Aristocrat - humidity problems

M

muziq

More, more, more
Hi folks,

Nutshell: I can't seem to get the humidity down in my Aristocrat Mxt 26.5 armoire humidor. I need some help/advice from the jungle. Please read on.

Background & additional information: I bought this beautiful baby in July, got it home and allowed it to stabilize before placing cigars in it, and currently have it at about 50% full. My house was built in the 40s and has fairly poor insulation and windows, but because I'm only leasing I can't make improvements there. The armoire is in an east-facing room that receives shade much of the day. I keep the house cool in the winter/warm during the summer for the sake of reasonable utility bills. The Mxt is insulated, and has three cooling units installed. I have not, repeat, NOT put any water in the humidiers since I brought the puppy home.

Specific problem: I've not been able to establish and maintain a desired RH of 62-64. Since I got the thing home, and regardless of major weather changes and different house thermostat settings, it's always over 70 RH, often going as high as 75 RH. The temp stays fairly steady at 63-65. When I bump the temp up, the RH comes down a little but not enough for me to be comfortable about avoiding a beetle outbreak.

Strategies I've employed to date:

*3 lbs of 65% beads from Heartfelt (no effect)
*Small then large containers of Damp-rid silica products (no effect--this was Bob Staebell's last suggestion, so yes, I've consulted him on this problem)
*I've even gone so far as to air the humi out with doors open, trays extended on particularly dry days when the house ambient RH is in the 30s or 40s for a couple hours at a time (produces a temporary effect that's erased the moment the ambient house RH gets back up to where it normally is, around 60 RH).

Options I'm considering:

*Shooting myself
*Electric dehumidifier installed inside the Aristocrat such as the one listed here

Do any fellow Aristocrat owners have a problem similar to mine, and if so, what have you done to solve this high-RH problem? I'm at the end of my rope, relatively speaking, and really need some fresh thinking.
 
Ive had a little of the same problem, but not as bad as you it seems. The humidity down here sucks for sure and doesnt help. I put 2 pounds of 60% beads in mine, no real effect that I could see. I open mine alot when Im home and sometimes leave one of the big doors cracked ever so slightly and that has helped alot. Since winter has come I havent had the problems and leave it shut up, but keep the room fairly cool, meaning I dont run heat in there much. The room has been staying at 40% RH for a couple months now and that has helped. Wish I had more suggestions for you. If I come up with anything I'll let you know.
 
#1) Have you calibrated several digital hygrometers and placed them throughout the cabinet to see how much variance you have from top to bottom and front to back?

Have you contacted Bob Staebell?

~Mark
 
before i offer some advice, I just want to say that I sell Cooled Avallo Cabinets. My advice is not a knock on Bobs cabinets, because I have had customers experience the same thing. I also own two cooled cabinets. One is a cooled Aristocrat, one is a cooled Avallo. So besides selling them, I do have a lot of personal experience. Bottom line is that low temperature setting is what is causing your problem. I keep my cooled cabs in the 69-70 degree range, and have never had a beetle outbreak, or even spotted 1 beetle in my cabinets. Raise that temp up to 69 or 70, and after some time, you should see at least a 5 point drop in your humidity levels.
 
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I've had/am having problems with my Plus 48 where the RH in the bottom is way to high...like 75%+. Pulled everything out of the bottom and loaded them into one of my empty coolers. Been 3 days now with them sitting by themselves "beadless" and the the RH in the cooler is slowing heading down to where I want it..

Back to the Aristocrat. Talked to Bob and he's sending me a fan for the bottom. Also rearranged my cigars on the other 2 shelves to try to get some even airflow. The humi came with the controls and tank and the topside seems fine. Since I received it last April and through the summer pretty much no problems. But now with winter, well I don't really know what's going on.

Really like my humi, support from Bob has been tops but sometimes I wish I had kept my old buy 1 box, toss it in the 50 count humi and buy the next one when I was running low method. Less fussing and worry.
 
Heath,

Man I have never had that type of issue with my Aristocrat 'm' but it was not cooled (you know this) I did however have one of a small batch of habitat monitors that had a small capacitor that was failing and this caused the Habitat monitor to f up and read low causing the humidifier to constantly run....luckily I caught the problem early and called Bob. He verified this small problem batch by a number *i think* that I read to him over the phone and sent me a new Unit. If you would like you are more than welcome to bring your unit up to my walk in and plug it into my power cord and see if it is reading the same as my Habitat monitor....Hell tonight even if it would make you feel better. That way at least we can eliminate your Habitat as being part of the problem.

In no way do I think you or anyone else should have to resort to putting beads or dehumidifiers in your aristocrat to solve any humidity issue....after all this is why you bought the set and forget right? Were you also having these issues during the summer months? sorry if you already posted this.

