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AG: This tip probably doesn't apply at your house.
On Wed, 08 Feb 2017 22:53:54 +0000, Phil Lee
wrote: John B. considered Mon, 06 Feb 2017 07:14:48 +0700 the perfect time to write: On Sun, 5 Feb 2017 14:41:19 -0000 (UTC), Andrew Chaplin wrote: John B. wrote in : On Sat, 04 Feb 2017 23:49:30 -0400, Joy Beeson wrote: To avoid the noise, microbial growth, limed-up belts, and so forth of a mechanical humidifier, we keep a pot of hot water on the stove. Aside from buying a new enamel pot every two or three years, it's also free: in humidifier season, every bit of gas we burn on the stove is gas we don't need to burn in the furnace. I just figured out that if I drop a cake rack into the humidifier and set my bottle of water on the rack, it will be nicely warmed by the time I finish dressing. This postpones freezing for quite a while -- and makes me more inclined to drink enough water. I would ask if a humidifier is actually necessary? I ask as I was born and grew up in a small village in up-state New Hampshire and we certainly never had a humidifier, nor did anyone else I knew. I grew up in and returned to Eastern Ontario, which is slightly colder and drier than NH. Humidifiers are a good idea if you are vulnerable to some respiratory problems. They also help the piano to stay in tune and to keep the antique furniture together. As a kid, we had the tank, wick and fan humidifier that was your best option if you had radiators. It put a half gallon or so each day into the house, and yet the humidity never got above 45%. Since I lived on the third storey and as far from the humidifier as one could get, it was not uncommon to wake up with a crusty nose. Now, with a forced air HVAC system, our humidifier is built into it. I have no idea how much water it goes through. Hmmm.. Well, we had a piano, my mother played and my younger brother played well enough that he made music his career. I don't remember anyone complaining about the piano going out of tune every winter :-) During my military career I was stationed at Edwards AFB where it rains perhaps once every year or so and later in Southern California where it seldom rains, and again I don't remember humidifiers being in use. I'm afraid you haven't convinced me :-) I'm not conviced on pianos, which unless they are very old or very low quality, will have a metal frame. The tone of the instument may suffer though, even though the tune (pitch) shouldn't. One minor point though - a pianist good enough to make a career of it would expect to be having their piano tuned regularly anyway, so if the tuner just got on with correcting it, why would you netice, unless you have perfect pitch and/or the tuning change is disproportionate in it's effect on different strings But I can confirm that low humidy it TERRIBLE for wooden bodied or framed stringed intruments, to the extent that humidity controllers are built into good violin, viola and chello cases - presumably double bass ones, too, but I've not seen much of those). If allowed to dry too much, a violin will twist and warp itself, the glue will crack and the whole body actually come to pieces. In days gone by, when such humidifying gadgets were not available at domestic prices, I had a violin which started to do just that, and the (very good) violin maker to whom it was entrusted for repair, asid that they'd had a lot of that kind of damage that summer, because it had been so dry. That was towards the end of 1976, still remembered by those of my generation in the UK as THE drought year. I know a few harpists who have the same problem, but woodwind suffers less, as of course the very breath that blows through them as they are played humidifies them, and they actually need oiling to avoid too much moisture being taken up into the weed. They probably would suffer, if left unplayed for an extended period though. WARNING FURTHER CONTENT IS ALMOST RELATED TO CYCLES! Harps, violins and similar stringed instruments are now available in a variety of plastics, which overcome the problems assocated with wood in extremes of humidity. They don't have the feel or resonance of wood though, and are mostly "skeletal", requiring pickups and an amplifier to function at all - and of course you can shape the sound at that point in the process. I suspect the different resonance of plastics (no matter what they are reinforced with) is the biggest difference between those and metal bicyle frames, and this difference is experienced as discomfort by many who've been brought up on steel. Added not quite bicycle content: I play a banjo for personal entertainment and yes they have made plastic frame banjos in the past. These were the cheap and dirty models usually purchased as gifts for your least favored inlaw's kids. -- Cheers, John B. |
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