Dry & Store - conditioning system for your hearing instruments
Dry & Store is a conditioning system for your hearing instruments, recommended for in-home use every night. While you sleep, it removes moisture, dries earwax, and deodorizes your hearing instruments. Results include:
- Fewer repairs
- Better sound quality
- Relief from itchy ears
- Longer battery life
- Fresh and clean hearing aids
If you have ever experienced fuzzy or distorted sound, weakness, static, intermittency, short battery life, or even all-out failure of your hearing aids, and you've confirmed that the batteries are good, there's a good chance that the culprit is either moisture or earwax. In fact, manufacturers report that as many as one-half of the aids they receive for repair are malfunctioning due to moisture or earwax. Thanks to Dry & Store, you can save yourself the time, expense, and aggravation of those preventable repairs.
How Dry & Store removes moisture
It takes three things to effectively dry a hearing instrument:
- heat
- moving air
- a charged desiccant
Heat Weakens the surface tension of the water molecules.
Surface tension is what causes moisture molecules to lock onto one another like magnets and ultimately to form droplets. Surface tension is also what binds water molecules to the inside of the hearing aid like glue. As the temperature is raised, the surface tension decreases. Caution: The heat must be gentle. Too much heat can be harmful. That's why hair dryers and microwave ovens should never be used to dry a hearing aid.
Moving air Helps the moisture escape from inside the hearing aid.
Once the moisture molecules are "unglued" from the hearing aid by virtue of controlled heat, they won't leave the hearing aid on their own. Moving air is the motivator to get them into the air stream where they can be circulated past the desiccant. (Imagine drying laundry on a clothesline. Laundry dries faster on a warm day than a cool one, and it dries even better and faster when there's a breeze. Same thing with removing moisture from hearing aids.) Caution: Again, the air inside Dry & Store is not "hot," and it does not blow air directly at or through the aids. Instead, it draws air down around the aids.
Desiccant Captures the moisture so it won't re-settle in or on the hearing aid.
A desiccant is a substance that has a high affinity for water and is used to absorb moisture. In a process known as "diffusion," moisture will move from wet areas to dry areas. Aided by the continuous flow of warm air inside Dry & Store, moisture will move from the hearing aid to the dry air outside of the aid. The desiccant is positioned in the midst of the air flow, so it can permanently remove the moisture from the air. Caution: Dry & Store should never be operated without a desiccant. If it weren't for the desiccant, the moisture released during conditioning would simply re-settle on and in the hearing aid.
How Dry & Store deodorizes hearing instruments
While the primary purpose of the Dry-Brik desiccant is to capture moisture released during the conditioning process, it also acts as a deodorizer. The Dry-Brik contains activated carbon, the same ingredient used in modern "odor-eating" household products.