Bart's New Vinotemp Project

[Bartolomeo]

Just got a new Vinotemp delivered today from meijer.com. Seasoning the trays right now and will keep everybody updated with some pics as its happening, nothing too exciting so far.

BTW, I want to get this right and do it the proper way from the start so I am a little anal about doing things. For example, I have purchased 8 Hygrometers, all of the same brand to salt test them and see which 3 I will keep, just want to keep the three with the 75% RH levels. Too bad the success rate is not pretty good right now.

Seasoning with Distilled H2O, cedar under the bowls and 2.5lbs of beads currently. I had cardboard originally holding the H2O but it started to smell like cardboard and replaced with cedar. I have Spanish Cedar trays in there right now that will hold my singles until my drawers/trays get done.

Put a cork to plug up the drainage hole and have left off the power to the Vinotemp to start with. Once up to speed after seasoning, will turn on unit and go from there.

Thanks,

Bart

[thechenman]

Looking good there Bart.

[Habanos2000]

Nice avatar!

[Bartolomeo]

Update tonight on project, had to start over for different reasons and back to seasoning the Cedar trays using the new Ranco system, so far so good

Bart

Electricians Putty

Ranco Temperature Control

Second hole drilled through the bottom using the drain hole inside

Left overs after tearing drain out

New line of cigars I am starting, Vinotemp Robustos

Inside look, tried to keep it as clean looking as possible

Putty that sealed where the Ranco temperature cord came in through original drain hole

[Tampa1257]

Question? Does the VinoTemp not create Condensation? If it does, why would you block off the drainage hole? Sounds to me that by doing what you have done will start with a Mold experiment about to happen. Just wondering.

[Bartolomeo]

Question? Does the VinoTemp not create Condensation? If it does, why would you block off the drainage hole? Sounds to me that by doing what you have done will start with a Mold experiment about to happen. Just wondering.

Thats a great question, once the Vino is up and running in ideal conditions, between the fan and beads and everything else in it, there should not be much condensation. Per other users of the Vino, a lot of them only get condensation periodically through out the year. I plugged up the hole to seal the unit and have no chance of RH leaking, to keep more of a controlled environment. So far so good but mold was one of my converns until I spoke with other users of the Vino

Bart

[CigarmanTim]

I never get condensation. Also, I have 3 spanish cedar shelves that are 1/4".

[PigFish]

Question? Does the VinoTemp not create Condensation? If it does, why would you block off the drainage hole? Sounds to me that by doing what you have done will start with a Mold experiment about to happen. Just wondering.

Plugging the drain hole... bad idea! When the ambient temperature reaches 3 degrees from the dew point you will get visible precipitation (condensations).

There are pluses and minuses with all types of coolers, including Peltier types. The fact that they cool more slowly than compressor systems is a double edged sword. Depending on the accuracy of your controls and the type of humidification system that you install, you could end up with a swamp! If you use passive systems and your homes ambient temp is close to that of your cooler you will likely be happy. If you run at a constant high differential temperature and use an active humidification system you will likely have a swimming pool at the bottom. You should at the very least attempt to channel the "runoff" into a closed vessel for several reasons. Good luck. - The Pig

[Bartolomeo]

Got some CPU fans and an Oasis.........trying to decide best place to mount fans and Oasis in the Vino

Hopefully have some pics later today

Bart

[thechenman]

Looking forward to seeing pics of the finished product.

[thechenman]

Looking forward to seeing pics of the finished product.

[Bartolomeo]

Maybe the 3rd time really is the charm......This is the 3rd time me messing with this Vinotemp.......Something was just not right so I decided to add an Oasis XL and a CPU fan to pimp this Vinotemp out.........I know its overkill but if I get my ideal RH levels, its worth every penny to me

Enjoy!

Bart

Me rigging the wires together for the CPU fan

Taped them together b/c I am not an Electrician

Adaptor needed between fan and AC plug

Me trying out some LT cooling fans but they didnt blow enough air for my taste

3 different types of fans to see what works best, decided to go with the Red one

I put two rubber washers underneath the screws to dampen any noise and give the fan a little more clearance

The infamous "S" drain valve in the Vino

Tried to keep everything clean looking with some ties and new Electricians putty applied

I put velcro on the bottom of the fan so I can move it anytime but yet sturdy enough not to vibrate or make noise when running

Pic of the Oasis and fan

Bottom view of the set up

Starting the whole process over again

Threw some beads in to start the process but the rest of the beads are in the Tupperware with the smokes, resting until Vino is up and fully functional

Last picture for now, will post more soon after I throw the smokes in there

[Guest rob]

Welcome to the world of thermo fridge cigar storage. I have been a long term user and have many of them. They are awesome!

