New Raching MON2800A is on the way

[BJack]

For me it's been a process of trial-and-error with different temp and RH settings over a few years (well before I got the Raching unit). With my first NewAir 1500 unit I started at 68F and 68% RH (just to be a bit lower than the standard 70/70 and what most retailers sell you cigars at) and then slowly over about and year and a half got to my 70F/64% RH settings. I would literally move the RH 1% (up/down), wait at least a month or two so all the cigars in boxes acclimate, smoke several, then tweak again by a % etc etc.
My reasons for settling on those are two-fold. The first is just purely personal preference...I just found I enjoy my cigars a lot more when they are a little drier. I find the flavors are more crisp/clean, less muted and very importantly for me they simply burn better, more even. I smoke very slowly...like about a puff (at most two) per minute. 
The second reason is my environment, and this will vary wildly depending on where you are. I live in a high temp and high humidity environment and always smoke outside on my patio. All year around, at night (when I smoke) outside the temp range is about 75F (lowest) up to about 88F and outside humidity is high 70% (lowest) and sometimes as high as 90%. So I found I need to store my cigars a bit drier so when I pull it out the wrapper does not get over-saturated with moisture while I am smoking it. So I found that storing at 64%RH (@ 70F) gives me just the right amount of moisture in the cigar so that it also burns nicely when I smoke outside in much higher humidity.
I have smoke cigars as low as 70F / 60%RH, but find that a bit too dry for my taste. 62%RH works great for me too, but I just bumped it up a tad to 64%RH just because I am not sure how well cigars will hold flavor if I want to age a few boxes for say 2-3 years. What I did find (for me) is that at 70F and any avg %RH over 66%, my cigars just burn like crap and because I smoke slow I had to keep re-lighting and touching up. Whereas now I light once and rarely have to touch my lighter while smoking. I figured out that for me (where I am), cigars stored at 70F and between 62%RH - 65%RH are always great.
So bottom line I store them at these settings based on my taste and environment. I don't believe you can go wrong with RH% 60-70. If you keep steady temps between 65F-70F, it's just a personal choice.

I appreciate you giving me your thoughts in such detail. I’ve been messing around with my humidor for about the last two years. Always trying to find the perfect temp and humidity. But now I’m about to move to another state and I’m going to have to do new adjustments again. So I’m always curious to see why other people place their humidity and temperature at the points they do. Thanks again for your thoughts.


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[Socrates]

A pleasure and it does seem like everyone goes thru a bit of journey finding their preferred temp & humidity for storage / smoking. I also can't dry-box where I am (not sure I would want to either way)...so with me it was a matter to find the best single settings that I can just smoke and store at. Of course, now I am already wondering whether I should lower to 63% RH for the summer LOL. It never ends! 😆

Good luck with your move and happy smoking!

[yuppie]

Gorgeous unit and appreciate the data you provided along with it.

[Socrates]

Thanks! Yeah I decided to just keep posting my experiences and observations as I use the unit. I know when I was thinking about buying a Raching I was scouring forums trying to find any real-life comments about their units, so I thought, "what the heck, I might as well do it with mine in case it helps others who may be thinking about buying one."

[Socrates]

Update:  Finally decided to connect my Raching MON2800A to a Cyberpower Sinewave UPS 1500VA/1000W to take care of very short intermittent power outages

A while ago I had posted about a unique problem I have with power. When my house loses power (pretty frequently where I live) there is a 5-10 sec delay before my home generator kicks on. This would consistently cause my 2800A to go into a weird state (creeping higher temp and rising humidity) for several hours and take about 8-12 hours to get back to normal. I know other users have not experienced this, but for me it became too annoying so I decided to buy this on Amazon for $220. 

Pricey and overkill in terms of power capacity, but I needed to have a UPS that outputs sinewave power, as opposed to standard digital waveform power, in order to not damage the compressor. It works like a champ and just for interest it could actually run the 2800A for up to an hour. Not that I'll need that since I have a home generator, but nice to know it can handle the power required by the 2800A.  

