Beads: Humidity drop

[dave8274]

I've been using a 4 oz. tube of 65% beads in my desktop humidor for a week or so now. The humidor has an excellent seal and if anything I've had problems with the humidity being too high in there before, despite living in a dry climate.

The humidity has been dead on, until yesterday, when it started to drop to about 59-60%.

I took a look at the beads and they were pretty clear, though getting a little bit milky, so I wet down about 80% of them last night with a spray bottle.

I also wondered if something could be wrong with my hygrometer so I put the one that is adjusted from my coolerdor in there last night as well.

This morning I take a look (after about 12 hours closed), and I am still at 60%. I opened the bead tube and they are still clear and wet enough to stick together.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Pete]

Not sure. That's weird....

My beads in the cooler keep it EXACTLY at 70%.
Maybe try putting a glass of distilled water in there...it'll raise the humidity and let the beads soak it up... maybe that'll help.

[dave8274]

Does anyone know how long it should take after opening a humidor for a few seconds (to check humidity or remove a cigar) for the beads to take it back to the correct humidity?

[madurolover]

Originally Posted by dave8274

Does anyone know how long it should take after opening a humidor for a few seconds (to check humidity or remove a cigar) for the beads to take it back to the correct humidity?

This depends on a number of things.
I would wait a while and see if it stabilizes.
If not then you may want to take the advice in the previous post.
Let us know how it turns out.

[galaga]

Originally Posted by dave8274

Does anyone know how long it should take after opening a humidor for a few seconds (to check humidity or remove a cigar) for the beads to take it back to the correct humidity?

Derivation of flux equation (from D. Phast's )page

"The flux equation, equation (9), can be derived from the < f2 > formalism given in Weinberg (1994). The function < f2 > defines the externally induced change in the distribution function. The general form for < f2 > is



where we have performed the phase-averaging to derive the perturbation as a function of the actions. The quantity Wl( I) is a scalar function of the actions

where a(L dot Omega) is a Fourier coefficient given by


and other quantities are as defined in §2.

To derive the flux equation we note that < f2 > can be written as a divergence:

where Wl=Wl × l. This equation makes number conservation manifest in action space.

To implement this term in a 1-dimensional Fokker-Planck scheme, we must change variables from actions to (E,kappa, cosbeta) and average over kappa and cos beta to obtain the one-dimensional flux in energy space. The transformation can be performed easily using the covariant form of the equation (e.g. Rosenbluth et al 1957).
........"
Naw, I'm just guessing ... How much do you want to futz with things?
I do know that if you have wet beads, that in about an hour after your lid is closed, if the humidity didn't go up something is wrong.
1)If you have 50% clear and 50% white beads then, by physical laws, the humidity is at the stated RH of the beads, given enough time (which is what you asked, see below)
2) Cigars and wood will absorb or release water vapor.

Try to only check it morning and evening to see how things are progressing.

[palm55]

Have there been ambient temperature fluctuations? I find that different coolers located in rooms of different temperatures will give me different RH results.

Also... You may want to salt-test your hygrometer. If it's a digital, and the reading is off, you may need to replace the battery.

[dave8274]

I just checked it after being out at the office for a couple hours and it is at 61%. I thought of the battery issue, which is why I put the second hygrometer in there, both have been salt tested and the readings on them are consistant.

The only possibility I can think of is I re-arranged the humidor on Saturday, so I took the cigars out for MAYBE 3 minutes. I can't imagine the cigars or wood dried out that fast though.

I'll leave it alone until tonight and see what happens.

[stogie_kanobie_one]

Ah... you may be onto something there. When you rearranged did you change the location of your humidification? Location can make a difference. How big is your desktop? I know I have a 150 count that is pretty big. I had to have several tube in it spread around to keep up. One on each side of the top tray. Depending on the make of your humidor I'd put the humidification as high as possible. I also agree with the temperature point. Big difference. Even when calibrating your hygrometers be sure you don't do it near a heat source. By near I mean I had a door-desk over top of some wall heating units. The heat from the unit when it kicked in would up my rh in minutes. I had to calibrate by leaving my units across the room away from heat. The same would be true of a desktop on a desk near heat.

[dave8274]

The humidor is pretty small, maybe a 50-75 count I would say. I lay the tube on top of the cigars and it pretty much runs much more than half the length of the humidor. If I run it the other way, it covers the entire width of the humidor.

It isn't near any heat source, and the temp in the house is pretty constant between 67-70 degrees.

[salimoneus]

if you re-arranged your humidor, then the hygro is probably picking up the lower humidity from the cigars nearest to it. perhaps those cigars were not getting enough moisture with the old setup.

[LORD PUFFER]

Originally Posted by Pete

Not sure. That's weird....

My beads in the cooler keep it EXACTLY at 70%.
Maybe try putting a glass of distilled water in there...it'll raise the humidity and let the beads soak it up... maybe that'll help.

I have heard some talk about just wetting the suckers down well when replenishing w/ DW. I don't have a lot of proof to this theory, but I believe that adding too much water impaires the bead's ability to put out moisture. I have noticed that I am not too precise on wetting my beads. After doing that my RH goes to about 72% on 65% beads. After about 3 or 4 days, the RH goes right to 65 and stays there. Once the beads start to dry out the RH will slowly drop.

Does anyone have any advice on stabilizing the RH initially? Is this due to overwetting the beads. If that is not the case then maybe my humidor just doesn't hold as well as I thought, but it IS a Reed and Barton, so I think my theory might hold water (pardon the pun).

[stevieray]

Originally Posted by palm55

Have there been ambient temperature fluctuations? I find that different coolers located in rooms of different temperatures will give me different RH results.

Also... You may want to salt-test your hygrometer. If it's a digital, and the reading is off, you may need to replace the battery.

I had a similar problem and it turned out to be the battery on my digital hygrometer was bad.