New Raching MON2800A is on the way

[Socrates]

Had a nice surprise this morning when the Raching factory sent me a pic of my new Raching MON2800A before they ship it out to me. I decided to go with the custom sliding rails on the top 5 drawers, and left the 6th shelf as a standard shelf without rails.  I noticed the 2 buttons at the bottom left of the unit which is the new automated water drainage system (no more handpump and having to use gravity to evacuate the water when changing it out. I also ordered two spare water pumps so I don't have to wait for parts if/when it fails. The first time I saw photos of the gold model I honestly thought it looked really tacky...but somehow over time (like a year) of looking at photos the Gold version really grew on me

Can't wait to get it...and will report again.

[Ford2112]

Curious to hear how it works out. Having seen one in person, they are beautiful units.

[Socrates]

Will surely report once I have it (likely in 1 month). Due to where I live it takes a long time to get stuff shipped here to Turks & Caicos. I decided to order a 4 Sensorpush devices + Gateway to monitor/verify the inside of the unit, so it will be interesting to see how steady/stable it controls Temp and RH.  

[Socrates]

What I can report so far is not on the Raching 2800...but on the SensorPush devices.

Very impressive to say the least. I bought the Gateway plus 4 of the HTP.xw sensors. Yes they are very expensive...but the setup, accuracy and the app are brilliant. I set them up in my current humidor (NewAir1500), one in the middle of each shelf,  and they match %RH and Temp of my existing digital Caliber IV hygrometers within 0.5%.  I calibrated the 4 Sensorpush in a Boveda 75% Calibration Kit until they all read a steady 75.5%. I had positive increase offsets for %RH between 0.7% and 1.8% for all 4 sensors...so pretty close out of the box. It did take 60 hours for them to calibrate and stabilize but I let them sit in the bag for a full 72 hours.

So far very impressed with Sensorpush...next step will be to test them in the Raching...when I get it.

(Attached screenshot of 4 sensors in my NewAir 1500 after calibration.)

 

[Socrates]

Well at long last...I finally received my new Raching MON2800A. I ordered the unit from a US dealer On Oct 16 and received it exactly 90 days later since it had to be shipped from China to Los Angeles, then sent by truck to Raching's US warehouse, then put on another truck to Ft Lauderdale, then put on a boat, shipped to the Turks & Caicos Islands and then finally delivered by truck to my house, then manhandled by two Haitians who hand carried it up a pretty narrow staircase up to the 2nd story of my house. I am surprised the unit survived all that transport. Uncrated it and everything was OK.

The fit and finish of these units is really beautiful and to me look way nicer in real life. I ordered the unit (as seen in first photo above) with sliding rails for the top 5 shelves. The are a bit stiff to move in and out but I think they are just new and will loosed up over time. In total they reduce your shelve size it seems by .75" roughly, so you do sacrifice a bit of space for the convenience of not having to remove a shelf each time you want to dig out a specific box. To me it was 100% worth it to wait on a factory unit.

I will mention that the other benefit of buying a new unit from factory now is that they come with a couple new upgrades: automated water removal pump which is useful when changing out water, a new fan behind the water tank that blasts air upwards which replaces the black turbo fans that you see in photos on the back wall in current (older) units. I think there are a few other minor upgrades too that I may not be aware of.

I moved the unit into position, levelled it then let it sit for 24 hours. Yesterday I turned it ON, added 2 gallons of distilled water then set it to 70F and 70% RH, for seasoning purposes, and will let it run like that for 7 full days. After that I will drop RH to 65% for another 2-3 days until it stabilizes at that RH. Not gonna take any chances of dry wood robbing my cigars of moisture, regardless of what readings I get from the unit, so I am gonna give it a full 10 days of seasoning, even though the manual says '5 hours'.

I also added my calibrates 4 Sensorpush sensors on the top 2 shelves, the 4th shelf and the 6th bottom shelf to monitor the unit and see if the Raching needs to be calibrated or not.

I did run into one issue. After running for 9 hours my temp was hovering perfectly near 70F, but my RH would not budge over 60%. Contacted Raching Tech Support late at night EST, and within a couple hours thhey had me change one parameter 'CC' from 6 to -1, and right afterwards my RH quickly rose to match my set 70% RH.

One observation I did make is about the shelves. They look nice and are fine, but in all honesty, the shelves that came in my NewAir 1500 are much nicer, thicker and feel sturdier that the Raching shelves. Also the railings that came with the NewAir out-of-box where smooth as butter. Anyway, for me these points are minor.

So, that's about all I can report at this point since I have no cigars in there and just seasoning at this point. But two key observations is the unit is beautiful, SOLID in terms of construction coming in at 200lbs....and...pretty damn quiet! I was expecting it too be fairly loud...but this is not the case.

