Elwood, I should addend my previous recommendation. As Don and others say the 35-65 % is more achievable but the reality was for us** - requesting 42% at 68F, agreeing that 35-65rh was good at "normal" temperatures and actually getting 15-75% and sometimes the temperature is 80 degrees in the summer. So we have Piano Life Savers on ALL pianos. I should mention that we had a piano storage room built for the Steinway D concert piano but it has always been alot of trouble to oversee and maintain and the humdifiers (ducted through the ceiling) have leaked on occasion causing damage to the piano. The string storage room which has discreet humdifiers and dehumidifiers at floor level works well enough with some heavy oversight. Best of luck, it will be interesting to hear what you finally end up with. Chris Solliday Lafayette College ** Lehigh University East Stroudsburg University ----- Original Message ----- From: Elwood Doss To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 12:29 PM Subject: [CAUT] Ideal humidity levels Just to confirm this with some other CAUTs. The ideal humidity level for pianos is between 48% and 52%. My Interim Chair shared that information with the architects and they said, "Wow, those are some tight parameters." We are planning to press for those parameters. Just wanted to get some thoughts from some of you who have gone through a renovation/construction experience at your schools. Is it a possibility? Very expensive to do that? How far from ideal can we go and keep the pianos in a comfortable environment. I've measured the humidity level in the present Fine Arts Building as low as 25% in winter and 80% in the summer with the air conditioning on. Joy! Elwood Rev. Elwood Doss, Jr., M. M. E., RPT Piano Technician/Technical Director Department of Music 145 Fine Arts Building University of Tennessee at Martin Martin, TN 38237 Office: 731/881-1852 Fax: 731/881-7415 Cell: 731/479-4043 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20090514/0d1b9568/attachment.htm>
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