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🔗 Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach:
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Walk down the cleaning aisle of any hardware store and you will see them — small white tubs of crystals, twelve, fifteen, eighteen dollars apiece. You buy one, take it home, set it in your damp basement or your closet or your boat. A few weeks later the crystals are gone, melted into a tub of liquid at the bottom, and you throw the whole thing in the trash and go buy another. And another. And another. Forty, sixty, eighty dollars a year, every year, for a tub of salt and a plastic bowl.
In this video I show you the same crystals, by the bag, at any pool supply store, for about four dollars. The same chemistry. Marked up three or four times by the company that packages it in a throwaway tub. And I show you the part nobody tells you: when those crystals have melted to liquid, you are not finished with them. You can pour that liquid in your oven, drive the water back out, and the very same crystals come back dry and ready to work again — the same four-dollar bag, used over and over, for a year or more.
I will be honest with you the whole way. I am Amish, and I will tell you plainly that cal
https://eliasyoder.com
Walk down the cleaning aisle of any hardware store and you will see them — small white tubs of crystals, twelve, fifteen, eighteen dollars apiece. You buy one, take it home, set it in your damp basement or your closet or your boat. A few weeks later the crystals are gone, melted into a tub of liquid at the bottom, and you throw the whole thing in the trash and go buy another. And another. And another. Forty, sixty, eighty dollars a year, every year, for a tub of salt and a plastic bowl.
In this video I show you the same crystals, by the bag, at any pool supply store, for about four dollars. The same chemistry. Marked up three or four times by the company that packages it in a throwaway tub. And I show you the part nobody tells you: when those crystals have melted to liquid, you are not finished with them. You can pour that liquid in your oven, drive the water back out, and the very same crystals come back dry and ready to work again — the same four-dollar bag, used over and over, for a year or more.
I will be honest with you the whole way. I am Amish, and I will tell you plainly that cal
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00:00Walk down the cleaning aisle of any hardware store and you will see them.
00:04Small white tubs of crystals sitting on the shelf, $12, $15, $18 a piece.
00:11You buy one, take it home, set it in your damp basement or your closet or your boat.
00:17A few weeks later, the crystals are gone, melted into a tub of liquid at the bottom,
00:23and you throw the whole thing in the trash and go buy another, and another, and another.
00:28Year in, year out, $40, $60, $80 a year, every year, for a tub of salt and a plastic bowl.
00:39Now I want you to sit with this.
00:41The white crystals in that tub are a thing you can buy in a 40-pound bag
00:47at any pool supply store or hardware store or farm store for about $4.
00:53The same crystals, the same chemistry, marked up three or four times, dressed up in a branded tub,
01:02sold to you as a thing to throw away.
01:05And nobody tells you what I am about to tell you today.
01:09That when those crystals have done their work and turned to liquid, you are not finished with them.
01:16Not even close.
01:18You can take that liquid, set it in your oven for a few hours,
01:22and the very same crystals come back out, dry and ready to work again.
01:27The compound never wore out.
01:30It just got full.
01:32And there is no money in telling you that.
01:35My name is Elias Yoda.
01:38I am Amish, and I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
01:42Now I want to be honest with you right at the start, the way I always am.
01:47This is not something my grandfather did.
01:50The crystals I am going to show you came out of a chemist's bag, not out of a barn loft.
01:56So I will not pretend it is an old Amish secret.
02:00That would be a lie, and you can spot one easy.
02:04But this lives by the oldest rule my grandfather ever taught me.
02:08Waste nothing, and never let yourself be sold the same thing twice that you could have used forever.
02:16My people have always known how to deal with damp.
02:20By ventilation.
02:22By lime-washed cellar walls.
02:24By hanging a cellar door open on a dry day.
02:27By where you put the spring house.
02:30This is a newer tool.
02:31But it follows the old rule, and once you know it, you will not be reaching for those tubs at
02:38the store again.
02:40Stay with me.
02:41Let me first say a true word about what damp actually does, because most folks think it is just a
02:48smell.
02:49A closet that smells musty.
02:51A basement that smells of earth.
02:54It is more than that.
02:55Damp air sitting in a closed space is doing quiet, slow harm the whole time you are not looking.
