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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?

do you live in a cold part of the country? it is relative humidity, don't forget.

most important info is...how are they smoking?

I use 65 rh boveda packs and just got a digital hygrometer. Turns out my big humidor is hovering around 60 RH. I think during these dry winter months I'm going to have to try to get some 69 rh boveda packs. My analog hygrometer read 65 rh. I'm recalibrating it now.

I also used some clear masking tape and blocked off 1/2 the hvac duct that was blowing down towards my humidor. my furnace does not add humidity, would be nice if it did.

Ran into this issue, gets some beads.
Bring your RH back up. They will be fine.
They smoked like champs.

Less is better than more.

It's my understanding that most if not all of the Humi-Care products are propylene glycol based which I've never found very affective in stabilizing humidity levels in a humidor. Once I started using Heartfelt beads I've never had a problem with humidity control. The boveda packs are good but expensive. I used their calibration kit and an adjustable hygrometer. I also put two or three hygrometers in my tower humidor. I use beads in it even though it has an active humidification system. You can skip this pantyhose and just spread the beads in a small tupperware container. Pantyhose are a good idea if you are trying to stay on the cheap. YMMV

I vote for the pantyhose. I had the Tupperware in there first but as soon a I lifted the humidor crooked, they dumped all over the place.
Instead of buying pantyhose, just go to a shoe store a grab a few of the "trying shoes on" nylons. They are free and are a decent size for the humidor.

Buy Beads.

Just say NO to kitty litter.

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.

Wheel = twink?

Haha wheels insult got a noob to join just to post a reply.

Welcome to cbid.

hahahaha awesome first post bub. You'll fit right in.

Here is a link with good RH information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_humidity

Don't let the whole Partial Pressure thing throw you off.
Here is what the word Relative means in RH. "Relative humidity depends on temperature and the pressure of the system of interest."