For anyone who has a wineador with Heartfelt beads, after you seasoned up your cedar drawers/trays and put your beads in, how long did it take to reach your desired humidity level? Maybe I'm just being impatient, but it's now been three days since putting my beads into my wineador and the humidity hasn't dropped at all from about 81%. My wine chiller is a small Newair AW-121E 12-bottle unit and I got one full pound of 65% beads which should be more than enough for the size of my cooler. I seasoned up my drawers for a few days first without any beads in the cooler. I put my beads into a wide, flat, shallow pan at the bottom so I have plenty of surface area to absorb humidity. I also put them into the cooler FULLY dry/discharged which I assumed would speed up the absorption process. I'm also using two brand new calibrated Caliber IV hygro's. They calibrated spot on using the Boveda 75% pack so I know they're reading the RH correctly. I have one in the top drawer and one in the bottom drawer and they're both currently reading 81%. The seal on the door is perfect. After inspecting the beads this morning, I'd say about a third of them are clear and the rest are white. I'd like to think there's nothing wrong with the beads. Is this just a long process and I need to stay patient? Will it take weeks to get the RH down to 65%? Any info/tips you might have would be helpful. I'd like to think I've done everything right so far. I'm just eager to get my sticks in there! Thanks.
Humidity issue in my new wineador with HF beads
- Thread starter 1977sjr
- Start date
Two other points I forgot to mention in my first post - I didn't wipe the drawers down when I did the seasoning. I simply put a small container of DW in each drawer and let them sit for a few days until the RH inside the cooler got to just over 80%. Also, the ambient RH in the room where I have the cooler ranges from 50% to 60%, so that should only help the RH levels inside the cooler come down quickly rather than slowly.
cgraunke
BoM March '14
You may have just over saturated the drawers. The bead transfer trying to suck moisture out of the wood is not a speedy process. Sounds like you just need a little more time. Maybe leave the door open a day, the close it back up to stabilize overnight and see where you're at...
Thanks Clint. That's just what I was thinking. I turned the cooler off, opened the door, and pointed a fan at the inside to help dry things out a bit. I'll check it again tomorrow and see what level it's at. Also, what do you think of me putting all the beads in a shallow dish at the bottom? Since it's a small cooler, I would think this is ok. Or would you divide up the beads into mesh bags/tubes in each drawer to spread them out a bit more?
Now that I have my cooler full of cigars, the RH has come down. It's 65% in the top drawer and 68% in the bottom drawer. It's odd that the RH is higher at the bottom, but I can live with those levels.
Mine is also higher at the bottom. Settling I assume? When the fan kicks on everything evens out as the air is moved around. Glad you got your RH down where you wanted it. I'm currently seasoning drawers for mine and can't wait to move them in. Note taken not to over-saturate them though.
Today it's down to 67% at the bottom so all is well. When my levels were really high I just opened the door and blew a fan toward the inside for a few hours and it did the trick. Happy gar'ing!