Winador: Equalizing Humidity with Cooling Turned on

[davidl]

So, I recently turned on the cooling element in my Thermoelectric cooler. Summer is coming, and temp inside was reaching the 70F point.

Now Normally, in winter, the humidity in my cooler is rock solid. In the fall I was having problems getting humidity to be the same across all shelves, so I put in two 80mm fans on the bottom shelve, one pointing up and one pointing down (I figured for better air circulation). This fixed the problem during the cool months.

Problem now is, now that i have the cooling on, I cant seem to get the humidity stable anymore. Top shelve shows 67% Middle Shows 65% and bottom shows about 62%.

If I leave the fans on all the time, humidity is stable, however, I feel something if off. Like i'm trying to force nature the wrong way.

Is it possible to achieve a stable 65% humidity across all shelves with my setup?

And since a picture is worth a thousand words :-)

[PigFish]

Hi David,

I have some good news and some bad news!

The circulation issue is or has historically been one that has largely been neglected by humidor makers. The fact remains that there are laws of nature, ones that largely drive the weather on our planet, major forces that can even support man made structures in air, that need to be overcome to make your humidor more homogenous. That force of nature is convection.

Natural therefore, is not what you want! Natural, is leaving you tobacco on the plant, or even on the shelf. Humidors are in fact, anti-nature! Unnatural is therefore your intent and should be your desire. It is in defeating the laws of nature, that one finds the single major reason for owning a humidor and storing his cigars in it.

The fans are a good idea. If they do not generate too much heat, I suggest you use at least one full time. Natural occurring convection will move warm air to the top and cool air to the bottom. That will change the water density of your humidor certainly. Since water vapor is in fact lighter than air, your humidor should naturally stratify further by distributing your water from greater concentration at the top, to lesser at the bottom.

Now the bad news. Stratification is likely the least of your worries. I have yet to see a system where air and water contacts a cold surface (below the temperature of the dew point) where water is not removed from air at a greater rate than heat is removed from air.

With accurate measurement you will likely notice a distinct dive in rH in your humidor when the cooling system cycles. A cycle of any meaningful amplitude and duration will cause a need to replace the water vapor that will be removed from the system. I am of course describing an active system for water replacement verses a passive one.

I suggest that anyone the who fashions himself as a humidor designer employ the use of a sensitive data logger. It is the only way to know. When you build one of these systems you become more than a humidor administrator. You become designer, engineer and builder. The design and engineering phases, and subsequent testing phases are no small endeavor. I have been doing it for years and it is anything but easy!

Here is a data log from yesterday. It has topped 90˚F in my shop the past couple of days…

As you can see, all controlled humidors will cycle. The further the set points for temperature and humidity vary from the ambient environment the greater the amplitude and frequency of the cycles. Controlling these cycles is your role of humidor designer and engineer.

While I don't recommend it, I can prove with the above chart that one can keep cigars safe in extreme temperatures. In this case the ambient is over 90dF. If you notice it, you will see that the cooling cycle precipitate the hydration cycles. Fast, efficient use of appliances and fast, high resolution controls aid this process.

Hand in hand with superior design, you can do a lot with a low budget commercial wine cooler. With a little help and the right parts one can make it one of the best, if not the best humidor money can buy!

Fans by the way are an integral part of my systems. While I am actively testing I run several integrated fans full time.

Good luck on your project.

Cheers -Piggy

[CUBANO]

Ray,

Thanks for the new and improved charts with the details of every index. I'm learning a lot from your posts.

[PigFish]

Ray,

Thanks for the new and improved charts with the details of every index. I'm learning a lot from your posts.

You are welcome. I am safer on this forum, my other opinions just piss everyone off anyway. Thanks for referring your son-in-law to me by the way. I think I might have frightened him a little with my reply!!! -LOL

Humidor building and education is a labor of love for me. I could do it 24/7… but then I would not have time to smoke or piss people off!

-R

[CUBANO]

You tell it like it is, no matter what. That's what I like. Keep it real brother,Take care.

[davidl]

Ray,

Thanks for the elaborate response. I always thought that leaving the fans on full time was not good for the cigars...which is way I have a timer that turns them on and off.

I understand the problem of the cooling element removing moisture by means of condensation. One the reasons that I chose a thermoelectric cooling element instead of compression, is that I do not live in a very hot region (I am high up). So, the hottest it gets in the room where the wineador is in is about 75-80F. The cooling element does not need to work too much to keep the box cool. Or so I think at least.

My problem was getting the shelves to be equal in humidity.

For the time being, I guess I will increase the duration that the fans work. I was playing with the idea of shutting off cooling all together...and taking the risk of infestation, but i'll try to keep away from that option.

In any case, thanks again.

[PigFish]

Ray,

Thanks for the elaborate response. I always thought that leaving the fans on full time was not good for the cigars...which is way I have a timer that turns them on and off.

