Timers for intermittent fan control

[CurtisEss]

A few weeks after playing some very effective box tetris, I took out box of Partagas Lusitanias to find that one cigar on the side had a lot of mold growing on it. It had become so over humidified that the foot had expanded and cracked. This problem wasn't limited to this one box, and it actually appeared that I had over humidified almost all of my stash without under humidifying any of it, to my eye at least. That point aside, it was clear that there were some areas of my humidor with very high local humidity. In one place, on the side of that box of Lusitanias, the humidity was so high that the side of the dress box was soft like balsa, and I was able to dent it by poking it with my fingernail. So I got another wine fridge to get some air space in my old one, and a fan to exploit it.

Once I started running the fan, I realized pretty quickly that constant operation wasn't going to happen. Although the air circulation is excellent without being too much, at ~11W, it seems to have a heating power that is about equivalent to the cooling power of my Vinotemp. This means that if the fan is running, the cooler is running. This creates a huge amount of condensation over appreciable time frames and dries everything out too much. I'm still trying to get the humidity down to 65% RH despite having a tray of 2 lbs. of dry 60% beads out for a week and letting many of my boxes take a few hours out of the humidor. This has been a huge pain in the ass. Anyway, among worrying about all of these other things, I've been looking for a way to control the fan intermittently. I've looked at light timers online and they seem to all be once a day for x hours type of situation. What I really want is something that will allow me to run the fan for something like 1 minute on 9 minutes off. Does anyone know where to find such a timer or want to commiserate on how much of a pain in the ass this situation is?

[Babaloo]

Hi, Try going on to (ASK.com). I'm sure someone there will help.

[Pixa]

Would a solution to be to decrease the voltage to fan which will make the heat issue a lot less but still do a more than adequate job of circulating the air. Say running at 3v.

[Optic101]

I use a "power plug timer" .

For the manual one every turn is 15 min.

Cost about 10 Dollar. Available at any DIY shop.

Works fine for me.

Sure I have a small power trans. between the power plug and the fan to adjust the voltage.

[PigFish]

I don't know about Ask Wiki but I do know a little about ask Piggy! -LOL

I have written some about the heat problem with fan use in non-active cooled systems. I actually built a little active ice chest based system, and I actually still use it because I am too lazy to take the cigars out of it, but I did not really find it to be a commercially viable product. There are two major problems with ice chest coolers and active systems and those are over-humidification and heat build up.

On the other hand, I never really considered that the performance of TE cooler systems was so bad that they could not keep up with fan induced heat. No offense meant, I would never bother with a TE cooler!

As far as solutions are concerned, I have custom timers made for my company specifically designed for this purpose. While I can run fans full time in my coolers, and I often do when I am doing a lot of testing, especially for fan induced control problems, I typically run them on a timer.

While my controller has a precision timer built into it, I will use that output for further function and often offload the timer work to an independent circuit. When I want a timer without a controller, this is what I use.

Here is a pic of a number of my products. I have a line of humidor circulation fans that are finger safe and easy to locate and mount. That is a different topic, but that is what the fan is all about.

I have not had the time to integrate the timer into a separate viable fan product as of yet, as building and testing items for my customers has been taking a lot of my time but this is exactly what you are talking about and a sample of what you may want. I have tested quite a few of these and I have settled on the larger black one. Since these are custom made, it has taken me about a year to move through different design ideas to settle on the one that satisfies me best. The one with the dials is really cool but since there is no way to determine the time other than by sitting with it and a stopwatch, or using a data logger, I have moved away from those.

...I do sell these by the way!!! -LOL

I can be contacted off line if you have more questions about timing circuits.

Oh, by the way, these will time independent on and off times from 10 seconds to over 10 thousand seconds by the combination of flipping dip switches.

Cheers! -the Pig

[PigFish]

...oh and by the way. Trimming DC fans is easier said than done. You put a resistor in the line and the resistor simply takes the power and turns it into heat. A pulse width modulator type speed control is what is really necessary and these types of things can be made at home but are far more costly to build than are worth the money.

Fans should be selected by CFM and power consumption. Unfortunately you don't really know what you need until you test it in your humidor.

While I am a firm believer in controlled circulation in your humidor, there are ways to overdo it and it can cause a lot of problems if you don't know what you are doing and why.

Cheers! -Piggy

[Babaloo]

I don't know about Ask Wiki but I do know a little about ask Piggy! -LOL

I thought you where going to pickup on that . lol

[CurtisEss]

Thanks for the ideas guys. One thing I've noticed about running the fan nonstop is that it dries out the humidor by making the cooler run constantly, making condensation. So even if I did have a compressor model that could keep up, the amount of water that I would need to add back to the atmosphere would be beyond what my heartfelt beads can accomplish. I had planned on using a combination of a voltage controller specifically designed for controlling fan speed with a light timer. However, the more I think about it, the more I would rather the fan run in very short (~1 minute) intervals. With my system, longer fan running times would cause the humidity to fluctuate quite a bit. Ray, I may have to get in touch.

