Beads - Too saturated?

Well Im in the process of setting up a small temp Coolidor, its a spare one I have laying around that dosent get much use. Its probably around the 28qt or less maybe. Im only using it until I can decide if I want a 50qt or 70qt cooler and find one I like.

I have a 1/2 lb of beads in a mesh bag currently in there. I dont have any cigars in it yet, so I put some Tupperware containers in there. I had all this in for a few hours and the RH was still only around like 56% or so. When I added distilled water to the beads last night i placed them in a bowl and poured a little bit of the water in, and mixed them around abit(which was a pain in the @ss and made a mess). So I thought that maybe I added too much water to them, so I took a blow dryer to em and dried them out a bit. I set them back in the cooler for about an hour or so and low and be hold the RH was at 68%.

So, is there a point where the beads get too saturated that they dont work correctly?

If your humidity is too high your beads are too wet. Charge them (or dry them) so that about 1/2 the beads are clear and 1/2 are white. Then leave them alone until your humidity cannot be maintained any more. Most of the time a drop in RH below the beads set point will indicate that they need to be recharged, but if you are living in an area that is very humid and the beads are pulling moisture from the air to lower the humidity inside of your humi, you may actually see the humidity rise when they can no longer pull excess humidity from the air. Again, that is the indication that the beads are too wet.

Remember that your credo/beads/whatever is a RH regulating system. This means it might have to lower the RH inside your humi occasionally. And also remember that things happen slowly... usually over days, not hours.

Get a cheap spray bottle from Wally World. Fill it with distilled water and then just spray them down when you need to. Voila...no more mess.

spiffy

Whether the beads are in a bag or in a bowl, you don't need to mix them around. They will automatically obsorb excess moisture. Hence, so many people recommend them. All you need to do is add some water and the beads do all the work for you.

I have my beads in small containers, spread around my coolidor, and use a shot glass to add water. Just don't add too much at one time. Small amounts of water can go a long way. Like Shelby says, the container should have half white beads and half clear beads.

Andrew

I thought for the intial charge of the beads, that 100% of the beads were supposed to be clear. Or at least thats what stated on the package, I think, could be wrong though.

As for adding water afterwards, I do have a spray bottle, but recently Ive been setting a shot glass beside them to absorb from. I think I like this way better so far.

Also I thought it would only take a few hours for the cooler to come up to the correct humidity, guess I was wrong and paniced for nothing.

Well after about a week of the RH staying around ~70% despite me drying the beads out a good bit, I am now recalibrating my hygrometers and starting over from square one.

I think all this trouble is caused by the humidicar calibration packet that I have been using, it might actually be out of date come to think of it, so I have em salt testing right now.:smiley5:

First, I'm presuming these are Viper/Cigarmony programmed beads. You can't oversaturate. Its their nature to regulate RH so long as they have capacity to absorb or expel moisture. The only chance you have of oversturating is when water is clinging to the beads by surface tension, such as when you soaked them.

I live in Colorado, land of ambient RH in the 20's. I routinely soak my beads to charge them without a problem.