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Ive recently opened a shop. Im planning on getting a couple of humidifiers/dehumidifiers for my finished guitars storing. I also wanna get one for my paint room. Does anyone know of what i should get? Im stuck on getting a humidifier or a dehumidifer but i just dont know wich one i need. I live in south Texas and its usually really hot and humid i guess. Is it also a good idea to put one in the paint room?

Unless you really want to risk a fire, I wouldn't dream of putting a de-humidifier in the paint booth.

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jw ( o)===:::

before you can decide which you're getting (de-humidifier or humidifier) you must know your RH. So what you want to get are a couple of hygrometers or a wet bulb system or something that will tell you (as accuratly as possible) what the humidity level is in your shop.

Once you know what it is before you add or take any humidity you can decide what to buy.

Also it will depend on the size of the room you're trying to control. Larger room will require a larger humidifier (if that's what you need) or if it's generally very humid in South Texas (which I'm guessing it is, especially with the storms down there) than you may want to look into a de-humidifier that hooks up to one of the main water drains in the building, that way you don't need to worry about emptying it. If the room is big and you need to remove a lot of moisture to bring the RH to an acceptable level, you may need a large unit or two medium size units (which I think would be better, if one breaks down you still have the other).

Sears carries a large range of both de-humidifiers and humidifiers. Might want to check them out.

And listen to Joe, he's been a professional painter for a very very long time.

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I have a 30 pint per day dehumidifier which works well in a smaller area, say 400 square feet. The nice thing about matching a dehumidifier to your space meaning not getting one that is too big is that the smaller ones are a tad quieter. Dehumidifiers are noisy......

Also be aware that when your dehumidifier clicks on it will draw some amps and may blow a circuit in your shop if you have other tools running at the same time. This is another reason to not purchase a dehumidifier that is bigger than you need.

For Humidifiers I like these from Sears:



What I like the most about them is the digital display. Although no RH digital display will be worth a crap this unit is accurate to itself. What I mean is that once you calibrate it against an accurate standard and determine that say 45% is really 50% you can set it to what you want and it will do a fine job of keeping the RH in your desired range.

These come in 12 gallon and 8 gallon and I have 2 of the 12 gallon ones for the rest of the house and one 8 gallon for the shop. I have had these units for a couple of years now and once I learned how to clean the filters to extend the life they work great.

If I lived in Texas I would consider air conditioning. Keep ya cool as well as de-humidify.

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Regarding humidifiers, do you just use one like mom used to put in the room when you were sick?

Darrin

You might be thinking of the steam humidifiers. Not the best option. There are humidifiers that don't make steam and work very well. They can be found in various sizes too from whole house to single room.

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jw ( o)===:::

Thank you Joe. Right now if I need humidity, I just open the door from my home to my garage...the evaporative cooler blows all the moist air you could need. Good for a dry shop I suppose, but not so nice when you crawl into bed and your sheets are all clammy feeling.

Thank you again.


Darrin

Thanks for the advice guys. Ive lived in california for 2 years. So i havent even started painting here in Texas. Why would a dehumidifier risk fire in my paint room? Do you think i would have problems with humidity if my paint room is well air conditioned?

The risk for fire in a spray/paint room from a dehumidifier is from the potential spark of the contacts when the dehumidifier clicks on AND any explosive vapors that you have in the room. This holds true with any electrical appliance that may spark to make a contact.

Not to be a jerk here but when I hear talk of opening a garage door to humidify a shop I think that we are just not getting the point.

Proper humidity control is so very essential to guitar building that if I were to start all over here is what my "to do" list would read like:

1) Build shop

2) Secure proper dehumidification and humidification as required AND a calibrated mechanical Hygrometer and maintain a RH range in my shop at all times of 42 - 48%.

3) Buy tools, wood, etc.

4) Build guitars.

Proper RH is fundamental to guitar building.

I have a very small shop (185 sft) and I also have a small A/C unit built in and honestly, it runs 24/7 from May to October and it barely keeps the humidity in check. My humidity during these months hovers right around 50-55 RH. So to get the RH down to 45 I also run my electric baseboard heaters (counter productive I know). This works for me but I still should get a dehumidifier so I don't have to heat and cool the shop just to keep the RH in check.

So what I'm getting at is while an AC unit will work as a dehumidifier you need to make sure it's large enough to do the job for the space you have. The other thing about using an AC unit to de-humidify your shop is that it's harder to control the RH with just the AC unit. It works on temperature and usually doesn't have a setting to cycle off or on for the level of RH, while a designated de-humidifier does.

