Quote:
Originally Posted by CigarNut
Plugged drains are the way to go. Any wooden humidor is a sealed box, and you would not drill a hole in your wooden humidor to allow airflow. Same for coolerdors. They are all sealed. If your ambient RH around the Wine Fridge is OK then you can get away with not plugging you drain, but that will vary seasonally. So, plug the drain.
I did not see if you are running the cooler. If you are that will affect the RH. The cooler units usually remove moisture from the air, which is why most people have a catch tray or the like in the bottom of their wine fridge to save that "excess" moisture and recycle into the air. If the RH is where you want then you can empty the moisture tray.
If your RH is low, saturate some more of your beads and go from there. Remember, you want to change the RH slowly so as not to affect your cigars -- we have all seen the results of rapid RH changes, like when you take a cigar from a warm room to very cold outdoors - split wrappers. Because of this I am not an advocate of adding any kind of raw moisture source (sponge, water dish, etc.) in your humidor -- but that's just my  . (The catch tray from the cooler unit is OK).
The bottom line is be patient: our cigars are much more tolerant than we think, and it takes a while for any change in our humidor to "soak" into the cigars... |
lots of good info but the biggest thing is to find out what works for you.
my last wine fridge wasn't thermo so it never ran. it was however a sealed vino and didn't have a drain plug. my new edgestar (same as bills) does have a plug and like bill i was having the low humidity issue.
i added a water dish because that is how i recharge my beads. i spray them now and then but i rather let them absorb what they need over about a weeks time and not worry about over saturation or spikes.
being that the fridge is running even thermo it will still pull some moisture out of the air. biggest thing like it has been mentioned was to give it time.
once you get the drawers in remember that the cedar there will also hold moisture and help out along with all the boxes you put in there.
if i were you bill leave the drain plugged / tapped up for a bit. take out your smokes and see where its at. then why not start adding them say box at a time after its been holding humidity where you want it. that way it slowly brings all the sticks to the humidity/temp of the fridge.
hope this helps bro
