Coolerdor

Well, I finally bought a cooler and an oust fan. I've been training growing quantities of cat litter for a couple of months, so I have about 3 pounds now to put in a 70qt cooler. That may be overkill, but I don't suppose it should hurt anything.

The good news is that I have emptied out the three tupperware containers that were training beads and holding cigars, I have room for the box of Puros Indios that's been sitting on my living room floor for 5 days now, and the two boxes of cigars for my brother's bachelor party that showed up last night have a home to rest in.

BTW- I think this is a pretty good deal on a cooler- the 70qt was just under $40 at Wal-mart.

Well, I took a bunch of pics with my new camera. Then I deleted them all instead of uploading them to my computer. Along with all the pics from my sister in law's bridal shower...

DOH!!!

I'm usually pretty good with technology. Today's just not my day. If I have time tomorrow I'll try to take some more pics and post them, I have to get to work now.

That would be cool, I'll wait until I try that to take anymore pics.

Most of this is probably already detailed somewhere, but I didn't come up with all the info in the first few results of the search I ran, so here it is:

You can buy silica humidification beads for about $22/lb. They are set to either 60%, 65%, or 75% RH, depending on your preference. They do a really great job of holding a specific humidity for you, able to both absorb when RH is too high, and emit when it is too low. They can be recharged by misting them with a spray bottle, or by simply putting another humidification device in the humi near the beads. If you live in a really humid climate and they get over-full of moisture, they can be gently warmed in the oven or in the sun to dry them out a bit.

The money saving secret here is that instead of paying $22/lb, you can go to Petsmart and buy 8lb of Exquisicat Pearls cat litter for about $12. As near as anyone can tell, they're exactly the same thing. The downside is that the cat litter beads aren't preset to a humidity. In fact, they're pretty darn dry. You have to "train" them to the RH you want. You lightly mist them (easy to overdo), then place them in a humidified environment of the RH that you want to reach, and let them sit for about a week or so.

As I've been doing this, I've come up with some hints and tips to make it easy/cheap. One product I've found particularly useful has been the big chunks of "wet florist foam" I got at Walmart for about $2-3 (I've only actually used the very end of one of the three bricks of foam I got). First, I pour about 1" of beads in the bottom of a tupperware. Then I mist them with distilled water from a spray bottle, and stir them up. Then I place florist foam wetted with 50/50 propylene glycol/distilled water, along with a digital hygrometer in the tupperware and seal the lid. (I put the foam in a little bowl so it doesn't come in direct contact with the beads and contaminate them with PG)

After several hours, I check the humidity. If it is too high, I stir the beads and take out the foam. If it is too low, I stir the beads. Then seal it for several more hours, and check again. If it was too high twice in a row, I've probably over-misted. This is easily solved by adding some more dry beads, and continuing the process. If it has been too low on two checks in succession, just a little more misting may be in order.

Continue to check it 3-4 times a day until the humidity has stabilized at your desired target for several checks in a row. Then you can just check once every day or two. Every time you check, give the beads a little stir, just to make sure everything is proceeding evenly.

Once the first batch has been training about a week, I use it to help train more beads. I just pour more dry beads into the mix and give it a light misting, then stir. The beads that are already trained smooth out the process and make it easier to hit your target RH.

Doc- Thanks for the camera help, I got all the pics back. (Saved my @$$!)

Here are some shots of the collection.