I came after playing poker with some buddies and went to put away some cigars I traded with one of my friends and one of my humidifiers was molding. What can I do to fix or should I buy a new one? By the way I took it out of my humidor. Any info would help. thanks

Just let it dry out ... and then wipe it down with a very weak chlorine solution. Let it air out for awhile ...

... and it will be fine ...

No need to throw away a good humnidor!

Ummm while Slim is right... Don't throw away a humidor... I think you wanted to know what to do about the humidifier. So if you want scrape off the mold and put it back together. If the mold comes back... Buy some wet florist foam from Wally World and refill the one you have after cleaning it...

ajeroth

... too funny.

That one went right over my head ... LOL!

heh heh heh he said HUMnidor

aje nails it had the same problme and it has not returned in months. After it dries charge it with PG.

Tonester666, it's not nice to pick on Slim like that.
I bet it is a nice Humnidor, heheheeeeee. ROFLMCAO!!!

Knof

What tone said.

Once it dries, charge it with 50/50. One of PG's properties is a mold inhibitor.

Ok ,
done the search.....looked through a couple of threads and syill am going to post my problem and am asking the pro's who knows !!

I have , a 2 level plexiglass type store disply humidor ( one you look in the front and the clerk unlocks the back door to retreve your selection ) . anyway...i am seeing a lite dusting...presumably mold on the oasis foam......what now? it's not all covered..it just started recently. any suggestions?
i don't want the stuff to spread and have removed the cigar's to safe harbor in my cooler till this gets rectified ! i have cedar slats in there to absorb and help with fluctuations in RH BUT DIDN'T KNOW IF THIS TYPE "FINE" MOLD ON THE OASIS IS NORMAL???

Mold is bad. Obviously. 🙂

Anyways, if it is mold, you need to get it away from your cigars ASAP. Pull out the humidifier and throw it away. Buy a new one if you need to from CI.

When using your new humidifier, make sure you only use distilled water OR pg solution. I recommend distilled water because it will never negatively impact your cigars' flavors, but others swear by pg. The point is that both will not carry mold into your humidor. Tap water can cause mold, so don't use it.

If you got any mold on the wood of your humidor, you might want to let it dry out a bit and then lightly sand the wood until the mold is gone. Do not use vinegar or anything that can impart a smell into your humidor.

If any of your cigars got mold on them, separate them from the others and smoke them fast. A little mold will not impact the flavor of your smoke, but a lot of mold will.

I'll slit my wrists before I throw out one of my humi's!

I think Russ said throw away a moldy _humidifier_, not a moldy _humidor_.

If a humidor gets mold in it, let the humidor dry out. The mold will die. Wipe off mold growth so it doesn't look tacky. No need to sand, disinfect, or irradiate. Mold will not live if the humidity is too low.

Yes, there will still be mold spores around, ready to grow once again if humidity gets too high, but there's nothing you can do about it; mold spores are everywhere. Maintaining a humidity too low for mold prevents mold growth.

I once received cigars with numerous mold colonies growing on the wrapper. I brushed the offending fungi off, let the cigars dry out a bit too be sure, and put them in a tupperdor. About 4 months later, the mold has not come back.

Control your humidity; there's no need for chemical warfare, and it has no additional benefit.

P.S. Distilled vs. tap water has nothing to do with mold. Any water alone, without regulation of some kind (e.g., PG, Climaxx beads, active device), will generally cause excess humidity and support mold growth.

I agree with everything you said except the water comment.

Distilled water is much less likely to lead to mold than tap water.

I agree with everything you said except the water comment.

Distilled water is much less likely to lead to mold than tap water.

Tap water has dissolved minerals and gasses in it. The gasses leave pretty quickly, I'd guess. Precipitated minerals left behind can eventually clog the humidifier sponge, reducing both its capacity and evaporative surface area, making it less effective.

Any evaporated tap water is essentially distilled water, so the water vapor in the humidor and around the cigars is the same either way.

Do you suspect that a clogged humidifier itself is more prone to mold than an unclogged one? Or that it regulates humidity at a higher level? Just curious.

Hmm, interesting and valid point. You are right regarding the precipitates, but that is just one issue regarding tap water.

I just got off the phone with a real source, her name is Linda Himmelbaur and she is the EPA water expert for the Rocky Mountain region. We are good friends and I have heard her lecture on water quality many times.

She says that tap water contains many contaminates including mold spores. Even though the amounts are extremely small, they do exist in standard tap water but do not exist in distilled water.

Does anyone know if "filtered" water is as good as distilled water? I want to know if i can start using the water out of my Brita filter. Not the faucet kind, but the water container kind.

Russ,
I'm not surprised about mold spores in water. They're pretty much everywhere --- more in the muggy South, fewer in desert climes, maybe rare in a NASA clean room --- but they're there.

After I've opened my bottle of distilled water a couple of times, they're in there, too. Every time we open a humidor, we let mold spores in. They are kept inert by not supplying an environment in which molds prosper.

About infiniterapture's question --- might Ms. Himmelbaur be familiar with the effectiveness of the Brita pitcher water filter? (I suspect it wouldn't remove a lot of minerals; besides, a gallon bottle of distilled water is pretty cheap and lasts a long time.)

I asked.

Yes, filtered water is better than tap, but not distilled. Even though distilled water has been opened up to air (and exposed to molds in the air), it is still more pure.

As cheap as distilled water is, I think I will stick with it.