Anyway call me or whatever if you want to plug in up in my walk-in and compare readings etc.

mikes
 
Check carefully around the door seals and throughout to make sure there are no air leaks. Does the door weather stripping tightly seal throughout or are there spaces where small gaps can be seen? You may need to use a light source to spot this. Bob does great work. I am a fan. But even Bob is human. :)
 
n2advnture said:
#1) Have you calibrated several digital hygrometers and placed them throughout the cabinet to see how much variance you have from top to bottom and front to back?

Have you contacted Bob Staebell?

~Mark
Click to expand...

Hi Mark - yep, calibrated two other hygros and have them in different locations, and thanks to the plethora of fans in the Mxt, the RH and temp are almost spot-on throughout the cabinet. And yes, I spoke with Bob about this; aside from the Damp-rid suggestion or going up to something like 5 lbs of beads, he didn't have other suggestions at this point. That's why I'm asking for advice--see whether anyone else has run into a similar problem, and to find out whether there are any other strategies that folks have invention-eered for themselves.

Mike - where the HELL have you been, man? Miss you at the weekend herfs! But hey, I may take you up on testing my monitor against yours, perhaps closer to the holiday break as I'm totally swamped right now. Thanks for that offer! Check the Central Texas herf post, btw!
 
rgordin said:
Check carefully around the door seals and throughout to make sure there are no air leaks. Does the door weather stripping tightly seal throughout or are there spaces where small gaps can be seen? You may need to use a light source to spot this. Bob does great work. I am a fan. But even Bob is human. :)
Click to expand...

Hey--I asked Bob specifically, "why would the RH go up in the cabinet when the ambient house RH goes up?" He replied (I'm paraphrasing here), "that cabinet is not air-tight like a fridge and even with the weatherstripping and insulation I put in them, there's going to be some leakage from the outside and that is likely teh biggest culprit of your high RH spikes." That being said, I did light-test it and nothing came through...this thing is as solid as it can get, and any leaks that are there are beyond what replacing the weatherstripping could probably do. So I'm like...:hn

RonC - hear your point, and here's my problem: I *did* keep the temp higher for quite a while earlier this year (closer to 69-70 degrees) and the RH was consistently closer to 68-69 RH, but I had a beetle outbreak that hit the entire cabinet! I'm not entirely sure whether I might have received an infested stick in a trade (that's the best I can guess at this point), however the combination of high RH and 70-range temperature probably did not help the situation as nearly every box was crawling with the little bastards*, at least that's my opinion. I'm trying to keep the temp and RH below commonly held thresholds for keeping beetles at bay.

So this is sorta where I'm stuck. Keep the ideas coming, folks...if you have any!

(*I check my stock weekly; I caught it in time and froze everything, so no stock was lost, thank God!)
 
that sucks regarding the outbreak. heres my opionion on that. lets say that you have a box of cigars shipped to your home during the summer. lets say there were times when that box was in a truck or wherever, and the temp got up to 80 or 90 degress for a few days. That would be enough to get the eggs active. now you put your box in your cooled cabinet. in my opinion, once those eggs get active, they are going to hatch whether your cabinet is at 60, 65, 0r 70 degrees. i just think that the 70 degree set point is all that you need. you can take other precautions like segregatimg new boxes for some time to protect against outbreaks.
 
RonC said:
that sucks regarding the outbreak. heres my opionion on that. lets say that you have a box of cigars shipped to your home during the summer. lets say there were times when that box was in a truck or wherever, and the temp got up to 80 or 90 degress for a few days. That would be enough to get the eggs active. now you put your box in your cooled cabinet. in my opinion, once those eggs get active, they are going to hatch whether your cabinet is at 60, 65, 0r 70 degrees. i just think that the 70 degree set point is all that you need. you can take other precautions like segregatimg new boxes for some time to protect against outbreaks.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with Ron.

Chances are your beetle outbreak was caused by the increased temperature during shipping and not your cabinet.

There is no definitive rule on the beetle hatching but the consensus is don't go over 70 degrees. Ron has great experience with the cooled cabinets, definitely follow his advice on raising the temp to 69 (odd that B.S. didn't suggest this!).

I would highly suggest using a coolerdor to quarantine new cigar arrivals for 3-6 months. Especially gifted cigars. (I actually never put gifted smokes in my cabinets at all).

Larger cabinets can be a little tricky to get even completely throughout, so you may find little "pockets" of varying RH levels. Many simply rotate their boxes around every month or so.

I hope this helps.

~Mark

.
 
muziq said:
Hi folks,

Nutshell: I can't seem to get the humidity down in my Aristocrat Mxt 26.5 armoire humidor. I need some help/advice from the jungle. Please read on.

