old beads not working anymore?
Hello cigar.com forum! good to see my old stomping grounds is still here. havent been active in 15 years I suppose, still smoking just not as much of a hobby anymore. got a problem!!! I havent kept a hygrometer in my humidor for a long time since I started using beads, they were always rock solid. I recently questioned a hygrometer I use to measure my room humidity, so I thought, ill put it in my humidor! I know for a fact its 67%. I put it in and it reads about 50!! I got my beads soaked real good and didnt open it for a week. still 50, still my beads are wet.. so I bought a new hygrometer and put it in my humidor. it reads 50%.... ****! any one had their beads go bad? these are from heartfelt maaaaaany years ago. I only ever put distilled in them.
Comments
My guess... it'll just take more time. Beads don't humidify quickly and there's lots of things in there that need to suck it up.
Wrong type of beads. I’ll move on.
You may need some bigger beads
Bigger than a cue ball?
You probably can not hear yourself fart???
Sounds like someone fogging a window with their breath.
I am by no means an expert, actually quite the opposite. Before I go on, if I am wrong, please correct me. I will not cry too much, I promise. I am fairly new to this game, however when trying to decide how to store my cigars, I was doing research into beads (not @Vision's type). One source I found said to not soak them, but rather use a dental syringe to squirt the water into the tube of beads. His reasoning was that when soaking them in a tub of water, the beads would lose some of the "active ingredient" in the beads over time, which would in turn lose the ability to keep the prescribed RH level. I don't know if this is true, but I tried the syringe method, and quickly realized how dumb this was. I now soak them, and plan on replacing the beads after X amount of time.
I was told that soaking them will cause them to expand too quickly and they'll crack and break, which I kinda believe because you can hear them start making noise when you get them wet.
The main thing w/ beads is getting them to the right amount of moisture so they can act as a 2-way humidifier and if they're soaked all they can do is give off moisture, not take it back up again. That might be fine in the drier months, but other times of the year the goal is to get the beads to the humidity level you want so they act like a Boveda. I have my kitty litter in mesh pouches and deli containers that I've replaced the sides w/ window screening material, so my method of hydrating them is to spritz them with distilled water when I see my hygrometers showing lower levels than wanted.
I spritz mine too. Lightly, then wait a couple days to see how much the rh goes up. I never tried soaking them. I like to slowly sneak up to the right rh level....Seems the work well that way.
Boveda.
Boveda +1.
Beads tend to crack and split when you soak them because they expand too quickly, which can reduce their effectiveness over time. The other thing I've seen with my beads is that sometimes, especially if you've ever used "juice" instead of water or continue to submerse them instead of spritz them, is that they can develop a film on the surface, which inhibits their slow-release properties.
Good news is that you can buy an 8 oz bag on Amazon for about 15 bucks. Try just replacing them.
https://forum.cigar.com/discussion/660564/good-kitty-litter-list-and-bad-kitty-litter-list-formerly-known-as-the-good-cat-litter-list-and/p1
I think I paid $32 for 20lbs
Don't know what the water is like where you live but our aquifer is acid enough to eat through copper pipes so the town adds a lot of calcium-something to raise the pH. I found when I was misting my orchids that the spray would land on the window and each droplet would leave a white deposit when it dried. If you don't use distilled water to hydrate your beads they will eventually plug up and not work as well.
I still say distilled water that you buy at the store is a farce. If it were truly distilled, why does it leave a whitish deposit in the bottom of a container from which all the water has evaporated?
I was taught that minerals and other contaminants were left behind when the steam returned to water state…