Wineador Heating

[CigKopf]

Hello all, I have a question about adding heat to a wineador. Sorry if this has been answered before. I searched, but I couldn't find what I was looking for.

I currently have a 16 count wine fridge. It stays right at 64 degrees, 65%. I live in Northern CA, and winter is coming soon. My house temperature will probably decrease to the 50s at some points during the winter. I'm concerned that the temp in my wineador will drop below the current 64 degrees. Is there a way to add a heating device to the fridge without doing too much engineering? I have no experience with refrigeration, and I'm a little worried that I would break the unit (and myself). I've seen something where I could add a heating pad with a temperature controller. Would the controller need to be connected to the cooling unit that is currently being used? Or, could the controller unit be connected to just the heating pad? Also, is heat not really a concern? Have people noticed that their fridge holds heat in fairly well, so as long as they don't open the door, the temp doesn't drop too low?

I know there are quite a few questions there, but I'm fairly lost. Thanks in advance for any help. And, if there is a post that answers my question, feel free to post a link. Thanks.

[Hiroshiro]

It's currently 51 at night here in socal. For the most part if u leave it at 64-66 it will do fine. U can go all the way to 60 and be fine. Don't worry too much about it

[PigFish]

As a general rule, hygroscopic materials bond more readily with water vapor as their temperature decreases. This is true for tobacco as its percentage water content will increase if the temperature is lowered and the rH of the space it shares remains the same. This is not theory but demonstrated empirically in research papers that I have.

I don't believe that refrigeration is beneficial to tobacco in the slightest as it has not been proven to be! A constant temperature however I believe is beneficial in that with a constant temperature one can regulate percentage water content with control of rH. Percent water content can be controlled with either variable as long as you fix the other and have some idea as to what adsorption characteristics are for your substrate as it relates to the variable you wish to change.

With that said, keeping constant rH and reducing the temperature will likely make cigars that you might believe are idea for smoking, perhaps too wet for smoking once reconditioned. Recondtioning may take longer than the cold weather lasts but I cannot comment on that. Ideal for smoking is of course a matter of taste.

Left for long periods, a mildew odor will likely appear in your cigars if left damp and cold for extended periods and as the temperature of your humidor gets closer to the dew point, you may find visible water in it if you are not careful and take actions to remove water as the rH naturally increases due to the drop in temperature.

I do, by the way have experience heating humidors. I do run a heater in my latest humidor designs.

If you are going to run heat, I prefer to use a unified logic controller for both heat and cooling. There are other methods surly, but none that I have tried. I am only interested in unified solutions and use a small touch safe resistive heater and a dedicated fan that doubles as a circulation aid as well.

Perhaps tomorrow I will post some low temperature performance charts of humidors with a heater.

I don't use a heater as much for cool weather use, as I do for dehumidification but it will heat at low temps regardless of the purpose behind it. I use a the cooling function to actually control high humidity and if it turns out that as a result of that process that the temperature decreases, in my humidors the number is 1.6 degrees below the set point, then the heater is energized and slowly warms the interior back to about .8 dF below the set point. As I said, I use a small heater that is not really designed for cold weather use and I cannot speculate if it will keep up with 50 dF outside temperatures. I have never tested it for that, but I might this winter.

My humidors freely move from a cooling mode to a heating mode automatically. If one finds oneself on one side or the other primarily, one can tweak the set point or some of the logic to his liking.

Whether or not heating is important to you, is not up to me. Nor would I accept blanket statements such as "you will be all right." "All right," can only be defined by you and your tastes. Additionally, no one knows how much water is built into your system based on the higher temperatures of summer use. If you decide to follow such advice I would be vigilant to look for the "cold damp shower" smell in your humidor if you neglect the temperature and the water content of the humidor for extended periods. If you are using an active humidifier in this humidor, you should remove it for winter months as a precaution but this advice is pure speculation on my part.

Good luck on your research! -Piggy

[Skyfall]

Electric Heating pad plugged into a timer or plugged into a thermo control sensor.

[nikesupremedunk]

Hold on...you're ok with living inside a house that's in 50's? Do you turn the heat on at all?

If you store the cigars in a basement where it'll drop down to the 50's, then just bring it up to the living room for the winter. But honestly I don't see any problems with storing it in the high 50's.