What I noticed after I plugged the 2800A into the UPS is that on average my unit is drawing about 100-115W of power while everything is running, compressor fans etc. When I switch the light on inside the humidor it jumps another 10 watts. Now what about surge power required by the humidor's compressor during startup. It could be as high as 3-5 times the average operating power, so even at worst case, say 5 x 120W average, the unit might need up to 600 watts for a split second on startup which is still well within the 1000 watt capacity of this UPS.

Anyway...for me it was the only way to stop this problem from happening, so thought I would share this in case anyone else runs into power issues like I do.

[Socrates]

On 3/17/2025 at 4:00 AM, griller said:

Enjoyed reading your experiences with the Raching. Hope to have the coin to splurge on one someday. With regard to the power loss + 5 second generator delay, have you thought about running an uninterrupted power supply & plugging the unit into that device (and that device into your wall outlet)? Could remedy your reset issues:

Hey Griller, thanks for suggesting a UPS. The intermittent power issues I was having with my Raching humidor were solved when I bought one!

 

[griller]

Hey Socrates, I'm happy to hear problem solved! Just enjoy those cigars! Glad I could help.

[BossHogg]

Unit looks good! Are you still having the issue of lower humidity at the top? I have the exact opposite in my humidor. It is usually higher at the top, until the ac unit kicks on. I don't store anything at the top though. 

[Socrates]

Hey Boss,

Thanks! So my Top Shelf (shelf 1) runs 1% RH lowers on average than shelves 2,3,4,5 and my bottom shelf (6) runs 1.5% RH lower. So in my case :

Shelf 1: 64% RH

Shelves: 2-5 are at 65% RH

Shelf 6: 63.5% RH

Interesting how you get higher humidity at the top.

 

[BossHogg]

That's actually a great setup 👍 

Looks like it's working really good. Yeah, my understanding is that humid air is less dense (lighter) than dry air so it causes it to rise to the top 👍 

[BrightonCorgi]

On 1/20/2025 at 5:32 PM, Socrates said:

 

I use SensorPush sensors too.  Got a kick out seeing this from someone else.

[BJack]

Hey Boss,
Thanks! So my Top Shelf (shelf 1) runs 1% RH lowers on average than shelves 2,3,4,5 and my bottom shelf (6) runs 1.5% RH lower. So in my case :
Shelf 1: 64% RH
Shelves: 2-5 are at 65% RH
Shelf 6: 63.5% RH
Interesting how you get higher humidity at the top.
 

I’m using SensorPush sensors on each shelf. Does your MON read different from what your sensors are showing compared to the MON screen?


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[Socrates]

19 minutes ago, BJack said:

I’m using SensorPush sensors on each shelf. Does your MON read different from what your sensors are showing compared to the MON screen?

Let me answer your question in 3 parts:

1) When I first got my 2800A, I first calibrated my 4 Sensorpush HTP.xw sensors (I placed them on Shelves 1, 3, 5, 6) using the Boveda 75% calibration kit and they did need some minor calibration. Then I put them inside the 2800A and compared to what the 2800A was showing me. Since the 2800A only shows One Temp & One RH on the LCD display, I had to sort of average out both temp and RH and focused mostly on the middle of the unit (shelves 3 and 5) and to answer your questions, YES the Raching was showing me 1F too high in Temp, but 3% too low in RH so I got the instructions (Raching Tech Support, or also available from Dad's Heaven retailer for example) and calibrated the Raching to match the Sensorpush Temp & RH readings. Put it another way, I decided to trust my Sensorpush sensors and then adjust the 2800A to match my Sensorpush readings.

2) Now even after I calibrated my Raching, the values still move around a bit on the 2800a's display however on about a 7 minute cycle. For example, even though I set my unit to 70F and 64%RH the temperature will change on the LCD display within a range of 69F- 71F and also the RH will show 64% (mostly) but does quickly fluctuate to 65-66-67% very briefly about every 7 minutes. However, when I look at the hourly and daily averages, my unit does overall keep 70F and 64% on average.