 

[Socrates]

Quick Update:

Day 4 of seasoning the Raching MON2800A at settings 70F and 70%RH. I have 4 SensorPush sensors in the middle of Top Shelf, 3rd Shelf, 5th Shelf and the Bottom (6th shelf).

Impressed at how even temp and rh is across all shelves with very little fluctuation. The humidor is empty of course but still happy to see virtually no difference from Top to bottom.

The only thing I had to do to have the unit match my calibrated sensors was to increase the RH offset of the humidor by +2...temp needed no calibration at all.

Will report my progress with more updates once my 10 day seasoning process is finished.

So far so good. Here is a pic of all 4 sensor push from top to bottom inside unit.

[Socrates]

Update on new Raching MON2800A:

So after seasoning the unit (running it empty) at 70F & 70% RH for 8 full days, I decided to cut my 10 day seasoning plan a bit short and just transfer my current cigar box inventory into it (19 boxes). I dropped it to 70F & 65% RH and within 2 hours it stable at these settings. Hopefully the wood absorbed enough moisture in those 8 days, lol.

So using my 4 Sensorpush HTP.xw sensors that are located (from Top to Bottom) on shelves: 1, 3, 5 & 6 here are my observations after 24 hours:

• Shelf 1 (Top):  Averaged over 24 hours (and even 1 hour show the same):   70.7F  / 62.5% RH
• Shelf 3:  69.5F  /  65.1% RH
• Shelf 5:  69.4F  /  65.5% RH
• Shelf 6 (Bottom):  69.8F / 64.5 RH

I also checked Shelf 2 (showed  70.1F / 64% RH) and Shelf 4: (showed: 69.5F / 66% RH). I just moved some sensors from other shelves temporarily to shech these shelves too.

My unit is maybe 60% full at this point (I am not gonna cram it beyond about 30 boxes so I can have good spacing and airflow).

So overall...I think it is performing OK? I mean given my setting are 70F / 65% RH for the entire unit...it does seem that the actual shelves 2-6 do more or less settle at 64-66%RH and 70F...which is what I was shooting for. Only the top shelf is low at about 62-63%RH...but I am ok with that since it gives me a place to dry out cigars a bit prior to smoking if I decide too.

The ONLY thing I am wondering about is this...the averages above look OK....but every 10 min or so...on every shelf I see Temp fluctuating by 1.5 - 2F and also RH swings of 1.5-2% also. Is this normal? I dunno, but if any other users with experience can share their observations it would be much appreciated.

Anyway...so far so good.

[TacoSauce]

41 minutes ago, Socrates said:

my current cigar box inventory into it (19 boxes)

19 boxes and not a single box of Cubans! It's a beautiful unit, but I think I would have spent that money on some Cuban cigars before splurging for the fancy storage.

[Socrates]

Haha...I was waiting for this comment😆 What can I say, a few years ago I discovered Pardon and honestly I lost interest in CC and stopped buying them. I could just not put up with the high cost and quality control issues. Don't get me wrong, when you get a good CC like a Monte 2, my god they are glorious, but these days I am just not into them. I love the Padron 64 and 26 series the most.

[TacoSauce]

2 minutes ago, Socrates said:

I could just not put up with the high cost and quality control issues

You sir, are a much stronger and more disciplined person than I am. Respect!

[Socrates]

 Well that said. I live about 300 miles from Cuba and have been thinking about a trip there. So I will probably have to break down and buy at least a couple boxes of Partagas P2 or Montes if I can find any

[Socrates]

Update: Cigar Drying / H-Sommelier Drawer

So last night I decided to test out the cigar drying function / drawer which is at the bottom of the Raching Mon series humidors.

I took a reading at both the foot and cap end of a cigar using my CigarMedic probe before using the drawer and got a reading of 65% at the foot and 67% at the cap.

Hit the cigar drying button. It ran for 30 minutes. Took out the cigar and got exactly the same readings.

The only difference afterwards is that the wrapper felt a wee bit warmer than before I put the cigar in the drawer. The humidor itself got maybe 0.5- 1F warmer during operation of the cigar drying function.

Anyway...my conclusion is that this function does not really do anything for the overall smoking experience.

You'd be better off dry boxing, or in my case just put a few cigars in a box on the top shelf which runs a couple %RH lower (around 62% in my case) and leave them there for a couple weeks prior to smoking.

Does not really make sense when I think about it, that 30 min in a warming drawer will do much at all.

