Doing a salt test

[Chris.]

Hey guys. I'm doing a salt test on my Don Salvatore hygrometer and it has been sitting in a zip loc baggie since about 11:30 last night. It read 78% humidity all night and this morning it read 82% and now it is at 80%. The temp this morning was about 69 degrees and right now it is 71.6 in the bag. I used a beer bottle cap full of morton's table salt with about 3 drops of tap water for this test. Is it supposed to take longer than this? The guys at the shop I bought it from said this one come pre-calibrated to exact specifications and that it would read accurate almost immediately.

When I initially got home with this, I did the damp towel test and only set it in there for about 5 minutes and it got to about 96%.

should I just be patient or is somethign wrong with this thing since they said its supposed to read accurately very quickly?

TIA!

[OpusEx]

Originally Posted by Chris.

Hey guys. I'm doing a salt test on my Don Salvatore hygrometer and it has been sitting in a zip loc baggie since about 11:30 last night. It read 78% humidity all night and this morning it read 82% and now it is at 80%. The temp this morning was about 69 degrees and right now it is 71.6 in the bag. I used a beer bottle cap full of morton's table salt with about 3 drops of tap water for this test. Is it supposed to take longer than this? The guys at the shop I bought it from said this one come pre-calibrated to exact specifications and that it would read accurate almost immediately.

When I initially got home with this, I did the damp towel test and only set it in there for about 5 minutes and it got to about 96%.

should I just be patient or is somethign wrong with this thing since they said its supposed to read accurately very quickly?

TIA!

Chris,

Yes, patience is something you should have, but remember that even though the people you bought it from say that it will read accurate, all gauges have some variance from perfection. It's just the nature of the beast. You can either take a confident reading and account for it into the future use of the unit, keep swapping units out until you find one that is perfect or +- 1% or buy a unit that you can calibrate (which is difficult to do sometimes and can result in many frustrating days of slight nudging up or down). Ultimately you should begin to be able to "feel" the difference yourself devoid of some piece of equipment by assessing how your smoking experience goes and use those experiences to make adjustments no matter what your hygro reads.

[RobustoG]

Not sure what you are going to use for humidification but you might want to consider getting a bag of beads or of your humi is smaller get a puck w/beads.

you can get them at 65% or 70%.

They are excellent at maintaining the humidity.

Then prety much watch your meter for a drop in case the beads get too dry. The beads will give off or absorb moisture much like the theroy behind the salt test.

[Darrell]

The salt test needs 24-48 hours in stable temperatures untouched/bothered in order to ensure accuracy.

[madurolover]

Originally Posted by Darrell

The salt test needs 24-48 hours in stable temperatures untouched/bothered in order to ensure accuracy.

I usually give mine 2 - 3 days to get a constant reading.

[DonnieW]

I prefer a month, just to be sure.

[Chris.]

I bought humidification pillows from CI and they work pretty well, keeping the humidity at 67%.