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Hi eveyone, Like many of you, for many years I have stuck a pack of silica gel at the bottom of my housings, to prevent condensation issues. This has seen me condensation free for 10+ years, including diving in tropical places (with/without air conditioned closing of the housing), and temperate areas in all seasons. My longest-lasting silica gel pack is the one pictured below, which I must have got in a shoe box, it has sat in my Nauticam D500 housing for the last 6 years (and I can't remember, perhaps it was in the previous housing already). Anyways, yesterday I opened my housing, to find my D500 DSLR and the parts of the housing covered in condensation!!!! What's weirder: I had put back the camera there so that it's would be ready for next dive (I find my housings the safest place to store DSLRs when not in use), and it had been sitting there for the last 2 weeks, the housing itself was sitting on our laundry room, which is slightly moist, but hey, it's been sitting there for many years. Noteworthy: I had NOT vaccumed the housing that time. I tried everything, found the desiccant pack very moist, so it was time to dry it up and rejuvinate my silica gel. Googling the best way to do it (oven, microwave...) I realized that: 1/ there isn't much good guidance available online. Most of the articles refer to free-flowing silica crystals that you can look at (colour change indicates if they are saturated in water or not), the idea being to pack them in a box, in one's camera bag. But these boxes are too big to fit in our housings 2/ I am still unclear why that condensation formed at home. INTERESTINGLY I've read somewhere (can't find the link anymore...) that saturated silica crystals (having absorved the max of their water capacity) may release that moisture on their own, without heating. Could it be that my silica pack went on strike and tried to flood my housing on land?!? All-in-one, I am curious what you people do to keep your silica pack doing it's job? If you do use paper silica bags like I do, how do you heat them up, how do you know when the crystals are dried enough? (apparently, if you heat them up too much, you may impair their water absorption capacity). Have a great day, Nicolas
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