solly wrote:RH in my house the last couple of months has been in the high 30's to low 40's. I have a 300 ct desktop and 2 100 ct desktops as well as a large coolidore for boxes. All are down to 58-59 RH except for the 300 which I open every day and it will drop to 54-55 easy enough. I have been using the humi-care jars with the blue beads but I think its time to invest in the heartfelt beads. I did a forum search and everything I read was helpful. I am leaning toward the 65% RH beads. Any thoughts? Also for those of you who use them, would you recommend the tubes or other containers they sell...or would you just go with the beads and bags then plop em in a tupperware?
True beads, like HF and HCM, work faster and more efficiently as the exposed area is increased. To illustrate, if you were to pack a volume of beads into a perforated tube the size of a 12oz soda can, it would work more slowly than if you were to spread that same volume of beads out on a cookie sheet / 12 " x 18" baking pan. We're talking minutes versus hours here, to cigars it's all the same, they aren't that sensitive, so whichever container fits better into your humidor will be fine.
Humi-Care aren't really beads, they are chunks of super-absorbent polymer gel. The company has been erroneously referring to them as "beads" for some time now. This is basically similar or possibly even the the same stuff as you can find in the garden isle at most hardware stores as "Water storing crystals", "aquabeads", "hydrosorb gel" etc. It's a fine powder crystal that blows up like 1000x when it absorbs moisture and then shrinks back down as it gives it off. They work, but they are kind of slow and don't do a very good job of absorbing excess humidity from the air. They are much better at releasing humidity.