DIY: An Inexpensive, Waterproof, Durable and Easy DIY Table-Top Dew Hutch

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

Scott Tannehill (Tannehill) has kindly written an article on how to build An Inexpensive, Waterproof, Durable and Easy DIY Table-Top Dew Hutch.

You can read the article on the IceInSpace Projects & Articles page, or directly by clicking on the link below:

An Inexpensive, Waterproof, Durable and Easy DIY Table-Top Dew Hutch

Thanks to Scott for writing the article. If you'd like to submit a review or article to IceInSpace, please Contact Me.

[iceman (Mike)]

Article uploaded.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Nice and simple design Scott.
Thanks.

[Dennis]

Good job Scott. It was interesting to read that you haven’t had any moisture build up on the inside of the structure, either on the inside walls or under the roof. When I built my portable hutch, I had to use a sheet of 3mm closed cell foam as a liner for under the roof flap, as condensation sometimes formed on the underside of the canvas and would drip onto the work surface if a wind gust flapped the material. It looks like the hollow core cross-section has some anti-dewing properties!

Cheers

Dennis

[Tannehill]

Thank you. I think the hollow-core of Corflute, and it's thickness compared to canvass, does probably help prevent dew on the inside. I also think the laptop under there generates enough heat to affect things, so a true test is to have the thing out all night without the laptop or any heat source underneath the hutch. I'll hopefully do that test this weekend in Snake Valley!

Scott

[Gargoyle_Steve (Steve)]

Great concept Scott, using Corflute is a bit of genius!

So far I've been throwing a large plastic table cloth over my gear table, but I have no where protected to keep books open, write notes, etc, and worse still it ends up with puddles of dew all over it.

Having seen your simple but very efffective solution I think I need to build one like that straight away!

I haven't measure my table yet, but I'm almost positive I'll need Corflute panels about the same size as those real estate signs that get hamered into my footpath every weekend...

[Tannehill]

Thanks, it's easy to do.

Last weekend at the Snake Valley camp, it was a terrible dew night. I turned off my laptop and did observe, after midnite, some mild moisture on the front of the table and EP case under the hutch. My Pocket Sky Atlas didn't get damp and nothing back more than 10 cm from teh edge got any dew.

My advice is make it as small as possible, and perhaps even consider draping a thin blanket over it so it hangs down a bit over the front edge, to further block the emissions of things under the hutch. Mine is huge, really, to accomodate my greedily-sized EP case. But my original Dew Box in the states was much smaller, just for atlases, really.

The EP case itself could be outside the hutch if one just kept the lid down between EP changes, or installed some cheap heater under the foam padding. Could make the hutch smaller.

Good luck