[CAUT] Climate Control

[Fred Sturm]

On Dec 12, 2008, at 5:53 PM, Stephen Snyder wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> One of the institutions I work for is going to lower the temperature  
> in all campus buildings to 50 degrees from Dec. 25 to Jan. 2   They  
> will still be maintaining the humidity level at around 35% during  
> this time. My department chair has asked me if this will have an  
> adverse effect on the pianos.  I told him that I didn't think  the  
> pianos would suffer for that period of time.   We are in the great  
> Northeast !  I would like to get some of your thoughts on this.    
> Thanks.
>
> Regards,
> Steve Snyder


	I think this is likely to be pretty common at lots of institutions,  
with everyone trying to save money wherever it is likely to have least  
impact. Our university is doing a little less, just dropping to 60F  
for the break, but also planning minor drops to 65F nights and  
weekends. I think it's a good opportunity for us to find out what  
effect this has, instead of just speculating based on isolated  
experiences. Like many, I have experience with hot or cold air blowing  
on strings, sun or stage lights shining on strings, bringing a piano  
from a cold truck to a stage and the like, but this is a different  
scenario. I know my home pianos (personal and customers') seem to do  
fine with this kind of fluctuation (people leave for vacation and turn  
thermostats down at night all the time), but I haven't really had the  
opportunity to look at it closely on, say, a concert instrument I will  
have tuned about a week before break and will tune the day after.
	In any case, I think tuning stability is really the only issue here  
(this level of variation of temperature) - I certainly don't foresee  
any structural effects just from temperature - and my gut feeling is  
that, since it means the RH will be higher (in my case there is no  
humidity control, so the lower temp means higher RH, other things  
being equal), that RH variance will be the main factor. I speculate  
that the lower temps for these periods might mean that our RH overall  
for the spring semester might not dip quite as low, but that remains  
to be seen.

Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu