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backbone

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Do the 65% beads hold true to 65% or do they end up less than that over time in a sealed environment?

I am trying to target a 60%RH in a winador, and Im wondering if I should use the 65% or 60% beads.

Thanks,

BB

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If your target is 60% then go with the beads that can get you there... 60%! I haven't added moisture to my beads all summer and the 65% beads are holding the coolers and humidor at 66%.

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Desiccant products, beaded or otherwise don't "maintain" anything, not as a constant anyway. A desiccant is no different than your cigar in that they are hygroscopic materials. The difference is the "density" of the product. Density in this case means, the amount of water that can be held at any percent moisture content, per gram of product.

In order to answer your question I must ask another question. Does you cigar hold true in a sealed environment? The answer is no! Sealing the environment only controls the influx or outflow of water vapor. Temperature has to be considered in any case of percentage moisture content. This however is not the point of my post.

Neither your beaded desiccant product, nor the cigar itself is 'programmed' to hold any amount of water. I have written about the many times now... If your cigar can dry out or get wet, so can your desiccant. They are the same in 'how' they act to water vapor, yet different in their isothermal behavior, how much water they can store at different temperatures. Back to temperature for a moment, water will migrate in or out of the hygroscopic material, cigars or desiccant dependent on temperature. Sealing may limit the keep constant the amount of water in the sealed system (the bag). It does not, in and of itself keep cigars at a correct or constant EMC....

Now back to your regularly scheduled program! -Piggy

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Thanks pigfish, I am aware there will be fluxuations in my setup and I'm ok with that. 

Has as anyone here used 60% HF beads and what readings are you getting. 

Thanks!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have had 2lbs of 60% HF beads in my 6cf wineador for ten days now and it has been holding around 63% rh (when I look at it). I am keeping the Temp around 70 F. 

I had a RASS last night and it burned and drew perfectly. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've had 65% HF beads in my desktop and a big coolerdor for several years. I live in the midwest and have a basement so I'm fortunate enough that temperature control is 65* pretty much year round. I've never seen the RH be anything more than plus or minus 2-3 percent of the 65% target. Most generally either right on 65% give or take 1% in the cooler. The smaller desktop I'm generally smoking out of seems to stay locked at 65% better. I'm not sure if it's due to it's smaller size, me being in and out of it more, or that it has an old analog hygrometer and maybe doesn't register real slight changes as well to the eye.

To the point, I'd buy the HF beads at the RH I wanted to maintain. If you do prefer 60% be sure you're also okay with slightly below that target. As PigFish said above, I don't think anything is going to ever "lock on" to an exact percentage and stay indefinitely. There is always an ebb and flow occuring.

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I have 2lbs of 65% beads in a wineador. They seem to work pretty well. I'm in the south so our summers are brutal. I try to keep them where half are hydrated (clear) and half are dry (white). I like my wineador setup because I can effectively control the humidity within a few points by adjusting my temps. Right now the internal temp of the cooler is around 66°F and I'm holding around 65-66% RH. Hindsight being 20/20 I would have bought the 60% beads. 

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I've had 65% beads in a coolerdor for over 10 years. Still hold dead-nuts true. Easiest humidification if your ambient temp is in check. ?

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...a little more detail... I'll often allow the humidor to drop below 65% on purpose as I prefer the 61-63% range. That's an option with 65% bead one wouldn't have with 60% beads. 

Cheers!

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It's totally climate dependent. Most of the time I'm fighting a very high humidity so for me getting the 60% beads would allow me to get to the low 60% range. But yes, take that into consideration. 

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39 minutes ago, SloppyJ said:

I have 2lbs of 65% beads in a wineador. They seem to work pretty well. I'm in the south so our summers are brutal. I try to keep them where half are hydrated (clear) and half are dry (white). I like my wineador setup because I can effectively control the humidity within a few points by adjusting my temps. Right now the internal temp of the cooler is around 66°F and I'm holding around 65-66% RH. Hindsight being 20/20 I would have bought the 60% beads. 