3) I now do not keep my Sensorpush on the shelves. I keep each one inside a cigar box on a specific shelf. At the end of the day I realized that all I care about is what happens inside a cigar box, not outside on a shelf. This is because I only store in boxes, not singles on a shelf.

More info than what you asked, but wanted to put it into context.

So YES, I had to calibrate both my Sensorpush AND the 2800A.

[Socrates]

Here is a link to how to adjust (calibrate) your Raching (same for all 1800, 2800, 3800):  https://dadsheaven.com/blogs/game-room-guru/raching-mon1800-calibration

Their example is for adjusting the RH sensors (C5,C6, C7, C8, C9), but the you can also adjust your temp too (if needed) by adding +/- offsets to Temp sensors (C0,C1,C2,C3,C4).

You need to set the same offset for EACH value. For example, when I got my unit it was reading 62%RH when it should have been reading 65%RH. So using the instructions, I had to add +3 to the preset values at C5,C6,C7,C8 C9. My temperature was reading 71F when it should have been reading 70F, so I had to subtract -1 from the preset values at C0,C1,C2,C3 and C4. 

[BJack]

1 hour ago, Socrates said:

Let me answer your question in 3 parts:

1) When I first got my 2800A, I first calibrated my 4 Sensorpush HTP.xw sensors (I placed them on Shelves 1, 3, 5, 6) using the Boveda 75% calibration kit and they did need some minor calibration. Then I put them inside the 2800A and compared to what the 2800A was showing me. Since the 2800A only shows One Temp & One RH on the LCD display, I had to sort of average out both temp and RH and focused mostly on the middle of the unit (shelves 3 and 5) and to answer your questions, YES the Raching was showing me 1F too high in Temp, but 3% too low in RH so I got the instructions (Raching Tech Support, or also available from Dad's Heaven retailer for example) and calibrated the Raching to match the Sensorpush Temp & RH readings. Put it another way, I decided to trust my Sensorpush sensors and then adjust the 2800A to match my Sensorpush readings.

2) Now even after I calibrated my Raching, the values still move around a bit on the 2800a's display however on about a 7 minute cycle. For example, even though I set my unit to 70F and 64%RH the temperature will change on the LCD display within a range of 69F- 71F and also the RH will show 64% (mostly) but does quickly fluctuate to 65-66-67% very briefly about every 7 minutes. However, when I look at the hourly and daily averages, my unit does overall keep 70F and 64% on average.

3) I now do not keep my Sensorpush on the shelves. I keep each one inside a cigar box on a specific shelf. At the end of the day I realized that all I care about is what happens inside a cigar box, not outside on a shelf. This is because I only store in boxes, not singles on a shelf.

More info than what you asked, but wanted to put it into context.

So YES, I had to calibrate both my Sensorpush AND the 2800A.

Thanks for the detailed information. I did the same with my SensorPush with calibrating them with the Boveda 75% packs and I also gave them an ice bath to make sure the temperature was good. The temperature on the MON was reading spot on with the Push sensors and my Inkbird digital hygrometers. The MON RH was reading lower than than both sensors. I will check out the link for calibrating the MON sensors. Thanks again for your insight. 

[Socrates]

7 hours ago, BJack said:

Thanks for the detailed information. I did the same with my SensorPush with calibrating them with the Boveda 75% packs and I also gave them an ice bath to make sure the temperature was good. The temperature on the MON was reading spot on with the Push sensors and my Inkbird digital hygrometers. The MON RH was reading lower than than both sensors. I will check out the link for calibrating the MON sensors. Thanks again for your insight. 

Great. If only your RH is reading low on your MON all you need to do is increase the preset values of C5-C9. They should be factory set to zero '0' so you just increase them by whatever offset you need to match your Sensorpush. 👍