[CAUT] Building humidity now, GREAT!

[joel a. jones]

Ron,  & list

My fight for building humidification started in 1974 when I came to
UW-Madison to a five year old building.  We had 12 pianos from Europe
(Gr Steinway, Bechstein, Bosendorfer) that were pronouned untplayable,
not staying in tune, and a waste of state funds. Bos Imperial, and 2  
Gr. Steinway
in concert halls that were rapidly loosingfavor as a concert piano  
with loose
  tuning pins, warping, etc....
       We did the following:
	1, Borrowed a thermo-humidigraph which tracked the heat/humidity
for one week,  This gave us a visual line of the changes for one week.
We moved the graph to various rooms to get an idea of how each section
of the building was reacting.
	2. We then made these charts available to the School of Music
Director and met with the administration and the University HVAC people.
The meeting were cordial and sympathetic with promises to  look into   
the
situation and get back to us. Did the building have humidifiers on the
heating units?  Well....take a look at the blueprints.
	**3. THE MOST IMPORTANT action we took was to find the person
in charge of the screwdriver that regulated the system in the Humanities
building, and take him to lunch.

After our lunch with George we had humidity.    Nothing changed until  
George
TURNED THE HUMIDIFIERS ON  !
	Subsequently we discovered that the reasoning behind not running
  the  humidifiers was to save energy by not running two systems-
heating and humidification.

During the next few months we quietly made the faculty (singers,  
woodwinds, etc)
aware of the changes.   They became very vocal about the  
improved,stabilized humidity
from their perspective.   Soooo, when HVAC people discovered that the  
building
was using less heat/energy it was obvious that they were saving  money  
by
producing a higher , stable humidity level  - they became believers.

This action also saved our building from the energy crisis in '78 when  
it was
ordered that the heat was to be turned off during the night and week- 
ends
in all state buildings.   Other UW campuses did not fare as well.

Champion humidity.   It's definitely worth the effort.

Joel
Madison, WI

that t
On Jan 7, 2011, at 10:14 AM, Ron Nossaman wrote:

> On 1/7/2011 8:46 AM, Gerald Groot wrote:
>> My college has 100 pianos that I tune frequently. The majority are  
>> tuned
>> 4 -6 times a year. Of course, concert work is done a lot more  
>> frequently
>> than that but, the concert instruments also have Dampp Chasers on  
>> them
>> which helps tremendously. The pitch and humidity swings are kept to a
>> minimum. Otherwise, with the rest of the building, humidity swings  
>> were
>> horrible!!! In August, it would be 65 %+ RH. October 35 %, December
>> 18-28 %. January through March, 14 %-20 %. Of course, tunings are all
>> over the place.
>>
>> These past 18 months, the CFAC (Covenant Fine Arts Center) was closed
>> for remodeling. They redid a complete renovation of the entire  
>> CFAC. 18
>> million bucks worth. Part of the building opened up in October at  
>> which
>> time the RH averaged 35 %. Granted, it just opened so they were  
>> getting
>> used to adjusing everything. We encountered the same problems Paul,  
>> one
>> room was 80 the next was 65 degrees.
>>
>> Supposedly, they spent quite a bundle on a new HVAC system. This past
>> Wednesday and Thursday of this week, it averaged 22 – 26 % RH. One  
>> room
>> was 19 %. So much for a new HVAC. I think they’re either over rated  
>> or
>> the people responsible for them do not understood how to operate  
>> them. ? J
>
> I tune for a small college that did the same thing. After years and  
> years of *extensive* and *repeated* discussion with them on humidity  
> control, they put in a new HVAC system at huge expense. A year or so  
> later, as the dust settled and they tried to get the thing under  
> control, they asked me why the pianos still won't stay in tune. I  
> asked them about the humidification system. "Humidity?", they said,  
> like they had never heard of such a concept. So no, there was  
> absolutely no consideration given to humidity control when the  
> system was installed. It never crossed anyone's mind, or if it did,  
> it was considered too expensive and was deleted. I suspect that is  
> the case there too.
> Ron N

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