 

32 minutes ago, Ethernut said:

...a little more detail... I'll often allow the humidor to drop below 65% on purpose as I prefer the 61-63% range. That's an option with 65% bead one wouldn't have with 60% beads. 

Cheers!

... lets recap a bit! You all have 60% beads, 55% beads, 20% beads, or 70% beads, for that matter. Your beads are the same whether you bought 60% beads or 65% beads.

The difference in your beads is water. That is it, no other difference... nada, zippo, zilch... comprendo?

Beads only reflect water content. Change the content, they reflect a different ErH. Want your beads 60 instead of 65? Dry them out!!!

Here is an idea, bear in mind I don't know the isotherm for HF beads, but they are likely just pure silica like many others (engineered of course). Weigh them, multiply that weight by .35 and that is approximately how much water is in them (at 65rH). Reduce that number 12*(0.35)*(0.05) and you get... 0.21oz. Reduce your 12 oz. of beads by 0.21 oz. and you have near 60 rH beads.

 

I am not guaranteeing accuracy! These are not my products, but this is a straight forward example of how they work. It is not exact because I don't know the isothermal line for this product but my familiarity with the media has some value!!!

The fact remains though that 0.21 oz of water in a humidor full of cigars is not going to do squat! Why? It is because your cigars represent more water than the beads and your cigars are actually controlling your beads, not the other way around.

Cheers! -Piggy

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7 minutes ago, vladdraq said:

Piggy you're not reducing the whole wheigt by 5%? Why just the water weight by 5, meaning 0.35 x 0.005 ? I don't get it.

I don't have a lot of time to go into this at the moment, but it is only the water content that reflects the rH. Look at the weight of the beads (dry) as a constant. It is the water content/weight ratio that makes up the isotherm. The water content reflects the rH. Remember this is just an estimate, on the fly, and I have been known to screw up math on the site... -LOL 

-Piggy

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I have 65 percent beads and for years they stay consistently at 62 in my coolidor and 59-60 in my wineador. Works perfectly for me and more importantly the cigars smoke like I like them to.

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9 hours ago, vladdraq said:

anyways i'm messed up now...lol. Following your logic a 65% beds should have 35% water, it's not 35% solid? Tried to google and your name came up a lot of times!! wow, i think you're pretty fed up with this. :-))

It gets tiresome sometimes but I really cannot stand misinformation and then watching others give another bad information. If one does not have a situation for critical information then it is unimportant. But those that are developing problems can get really confounded with the misinformation on the net, and others claiming to never have a problem. It is not to say that they don't have problems, but each ambient is different. And with different ambients come different problems, or no problem at all.

If I helped a guy figure it out, or save him a box of cigars that don't turn into fungus food, then I am happy about it! I hope the information helps you.

Best of luck on your projects! -Piggy

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I am at 20 days out now and my RH has dropped to 59RH at 72F, my ambient temp is around 76F.

I have been in and out of it too often in this time frame.

Its time to put some water vapor back in, so I wet a sponge with Distilled water, got as much water out of the sponge before I put into the Humidor and used it to re-charge the beads.  Left it overnight and the RH has bumped back up to 61RH.

I may need to look into some type of active source of water vapor, or just keep re-charging monthly.

Thanks for all the responses!

 

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Backbone, how are your beads sitting right now, are they all charged? If not, just add some distilled water to them until they turn translucent. 

 

Pig, I really hate to ask this question because I know you're tired of it but now I'm a little confused as well. For some reason I thought about this pretty extensively on my fishing trip yesterday. HF sells beads of different RH ratings. They are all sold in the same weight. Pounds for this example of use in a large volume to control (wineador). If all beads are the same, how can they market different RH beads (60%, 65%..etc) all sold by the same weight (lb)? I wholeheartedly agree that there isn't some crazy voodo going on but there has to be something about the makeup of the different beads that allows them to hold more or less water correct? 

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First off guys, it makes me a little uncomfortable 'detailing' someone else's product. Remember, this is not my product, so specifics, exact information that I should have about a product is not here to give.

