Refrigerator Humidity

[reachej]

Does anyone know of a way to make the humidity of a common refrigerator adjustable? Perhaps a small machine not unlike the one that you have in your bedroom, but with the ability to adjust the humidity to a specific pertentage? Other ideas?

[jsolomon]

I have a few ideas, but none of them are cheaper than a couple hundred bucks, and all of them involve the use of power-tools to cut into a refrigerator.

<insert Tim Allen grunt-bite>

[Okbrewer]

Do you really want to make the humidity adjustable or do you want to maintain a humidity level? There are devices available that are used to regulate and adjust humidity levels in walk-in cigar humidors that might be adaptable for your use. Look for an Oasis sysem. A cheaper alternative that many cigar smokers use for larger humidors is humidification beads, such as these: http://www.heartfeltindustries.com/beads_1.html

They are used to maintain humidity at either 65 or 70%. A pound or so of those in a container in your fridge might do the trick.

Either way, you will need to get a hygrometer to check the relative humidity.

Of course in a humidor, the temperature is also maintained at around 70F.

So, after alot of rambling, this may or may not work in a fridge that you want to keep refrigerated and humid!

Bob R in OKC

[russ parsons]

crisper drawer? that's what they're designed for. small, tight-sealing spaces that increase humidity (or, rather, decrease its loss).

[reachej]

I have a few ideas, but none of them are cheaper than a couple hundred bucks, and all of them involve the use of power-tools to cut into a refrigerator.

Do tell, power tools are cool and a few hundred bucks is manageable...

[jsolomon]

It's really stupid-simple.

Get something similar to this guy and mount him in your refrigerator, so he can monitor the humidity in there.

Take a humidifier like this one and a duct-reducer, some duct tape and some drier vent hose.

Now for the fun part.

Drill 2 holes in your fridge. 1 for the power cord of the humidity controller, and 1 for the drier vent hose. Plug the humidity controller into an outlet and set it to your desired level. Then, take your humidifier, and using the duct reducer, tape, and drier vent hose, hook up the outlet of the humidifier to the vent-hose-sized hole in the fridge. Finally, plug the humidifier in. Voila, humdity control.

Incidentally, if you use a low-temperature incubator, or a more industrial-quality refrigerator, it is likely that you'll get an outlet.

Alternately, you can mount everything inside if you get one of those nifty light-outlet-to-normal-outlet thingamajigs (then you don't have to cut ANYTHING)

[jmolinari]

For my curing chamber i got a humidistat which sits in the fridge, this controls an ultrasonic humidifier which also sits IN the fridge. Temp of fridge is controlled by external thermostat.

I posted pics of my setup in another thread on here. Go look for it.

The lightbulb in the fridge is also required to control how often the fridge cycles, drying the air. I explained it all .

jason

You can find information here : https://home.comcast.net/~jasonmolinari/Salame.htm

Edited January 13, 2006 by jmolinari (log)