Whole room humidifiers for storing puerh?

[Rickpatbrown]

I'm new to the world of puerh and live in Maryland (east coast - US). I'd like to start building a collection of cakes that will be good in the upcoming decades.

We have hot and humid summers and cool to cold winters. Running the heat in November -March dries out the house pretty well. I bough a hygrometer to monitor the relative humidity in my bedroom (where I store my puerh in an open cabinet. I see around 40% RH and the room is around 63F. I take a shower with the door open and the exhaust fan off and the RH jumps to about 60%, but that is gone in about an hour after the shower every morning.

I was thinking of buying a humidifier for my room. I don't know if I want a pumidor. They seem like airflow could be an issue and if you mess up something, you could easily destroy a lot of money worth of tea. Humidifying the whole room seems safer to me. Plus, it would be nice to not wake up with a dry throat in the morning.

Do people have experience with humidifiers? They look like an appliance that gets mixed reviews. Mold, cleaning, mist, leaking, clogging all sorts of problems are prevalent. Evaporative humidifiers sound like they work the best, but need constant filter replacement.

-Or maybe, I should just spend the money and buy aged cakes. But, that's probably another thread.

[There is no self]

I can't comment on whole room storage, but if you have radiators you can use one of these to increase humidity:

https://goo.gl/images/rzt2RY

I don't really know what they're called in English. You basically fill them with water and hang them to the radiator. They work well if the room is not too big.

[Rickpatbrown]

I can't comment on whole room storage, but if you have radiators you can use one of these to increase humidity:

https://goo.gl/images/rzt2RY

I don't really know how they're called in English. You basically fill them with water and hang them to the radiator. They work well if the room is not too big.

Ahh. Those look pretty smart and easy enough to keep clean. I don't have radiators, though. I have a furnace that blows hot, dry air out of vents.

[Stephen]

I keep tea in a small room (walk-in closet size) that is used for tea and storage. I use an ultrasonic humidifier during really dry times. It works, but the humidity eventually dissipates. Using distilled water cuts down on mold, dust issues. I keep some houseplants in there and they help keep humidity stable. Whether or not this results in good tea over the years I don't know.

In your situation perhaps try a closed cabinet. This could keep out odors and help stabilize humidity. The humidity stays fairly stable in my closed tea cabinet. I open it in higher humidity and keep it closed otherwise.

[Atlas]

Evaporative humidifiers with a bacteriostatic solution are probably your best bet. If your water isn't too hard you shouldn't be replacing filters more than once every 3-6 months.

Honeywell makes a good one. The bottle of bacstat will last you ages.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FJ ... UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V ... UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000R ... UTF8&psc=1

As for the sense and safety of humidifying a whole room in the first place, I'm not sure how many people have a decent amount of experience with that over a decent period of time. Temperature seems to be important, too.

[the_skua]

I live near the east coast (central NY) and I've been running a whole room humidifier for about a year now and am giving up. Right now, in January, it can't keep up. I'm barely keeping 40% RH in the room with my tea and the temp is often in the low 60s. Most importantly, I am very unhappy with the condition that many of my mid to older teas are in right now. They're very dry and acidic (I just put a 2007 Changtai blend into conditioning and found it was holding only 41% RH!).

I am actively switching to a hot box (https://mgualt.com/tealog/2018/08/04/te ... w2t-bosch/) held at around 80F, conditioning with 69% Boveda packs, before sealing in mylar bags.

After ~10 years of owning teas in NY and RI, I now firmly believe that passively aging in most of the northern US is not effective. Through the hot box, I'm seeking to mimic storage conditions I've enjoyed (Taiwan, Malaysia). So, your point of buying only aged tea is a potentially viable route, if a more expensive one.

[Rickpatbrown]

I live near the east coast (central NY) and I've been running a whole room humidifier for about a year now and am giving up. Right now, in January, it can't keep up. I'm barely keeping 40% RH in the room with my tea and the temp is often in the low 60s. Most importantly, I am very unhappy with the condition that many of my mid to older teas are in right now. They're very dry and acidic (I just put a 2007 Changtai blend into conditioning and found it was holding only 41% RH!).

I am actively switching to a hot box (https://mgualt.com/tealog/2018/08/04/te ... w2t-bosch/) held at around 80F, conditioning with 69% Boveda packs, before sealing in mylar bags.

After ~10 years of owning teas in NY and RI, I now firmly believe that passively aging in most of the northern US is not effective. Through the hot box, I'm seeking to mimic storage conditions I've enjoyed (Taiwan, Malaysia). So, your point of buying only aged tea is a potentially viable route, if a more expensive one.

I ended up going the pumidor route. Using saturated salt solutions, I get in the 65% RH range and seems pretty foolproof.

Now, I'm realizing my problem might be temps. I cant keep the thermostat at 70. I'd melt. Id love to heat things up a bit, though. I feel like this is where you can really run into some problems with destroying tea. I started looking into making a wifi controlled thermostat, but quickly realized my electronic skills are not up to snuff.

Make sure you post your hotbox setup in the Puerh storage thread! I'dove to see it.