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Temp Issues

Living in So. Cal., especially in the summer (103 degrees today), it is way too expensive to keep my house cooled at 70 degrees.  I keep my humidor near the floor where it is coolest and in a room that is not pounded by the daytime sun.  Bottom line, my house temperature hovers around 75 degrees, sometimes higher or lower, depending on when I am at home.  My cigars seem to be okay and smoke great.  I know during the cooler season it will be no problem keeping them cooler.  I am sure this has been argued already several times so bare with me.  Any reasonable solutions or does everyone else just deal with it?   

Comments

  • rusiriusrusirius Posts: 565 ✭✭
    ADSEG:
    Living in So. Cal., especially in the summer (103 degrees today), it is way too expensive to keep my house cooled at 70 degrees.  I keep my humidor near the floor where it is coolest and in a room that is not pounded by the daytime sun.  Bottom line, my house temperature hovers around 75 degrees, sometimes higher or lower, depending on when I am at home.  My cigars seem to be okay and smoke great.  I know during the cooler season it will be no problem keeping them cooler.  I am sure this has been argued already several times so bare with me.  Any reasonable solutions or does everyone else just deal with it?   
    The "reasonable" solution is a wine fridge... $200-$300 depending on size... Possbily cheaper if you can pick up a sale or better yet a garage sale or something...

    With that said, I have a "sudo" wine fridge I fixed up... It's actually a "real" fridge that I bought for practically nothing in a local paper classifieds ad. I found a temperature probe that drives a contactor for a 110v outlet... So basically I can set the box at 70 degrees and fridge set at it's coldest setting... When it gets to like 71 the power comes on and cools it down to about 69 and then kills the power... Works well, but a wine fridge would be simpler, albiet much more expensive...

    As a side note though... I DO keep a humi in the house... It's more of a "too be smoked sometime in the next month or two" humi... My temp indoors stays right around 75... I watch it pretty closely but so far it's been great... I'm not entirely convinced that 75 is a problem to be honest, even for sustained periods... I guess time will tell... ;)
  • j0z3rj0z3r Posts: 9,403 ✭✭
    Where abouts in Socal do you live? I live there myself and have the same temp problems you do. My solution is to try and keep my humi a reasonable temp, but not let it worry me too much. As long as my temp is lower than 80 degrees I don't worry excessively about it.... I don't think I've ever been at 70 degrees, usually closer to 75.

    The wine fridge is a viable option as well as rusirius mentioned, though it is a bit costly. Personally, if I were you I wouldn't worry unless you start seeing little holes in your cigars, then it is time to rethink a solution.
  • j0z3rj0z3r Posts: 9,403 ✭✭
    rusirius:
    With that said, I have a "sudo" wine fridge I fixed up... It's actually a "real" fridge that I bought for practically nothing in a local paper classifieds ad. I found a temperature probe that drives a contactor for a 110v outlet... So basically I can set the box at 70 degrees and fridge set at it's coldest setting... When it gets to like 71 the power comes on and cools it down to about 69 and then kills the power... Works well, but a wine fridge would be simpler, albiet much more expensive...
    Now that sounds like something I'd cook up Greg. I'm an Electrician by trade, so rigging things up to work within a set of parameters is stuff I like to do for fun lol. I like your method too, a thermostat controlled contactor. *temp hits 71, CLANG! contactor engages.... down to 69 CLANG! contactor disengages. lol*
  • rusiriusrusirius Posts: 565 ✭✭
    j0z3r:
    rusirius:
    With that said, I have a "sudo" wine fridge I fixed up... It's actually a "real" fridge that I bought for practically nothing in a local paper classifieds ad. I found a temperature probe that drives a contactor for a 110v outlet... So basically I can set the box at 70 degrees and fridge set at it's coldest setting... When it gets to like 71 the power comes on and cools it down to about 69 and then kills the power... Works well, but a wine fridge would be simpler, albiet much more expensive...
    Now that sounds like something I'd cook up Greg. I'm an Electrician by trade, so rigging things up to work within a set of parameters is stuff I like to do for fun lol. I like your method too, a thermostat controlled contactor. *temp hits 71, CLANG! contactor engages.... down to 69 CLANG! contactor disengages. lol*
    Exactly... My dad works for a company that runs a hatchery... They use a lot of stuff like that in their incubators, so I had him snag one for me... Not sure what it would cost to purchase, but I can't imagine it'd be too expensive... I think I paid $20 for the fridge cause it's ugly ass green... But it stays in the garage so it didn't make a bit of difference to me!
  • j0z3r:
    Where abouts in Socal do you live? I live there myself and have the same temp problems you do. My solution is to try and keep my humi a reasonable temp, but not let it worry me too much. As long as my temp is lower than 80 degrees I don't worry excessively about it.... I don't think I've ever been at 70 degrees, usually closer to 75.

    The wine fridge is a viable option as well as rusirius mentioned, though it is a bit costly. Personally, if I were you I wouldn't worry unless you start seeing little holes in your cigars, then it is time to rethink a solution.

    I live in the City of Hemet.  Not the desert but close. 

  • j0z3rj0z3r Posts: 9,403 ✭✭
    ADSEG:

    j0z3r:
    Where abouts in Socal do you live? I live there myself and have the same temp problems you do. My solution is to try and keep my humi a reasonable temp, but not let it worry me too much. As long as my temp is lower than 80 degrees I don't worry excessively about it.... I don't think I've ever been at 70 degrees, usually closer to 75.

    The wine fridge is a viable option as well as rusirius mentioned, though it is a bit costly. Personally, if I were you I wouldn't worry unless you start seeing little holes in your cigars, then it is time to rethink a solution.

    I live in the City of Hemet.  Not the desert but close. 