[PigFish]

...this is an example of cool weather performance in one of my humidors. As the red heat line dips to 67 dF the heater is engaged and warms the box back up.

The humidity line in a sealed humidor with a free water source will typically tend to climb as water evaporates from it and the cooling coil. This is an empty humidor with some beads, however they cannot take on the water at a rate fast enough to compensate for the condition. Since the humidor is empty, there is little hygroscopic material in there to buffer these moves and further stabilize the humidor. I test humidors empty for this reason. There is no sense in trying to hide what is really happening in there, not if you want to find ways to make ones humidor work better!

The blue line actually shows that the dehydration cycling is likely to blame for the drop in temperature over time. I don't know if I placed a lab data log this night, probably because I knew the temp was dropping and I have had an emphasis on high temp testing and not low temp testing.

Cheers! -Piggy

[CigKopf]

Thanks everyone for your help with this matter. It is very much appreciated.

Holy Moly Piggy, that is some great information. Thanks for the insights and data. I've read some of your other posts on here too. I would love to have half your knowledge on this topic haha. Sorry, I'm going to bombard you with questions now, as this has really peaked my curiosity. For the graph that you posted, where is the dew point? Maybe I'm missing it, but I'm not able to see the green line. Is it higher than 78 or 79F? Also, you say that dehydration cycling is to blame for the drop in temperature over time. That is really interesting to me, which makes me ask, how does the frequent increasing and decreasing of moisture in a closed space cause the temperature to drop? Lastly, what is causing the moisture to increase and decrease so much? Are the beads breathing, so to speak?

As far as the temperature in my home, let me clarify, it will only hit low temps when I am not home. I don't run the heat when I'm not home. Also, my very expensive "luxury" apartment has fairly poor insulation, which means the temperature in my home can get fairly low in the winter. It may even go lower than the 50s, but I've never measured my home's temperature before.

[PigFish]

Well mate, I cannot bestow all my humidor knowledge to you, the mods would take away my foil hat, leaving my bald head exposed to gamma rays and Rob would likely expel me for insulting his friends in the Cuban government!!! -LOL At least this way, I have some value!!!

Dew point is on the chart but not the jpg, just so that you can see the variations better. It is a resolution thing... I will consider posting a pic with the dew point when I have a minute. Dew point is going to below the temperature line. As the temperature falls, water vapor has less ability to stay in suspension and condenses. This point of lower temperature, where rH would approach 100%, water molecules will form up in space and begins to fall out of suspension and becomes droplets, or rain. That is the dew point in less than technical terms.

Dehydration can be accomplished in different ways based on what you want to dehydrate. The easiest way to dry space, or strip it of water vapor is to use the dew point and the process of condensation. You create a cold point and move the water vapor past that point until you have reached the desired rH. The cold point, coincidentally cools the air in the space as well and that is what we recognize as air temperature.

As an example then we take a closed space that is in a room that is less than or equal to the set point, the desired temperature lets say, and we use a system of refrigeration to remove water vapor and it in turn cools the air slightly every time it cycles. Eventually the air temperature falls noticeably and you either have to halt the cycle, or feed energy back into the system. I feed it back via a heater... Your topic, in a nutshell.

The acts of changing rH does not cause the drop in temperature, the function of using refrigeration to dehydrate space causes the drop in temperature as I have just explained.

The biggest problem with active systems is actually controlling evaporation. When I say active, I mean both active cooling and or active humidification. Liquid water, when given access to open space will attempt to saturate that space until the water activity level of the water reaches that of the space. We call this equilibrium. Water then, in a space will always be looking to create equilibrium with the space that contains it. In our case it is the sealed humidor and the number is always greater than what you will consider optimum for storing cigars.

This is where most humidor designers break down and unplug their sealed humidors. They either remove the water source, don't recognize the problem or don't see the problem due to the fact that their instruments won't report it due to resolution. If their cooler cycles, the dehydration process will reset the space back to dry and it will slowly creep until such time that they recognize the problem, or it cycles again. Most people discover this problem in winter as a result of the processes involved and they wonder why suddenly their humidor is having a high humidity problem. This is why!

Increase and decrease so much!!! That is funny... Not meaning to sound as if I am insulted by the comment, I assure you I am not, you should try data logging even a static humidor. They range considerably throughout the day unless there is absolute balance in the evaporation of the system and there is absolute stability in temperature.

