I guess it can be easy to be unaware of good fortune sometimes. I really do just about nothing to keep RH in the 45% to 50% range. I'm located just outside Tampa, Florida and my shop is a 1,000 sq.-ft.concrete-block (we don't use cinder blocks in the south!) structure with a concrete floor and a well-insulated roof (eight-foot ceiling). I painted the outside of the block walls with a moisture-proofing-type paint - that may help moderate things a bit. The summers are very hot with very high humidity (and about nine months long!) - I run a wall-unit AC whenever I am in the shop in the summer - I turn it off whenever I am not in the shop. The AC unit does a real good job removing water vapor from the air. If I run it for several hours, the shop RH will drop into the high 30%s (but never lower). Even if that happens, I have so much wood (1,000 bd.-ft. of spruce, etc.) and stuff in my shop that serves as a water vapor sink, that within an hour after turning the AC off, shop RH pops right back to 45% or so. Most of the winter is sunny and dry with nights in the 50s and 60s and daytime highs in the 70s (I know, pretty darn rough). Outside RH is typically 30% to 50% in the winter. Once in a while we will get some funky winter weather front that skirts the area and we have drizzle for several days and high RH. My AC unit also has a heating strip in it, but only very rarely when Wichita Kansas is blasted with a sub-zero cold front and the temp here dips into the 30s at night do I turn the heat on - some winters I never turn the heat on. So for most of the winter, no heat or AC, but the outside RH is such that my inside RH stays nice and stable. Sometimes in the winter I will open windows after a cool night to warm the shop a little. If we have a sustained high RH period in the winter, I will run my little basement-type room dehumidifier and that will keep shop RH down. I don't think I ever had to run it last winter. It seems I am fortunate and simply have a low-tech but very well balanced system with local weather that ALWAYS provides adequate minimum humidity and high enough temperatures to almost eliminate the need for heating, a vapor-resistant building, an AC unit that removes just the right amount of water vapor in the summer, a dehumidifier to remove water vapor in the winter (if needed), and a very big pile of wood that serves as a water vapor sink to moderate any occasional short duration RH extremes. Below is picture of my humble little shop after a little dusting, vacuuming, and straightening up (wall AC unit is between the two left-most windows). Terry Farrell ----- Original Message ----- > I'm curious how you achieve a whole shop RH conditioned space. > > Although my shop is very well insulated and so forth, in New England, sustaining > year round RH conditioning in my 1300sf , 11 ft ceiling shop is just not on option during the > non-heating months...way too pricey. > > In Florida, I guess you must be running air conditioning 12 months... is that how you > achieve your whole shop RH conditioning. > > Short of whole shop conditioning, a removable insulated blanket tent, > thermostat and portable heat source(lamps) does the trick for spot conditioning > except during the soggiest dog days of July/august. > > It would be interesting to know what you and others RH conidtion either the whole shop or > smaller sections of it. > > Jim I -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20070723/d709e48b/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 45298 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20070723/d709e48b/attachment-0001.jpe
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