Most of us want to get to building guitars or to even get that first guitar build under our belt and if you only plan on building one or two, I wouldn't worry about the humidity to much, just get a decent hygrometer, watch your local weather patterns and build while the RH is around 40-50%. The other factor is where will your guitars live? Will they live in your home? What type of humidity control do you have where the guitar will live? Will you leave it out of the case? Will you have a humidity controlled case or have a humidity control unit living in the case? You want to build the guitar so that it will match it's living environment. 42-48%RH is in the middle of the road, that's why it's become the benchmark for guitar makers. There aren't to many places where this is the normal humidity patterns over a 12 month period. Imagine building your guitar in the Amazon and then having it live in Arizona. It wouldn't last very long unless the RH in the build environment matched that of the living environment.

Now, if you want to build more than a couple of guitars, having some way to keep the RH in check through all the seasons is a must!

My humidifier is just a small 3 gallon unit. It's a mist humidifier and I have to fill it in the winter months on average of every 2-3 days to keep the RH at 45%

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I have news for you Rod! Running the dehumidifier will be like running your baseboard heater in that way, though it won't probably have to run much to move it to 45%. But the dehumidifiers produce a lot of heat.

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Waddy

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So what you're saying is that my shop would be in the same (most likely) situation with a dehumidifier versus the AC and the heaters on?

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"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

I use a small dehumidifier I bought at Lowe's as well as a two wick-style humidifiers for the cooler months. The dehumidifier works well as it has an auto-dry feature and will keep it around 40-50% during the summer months with relative ease. I have a 14 x 24 shop that is well-insulated and a small window unit AC. If I don't run the dehumidifier the RH will get up to 70-75%! AC's do not dehumidify well at all compared to a real dehumidifier. It takes both humidifiers to keep my humidity up in the winter and I live in the SE US.

Consider this "rule of thumb": For every 20 degrees F you heat the outside air to inside comfort levels you effectively decrease the RH by almost half (approx 45%)! And the reverse is true for the summer when cooling air. So if outside is 80 degrees F (50% RH) and you cool it to 70 degrees F you'll increase the RH by about 22.5% and end up around 72% RH. If in the winter you warm 30 degree F (50% RH) air to 70 degrees F (increase of 40 degrees) you'll decrease by 45% twice and end up with an RH of 14-17%!! That takes a lot of humidifying and trust me a very dry shop will kill you and your moral with all sorts of problems. What Hesh said is spot-on. Take care of this first. Been there and done that and RH is a serious thing.

All said if you can take it warmer in the summer and colder inside the shop in the winter all this will be a little easier to control. Best of luck.

SR

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You would have to try it to see, but it could be close. I don't know how much you have to run the heater, but I wouldn't guess that the dehumidifier would have to work very hard to get it from 55% to 45%, and might only run sporadically, which might be an improvement.

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Waddy

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Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Waddy and SR are making some really good points.

One more thing to remember is that dehumidifiers won't work well below 70 F and will instead start to ice up. This is not unlike when your car's AC starts spitting at your passenger which can be a blessing if the conversation sucks.....

So IMHO you really need a source for heat to get your shop above 70F if your climate won't do this for you. You also need AC so that you are comfortable but again only if your climate does not provide this for you. And you need to dehumidify and humidify as required for your locale.

Waiting for the weather report to indicate that you are in an acceptable range is a potato chip waiting to happen...... Both the Weather Channel and the WC web site are frequently way off from the measurable reality at my place.

And lastly, but most importantly - get a decent mechanical hygrometer and keep it calibrated so that you know what you are dealing with. The Caliber III digitals have served me well and were pretty accurate for the ranges that we need but a couple of years later mine are no longer accurate. It could be the batteries - don't know (yet).

It makes absolutely no sense at all to invest in and use precise measuring devices, jigs, etc for guitar building when if your RH is not under control your wood will be moving all over the place.

OK here's what I have. Of course I'm dealing with about 2400 sq ft with 14' high ceilings. When I bought this building it had an old gas fired boiler with baseboard heat in the office and a hot water overhead unit with blower. I had that torn out and replaced with a forced hot air unit with 2 stage central air. The furnace blower is set to run on low speed all the time until the temp calls for heat or cooling. The humidifier runs independently set by a humistat. All winter long I maintain right around 45% humidity. In summer it's pretty much the same but the humidier is off. The cooling system set to 72 deg. holds humidity right around 42-48% . I have not had to use a dehumidier yet. I realize that this is quite a bit larger than a home shop but it works great for me and the zoot. Cost about $11,0000

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Hesh, I was just messin' around with the garage door comment. I have to say, the thought of humidifying my 95 degree garage sounds super-appealing. I'll have stable guitars, rusted tools and heat stroke. I'm going to have to figure something out that makes it survivable for me and the guitars. If I wasn't renting, this would be easier to deal with to some extent.

Darrin