Initial Thoughts/Brief Review of new Vigilant Vault 2000

[Cayman17]

They must have had a customer back out on them, so I pulled the trigger. I’ll post some pics and a review when it arrives. It even had the upgraded humidity system and lights, so it was a good deal. 

 

[Cayman17]

It’s here and just started seasoning. It was no small task lugging it down a flight of steps but we made it 👍🏻

[Cayman17]

So we are three weeks in, and I wanted to provide some information for anyone planning to buy a Vigilant Vault for storage.  I plan to add to this a little later, but for now, here is what I have experienced in the first three weeks of owning a Vault 2000 unit. 

Delivery of the unit was smooth, and it was very securely packaged. A truck driver dropped it off with a lift gate and very kindly moved it into my garage with a pallet jack. From there, I had to obtain the assistance of my former neighbor (and cigar enthusiast) to help me muscle it down a flight of carpeted stairs and through a tight nook area beneath the stairs. We made it look relatively easy, though it is heavy and cumbersome to move around. We used a dolly at the bottom of the steps, which helped a lot. 

Setup was pretty easy. The directions are pretty easy to follow and I let it season for 48 hours after letting it sit overnight with the doors open to acclimate to the temperature in my basement. The unit had adjustable feet you can use to make sure it is level, and a provided hex tool enables you to adjust the feet up and down from inside the unit. The electronics are simple to hook up. Mine came with lights installed, which I enjoy a lot but they are expensive to add (I negotiated free lights as this was a sample unit). The humidification unit is designed to sit in the right rear corner of the unit, which came with 4 adjustable shelves and one fixed shelf. The fixed shelf is perforated and the fixed shelves are solid (and heavy).  The shelves are held in place with small metal supports you have to push in, and the shelves do not pull out. 

The unit locks up securely, but if you adjust your doors at all (which I did) you must be careful that the unit will still seal and lock properly because it locks via metal tabs at the top and bottom of the right door. My initial adjustments caused the door to slide outward a bit too far, and it would not latch properly. When I saw the problem, I was able to adjust the doors to cause them to move backwards into the unit and then everything was fine. The doors, in my opinion, should be treated very delicately. I am very careful when opening and locking the doors so as to make sure it closes and seals securely. I don’t want any problems with the lock, which is not very heavy duty. 

After a few days I loaded a ton of boxes into the unit and started measuring humidity. The humidifier is preset at 67 and they recommend leaving it there for 2 weeks with cigars inside, which I did. My unit was reading 67 at the base of the unit and slightly higher (around 69-70) at the top. I have since lowered the humidity setting to 65, which seems to caused a slight drop at the top. I plan to drop it down a bit more in the coming weeks, to around 63 and see how that works. 

My primary complaint (aside from high price) is that one cannot see the humidity level reading from simply looking into the unit because the readout is facing the shelf above it. You have to get in there and slide the humidification unit out to the front edge in order to get a reading and adjust the setting.  I’ve seen other units where the meter is attached to the wall of the unit and that would definitely be more convenient than the default setup you receive from vigilant. I believe you can wall mount the unit controller if you want, but you have to do that yourself. Otherwise, it seems to work fine and it is defiantly a solid, attractive piece of storage equipment.  You can get drawers for loose cigar storage if you configure it yourself from Vigilant, but mine was a demo unit that was already built without a storage bin, only shelves. 

This unit, in their espresso lacquer finish with lights and their guardian humidification system, was $5600 delivered via freight truck.  It does hold a lot of boxes and I’m happy with it so far, even though I wish the humidity readings were easier to take.  This is one of their stock offerings, you can go full custom but I shudder to think what that would cost.  The cigar vault 2000 is perfect for my purposes- the shelves are about 2 feet deep, so you can stack two rows of boxes (front and back) on each shelf.

 I am attaching some pics of shelves, lock mechanism and the position of the humidifier so you can better understand what I am trying to explain.  Hopefully this write up helps you decide if one of these storage units is right for you. 

The pic above shows the light switch installed under one the shelves. I really like the lights but they are an expansive add-on.