Ambient humidity and seasonal behavior changes

D

Da Klugs

NISU
This topic may not apply to everyone here. If you keep your cigars in coolers you are pretty much immune to the 20-40% drop in humidity in areas of the country where we need to heat.

I experience a dramatic change this time of year in maintenance issues related to humidification. All summer long its a once a month reload of the CO's. Environment where I keep things is always 70 degrees. Have 40 lbs of beads spread around in things that I don't recharge all summer. Inside temp of the cabs is always 68 degrees. Seems simple enough.

Humidity in the summer ranges from 55-60% in the office. This makes for easy humi maintenance. Well heating season just started. The humidity in dropped from 50 to 30% in a week. Humidity in the cabs dropped from 64 to 60% in a couple days. Happens every year. Capacity is good, but less than optimally sealed former cigar club cabinets are a pain during the winter. High end electronically controlled cabinets probably are not affected much other than the need to keep up with the reservoirs. The rest of us have more work to do. Turned on the humidification system on the furnace and the office is back up to 42%.

Adjusted the CO II's to the winter setting. Charged the beads for the first time since June. Need to keep up with this now on a weekly basis till springtime.

Thought I'd post this as this time of year many people start posting about their cigars not tasting the same/ flat / losing their palate. Every system (Other than coolers) is affected in some way. Might be that your cigars are a few points different in RH than they have been during the summer and you need to adjust your humidification settings/process.
 
I know we have a lot of stickies, but methinks this would be a good one to add or dump into an existing sticky...nice work, Klugs!
 
I would argue that even cooler people deal with some issues, albeit to a lesser degree. Beads tend to need more recharging since the drop in humidity is unavoidable with opening of the cooler, which may happen more since we don't have that nice glass to look through to keep an eye on things. I know that I have gone from having an apartment humidor (AC at 70, and humidity stayed at 67%) to virtually no humidity. I charged the beads once in May, and that lasted all summer. Now I am spritzing every week.

I feel bad for you Dave. How many gallons of distilled water are you buying? Do you just back the car up to the grocery store?
 
Twill413 said:
I would argue that even cooler people deal with some issues, albeit to a lesser degree. Beads tend to need more recharging since the drop in humidity is unavoidable with opening of the cooler, which may happen more since we don't have that nice glass to look through to keep an eye on things. I know that I have gone from having an apartment humidor (AC at 70, and humidity stayed at 67%) to virtually no humidity. I charged the beads once in May, and that lasted all summer. Now I am spritzing every week.

I feel bad for you Dave. How many gallons of distilled water are you buying? Do you just back the car up to the grocery store?
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I have to agree w/ Twill. This is my first winter keeping a coolidor and I am still trying to catch up with the sudden drop in humidity. I had set my cooler up in Aug/Sep and hadn't charged the beads since, so I think it is definately related to the ambient changes. :2
 
Thanks for the reminder Dave, I need to charge the beads myself tonight.

I think it's also true, at least here, in the Northeast it's impossible to rely on the normal ratios of beads to humidor size type guidelines. In the winter I've got anywhere from 1 1/2 to 2 times the recommended number of beads working, it's the only way I can keep the humidity levels up.
 
Noticed a slow drop in humidity in my two desktops about a month ago and have since gone into winter maintenance. I add a soaked credo to each humidor and check them every week when I spray down the beads.

I've found it's important to maintain humidity and not to get behind as it can be difficult to bring the humidity back up during winter. Two years ago I had to go as far as to re-season one of them and that didn't even get it fully recovered.
 
Thanks for the reminder.

I've added an additional pound of beads to my cooler, I plan to move some of my better smokes from the desk tops to the cooler for the winter.

Time to stock up on distilled water.
 
I use the CO and I always have to make the proper adjustments for this time of year. I usually have to refill twice as much as during the rest of the year. I usually try to keep my sticks rotated on a regular basis as well.
 
ahhh, the old humidity drop in the fall thingy...It stinks. I learned about this the hard way last year, but not via my humidor(I didn't actually have a real humidor yet). I learned by my acoustic guitar. I've had electric for years, but this was my first acoustic. I started getting a twang in the 3rd sting on the 9th fret. After consulting Guitar World, they said is was dry and needed humidification. I learned a lot researching humidification devices and then shortly after, I ended up building my first humidor. (see link in signature). I too though have seen some hard fluctuations in the humidity in my humi. I unpacked the humidifier for the house about 2 weeks ago and the fluctuations have slowed considerably.

On an unrelated note, the humidifier is a 12Gal evaporative basin type. I have always found it funny that the cats migrate to it when I am in the filling process. For when I remove the fill container, the basin is exposed revealing a olympic size pool of a water bowl for the cats to indulge in.
 
My 400 bottle wine cooler, 40 bottle wine cooler and my aristocrat are all fine same temp same rh.
 
Da Klugs said:
Smart. This time of year is when I have some regrets just not getting 6 Big Aristocrats vs the cigar club thing. It's unique but not automatic.
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If you can get an extra humidifier, for the whole room and make sure that everything has a good seal.
 
hova45 said:
If you can get an extra humidifier, for the whole room and make sure that everything has a good seal.
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I have one running in my office now. Problem is the HVAC system has returns. Office space is 6000 SF and you know what humidity likes to do.
 
I refill the reservoirs every couple of months on schedule, but I've already adjusted the accumonitor 2 percentage points higher to compensate for the seasonal change some time last month. Great to have that remote OS btw.
 
I'm on kind of the opposite schedule. Since I don't have AC and the summers tend to be dry here I move everything into coolers in an inside closet to keep them cool and I have to spritz the beads all the time. In the winter the house is a rock steady 68 and unless it's bitter cold the heater doesn't run enough to dry things out from the constant rainfall. Just today I moved most of my sticks to a desktop humidor and I'm looking forward to having easy access to them for the next few months. No more climbing into the closet everytime I want a cigar. That's right, my cigars have come out of the closet.
 
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