Best small fan units to add to Wineadors

[eswary]

During several times of year my unit is creating a little more condensation that I'd like to deal with. My solution is adding a extra fan to help dry up my after market catching reservoir.

I plugged the drain hole and added a reservoir to catch condensation. Then threw in a couple pantyhose filled bead balls to soak up the extra moisture. Even then I rotate these bead balls and sometimes have to use a sponge and or paper towels to dry the reservoir.

My thought is if a add another small fan pointed in the direction of this reservoir I may be successful at keeping it dried out. I'm ok with my current process because I've been doing it for years and never had any mold issues, but I think I can make my process even easier and automated with a added fan system.

Any thought, trials, and or tribulations with these endeavors and the type of fans you used would be greatly appreciated.

Eric

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[eswary]

A few pics of the rigged-up reservoir, the beads in the bottom, and what it looks like. As you can see there isn't a ton of room except for on the bottom. The unit does have dual fans, the top one resembles the bottom one. RH is constant at all levels currently.

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[PigFish]

I have read of several of these threads now about a concern for condensation. For the sake of argument, I am going to talk about what is happening here and others can chime in with what they are, or may be attempting to accomplish with their endevours.

Condensate will ruin your cigars, that is a given and therefore your cigars should be protected from it. However, the way one deals with condensate will depend on the condition of the sate of the humidor, before and after the condensate is created.

For example. If your humidor's state of rH is at 65 prior to cooling, and condensate is created in the process, guess what folks, it is no longer at 65rH regardless of what your hygrometer is reading.

If we look at a cooler (humidor) and consider it a closed system. A system where the cooling cycle creates condensate, that water comes from somewhere and that somewhere is humidor space. Once the water is removed from humidor space (water vapor) and collected and coalesced as water (condensate) then it is no longer suspended in the space of the humidor.

With this being the case, a system of forced air evaporation would bring that water back to a vapor state and then return your humidor back to it desired rH.

The problem with this theory is that humidors are only sealed when closed and left closed. Obviously this is not the purpose of a humidor, a permanently sealed vessel to store cigars! A humidor is an active "living" system where activity is a part of its purpose and it therefore we, or the humidor itself, must deal with the side effects of this activity.

For those who live in dryer climates this does not represent a problem. It means that air exchanges are biased to the dry and one would be in a perpetual state of needing to add water to keep the rH UP.

On the other hand we have a situation where the ambient, not necessarily higher in rH, but higher in absolute water content, where once an air exchange takes place, water vapor is added to the net humidor environment. This poses a potential problem with the forced evaporation of the condensate method. If we say that "x" = our optimum rH in the form of absolute water content in our balanced system, and all that water is evaporated into the humidor space once the cooling ends then any amount of water "x+y" would then equal an amount greater than our given rH at the temperature that we have chosen.

It is that simple folks. Humidors are only to be considered sealed to solve the problems necessary for sealed systems. Beyond that they need to be consider "open" systems where air exchanges will alter the equilibrium state of the humidor.

As always I have to emphasize that one looks to their ambient for the answers unless they have mastered the control of a varying environment. That is my expertise and path, mastering environment with total automation, I therefore don't worry about such things. But, for those of you that are working in a world that is part automated and part passive, YOU NEED TO CONSIDER THE AMBIENT in all your decisions. If you don't, and your ambient changes you will have problems. The worst of which means moldy or dry cigars.

Drying your condensate is therefore only half of the answer. An while it might work in some months that are dry, it might be devastating in months that are wet. Look deeper for your answers folks... Ask yourself, "what could happen if I do this?" before making changes...!

Cheers! -Piggy

[eswary]

@ PigFish

Thank you for taking the time to discuss this topic as many people deal with these issues and should benefit from the time you spent typing that out. I certainly did and it gave me a few things to keep in mind.

My ambient is a swamp. I live in Miami and never ever have had to add water/moisture to any system I've ever had. Rather I have to constantly monitor the reduction of moisture within my system.

I would say most people are directly the opposite, so I'm looking for exact thoughts, ideals, or experience on how to better manage this from their experiments in ultra humid climates. I have no dire problems or emergency issues to speak of, but I'm always looking for better management practices.

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[PigFish]

You should not be running air over your cooler when they are not running... period! You should collect the condensate in a mostly sealed (little air exposure) but still vented bottle. In this way you are allowing your cooling to dehydrate your system where you are dependent on air exchanges to rehydrate your system. Either way you will have to monitor and balance.

Putting all the condensate back into the humidor space as vapor, inclusive of repetitive air exchanges, will net you wet cigars.

Best of luck on your projects... -Piggy