I sell desiccant products for my humidors (read this as a disclosure). I don't sell it generally or otherwise compete with the guys at HF because we are after different business and we use beads differently. So bear in mind here a bit, I am not about deriding someone's product, just about attempting to clarify something about it generally. I am therefore talking about desiccants generally... as HF beads are (IMHO) another beaded desiccant product!

When one of the retailers sells you 60 verses 70% beads, in one case you get more desiccant and less water and in the other you get more water and less desiccant... It is that simple! When you sell desiccant by the weight, and you sell it with water in it, you pay a lot of money for water.... and of course the labor that someone used to put it there! As the desiccant dries (supplies water) the ErH that it supports declines with it. There are no 60% (programmed) beads. They are not like a tank of gas (to deliver) 60% until empty. They just don't work that way!

Hope this helps! Cheers -Piggy

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Wow, ok.  I thought there were different amounts of salts in the beads that made them skew toward a particular RH.

So If I continue to add water vapor to my 60RH beads I can make them whatever I want?

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2 hours ago, SloppyJ said:

Backbone, how are your beads sitting right now, are they all charged? If not, just add some distilled water to them until they turn translucent. 

 

Pig, I really hate to ask this question because I know you're tired of it but now I'm a little confused as well. For some reason I thought about this pretty extensively on my fishing trip yesterday. HF sells beads of different RH ratings. They are all sold in the same weight. Pounds for this example of use in a large volume to control (wineador). If all beads are the same, how can they market different RH beads (60%, 65%..etc) all sold by the same weight (lb)? I wholeheartedly agree that there isn't some crazy voodo going on but there has to be something about the makeup of the different beads that allows them to hold more or less water correct? 

Thanks SJ, I did recharge them and I'm back where I want to be.

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10 minutes ago, backbone said:

Wow, ok.  I thought there were different amounts of salts in the beads that made them skew toward a particular RH.

So If I continue to add water vapor to my 60RH beads I can make them whatever I want?

Yup!

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As a matter of fact, do this. Take your hygrometer and put some of your beads in a bag with it! Keep the temperature at a constant, say 70F. Squeeze as much of the air out as possible (limit stratification) and get a reading! That is what your beads are now!

Bear in mind. Change the temperature and change the reading. One thing not disclosed with bead is that they are not poly-thermic and static. Their performance is based on isothermal testing, meaning in 'one temperature.' What the beads read at 60F (rH) will be different at 70F and 80F. This is how they work!

-Piggy

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1 hour ago, PigFish said:

First off guys, it makes me a little uncomfortable 'detailing' someone else's product. Remember, this is not my product, so specifics, exact information that I should have about a product is not here to give.

I sell desiccant products for my humidors (read this as a disclosure). I don't sell it generally or otherwise compete with the guys at HF because we are after different business and we use beads differently. So bear in mind here a bit, I am not about deriding someone's product, just about attempting to clarify something about it generally. I am therefore talking about desiccants generally... as HF beads are (IMHO) another beaded desiccant product!

When one of the retailers sells you 60 verses 70% beads, in one case you get more desiccant and less water and in the other you get more water and less desiccant... It is that simple! When you sell desiccant by the weight, and you sell it with water in it, you pay a lot of money for water.... and of course the labor that someone used to put it there! As the desiccant dries (supplies water) the ErH that it supports declines with it. There are no 60% (programmed) beads. They are not like a tank of gas (to deliver) 60% until empty. They just don't work that way!

Hope this helps! Cheers -Piggy

Thanks Pig. I totally get that and that's how I would understand it to work. However, HF beads are sold dry and by weight. You must hydrate them before use with water. I thought that was a given so that's where the miscommunication came from and still leaves me wondering how they sell "rated" beads. I have a BA in soil and water science so I totally understand what you are saying and agree with you, I just don't know how they can sell beads by weight and get them to perform differently. My nerdy mind still can't wrap my head around it unless the beads really are designed to hold different amounts of water via their chemical makeup and/or size. 

 

Nonetheless, my beads work as advertised after I figured out how they performed in my ambient environment so I can't complain too much. Not trying to beat a dead horse. Thanks man! 

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