Hi Fred, Have a look at a chart. When temperature drops RH spikes up. Buildings being what they are they soon reach equilibrium again at what ever the "usual" RH was. Then when temperature is raised RH spikes downwards. Pianos do not like this from a tuning stability point of view. Damppchaser equipped pianos don't like heat changes either, for the spikes aparently exceed the ability of the unit to compensate. I've attempted in the past to add heat control to pianos and so far the results are less than I've hoped for. At 10:18 AM 12/14/2008 -0700, you wrote: > > 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 Regards, Don Rose, B.Mus., A.M.U.S., A.MUS., R.P.T. Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat mailto:pianotuna at yahoo.com http://us.geocities.com/drpt1948/ 3004 Grant Rd. REGINA, SK, S4S 5G7 306-539-0716
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