I keep looking at my hygrometer and it is always above 50%. This is most unusual for Vienna, Austria,. where I expect to be running the Venta humidifier at this time of the year. I thought at first that the meter must be bust; but it seems to be working and the treble crack on my double hasnt opened up.
Can this be because I have turned the central heating down from 21°C to 19.5°C in response to the quadrupling of energy costs? It seems a large effect for such a small change.
I struggled with humidity for the first 18 of my 20-year sojourn here in Noreg. I live in the mountains as far from the sea as once can be and humidity I side my house is a constant problem. I heat using propane to keep the level up but, in a relatively small room, I’ve also had the humidifier pouring 6l of moisture into the air.
Until three years ago. I have sold all my instruments and don’t need a humidifier but the level remains at between 40 and 60%.
It’s obviously global warming. It’s also odd that it’s 1 degree outside. In the old days, it is usually between -15 and -30.
Le 29/11/2022 19:07, David Pickett via The Jackrail écrit :
I keep looking at my hygrometer and it is always above 50%. This is
most unusual for Vienna, Austria,. where I expect to be running the
Venta humidifier at this time of the year. I thought at first that the
meter must be bust; but it seems to be working and the treble crack on
my double hasnt opened up.
Can this be because I have turned the central heating down from 21°C
to 19.5°C in response to the quadrupling of energy costs? It seems a
large effect for such a small change.
What is the experience of others?
The RH is also rather high for the season here (in France). I think 1.5°
less will only raise the RH by 4 or 5%.
It’s a humidity calculator. I’ve played a bit with it and it seems that you could experience a variation of humidity of about 5-7 percent when the temperature changes of 2°C.
Nobody’s experience seems to match mine closely, but here’s a digest, FWIW.
My hygrometer has never lived in a humidified environment. It has been in 5 different houses of which 4 had central heating and 1 had gas stoves. The hygrometer seldom registers below 70% - usually when very cold, dry, & windy; this is true, approximately, for all the houses. A more normal reading is 78-80%, whether winter or summer. Now it’s 78% & the outdoor temp. = 5ºC.
Mostly the hygrometer has lived in a room with a radiator & an open door. Other rooms with radiators may have their doors open or closed at various times, or the radiator in a room might be turned off if I don’t need to heat that room. In general the timer on the thermostat turns on the heating for an hour or so in the morning & another hour or so in the evening, and at other times if I choose to override the timer.
Pitch & tuning are quite stable : last tuned in mid-September, still close to a=392Hz and reasonably in tune, excepting the lowest ½ 8ve {GG AA BB CC}. The instrument is historically conceived, based on the 1688 Richard at Yale.
Occasionally the humidity drops to 60% or even slightly below; then a small crack in the soundboard opens a bit.
I can’t think of any other relevant details, but if anybody has questions, please ask.
I’ve always heard that things are better in Europe, including humidity :>) But I had no idea of the difference those of you near oceans experience. Here in the US state of Minnesota where winter temperatures can reach -30 c, indoor humidity can plummet to 10% if there is no compensating humidifier.
Even instrument museums such as the Vermillion SD facility give up on trying to bring winter indoor humidity above 40% lest the double-insulated windows condense water and lead to rot and mold. The fact that some of you are experiencing indoor winter humidity of 70% is hard to imagine.
Certainly, if your winter temps are a lot higher these days, and the outdoor humidity percentages the same, you’ll need less heating which will result in a higher indoor relative humidity, all other things being equal.
I trust you have a modern hygrometer. Older stretched-hair hygrometers are notoriously inaccurate.
At the University of Minnesota back in the 1990’s I was custodian (janitor) and one of my areas was the rare documents room of the Music Library. It was kept at 50% humidity year round. It had seals on all the doors and was separated from the rest of the library with a glass wall. In building it, they would have had to put in special vapor barriers and used special construction to avoid mold. Going in there in the winter felt like being teleported to the tropics:)
They didn’t bother with that sort of climate control for the pianos, harpsichords, chamber organ, etc. It would have been impossibly cost prohibitive. And there was no point either, especially if they were just going to be hauled out into the concert hall and its likely 15% winter (or 80% summer) relative humidity.
That said, my 23 year old ZHI single has yet to crack in those kind of climatic extremes. I do get the problem of bottoming out the keys before they pluck in the summer. I will need to hang the keyboard from the wrestplank ala Skowroneck when I restring one of these days.