03:04It feeds the mildew on your leather boots, and the green spots on the wall behind the dresser.
03:10It rusts the tools in your shed, and the springs in your bed.
03:14It softens the cardboard boxes you stored in the attic, and rots the paper in the books in your basement.
03:21It darkens wood.
03:23It puts that particular smell in a boat you closed up for winter,
03:27or a hunting cabin you locked up in October and walked back into in April.
03:33The folks who study these things say once the air in a closed space gets damper than about 60 parts
03:41in a hundred,
03:42mold can start growing on a surface in a day or two.
03:46You cannot scrub your way out of that.
03:49You have to take the water out of the air.
03:52The question is only how.
03:55The big stores will sell you a powered machine for two or three hundred dollars that does it.
04:01A compressor, a fan, a drain, a thing you must plug into the wall and listen to and pay to
04:09run.
04:10And for a flooded basement, that machine is the right tool, and I will tell you so honestly.
04:16But for the everyday damp, the closet, the small basement, the boat in winter, the cabin in storage,
04:24the shed, the gun safe, the camper, the storage unit, the pantry,
04:30there is something far simpler and cheaper, and it needs no power at all.
04:36It is a bucket and four dollars of salt.
04:39So let me tell you about the salt itself, because the chemistry is the real magic and once you see
04:47it, you will not forget it.
04:49The crystals you want are called calcium chloride.
04:53You can buy a bag of it at any pool supply store, hardware store, or farm supply for about four
05:00dollars.
05:01The very same crystals they use to melt the ice on the roads in winter, the same the food companies
05:07use to keep their pickles crisp.
05:09Get the pellet, or the flake kind, not the powder.
05:13Now here is what this stuff does, and it surprises people every time they see it work.
05:18Calcium chloride is what chemists call thirsty.
05:22They have a longer word for it, but thirsty is the right word.
05:26It pulls water vapor right out of the air around it, with a strength most other things cannot match.
05:32The little silica gel packets you find in shoeboxes and beef jerky, those work too, but they will absorb perhaps
05:39a quarter of their own weight in water before they are spent.
05:42Calcium chloride keeps drinking.
05:44It can take in many times its own weight in water.
05:48Under the right conditions, the chemistry can keep going until the crystals have dissolved themselves into a puddle of brine.
05:55They do not just stop and quit.
05:57They keep working, all the way to liquid.
06:00And here is the small marvel.
06:02It needs no electricity, no fan, no motor, no pump.
06:06Set it in a closed space, and it works silently while you sleep.
06:10It does not whine, it does not hum, and it does not raise your power bill by a penny.
06:16It just sits there and quietly pulls the wet out of the air.
06:19Here is how you build it, and it really is this simple.
06:23You need a bag of calcium chloride, $4 at the pool supply store.
06:27You need a bucket or a deep bowl, you have one.
06:30And you need something to keep the crystals up out of the brine as they melt, because if they sit
06:35in their own water, they stop working.
06:37A plastic colander, the kind your wife strains noodles in, set down into the top of the bucket so it
06:44rests on the rim.
06:45That is the whole thing.
06:47Or you can use two stacked food safe pails with holes drilled in the bottom of the top one.
06:53Either works.
06:53Pour the calcium chloride pellets into the colander, two or three inches deep, set it on top of the bucket.
07:00Put the whole thing in the closet or the corner of the basement or wherever the damp is, and walk
07:06away.
07:06That is the build.
07:08What will happen over the next days and weeks, the crystals will start to look wet, then to clump, then
07:14slowly to melt,
07:15to turn to a clear liquid that drips through the colander into the bucket below.
07:20That liquid is the water that used to be in the air of that room.
07:24Watch the bucket fill, and you are watching the room dry.
07:27When the colander is empty and the bucket is full of liquid, you have not lost a thing.
07:32You have just gathered all the damp the crystals could hold.
07:36A few honest, practical words, because I will not let you build it wrong.
07:401. Each bucket only works on the air right around it, say three to five feet.
07:46For a closet or a small room, one is fine.
07:49For a larger basement, set out two or three of them, spread along the walls.
07:54Calcium chloride does not pull from across a room the way a fan does.