    What a small world. I live in Hemet too. I think the closest anyone on this board has been to me yet is about 100+ miles away.
  • Not to get away from my original question here, but it is very hot & dry in Hemet.  The humidity the last few days has been around 10%.  I know weather accross the country differs so we all have issues one way or the other.  By the way, I live at State St. x Whittier Ave....Thanks for the responses, I usually post questions rather than answers. 

  • kuzi16kuzi16 Posts: 14,633 ✭✭✭✭
    j0z3r:
    rusirius:
    With that said, I have a "sudo" wine fridge I fixed up... It's actually a "real" fridge that I bought for practically nothing in a local paper classifieds ad. I found a temperature probe that drives a contactor for a 110v outlet... So basically I can set the box at 70 degrees and fridge set at it's coldest setting... When it gets to like 71 the power comes on and cools it down to about 69 and then kills the power... Works well, but a wine fridge would be simpler, albiet much more expensive...
    Now that sounds like something I'd cook up Greg. I'm an Electrician by trade, so rigging things up to work within a set of parameters is stuff I like to do for fun lol. I like your method too, a thermostat controlled contactor. *temp hits 71, CLANG! contactor engages.... down to 69 CLANG! contactor disengages. lol*
    the problem with this is that a condenser unit also messes with RH. thermo electric does not. what you need is a Peltier device rigged to turn on at at 71 or 72 and turn off at 68 or 69. i never thought of putting the peltier on a thermostat to turn on and off but it makes perfect sence. when i build a humi some day that will be one of the features.
  • urbinourbino Posts: 4,517
    A 28-bottle wine fridge can be had for well under $150. Look at Target or Wally World.
  • I can get one here that is a 40 bottle (maybe 50) for only 100. If i wasn't now jobless I would have been all over 2 of those. One for wine another for smokes.
  • rusiriusrusirius Posts: 565 ✭✭
    kuzi16:
    the problem with this is that a condenser unit also messes with RH. thermo electric does not. what you need is a Peltier device rigged to turn on at at 71 or 72 and turn off at 68 or 69. i never thought of putting the peltier on a thermostat to turn on and off but it makes perfect sence. when i build a humi some day that will be one of the features.
    I have to respectfully disagree... Rather a cooling unit is drive by vapor compression or thermo electrics will have no bearing on it affecting humidity levels...

    The problem with either of these devices is that they draw moisture out of the air via condensation... Condensation occurs when water vapor in the air comes into contact with a surface that is below the dew point for that given pressure and humidity.

    It doesn't matter if that surface is cooled via vapor compression, thermoelectric, termotunnel, pulse tube, or any other sort of cooling device... ALL that matters is that the surface is cooled below the dew point and causes water vapor to condense...

    Using a simple equation for calculating dew point (which may be off by like +/- 1 degree, but close enough for our purposes and MUCH easier to use) we find that at 70% humidty and 70 degrees F is right around 59 degrees F.

    So if you REALLY wanted this to work in this way (i.e. without any other sort of regulation) what you could do is set up the same type of system, but also monitor the coils... If the coils reached a temperature of 60 degrees, lock out the compressor (or peltier or any other type of cooling) from being able to run until they warmed back up to say 65... The coils would still cool obviously since they're still much cooler than the target temperature of 70, but they will never get cooler than dew point so no condensation and therefore humidity level will never change (given a sealed environment of course)

    HOWEVER... I haven't found it to be a problem thus far... To begin with, I don't store the cigars in there out in the open... I still keep them in humis... The humi regulates the humidity just like it would in any other environment... During summer time it really doesn't run very frequently, and I guess because it's such a small shift that's required when it does run the coils don't seem to get too cold and condense water vapor, or at least not any noticable amount...

    During winter time I plan on wiring a bulb in there... much like you would for a welding fridge... That should keep things happy as well...

  • kuzi16kuzi16 Posts: 14,633 ✭✭✭✭
    Every cigar forum i have ever been on has said that a condensing unit will make it far to dry and a thermo electric will do beter when humidity is an issue. I dont have a fridgador and probably never will, so to say my knowledge on the subject is "limited" would be an understatement. Plus the only electronics i deal with are electric guitar inards so im at a loss there as well. Maybe someone with a thermo electric fridgador and an understanding of the electronics/physicas/whateverelsescienceisbehindit can give a more thought out argument.
  • rusiriusrusirius Posts: 565 ✭✭
    kuzi16:
    Every cigar forum i have ever been on has said that a condensing unit will make it far to dry and a thermo electric will do beter when humidity is an issue. I dont have a fridgador and probably never will, so to say my knowledge on the subject is "limited" would be an understatement. Plus the only electronics i deal with are electric guitar inards so im at a loss there as well. Maybe someone with a thermo electric fridgador and an understanding of the electronics/physicas/whateverelsescienceisbehindit can give a more thought out argument.
    Hrmm... The only possible explaination I can think of is because peltiers are much less efficent than a typical fridge. Because of this there is a limit to the amount of temperature difference between the two halves of the peltier... When you're talking about cheap low power peltiers it's a very small difference... This could in theory make it MUCH less likely that the surface would ever reach dew point.

    It's certainly far from possible though... In fact, peltiers are used in many different models of dehumidifiers...
  • kuzi16kuzi16 Posts: 14,633 ✭✭✭✭
    the peltiers that i looked up when i was thinking of building a humidor with one in it ( link )were 55 on the cold side and 190 on the hot side. rig this to go on when the temp hits 72 and off when it hits 68. put a rigged oust fan in the mix to to blow accross the cold side and in theory you should have no problems. ... and if you have beads for humidification, place the beads directly below it... catch any drip.



    again, this is all based on limited knowledge of the physics and the electronics.
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