[PigFish]

Thanks for the ideas guys. One thing I've noticed about running the fan nonstop is that it dries out the humidor by making the cooler run constantly, making condensation. So even if I did have a compressor model that could keep up, the amount of water that I would need to add back to the atmosphere would be beyond what my heartfelt beads can accomplish. I had planned on using a combination of a voltage controller specifically designed for controlling fan speed with a light timer. However, the more I think about it, the more I would rather the fan run in very short (~1 minute) intervals. With my system, longer fan running times would cause the humidity to fluctuate quite a bit. Ray, I may have to get in touch.

Are you using an AC or DC fan Curt? At 11 watts I have gotta' guess that it is AC. I can get 25cfm~ DC fans that pull about 20mA or about 3 watts. I don't know what kinda' fan you are using but that is a place to start.

Typically the smaller the fan, the less efficient it is. I like using 25cfm 60x60 fans for a lot of things but the 80x80 will pull about half the power at the same cfm. A little study on the fan itself might do you some good.

Let me know if I can help... Pretty busy the last couple of weeks so it may take time for me to turn around. Cheers!

[CurtisEss]

I am running a 92 mm AC fan that gets 31 cfm. I looked at some other DC models just now and saw that one, for instance, got 24 cfm at 0.96 W. I didn't realize that my fan was only about 10% as efficient as a slightly smaller DC model. I have tried to use the speed controller to see if I can run the fan full time without issue, and I also see a large drop in humidity.

My biggest problem is that the back of the fridge is slightly colder than the front, so the colder hygroscopic materials near the back absorb more than their share of humidity during the course of natural air movement around the humidor. I realize why people hook up fans so that the fan is running at the same time as the cooler is running, to help disperse the cold air and minimize this issue. However, I would like to get some air movement even when the cooler is not running. In the winter, the ambient temperature around my humidor is about 60 F, so the cooler never needs to run, but I would like to run a fan periodically anyway to minimize any possible humidity or temperature heterogeneity that occur naturally.

Ultimately, what I want is a system that is homogeneous with respect to both temperature and humidity without my having to constantly monitor it. The ways I see of achieving this both relate to the efficient movement of air inside the humidor, but the means for creating this movement have to also lie within the constraints engendered by a relatively weak cooler and a fairly slow humidification system.

[CanuckSARTech]

I'm running an Oust fan - it's unknown MM's in diameter, running off of a 1.5 V, 8000 mAh LR20 power source (aka - a D-cell battery), and gets an unknown volume of CFM movement going.

However, for me....the easist and simplest thing with those is this. Battery runs for 4 to 6 months. Replace. Constanst operation in a stand-alone unit. Built in electronics that have it running for 5 mins out of every 15 minute cycle. Perfect amount of air flow for within a medium cabinet or 100-quart coolerdors. Costs only about $10 per unit. Lasts for years. If issues, move or replace.

Sometimes, a super easy solution is better than a high-tech set-up and fix.

[GottaBeKD]

I just ran into the same issue but not as bad. My wine fridge has been running for over 7 months without any issue and steady rh at a set 68 f. As far as I can tell I had a short power outage about a week or so ago and the unit reset the temp to 60 f. Not thinking of it I kept it there and yesterday I noticed water accumulation around the plugged drain hole.

I immediately took everything out and inspected every piece. Then played tetris with my existing cooler to store the stock from the wine fridge.

Moral of the story. If you are using active cooling be very careful of condensation.

A cooler in the basement with a steady ambient temp is my solution going forward.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

[PigFish]

I'm running an Oust fan - it's unknown MM's in diameter, running off of a 1.5 V, 8000 mAh LR20 power source (aka - a D-cell battery), and gets an unknown volume of CFM movement going.

However, for me....the easist and simplest thing with those is this. Battery runs for 4 to 6 months. Replace. Constanst operation in a stand-alone unit. Built in electronics that have it running for 5 mins out of every 15 minute cycle. Perfect amount of air flow for within a medium cabinet or 100-quart coolerdors. Costs only about $10 per unit. Lasts for years. If issues, move or replace.

Sometimes, a super easy solution is better than a high-tech set-up and fix.

...show off!!! -LOL

The fact is my friend that you use a 10,000 dollar heat sink to condition your cigars, it is the cool concrete floor of your basement!! Some of us don't have that and need to move our cigars to locations where the 60 degree heat sink is not available. We therefore build systems to make an imperfect environment, more perfect.

Someday you will need a product... You'll see... Then I'll have my revenge!!!! -LOL

Cheers mate, hope all is well in constant climate! -R

[CanuckSARTech]

...show off!!! -LOL

The fact is my friend that you use a 10,000 dollar heat sink to condition your cigars, it is the cool concrete floor of your basement!! Some of us don't have that and need to move our cigars to locations where the 60 degree heat sink is not available. We therefore build systems to make an imperfect environment, more perfect.

Someday you will need a product... You'll see... Then I'll have my revenge!!!! -LOL

Cheers mate, hope all is well in constant climate! -R

Piggy, when I win the lottery and retire to the Florida Keys (hey, just a short boat ride from our imperfect paradise), and I move out of the frozen north, I will personally fly you out and hire you to make it dummy Canuck-proof for me!!!!

Cheers amigo!!!

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