I understand the problem of the cooling element removing moisture by means of condensation. One the reasons that I chose a thermoelectric cooling element instead of compression, is that I do not live in a very hot region (I am high up). So, the hottest it gets in the room where the wineador is in is about 75-80F. The cooling element does not need to work too much to keep the box cool. Or so I think at least.

My problem was getting the shelves to be equal in humidity.

For the time being, I guess I will increase the duration that the fans work. I was playing with the idea of shutting off cooling all together...and taking the risk of infestation, but i'll try to keep away from that option.

In any case, thanks again.

David innumerable collisions with air molecules are being made with your cigars every second. The truth is that air flow aids in de-stratifying your humidor for both air and heat. If it is a concern, keep the cigars in boxes as you do apparently.

Don't kill yourself trying to achieve perfection. Some of us will get closer than others and if you need that level you likely need to emulate what they do in order to get it. If it is not affecting your smoking experience and keeping you up nights, don't worry about it. Humidor perfection, when it gets in your blood becomes an obsession something like the cigars themselves… Do you really need another obsession???

I am afraid that the TE cooler theories are a myth! You have to look at cooling systems for what they do. They remove heat. In order to remove heat without removing water vapor, you would need to limit the cooling coil to a temperature above that of the dew point. One can do this certainly. One could potentially PWM the temperature of the coil with a fast response sensor and modulate the fan along with it and use an algorithm to plot and predict temperature changes based on the ambient, the rH and the need for change. The question is, do you think that is built into your wine cooler? Answer, no!

The TE cooler must use a standardized means of cooling protocol to achieve any amount of efficiency. It therefore ramps up to full cooling capacity and stays there until the temperature demand is met or the heating side overheats (assuming it has such protection built in) and it shuts down to avoid damage. That is all that it does!

Pull up any Youtube video and watch anyone with an infrared thermometer meter one as they cool. They cool pretty fast and get close or below freezing rather quickly. The TE cooler is simply a way to make a smaller wine cooler cheaper! That is it. It is purely economics…!

I am not bashing your TE cooler, I am debunking the myth about them… What I am getting to, is if you expect your cooler to actually be able to beat a delta of 10 or 15dF, you can expect it run a large percentage of time therefore sapping your water in your humidor and turning it into a puddle. With a passive system it will take hours, assuming no further cooler cycling to put that water back into the space about your cigars. This is not stable!

At 80dF one can see from the chart above that my systems cycle about 2 times an hour. I changed programming sometime back and opted for the longer dwell time, greater cooling time, for greater cooling depth, about 0.5dF in order to change this cycle from short cycles about once every 6 minutes. The dwell time on my cooling is about 3 to 4 minutes at this delta.

I would like to remind the audience here, that I can only do this via the modification of the set point differential and activation logic differential settings. You cannot do this on a pre-configured cooler control. That control has something the realm of a 2 to 4dF differential logic structure for heat control. To the layman… this means long cooling cycles and deep dehydration!

As of today, I get about 4 to 6 cycles at 90dF. This is an extreme case and I don't recommend it at home (I am a professional after all…-LOL)

Expectation for these systems to keep stability, not to keep cool, but to keep stability at these deltas is an unreasonable request of them. I have manage to top 90˚ and am shooting now for 100˚ just to say I have done it!

To be honest though, I don't sell a system based on those numbers! I think it is dishonest in that somewhere someone must analyze where the line is drawn that determines stability.

Stability is what I am after, I can't speak for the rest of you. Keeping cigars cold is not my goal. Keeping them stable is and driving these systems to the point of instability in order to make them hit a delta is a goal of mine, but it does not truly meet with the goal of environmental stability!!

Cheers -R

[Wallbright]

Wow what a wealth of knowledge. I was having trouble keeping the humidity stable with the wineador on as well. I appreciate all of the input in this thread.

[...]

Sorry for bringing back that thread from the dead but based on my own situation, what negative effects should I expect?

I run a wineador, comp style, all cigars in boxes with packing tape over the boxes' openings. I have a small Hydra with fans and about two pounds of beads in a bottom tray. based on readings from two hygrometers and built-in hygro on the Hydra, rh drops significantly while cooling cycles (as mentionned) and then pick up again soon after. Would boxes act as sufficient buffers or should I spend a lot of effort trying to minimize the rh swings?

Any imput welcome

[PigFish]

Sorry for bringing back that thread from the dead but based on my own situation, what negative effects should I expect?

I run a wineador, comp style, all cigars in boxes with packing tape over the boxes' openings. I have a small Hydra with fans and about two pounds of beads in a bottom tray. based on readings from two hygrometers and built-in hygro on the Hydra, rh drops significantly while cooling cycles (as mentionned) and then pick up again soon after. Would boxes act as sufficient buffers or should I spend a lot of effort trying to minimize the rh swings?

