Commercial Humidification Options Compared

[mrcigar]

Hey,

I searched and found a few threads on the different ones. Wanted to get feedback. I realize there a bunch of products on the market these days, and trying to make sense out of all of them.

My situation is I have a older house so the temperature fluctuates, so have been keeping them on the main floor in a humidor and special ones in a old version cigar caddy. With my work situation some weeks I'm home every day. Other weeks I'm gone for a few weeks at a time, and no one else to check them. Worse thing is finding that they got dry, some can be revived but you can definitely taste it .

What do you suggest that I use?

 

[Not A Nice Person]

Sounds to me like you've got two separate problems---temperature fluctuation and variable absences---with one solution: wine cooler conversion + Oasis.

The wine fridge will give you a constant temp, and a tight seal that will conserve humidity, and an active humidifier with a reservoir, like the Oasis or one of its competitors, will mind itself for weeks in your absence.

Tons of threads around here on setting one up, too.

~Boar

 

[waffle]

Sounds to me like you've got two separate problems---temperature fluctuation and variable absences---with one solution: wine cooler conversion + Oasis.

The wine fridge will give you a constant temp, and a tight seal that will conserve humidity, and an active humidifier with a reservoir, like the Oasis or one of its competitors, will mind itself for weeks in your absence.

Tons of threads around here on setting one up, too.

~Boar

You could also use some HCM Beads for a very similar solution. But yes, either I think would work, in fact I've been in the same situation and used the HCM Beads with a Edgestar28 with flawless results!

 

[ELittle]

I would say it depends on the size and type of your humidor as well as how many cigars you have in it. Do you use a cooler or a humidor lined with cedar? If you're using a cooler that is full of cigars it will be more stable over a longer period, if it's kind of empty it will tend to fluctuate more. If it's a humidor lined in cedar and has been in use for a while the wood should keep it more stable as it will have more moisture in the wood.

The temperature fluctuation will impact the RH also. If it gets warmer RH tends to fall, at least in my area. When it is colder out the RH seems to be higher. If you can keep the temp in the room the humidor is in stable that will make a large difference. I keep my bedroom door open in the winter to let some heat in from the rest of the house and use a window ac unit in the summer to control the heat.

A wine cooler is an option but I don't like them, it's just a personal thing. I found that whenever my thermoelectric units turned out the RH would fall dramatically so I gave up on it and moved everything into coolers. Also a wine cooler will not warm up the temp if its cold, and most of them are only good for 20 degrees over ambient temperature, so if the room is 95 degrees in the summer its not going to cool it down to much more than 75 degrees or so which is still too warm. I live in an old house also and my room can dip into the 40s at night so I keep a space heater in my room and keep my room about 65-68 degrees year round.

I've had good success with the heartfelt beads. You just need to make sure that they aren't all saturated so that they can remove humidity as well as release it when needed. Boveda packs work nice in cigar caddys also. I bought some of the heartfelt bead sheets and cut them to size for my travel humidors, they are neat and stay out of the way. The thing with the beads is that they take a while to acclimate in a larger cooler, I think it took mine a couple weeks to a month to get stable. I also used about 3 times as many beads as I needed so I would have a rock solid RH and I ended up only having to add water to them about once every few months once they were dialed in.

I eventually moved everything into an Aristocrat so I didn't have to play with 3 large coolers. But I would say for what you have beads would be a good option and maybe a humipack or something similar for your otterbox. Some people also like those little oust fans to circulate air inside their coolerdoors which can help maintain a more even RH inside the cabinet.

Water pillows and boveda packs are good for smaller things like traveldoors or shipping cigars, but I don't think I would rely on them for long term control as they will dry out faster than beads. And like mentioned above a good active humidification setup like a cigar oasys or an accumonitor from avallo would be great, but might be overkill depending on how big your humidor is. I used a 120qt cooler for a long time with only beads in it and had no need for active humidification.

Edit to add: stuff