In a world where temperature and humidity will vary with time of day and with the seasons, this is close to perfection!!!

I hope I answered your questions. I am always happy to share my results and knowledge when I have the time.

Cheers -Piggy

[CigKopf]

Thanks again, PIggy. I read your answers about a week ago, but I've been so busy and in a hurry so much that I forgot to respond. I definitely didn't mean for my last question to be any kind of an insult. Its very interesting to see how the different aspects of a humidor affect each other and cause minute changes in the system.

I'm definitely interested in data logging, but I have two hygrometers that don't agree with each other. I have a caliber 3 that is reading 68% and a caliber 4 that is reading 63%. I currently have 65% beads, and I'm using about twice as many beads as what is recommended for my humidor's size. Do you have any experience with the caliber 3, or caliber 4, and know if the caliber 3 is as accurate out of the box as the manufacturer says? Maybe I can just log both readings haha.

[PigFish]

Thanks again, PIggy. I read your answers about a week ago, but I've been so busy and in a hurry so much that I forgot to respond. I definitely didn't mean for my last question to be any kind of an insult. Its very interesting to see how the different aspects of a humidor affect each other and cause minute changes in the system.

I'm definitely interested in data logging, but I have two hygrometers that don't agree with each other. I have a caliber 3 that is reading 68% and a caliber 4 that is reading 63%. I currently have 65% beads, and I'm using about twice as many beads as what is recommended for my humidor's size. Do you have any experience with the caliber 3, or caliber 4, and know if the caliber 3 is as accurate out of the box as the manufacturer says? Maybe I can just log both readings haha.

No I am afraid that I know nothing about the instruments that you are using.

Stacking up hygrometers against one another is is a double edged sword. Is one right, or the other, are they both wrong? I cannot answer that question. More than likely they are both wrong to a certain degree. The real key is in not depending on accuracy as much as precision. Your cigars don't know the difference in being shacked up with a accurate hygrometer or a less that accurate one. As a smoker, you know what you like and what settings you need to have on your instruments to get them there. Stability, repeatability and precision are the factors that are most important to me. Typically, the better instruments are the most accurate as well. Now I am not going to make an argument for intentionally buying poor hygrometers, however the endeavor does not require true laboratory grade equipment.

The hygrometer game is like any other big gun contest. While I do believe in getting the best instruments that I can, it is not as though there is any need to blow your cigar budget on a hygrometer. The hygrometer itself is not the cause of most people's problems. Most problems start with a lack of understanding of the problems and solutions. Poor design for the macro climate is the typically the biggest problem.

I use a number of different instruments. I have my sensors built to order for my controllers, but I have come across a number of good sensor makers. Some temp/rH transmitters cost hundreds of dollars each. I have a supplier that makes what I want for a reasonable price that I consider good enough to use myself and can budget to sell with my systems. I actually tend to use more of my lesser accurate sensors for my own work. I have two types; a 1.6rH accurate model and a 1.8rH accurate model. I mostly use the 1.8rH for my own projects. When I test working sensors against my certified sensors, I can really see little appreciable difference. The fact of the matter is that hygrometer placement is a larger factor than the hygrometer itself.

I use all kinds of sensors especially in testing my humidors. My controllers can use a number of different temperature sensors and I use NTC and other inexpensive sensors as needed when testing different systems. I often double wire a project so that I can use a remote controller, one outside of the humidor so that I can make changes without disturbing the data logging inside. My experiments (not finished products) are often a wiring nightmare!!!

I use some of just about everything. I use NTC's, thermistors and even thermocouple heat sensors. I cut the thermocouple sensors to my liking and TIG weld them in the shop. They come in really handy for data logging and their lower resolution does not bother me in these situations.

If you are not in the controller market, the bottom line is that you want something that is relatively fast, reads at least to 0.5 resolution if you care to be that precise and that you place it in such a fashion that it reads your humidor and not the surface of a saturated hygroscopic substrate.

Reading your substrate is okay in the end, but not while testing. Testing should be done honestly or you are not really testing!!!

This is how a great humidor works. Most people require much less control or performance. It is a niche, geek thing! You either are a type who sweats the details or not... Humidor pshycrometrics is not everyone's cup of tea. It is mine!

Cheers! -Piggy