I'm not sure about the climate where you live... but if you do have hot summers (and the fridge is in a normally temperate room)... then Piggy is right - you will end up with a truckload of condensate at the bottom.

As Piggy said (and proven also by my own experiences), if the differential between the temperature inside the fridge and the ambient room temp is more than 3 degrees... you will begin to create condensation. Also, the higher that differential - the exponentially more condensation you will have pooling at the bottom.

And trust me - you can not put enough beads into the system to catch and redistribute that moisture. Saturation of the beads occurs very quickly (days). You will need to remove them and dry them out as they will literally be dripping wet.

Also, don't make the mistake of putting cigars, boxes or cedar so that they touch the walls, doors, ceiling or floor of the fridge. Major sadness will ensue if you do.

[PigFish]

The Oasis is an active humidification system. I don't own any but I do know a little about the theory.

I am not going to claim to know all there is about these systems, but like Rob I have used a few... and built a few... made mistakes, a few potentially costly, caused and solved problems and created workable solutions. My advice is unsolicited and not meant to be offensive so please don't take it the wrong way.

You may very well be headed for a disaster here!

1) Take your wood and make a false back, spaced away from your back wall and your cooling fan.

2) Place any, all circulation fans in the back wall where there will always be some free space for circulation.

3) Clear the drain hole or provide some means to bottle your condensation.

4) Make a platform for the bottom.

5) Remove all metal shelves, and replace them with a less conductive material, like wood. Once the shelves cool, especially around the cooling system, and are contacted with moist air from the oasis they will condense water and start a rain forest in your project!

6) Cool air as well as moist air needs circulation assistance OR remove your oasis altogether.

7) Stock the unit and use your Oasis to bring the ambient humidity close to where you prefer it. Introduce your beads to acclimatize them as well.

8) Remove the Oasis and run the units cooler in small increments to reduce the temp in the box, perhaps 1 degree a day.

9) Don't attempt to refrigerate your cigars, know where you want to go and why. 68 degrees works well for me.

10) Accept the drying effect of the cooling system, it is physics at work and you can't stop it. Once the climate comes to equilibrium you will need to provide little in the way of additional water.

11) Since you do not have a way of moving air linked to humidification changes without adding additional water to the system, you may wish to add a line voltage fan and run it off a cheap digital timer, set it to run several times a day for set periods just to make sure you don't get dry spots.

12) Bag all your loose cigars in the beginning at least... just in case!

Good luck again! -Piggy

[Bartolomeo]

Thanks for the comments/suggestions, they all make sense and I appreciate it, thats why we are here, to share info with each other

1. I have custom shelves and drawers coming from Chasidor in a couple of weeks, so that will be the real set up when they arrive

2. I have my CPU fan in the middle of the bottom floor blowing up to keep things moving around and made it possible where I can put a shelf on the 2nd notch from the bottom as to not take up too much space

3. The room temp(my office) stays around 73* usually.........as I type this, I took out the bowls of H2O this morning and I am getting a reading of 68*/68%RH right now in the Vino, which is empty except the 65% beads/Oasis and cedar planks currently in there absorbing moisture. I had the RH% up to 70% this morning and decided to take the H2O out. My goal is to get it settled around 67%RH for a couple of days and then put the smokes in, b/c adding the cigars will lower the RH a little bit. Goal here is 65%RH for my Vino and I understand that will vary slightly from top to bottom, hence why I added the CPU fan. I will take out the metal shelves and cedar planks once the real shelves/drawers arrive. The drawers will have optional glass tops to minimize any spikes in RH% due to opening and closing of the Vino.

4. The Oasis may be overkill but just testing it right now to see if I need it

5. Getting some condensation but nothing to worry about so far

6. I have about 3lbs of 65% beads spread out on every shelf to help as well...........they are about 60% wet with 40% dry(White in color)

7. I live in Raleigh, NC where we do get 4 seasons here and the Summers are hot but I try and combat that with house running around 71* at night and 73* during the day.