07:58It works on the air close by.
08:002. Put the bucket on something the brine cannot harm.
08:03The liquid that drips into the bucket is salty water, and salt water is corrosive.
08:09It will pit metal and stain concrete.
08:11Set it on a board, or a glass tray, or an old plate.
08:15Don't set it directly on a nice wood floor or on metal.
08:18A cheap caution.
08:203. Keep the crystals out of reach of children and pets.
08:23They are not deadly, but they are eye-irritating and skin-irritating with much contact,
08:28and the brine especially so.
08:30Treat it like the lye or the boric acid I have spoken of before.
08:35Useful tool, kept up where it belongs.
08:37That is the whole build.
08:39$4, a few minutes, and a bucket.
08:42No power.
08:43Now here is the part the company that sells you the throwaway tub will never put on the label.
08:48The part that turns a $4 bag into a thing you can use again and again.
08:53When the crystals have all dissolved into the bucket of brine,
08:56you might think the job is done, that you toss the brine and buy a new bag.
09:00You do not have to.
09:02That brine is the same calcium chloride.
09:04It is just full of water now.
09:06And if you drive the water back out, the dry crystals come right back.
09:12The compound itself is not used up.
09:15It cannot be used up.
09:17You just need to take the water back out, and the way to do that is heat.
09:22You pour the brine carefully into a glass baking dish.
09:26A glass dish, not a metal one, because the salty water will eat at metal.
09:32Set your oven to a good hot temperature, around 400 degrees Fahrenheit,
09:38what they call about 200 Celsius, somewhere in that neighborhood.
09:42Slide the dish in and leave it for two or three hours until all the water has steamed out
09:48and what is left in the bottom of the dish is dry crystals again.
09:53Let it cool.
09:54Knock the dry crystals back out into a sealed jar, a glass jar with a tight lid,
10:01because if you leave them out in the air, they will start pulling water again right then and there.
10:07A few honest cautions on this step, too, because you should know them.
10:13Open a window or run the kitchen fan while you do it, because all that water is going somewhere.
10:19It is steaming into your kitchen air, and you do not want to dump the damp you just removed
10:25from the basement back into the kitchen.
10:28Vent it out.
10:30Use glass, not metal.
10:32I will say it again because it matters.
10:35The brine is salty and corrosive.
10:38It will eat a metal pan over time.
10:41Glass is the right choice, and it is also easy to clean.
10:46Do not crank the oven any hotter trying to rush it.
10:50Past about 400 degrees, you start to change the chemistry of the salt itself,
10:55and it will not work as well.
10:58Slow and steady is right.
11:00And one honest thing the salesman will never say,
11:05you can do this many times, but not forever.
11:09Each cycle, the crystals come back a touch less perfect than they were,
11:14because a little is lost each time, especially in very damp climates.
11:20But many cycles, you will get out of one $4 bag easily.
11:24Many months, often a year or more out of the same crystals,
11:29instead of throwing them away after a few weeks.
11:32That is the difference between a thing they sell you and a thing you own.
11:38Now I owe you the honest limits, because I will not let you build this,
11:42and then be disappointed that it did not do what no $4 bucket of salt could ever do.
11:48This is for damp, not for wet.
11:52If your basement walls are running with water because the foundation leaks,
11:56or the cellar floods, or there is water coming in from the outside,
12:01this is not the tool for that.
12:04That is a job for fixing the leak, and yes, possibly a powered dehumidifier.
12:09This bucket is for the everyday damp that hangs in the air of a closed space.
12:16It works best in enclosed spaces.
12:19A closet, a small basement room with the door kept shut,
12:24a gun safe, a tackle box, a boat or camper that has been shut up for the winter,
12:30a pantry, a storage unit, a tool drawer, a cabin closed up between visits.
12:37Smaller and closed is best.
12:39A big open room with the doors and windows in and out all day,
12:44the bucket cannot keep up with that.
12:47Use it where the air sits still.
12:50It is a quiet tool, not a fast one.
12:53A powered machine pulls a lot of water out of the air in a hurry with its fan.
12:58The bucket works slow and steady, a little at a time,
13:03drying the air around it day after day, week after week.
