Salt Test --- My Hygros are nuts
0 That Guy 0
Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 188
in Cigar 101
I have two digital hygrometers. One I purchased when I got my humidor and the other is an Oregon Scientific weather station hygro. Someone had asked me in my previous thread if they were calibrated correctly but I had just calibrated my 2nd one to match my Oregon Scientific.
So I broke the ol salt test out to test them both. The new hygro read 74% so I marked it as one low. The Oregon Sci. read 72% so I was incorrect in thinking that it was reading right and marked it as 3 low.
Now here's where it gets weird. Since reseasoning my humi I have, for the first time, had some trouble getting the RH to come down (earlier I couldn't get it to stay up) as it was climbing up around 75-77%. So I would just open and close the lid, airing it out, periodically throughout the day until the RH dropped to 60%. Upon shutting it, the RH would start to climb again - it's not a bad problem to have though as I use beads which have started working now.
Anywho.......Both hygros set over night and this morning the new one read 72% which is marked as one low but the Oregon Scientific reads 65%, which is only supposed to be 3 low. How the heck to I make sense of 7% difference? On a side note I am using 65% beads.
So I broke the ol salt test out to test them both. The new hygro read 74% so I marked it as one low. The Oregon Sci. read 72% so I was incorrect in thinking that it was reading right and marked it as 3 low.
Now here's where it gets weird. Since reseasoning my humi I have, for the first time, had some trouble getting the RH to come down (earlier I couldn't get it to stay up) as it was climbing up around 75-77%. So I would just open and close the lid, airing it out, periodically throughout the day until the RH dropped to 60%. Upon shutting it, the RH would start to climb again - it's not a bad problem to have though as I use beads which have started working now.
Anywho.......Both hygros set over night and this morning the new one read 72% which is marked as one low but the Oregon Scientific reads 65%, which is only supposed to be 3 low. How the heck to I make sense of 7% difference? On a side note I am using 65% beads.
Comments
Also remember this is Relative Humidity, which is Relative to the temperature. So if you do your salt test somewhere where the temp is 75* then put the hygro in a humidor that is 65*. You could potentially have issues.
Now, if the hygro was a measure of absolute humidity, THEN the humidity would fluctuate with the temperature because it's measuring humidity against an absolute standard instead of comparing it to whatever the temperature is, instead of being relative to temperature
.
I've learned today that I will never understand my two Hygros and will just have to base my RH on an assumed percentage. I placed them both in the same ziplock in the same rubbermaid and did the salt test. They both read 75% on the dime this morning - it was glorious! I placed them back in the humidor and went out to make insurance calls. Upon returning the Oregon Scientific reads 65% (remember I have 65% beads) and my generic digital reads 70%.
What have I learned from this experiment?