8. I took out the drain so I could route all wires through the bottom and keep a clean look, used Electricians putty to put a tight seal on it

I am going to raise the Ranco external temp controller device to 68*, turn off Oasis and see where this gets me to kind of experiment

Questions

1. Do you think I should run CPU fan 24/7 or put it on a timer?

Thanks,

Bart

[PigFish]

I treat conditioned air as a fluid added to the humidor. Any fluid added needs to be dispersed as quickly as possible as to not over saturate the humidor, causing another problem. Cool air and humidified air are therefore the same as far as I am concerned; they are fluid products "added" to the humidor.

Conditioned air serves two purposes: 1) to cool the humidor and 2) to dry the humidor. Humidified air serves only 1 purpose... to add water to the air. There is a fine balance between circulation of the two fluids and how they affect each other since each directly counter acts the other.

If your system will ultimately rely on the return of a desired ambient from the saturated interior in equilibrium (a reasonable and stable approach to the problem of low RH) then I would look to run the circulation fan with the refrigeration fan in order to spread the "fluid" (cool air) as quickly as possible. The faster you reduce the temperature in the enclosure the less the "cooler" will strip water from the system. It is like balancing; react quickly, recover quickly. React slowly and you may end up in at a resonance bouncing between extremes with your systems working all the time to counteract each other. What you don't have is a non-cooling dryer. This is why most sealed systems with active humidification systems creep up on their own.

If you use a line voltage fan you can connect it up with the cooler circuit in parallel to run when it does. In an almost airtight environment like your cooler once you have the interior at approximately 65RH it will bounce from low 60's depending on the ambient temp of the home, to 65 again without much active humidification. You may need to add the Oasis back into the mix in winter as the whole home dries out and as your internal ambient creeps below the mark. High humidity will likely be a larger problem. Active systems just put too much water into a sealed system causing the creep. You can counteract that several ways... but I am not taking on that aspect here and now.

If you can't run the fan with the cooler, it is quite easy I assure you, I would time the fan and not run it full time. The fan will eventually wear out as well as cause heat and if it burns up it will likely stink your cigars beyond repair. I have burned up a cooling fan in a computer case before; it actually caught fire! Rare... yes, but is it worth it? You decide.

[Bartolomeo]

I treat conditioned air as a fluid added to the humidor. Any fluid added needs to be dispersed as quickly as possible as to not over saturate the humidor, causing another problem. Cool air and humidified air are therefore the same as far as I am concerned; they are fluid products "added" to the humidor.

Conditioned air serves two purposes: 1) to cool the humidor and 2) to dry the humidor. Humidified air serves only 1 purpose... to add water to the air. There is a fine balance between circulation of the two fluids and how they affect each other since each directly counter acts the other.

If your system will ultimately rely on the return of a desired ambient from the saturated interior in equilibrium (a reasonable and stable approach to the problem of low RH) then I would look to run the circulation fan with the refrigeration fan in order to spread the "fluid" (cool air) as quickly as possible. The faster you reduce the temperature in the enclosure the less the "cooler" will strip water from the system. It is like balancing; react quickly, recover quickly. React slowly and you may end up in at a resonance bouncing between extremes with your systems working all the time to counteract each other. What you don't have is a non-cooling dryer. This is why most sealed systems with active humidification systems creep up on their own.

If you use a line voltage fan you can connect it up with the cooler circuit in parallel to run when it does. In an almost airtight environment like your cooler once you have the interior at approximately 65RH it will bounce from low 60's depending on the ambient temp of the home, to 65 again without much active humidification. You may need to add the Oasis back into the mix in winter as the whole home dries out and as your internal ambient creeps below the mark. High humidity will likely be a larger problem. Active systems just put too much water into a sealed system causing the creep. You can counteract that several ways... but I am not taking on that aspect here and now.

If you can't run the fan with the cooler, it is quite easy I assure you, I would time the fan and not run it full time. The fan will eventually wear out as well as cause heat and if it burns up it will likely stink your cigars beyond repair. I have burned up a cooling fan in a computer case before; it actually caught fire! Rare... yes, but is it worth it? You decide.

PM sent

[Bartolomeo]

Just added 3 cigar boxes to absorb some RH so when I put smokes in them in will be an easy transition from their current environment

Bart

[PigFish]

Check your PM. -R

[Tampa1257]

I owned a Haier Winecooler for several years and used it to store my cigars because I lived in Florida, where you need Temp control as bad as rh control. I upgraded to an Aristocrat Temp and RH unit.