13:07For most of what most folks need, keeping a closet dry, keeping mildew out of a stored camper,
13:14keeping the smell out of a pantry, slow and steady is exactly the right speed.
13:20Cheaper, quieter, no power, never breaks.
13:25But know what it is and what it is not.
13:27If you have one bad, damp basement and a wet flood, you may want both a powered machine for the
13:34heavy work
13:35and these buckets to keep things dry afterward.
13:38They work fine together.
13:44Now I want to take a moment because this is the part that matters and it is bigger than the
13:49$4.
13:50Think about what this whole little setup means.
13:54A bag of salt at the hardware store, $4.
13:57A bowl and a colander from your own kitchen, nothing.
14:02Reusable, again and again, with an hour or two of oven heat.
14:07And on the other side of the aisle, an entire industry, billions of dollars a year,
14:13built on selling you that same $4 of salt in a small plastic tub for $12 or $15
14:20and asking you to throw it away and buy it again next month.
14:25The compound did not change.
14:27The chemistry did not change.
14:30What changed is whether you know that you can pour the liquid in your oven
14:34and bring the crystals right back.
14:37This is the pattern I keep coming back to on this channel
14:41because once you see it, you see it everywhere.
14:45There is good money in selling a man a thing he must keep buying.
14:50There is no money in telling him how to make one bag last him a year.
14:56So nobody puts, this can be regenerated on the side of the tub.
15:01And nobody runs a commercial showing you the oven trick.
15:05And a whole nation buys the same bag of salt 15 times when they could have bought it once.
15:12That is not exactly a conspiracy.
15:15Nobody is hiding it.
15:16It is just that a system that profits from your repeat buying
15:20will never go out of its way to teach you not to.
15:24My people have always tried to live the other way.
15:28A thing that can be fixed, you fix.
15:31A thing that can be reused, you reuse.
15:35A tool you bought once should serve you and your children both.
15:40The bucket and the salt are not Amish,
15:42but the habit of mind behind them,
15:45make it last, do not be sold the same thing twice,
15:49is as old as my grandfather's toolbox
15:51and as old as any plain home in this county.
15:55So here is what I want you to do.
15:58This weekend, go to the pool supply store or the hardware store
16:02and ask for a bag of calcium chloride pellets.
16:05Four dollars.
16:07Take it home.
16:08Find a bucket and a colander or a deep bowl you have lying around.
16:13Pour in two or three inches of pellets,
16:16set the colander on the bucket
16:18and put it in the dampest closet or basement corner you have got.
16:22Set another one in the boat, if you have one,
16:25or the camper,
16:26or the gun safe,
16:27or the storage unit,
16:29wherever the damp has been a problem.
16:32Come back a few weeks later.
16:34See the bucket fill.
16:35Pour the brine into a glass baking dish,
16:38400 degrees in the oven,
16:40two or three hours,
16:41window open.
16:43Let it cool.
16:44Knock the dry crystals back into a glass jar with a tight lid.
16:48The same four dollars.
16:50Working again.
16:52And tell me in the comments below,
16:54what is the dampest spot in your house,
16:56the one you have been throwing those store-bought tubs at?
16:59The basement?
17:01The boat?
17:01The cabin?
17:02The gun safe?
17:03The closet that always smells?
17:06And once you have built one of these and run a cycle,
17:09come back and tell me how it went.
17:11How much liquid you caught?
17:12What kind of climate you live in?
17:15I read every single one,
17:17and the things you all teach each other in those comments
17:20help every new person learn faster.
17:23Next time,
17:24since we have been speaking of moisture-enclosed spaces,
17:27I am going to show you the old, plain way
17:30my people built cellars and pantries
17:32that stayed dry without any salt or any machine at all.
17:36The lime-washed walls,
17:38the cross-draft,
17:39the placement,
17:41the small habits that kept food storage rooms sweet for generations.
17:45It is the older cousin to today's bucket,
17:48and the two of them together
17:50can keep your storage spaces in good order for a very long time.
17:54Until then,
17:55use a thing once,
17:57use it again,
17:58waste nothing,
17:59and remember,
18:00the people who built this country with their hands
18:03new things we are only just starting to remember.
18:06remember.
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