Background & additional information: I bought this beautiful baby in July, got it home and allowed it to stabilize before placing cigars in it, and currently have it at about 50% full. My house was built in the 40s and has fairly poor insulation and windows, but because I'm only leasing I can't make improvements there. The armoire is in an east-facing room that receives shade much of the day. I keep the house cool in the winter/warm during the summer for the sake of reasonable utility bills. The Mxt is insulated, and has three cooling units installed. I have not, repeat, NOT put any water in the humidiers since I brought the puppy home.

Specific problem: I've not been able to establish and maintain a desired RH of 62-64. Since I got the thing home, and regardless of major weather changes and different house thermostat settings, it's always over 70 RH, often going as high as 75 RH. The temp stays fairly steady at 63-65. When I bump the temp up, the RH comes down a little but not enough for me to be comfortable about avoiding a beetle outbreak.

Strategies I've employed to date:

*3 lbs of 65% beads from Heartfelt (no effect)
*Small then large containers of Damp-rid silica products (no effect--this was Bob Staebell's last suggestion, so yes, I've consulted him on this problem)
*I've even gone so far as to air the humi out with doors open, trays extended on particularly dry days when the house ambient RH is in the 30s or 40s for a couple hours at a time (produces a temporary effect that's erased the moment the ambient house RH gets back up to where it normally is, around 60 RH).

Options I'm considering:

*Shooting myself
*Electric dehumidifier installed inside the Aristocrat such as the one listed here

Do any fellow Aristocrat owners have a problem similar to mine, and if so, what have you done to solve this high-RH problem? I'm at the end of my rope, relatively speaking, and really need some fresh thinking.
Click to expand...


I wanted to reply but don't qualify as an Aristrocrat Owner

I will post a chart showing my undersrtanding of this matter.... FWIW
 
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n2advnture said:
I would highly suggest using a coolerdor to quarantine new cigar arrivals for 3-6 months. Especially gifted cigars. (I actually never put gifted smokes in my cabinets at all).
Click to expand...

Thanks, Mark. Ron suggested a room dehumidifier for the room the cabinet is in, which isn't going to be cheap (~$200+) but I think it's probably my best long-term solution until I buy/build a house with more easily-controlled environmental characteristics. As for the cooler, it would be a good option but Austin (and my house) gets too warm the majority of the year to house cigars in an uncooled coolerdor. For those who live in cooler climates, have cool basements, or can afford to keep their abodes fairly chilled, coolerdors are great solutions; for the rest of us, not so much.

After the beetle outbreak I moved to freezing every single stick that comes to my address, with no problems so far in terms of another outbreak or an adverse effect on taste.

It's funny (and a little frightening) the lengths one will go to in order to store rolled-up dead plant material :r
 
http://www.arlinliss.com/__Humidor_Controls/Humistat/temp%20and%20humidity%20relationship
ArlinLiss said:
I wanted to reply but don't qualify as an Aristrocrat Owner

I will post a chart showing my undersrtanding of this matter.... FWIW
Click to expand...

 
UPDATE (because I know so many of you were on the edge of your seats :r): the ambient RH in the house has been in the 30s for the last couple of weeks. Together with the lower temperatures in the house and continuing to use the Damp-rid, I *finally* have the Aristocrat's RH down to the 63-65 RH range. The cigars are smoking brilliantly, btw, so I'm hopeful I can keep the RH below 66 from here on out. :tu
 
thread jack on.

All this talk about humidity problems is what keeping me from buying one of these humidors. If I have to spend several thousands of dollars for cigar storage, I would expect them to work as advertised.

thread jack off.
 
bonggoy said:
thread jack on.

All this talk about humidity problems is what keeping me from buying one of these humidors. If I have to spend several thousands of dollars for cigar storage, I would expect them to work as advertised.

thread jack off.
Click to expand...

While nothing is absolute my Aristocrat has been damn near perfect. In the Spring/Summer months I do put in some KL to reduce the humidty but the humidty outside the humidor is 80-100% and I do the same with all my humidors/coolers. If I could add one feature it would be the ability to reduce humidity as well as increase it. I beleive Vigalant humidors have this but have never heard if it works.

In the winter months I never worry if it's set at 65/65 it will be 65/65. IMHO Aristocrats are the best cabinet humidors on the market and when I can I will order another.

Should you order one I'm 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999% sure you'll love it.
 
bonggoy said:
thread jack on.

All this talk about humidity problems is what keeping me from buying one of these humidors. If I have to spend several thousands of dollars for cigar storage, I would expect them to work as advertised.

thread jack off.
Click to expand...

Mine has never had a problem, from the heat and high humidity of the Chicago summer to the forced air furnace, almost non-existant indoor humidity of the single digit temperature winter, mine has held exactly what I set it for day in and day out, Ronnie. I couoldn't be happier. :2
 
I also have to say that I have had mine for the last 2 Minnesota winters, and the short (but sticky) summer - and I have had no problems with mine
 
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