Humidity problem, the beginning of mold
- Thread starter Marryjann
- Start date
BigBallzWillie
BE THE BALL
The entire cigar industry maintains their product @ 70% relative humidity...........please explain your claims about 65% humidity......then call Boveda and then tell all the humidor builders for the last two centuries that they had it wrong the whole time.
I have news for you, weed does not mold at 65% RH.
BigBallzWillie
BE THE BALL
good point...the micro-climate is a beyotch..especially for PM. A good dousing with sulfur before flipping is very effective PM preventative.
printer
Super Active Member
No, but humidity sensors start getting more inaccurate toward the extremes of their range. 2% accuracy is considered pretty good in the mid-range, 70% and on the percentage error starts getting wider. So say you have a meter that is out 5% and you are keeping the humidity at a 70% reading. So you have an actual reading of 74.5%. Then you get the localized humidity at the flower which is 10% higher and you are in mold territory.The entire cigar industry maintains their product @ 70% relative humidity...........please explain your claims about 65% humidity......then call Boveda and then tell all the humidor builders for the last two centuries that they had it wrong the whole time.
I have news for you, weed does not mold at 65% RH.
As humidity sensors get old they drift. Inaccurate temperature readings can cause the meter to calculate the humidity and report it lower (reading the temperature higher than it really is caused a lower humidity reading). As far as cigars go, they are not giving of moisture that they are sucking up with their roots. If your plant was dead and the plant mass was stabilized at 70% RH then keeping the humidity at that level will not be a problem. But we are talking about live plants. Occasional spikes in humidity are probably ok as plants out in the wild do get rained on. But sustained high RH is looking for problems.
As far as my talk, I can be just another voice on the internet where everyone has an opinion and some are not worth the electrons it takes to get them to you. But I have a background in electronics, I was a Instrumentation Technologist, had my Instrumentation Mechanic Licence (as well as Electronic Licence and Limited Instrumentation Electrical Licence). I have done calibrations on a wide range of electronic and mechanical equipment in a range of industries. I have a good idea of what equipment can do in terms of temperature and humidity control as I took care of those systems for a 30 building hospital complex that housed from surgery to research labs and medication production. The surgeries were shut down at 65% RH do to the possibility of mold, the ventilation system repaired or adjusted to be back below that number and cleaners would disinfect the whole room ceiling to floor.
While cutting open a person might be a extreme condition where you do not want any mold I use it as a benchmark. With my knowledge of the technology and the day to day physics of the air industry I gave my opinion. You might get away with 70% RH and say I am wrong. But the next guy may have 70% dialed in and get mold. It depends on your equipment and your local conditions. I gave a number which I would strive for and be confident that I should not get mold to any great extent forming. I hate tossing out good weed I spent a lot of time growing. I had to toss out a donkey dick from one plant and the plant right next to it was fine. Other than that cola the rest of the plant was fine. So as they say, your milage may vary.
I hope this explains my opinion to your satisfaction.
I used to have to manage all the meter calibrations for one of the shops I worked in when I was in the USAF and a lot of people don’t seem to realize how often this should be done for all measuring devices. This is one of the reasons I find it so important for growers to store their flower with 2-way humidity packs.
printer
Super Active Member
I worked for an aerospace plant and all our equipment was NIST traceable. Our shop calibration equipment went out every year to get re-certified. Our calibration equipment that we took out into the plant checked regularly on our NIST standards. But aerospace is documentation, documentation, documentation. Every step in building a part has a person sign off on it. I lived MIL Specs, specks from Pratt and Whitney, Mcdonnell Douglas, we made parts for a load of companies. Got audited by them every year. When I first got to the hospital I was shocked at the lack of certification in many things we had going on. But then again, my boss put it this way. "We are not going down that rabbit hole. We supply a service for the people here, if they want it done better they can bring another company in."
We did have a couple of humidity, temperature, CO2, meters that we did send out. I did check out temperature meters at ice-point and boiling, I could have done more but they did not want it. Mind you we had Flukes and darned if I could remember the humidity meters. Once covid lets up (hah) I'll be able to go to their shop and compare my little meters to there good meters. I do have some respect for the cheap stuff out of China. But when you make a run of 50,000 you can dial in your process.