Any imput welcome

I cannot say that I really understand your question. It appears that you have huge dips in rH when your compressor runs. This is (or should be) expected with solutions that are neither precision nor consummate.

Is well-done steak ruined?

I ask this not to be snide but to emphasize a point about cigar storage. Storage solutions, like taste will largely be interpreted and rationalized by the one doing the analysis; the owner of the system.

This brings to mind perspectives about what it means to be 'stable' as well as what it means to 'work.'

Not that you asked me directly, but if you did, my only choice would be to judge your performance against my own. In my eyes your system does not work!!! Using your own words, it appears that you have events that are causing profound swings in your storage conditions. Those swings are antithetical to stability and therefore define your systems performance.

For the record, all humidors will have natural swings. They will swing for a number of reasons including ambient condition changes, stratification as well as internal appliance operational swings.

It is not up to me to decide where you will settle. That is of course unless you are asking me to design a system for you.

The question going forward then is not a question for me but for you. Are you satisfied with how your system works and if not, why not? Are you satisfied with the condition of your cigars and if not why not? Are you afraid of what these swings might do to your cigars and to your future smoking experiences? If yes, what do you want to do to fix them?

Lastly, what will you call success and at what point will you be satisfied?

If you turn these topics into a committee meeting then you will likely cause yourself a lot of consternation and really end up confused. You see, it is not about me… Nor is it about other members. It is all up to you. You will be the final arbiter when it comes to how your cigars are stored. Only you will be up nights over them, satisfied or dissatisfied over your decisions!

If you have not data logged, the fact of the matter is that you likely see only a small part of the problems in your system. Is that what you want to hear?

What then will make you content? What is better, ignorant bliss or real data? What do you want and what do you need?

I cannot answer these questions for you, nor can anyone else. I like all my cigars to be in the condition that I wish to smoke them. I don't want to babysit them but I do want them babied… The extents and expense that I take might not be right for you.

If you are specific in what you want perhaps I can point you in the right direction. But you have to know what you want first and what extent you will go to get you there.

Best of luck on your project. -the Pig

[...]

Thanks for the reply Pig. My place has central AC at 70F so I do not run the compressor but experimented with it when I first bought it. It was empty then and I haven't tried it since.

It is a fact that I would be worried of the effects on my cigars if I had to operate the compressor, either if I moved, if AC failed or if I wanted to store at lower temp.

I'll investigate the modified vertical freezer option as suggested by Skyfall.

After reading many of your comments on the matter, I understand you have extensive experience and data on humidity and temp management. In your opinion, what would be the effects (on cigars) of storing cigar boxes individually in sealed plastic bags, temperature being constant (I have read Nino's post on his cellar storage)?

In such a sealed bag, would RH be fairly constant (again, stable temperature) or would the addition of beads or Boveda packs help maintain RH due to some water escaping through the plastic?

The deeper question is: how much contact with the ambiant air cigars require to properly outgass as they age (while inside their wooden box)?

Again, quite a noob here but always so curious about everything, more so when the subject is such a passion as cigars

[Skyfall]

In a small wineador, I once ran the condensation tray directly back into a cigar oasis filled with beads. it worked pretty dang good, but do yourself a favor and go ahead and modify a freezer.

[Chargerfan]

In a small wineador, I once ran the condensation tray directly back into a cigar oasis filled with beads. it worked pretty dang good, but do yourself a favor and go ahead and modify a freezer.

Never thought of this!

Did you drill the cartridge above the beads but below the fan/component part?

I once learned that plugging the rear hole to prevent moisture loss was NOT the correct way to go about it. Learned the hard way actually. Here in Phoenix, my thermostat is set at 77/78 in the summer. Any lower and my utilities would bankrupt me. Even at a goal of 13 or 14 deg differential from the ambient room temperature, I notice that I have difficulty in stabilizing rH for long. I have to refill my Sm Hydra every 2 weeks. Along with the 1.5 lbs of beads.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Skyfall]

Never thought of this!

Did you drill the cartridge above the beads but below the fan/component part?

I once learned that plugging the rear hole to prevent moisture loss was NOT the correct way to go about it. Learned the hard way actually. Here in Phoenix, my thermostat is set at 77/78 in the summer. Any lower and my utilities would bankrupt me. Even at a goal of 13 or 14 deg differential from the ambient room temperature, I notice that I have difficulty in stabilizing rH for long. I have to refill my Sm Hydra every 2 weeks. Along with the 1.5 lbs of beads.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

I would never be using a thermoelectric unit wine cooler anyway. Compressor or nothing. The drip tray was in the back of the unit about 6 inches off the bottom. just drilled in the back, ran some plastic tubing from the drain hole out the back, then drilled another whole in the back towards the bottom and ran the tubing back into the unit into a hole drilled in the cigar oasis. Sealed everything with non scented silicone. Filled the oasis with beads. All condensation was gravity fed back into the Oasis. Worked like a charm.