[Socrates]

Update:  Placed SensorPush Hygrometers inside cigar boxes

Since I transferred my cigar boxes into the Raching 2800A a couple weeks I have been measuring temp & %RH on 4 different shelves and looking at the daily averages to see how much fluctuation there is.  A couple days ago I placed each of my 4 HTP.XW sensors inside a box on Shelves 1, 3, 5 and 6 (from top to bottom respectively, and watched to see what happens inside a different box on each shelf.

As one would expect, and nice to see,  temp and %RH fluctuations are virtually non-existent. This is good because this is what the cigars actually experience in terms of fluctuation.

Temp fluctuates inside each box by only +/-   .1 - .2 F (from my 70F setpoint) on every shelf.  %RH fluctuates inside each box by only  +/-  .4 - .5  %RH  (from my 65% RH setpoint).

So yeah, for anyone wondering about the Raching Mon series units...they are really damn stable. I am very pleased about this.

[Socrates]

Update: Unit went into an abnormal state of High Temp and High Humidity for Several Hours.

So, had an interesting problem occur yesterday. My house lost power yesterday at approx. 9am and then my backup generator kicked on approx. 5 seconds later. We have a lot of power outages on the island I live on, but this is the 1st one since I got the 2800A. I own a generator for this reason and it literally comes on 5 seconds after it senses power loss. I did not notice anything wrong with the unit until around 11:30am when I saw the temp and humidity had climbed to 73F and 75%RH, up from my settings of 70F/65%RH.

I checked my settings (temp, humidity, calibration offsets etc) in the unit and they were all still there, so its not like the 5 sec power loss caused the system to reset itself. About 2 hours later the unit was sitting at 73F and 78% RH. I unplugged the unit, waited 3 min then plugged it back in...still no change...no cooling going on and could only hear the fans running inside. When I put my hand behind the unit it did not feel warm at all, so pretty clear the cooling was off.

I sent an email to Raching support at noon (EST) to see what they could suggest or how to reset the unit. In the meantime I came across a post on Reddit from a user that encountered a similar problem in the past, so I decided to try what he did. I changed my settings to max temp and max %RH: 72F / 75% RH and let it sit that way for an hour. Then I changed my settings back to my original: 70F and 65%RH.

About 15 min later I noticed the cooling came back on. Very slowly over the next 3-4 hours the temp and RH started dropping. By 5pm, the unit was at 71F and 72-73% RH. Still too high and not near my 65%RH setting. Then at 7pm it really started to drop in %RH and by 8pm...my unit was back down and stable at my 70F and 65%RH settings.

At 9pm EST, I got an email from Raching asking me for more info to help, but the system had corrected back to normal. 

So, as usual, I found their support to be very responsive as usual, but in this case not sure if what I did is what reset the unit back to normal after the power loss or not. Support said that sometimes a power loss might cause the unit to go into an abnormal state for a few hours and then goes back to normal. Anyway, I'll have to see if this happens again down the road or not, but for now all is back to normal.

[Socrates]

Update: Unit goes into abnormal state for a few hours after a 5 sec power loss. As a follow up to my last post from Feb 13 thought I'd report on the unit's behavior after another very brief poser loss.

Had another power outage in my area yesterday, but since it does take my home generator 5 seconds to startup,  the 2800A did lose power, but for only 5 seconds.

Unlike, on Feb 13 when I fiddled with the temp & humidity settings to get it to start cooling afterwards, this time I did nothing and just observed the system behavior.

Not sure if other Raching Mon users experience this, but my unit seems to go into a kind of suspended state for about 2 hours where only the internal fans are running, with no cooling or humidifying going an. After about 2 hours the unit seems to reset itself and then start to cool again. All in al,l it does seem that after even a few second power loss, my unit recovers back to normal after approx. 5 hours.

Not great, and I wish it didn't do this, but based on the Sensorpush sensors that I have place inside cigar boxes in the unit, the cigars themselves barely notice this behaviour. In my case over the 5 hour period, the inside of my cigar boxes went up about 1 F and 1%RH, then came back to my setting after about 5 hours, so really no effect on the cigars.

[Luisb]

I’ve had a MON3800 for about a month. All has been going smoothly so far. A few days ago, I had to unplug it for about a minute or so. I remembered your post and looked in the manual for a "turn off" button or something like that. I didn’t find any steps to do it, so I just unplugged it. I didn’t have any issues—plugged it back in, and it worked like normal.

[Socrates]

Yes I found it odd that there is no way to power it down other than physically unplugging it. Good to hear that yours behaved ok when you unplugged it and then back in. I might try to unplug mine too for a minute or two and see if it behaves normally. Maybe because my power outages are only about 5 sec it causes it to get confused...I dunno.