Rick, You've gotten some great answers. Listen to Dr. Will as he knows whereof he speaks, being of the frozen tundra section of the US, and a smart guy to boot. In my area as well, RH goes from below Death Valley levels (way lower than 20%), to 85-90%. NH has longer periods of the extreme lows, and a lot more people with wood stoves. As to educating your client - manufacturers and PTG are our very best resources. Manufacturers have, since time began, been telling their consumers how to care for pianos. Use their literature. The people who made the piano have sage words on maintenance. PTG has produced wonderful hand-outs/mailers for the same purpose. Consumers need to know that this is not just a sales pitch, it's physics. Dampp-Chaser has an excellent package of educational materials. I have a habit of looking around the room for vents, radiators, cold air returns etc. on my first visit. That is the time to bring it up. If I don't, when the inevitable occurs, it's my reputation on the line. Key point: Do everything possible for the room, but not to the point where you will damage the structure of the home if you add any more moisture. (Use the well-known Bemis chart as a guide to maximum room RH at given outdoor/indoor temperature levels.) Put in a full DC system. Use an undercover, and add a string cover, if needed. Especially due to your location: Lower the moisture level in the humid seasons to an approximation of what you can achieve by raising it in the dry season, thereby minimizing the drastic change. I started playing with this in about 1982 with a customer who had a stream under her house (wooded lot). I decided to expand this quest after getting the desired results, and got to where I would go, at no charge to the customer, to check the pitch in the tenor, to see what was was going on with the humidity levels. I can't tell you how much I learned. After a couple of years of this at the business' expense, I could be pretty sure of what to expect. I was making additions in wattage, re-arranging components, whatever it took to get the pitch of F3 (or comparable) to settle down through seasonal shifts. In those days it meant adding lots of short extra rods. I hope this is helpful. Best regards, Ruth Ruth Phillips ruth at alliedpiano.com >The pan on the stove is a drop in the bucket (or pan) in terms of the humidity control needed. It will lend the false sense that something meaningful is being done, when that pan is inadequate to the task. >The conversation I have with my wood stove customers goes thusly: >Here in New Hampshire with our long, cold, and very dry winters, a wood stove in the same room with a piano is ultimately the kiss of death. Relative Humidity can drop below 20% in deep winter, and the corresponding EMC of the wood can floor out in the 4% range, which is drier than most of the components in the factory ever were dried to. We know what happens to soundboards, etc. >The best thing to do is move the piano to another room away from the wood stove. They should not be together. >If the piano must remain in the same room, it is imperative to get a large humidifier and put it in that room, along with a decent quality room hygrometer. Try to get the RH over 30 % if possible. 40% is better but that is limited by the condensation on the windows that may form. But as high as possible without damaging the window frames from the dripping condensation. You may find the humidifier is putting 3 or 4 gallons of water a day into the interior air. >Install a damp chaser in the piano as well. >Tune after the major humidity shifts so that the tuning will last as long as possible. The October tuning means that her piano is going to smack into the dropping pitch wall sometime in December or early January. You could be the finest tuner on the planet, and the pitch is still going to fall through the floor. Hell, you could tune it a week before and the result will still be the same. >Tell her that once a year is inadequate to her needs and the setting the piano is in. Two minimum, probably more. >I would have forewarned this customer back in October that all bets would be off as far as tuning would be concerned once she got seriously into the heating season with a wood stove. That way when the tuning goes kablooey, she will know that was the predicted result that came true. If you do go back to tune it, paid or unpaid, take pitch readings of say every octave on C, and show her the results. >What I might do to meet her in the middle a bit would be to offer to drop by and spend half an hour talking with her about humidity control on your dime, but that if she wished you to retune the piano, that would be full price, as you are not the cause of the tuning instability. The inference that goes with tuning the piano again for free is that it was your fault that it went out of tune in the first place - which it is NOT. >Good luck. >Will Truitt
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