The reason I asked about the Condensation is from personal experience and the almost loss of several hundred cigars.

Piggy can help you prevent this from happening, even if you do life where there are 4 seasons.

[Ginseng]

Absolutely some amazing advice and experience on display here. You just can't game thermodynamics. I know where to go should I ever want to whip one of these up.

Wilkey

[Bartolomeo]

Update on Humidor:

Had the RH and Temp levels where I wanted them but had a issue with the condensation occuring, so I wanted to fix that issue and move forward. Here are some random pics and comments

-My goal is to have all of my crap on the floor to be below the second notch up, so I can put my shelves in when they are ready, so basically nothing above that height is my plan, so far so good

-I have about 3.5 lbs of beads in the humi spread out in bags, Overkill I know, but it will keep the RH more stable when opening/closing the humi

-I have 4 different brands of Hygrometers but all are accurate so I cant complain

I use to get that fine dust from the beads so I came up with a solution that works for me. I take the beads and put them in a strainer to shake out the excess small particles which helps reduce the fine dust you some time see in your humidor. You lose about 1-2% but not a big deal when you have no more dust

Pic of the leftovers in the sink

Some humidity sheets I got from Heartfelt, I was originally going to use it to suck the excess condensation but dont like that idea now b/c of possible mildew/mold problems down the road

Bought a thin, rubber cutting board @ Walmart to shape a funnel to drain the excess condensation down the middle of the exisitng channel, used Black duct tape to help. Its important when you do this, to keep the original ridges along the side of the channel so the condensation doesnt spill on either side. The White cutting board was an exact shape of the channel to help out.

Bought a butter dish to collect the condensation as an experiement. I dried my 65% beads completely White so they could suck up all of the moisture. The cutting board drains into the butter dish, I use a stick or a pen to move the beads around once in a while to make sure all moisture in the dish is equal. I then moved my fan to blow on the channel and bead dish to help dry it out, this has helped immensely. I like this dish b/c its clear and I can see whats going on, I have a bigger one but its White.

Fan on top of beads blowing down on bead dish, I need to rework this to clean it up a little bit

Cutting board I used b/c I couldnt find any of the binder page dividers others here use

Dymo Letra Label maker I use to band all of my singles along with the Heartfelt bands

Waiting for their new mansion to be ready

Beads before I put the fan on them

[Bartolomeo]

Let me say Piggy was a huge help with this experiment of mine

He knows his ****

Bart

[Bartolomeo]

Here is an update on my humi:

-My Vino ideal range is 62-65%RH and 65-67* Temp, currently I am achieving this since 95% of my smokes are CC and I have found they like a lower RH than the NC

-I have a fan blowing up @ the front glass of the Vino and a fan on the top shelf blowing towards the front glass for great airflow, I have found the added airflow benefits my Vino rather than just using the original fan the Vino came with

-I have farted around with this Vino the last couple of weeks and definitely overanalyzed everything but got it where I want/need it for my evergrowing stash

-I put a board in front of the Vino fan to help spread the air out a little more and really like this idea, this will allow me to put boxes directly in front/top/bottom of the fan and not have to worry about it. There is enough room between the board and fan as well. The middle section of the fan sucks air in where the four sides blow the cool air out, learned that as well. Also with the board, I am able to push the Vino metal shelf all of the way back, so I am not eliminating any room using the board

-I took the Heartfelt beads out of my condensation tray b/c it would be non distilled water accumulating in there and making a mess, this way I just dump it every couple of days/weeks depending on how much is in there

-The fans and Vino are plugged into an surge protector, which is plugged into the Ranco temp controller, so all three run at the same time and no need for a timer for the two fans

-I am waiting on shelves/drawers so will use boxes and cedar trays for now

-I replaced my Oasis sponge with water beads

-I will post pics of the smokes very soon

-I tried the following scenarios with no luck......unplugged w/ no fan, unplugged w/ fan, plugged w/ no fan, plugged w/ fan.........This is located in my office on the second floor in my NC home, it does get hot here but the room temp avg is about 73* during day and 71* at night in the Summer

-I left the hole at the bottom of the Vino open, to let the Vino "breathe" if you will

-It looks messy right now but it will be cleaned up when the shelves/drawers get here

-Again, I overanalyzed everything but it works correctly and thats what was most important to me

Thanks,

Bart

[thechenman]

Nice work there...impressive.