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That sucks.

Regardless of your humidor of choice, climate controlled or not, you should be using two way humidification. Takes a lot of the maintenance away and they work. I run a couple pounds of heartfelt beads and about a dozen Boveda packs. Every once in a while I saturate the beads and the Bovedas take up the excess.

Same setup and method of operation here but I use the jars of super-absorbent polymer beads saturated with 50/50 solution, not the silica beads.

Works great and identically. The Bovedas self-recharge, all you do is refill the jars occasionally. Near-zero effort, I love it.

I use 116-quart Sterilite containers with handles that snap up to lock over the lid. Not a perfect seal, but pretty good, which is what you want for a cigar container. In each of these containers, I typically have 2-4 of the 4-oz polymer bead 50/50 jars and about 4 Bovedas (69%).
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don't stop now!

I was considering a pound of heartfelt beads to put in the pan but I had trouble with a small batch of those back when I still had a desktop humidor and was first getting into cigars a year ago. I believe I washed the salts off them. They would put off 71-74% despite not dripping wet. Instead of dealing with that again I decided on the homemade Boveda since that is way cheaper than Boveda or beads. I also wonder what kind of salt(s) they are using on those beads. From what I read no one has any issues with them so I am going to say it was user error on my part.



Thank you for your reply, after going through the trouble I have I agree 100% on this one and will recommend it to anyone who runs cabinets. Everyone I have seen running the previous version of the Remington and Reagans use water or floral beads and have no issues that they talk about. It had me expecting I could just dump water in there and be good to go but that was not the case. Thankfully the floral beads are cheap (I think I paid $6 for what will add up to a lifetime supply if I ever find a use for them).

Since my second reply, it has been running as perfect as I imagine they can run. It averages 68% and 68F according to my Govee APP and it never runs a dehumidification cycle (only a cooling cycle when the temp gets high). Long story short. Just buy Boveda at the average RH you want or make your own solution and seal it in something that only allows water vapor out. (HDPE is working out for me but it's very thin).

Well I'll be damned!!!
The cow's tryin' ta milk the tittums!

That's a first...

I am still working on a salt-only solution for this but I did find something on the topic:

https://www.teaforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=177&start=45

He is using sugar which I am trying to avoid based on one of the patent documents on the Boveda page:



It is certainly easier to do this than figure out the salt ratios (I have a working 68% solution of just salt and vegetable glycerin but that is a sugar so there is the "cycle" limit).

I might just say to hell with it and work with sugars+sodium chloride. It's not like it costs anywhere near $6 to make the pack but I am aiming for something long term rechargeable I can just swap in and out of the humidor as they get dehydrated.

Another interesting thing that is suggested in the above link is to the use of the mail packets as a material for only allowing water vapor through so I am tempted to try those as these packing air pillows are a bit thin and less puncture resistant. Cigars daily has been featuring one of the Boveda guys in a few of his videos lately and in the first they literally cut open a boveda bag and if they are using Hytrel as suggested in the patents then that stuff looks pretty stretchy and durable. I am not overly worried about dropping, breaking, puncturing, etc of the air pillows but it would be nice to have something less vulnerable.

I will leave you with the water xanthan gum ratio I decided on. It is doing the job of keeping salts from settling in the bottom perfectly:

Water Solution:

1500G Distilled Water
20G Xanthan Gum

I shook it up in a gallon jug as that has plenty of air room to help break down the Xanthan Gum. It is best to add the Xanthan Gum and give it a few good shakes then leave it sit for an hour and shake a few more times every hour. The Xanthan Gum likes to clump together like flour in water but the clumps eventually reach a saturation point that you will get a good mix.

If you got kids, you could add green food dye to it and it would be the perfect green slime. Probably should add the dye to the water before the Xanthan gum though.

You must have got one of the domestic models. Bummer dude.

Well educated is being a bit too kind. And to be honest, this has become my new obsession since I gave up vaping a few years ago (I was mixing my own juices and what not). It's more waiting for things to fail or succeed, a few minutes to add something, a few more minutes to dump it and mix a new test batch.

I just don't like the beads because they are prone to user error as I have found. I am sure if you took a measured set of beads that have been in the oven and are completely dry you could then find the right measurement of water to add then later go "well it weighs this much so it needs this much water. They also run the risk of washing off the salts they are coated in that offer the set humidity they are rated for which I am sure I did and things went over their 70% rating. Thankfully this was back when I was still limited to a very cheap and leaky desktop humidor so I was rewatering those beads at least once per week so I only bought a small tube. "Pounds of beads" are going to cost more than these salts would on Amazon so once I figure things out I can provide my results and save the next guy money.

Right now I am waiting for some new salts to come in as well as an AWS-100 scale since I want to be able to measure things in less than gram quantities. I am no chemist by any means so this is trial and error as well as learning some interesting things. For instance, 1 gram of sodium citrate, citric acid, and ammonium chloride with 3 grams of water causes the liquid to become completely clear but then a day later it will become as white as milk. I didn't keep records of these because I could never keep them below 71% humidity even with good old sodium chloride added. I have a feeling I am using too much of the acids since I get that milk white chemical reaction so the AWS-100 will help with that (I am limited to whole gram measurements for now).

As for my time and value of that time, my job is in tech support so there is a good deal of waiting for a problem to come in before I do my actual job. I take that time to tweak whatever mixture I am testing at the moment. I've become obsessed with what is basically "DIY Boveda" because they can be dropped in and you don't have to worry. I worried every day about my humidor until I gave up on using it's humidification system as intended which was causing all kinds of fluctuations. A working recipe can be easily remade, or you can recharge them just like the actual Boveda (though I recommend recharging without them coming in contact with a pool of water as that risks adding too much water). It is a geat system and fun chemistry.

GREAT ADVICE!

I would add that when first switching over to the Heartfelt Beads, it is a good idea to put them in just as they come without adding any distilled water to the bags, or whatever you end up putting them in.

This takes full advantage of the "Two Way" system and allows the user to get a good sense of how their humidor actually behaves when it comes to maintaining a stable RH. This is especially true when you are dealing with a larger box that is all cedar lined. After a few days of close monitoring with an accurate digital hygrometer, ( I would recommend the Boveda Butler Sensor) you will know which direction you need to take the box in. Either leaving the beads dry and allow them to stabilize the environment, or adding distilled water to a portion of them to raise the RH to a higher level.

Personally, I use (2) NewAir CC-300H and (1) 100H, maintained with a Cigar Oasis PLUS 3.0 in each of the 300s, and a Humicup M1 in the smaller 100H. Since I am only dealing with cedar shelves and drawers along with the sticks and boxes themselves, the majority of the inner surface area is inert and is not contributing to the interior atmosphere in either direction.

I prefer to store all of my cigars at 65% RH, so maintaining that in a stable manner has been relatively easy in these boxes using hardware humidifiers only. My fourth box is a large footprint desktop where I use the 65% Heartfelt Beads exclusively. I find that in a box that isn't directly climate controlled, the 65% beads do a great job maintaining a relatively stable RH, and without the risk of going over the 70% mark, even when things get on the warm side inside the box.

OK. Gotta Know.
Why the handle Tittums???
You a breast man or what?

Actually, I am more a Colonel Sanders leg and thigh man. I came up with the name after the "Titty Sprinkles" Morgan Freeman meme. My fictional full name is "Tittums McSprinkles".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0O7biX22SE