a longer period.
But can you just put your shoes in the wardrobe? Doesn’t that – well – smell?
The biggest problem concerning the storage of shoes is that no matter how often you wash your feet or how much foot deodorant you use, you can’t stop certain smells from evolving. But who would want such a smell to spread to their freshly washed laundry? The reason for the typical, slightly musty smell of shoes is mostly moisture, and if they are not dried sufficiently, they can quickly take on a rather unpleasant smell. If you have been wearing your shoes all day, you should therefore make sure that you air them well afterwards. And if they are soaked from the rain, you should dry them thoroughly for at least 48 hours before putting them back into the closet. High levels of humidity can easily lead to unpleasant smells developing in your wardrobe – smells which linger in clothes and which are extremely hard to get rid of, even when you bring on the big guns like lashings of perfume and room scent to cover them up or drown them out.
One of the best and most efficient ways of combating excess humidity in small rooms or walk-in closets is to install a dehumidifier. A basic model, like the TTK 30 S for example, is most well-equipped to do the job. These ultra-compact appliances are not only really economical, they are also particularly well suited for continuous operation in small and heated rooms.
And as soon as you’ve got the problem of high humidity under control, then there is nothing to stop you from having a nicely orderly closet… because is there anything that could possibly be more delightful than having all of your favourite items of clothing lined up beautifully in one place? Apart from yet another pair of shoes, maybe …
