I live in the tropics where the relative humidity indoors is between 80-95% and temperature 26-30 Celcius year-round.

I have a new 6' grand in a corner of a large living room. To reduce the ambient humidity, I have installed a de-humidifier on timer that blows dry heated air under the piano for 30 minutes every 2 hours. The air is not directly blown at the soundboard, but sort of passes in a parallel line under the piano. I have been keeping track of the humidity inside my piano with a hygrometer, and it is usually fairly constant at about 75%.

I understand that it is usually not advisable to put a piano just above an air vent or next to a radiator. I wonder if my dehumidifier would be ruining my piano in the long-term.

There is no air-conditioning in my living room but there is nowhere else I can put my piano. If I position the dehumifier away from my piano, it is not very effective as the room is very large and the windows are usually opened for air circulation.

I would appreciate any opinion, especially from folks living in similar environments (e.g. Florida, perhaps?)

I don't know If I would recommend blowing air of any kind under a piano. I would rather place the dehumidifier within a few feet of the piano. The ideal ambient humidity is 40%-45%. Many pianos would have lots of sticky keys at 75% humidity. Excess humidity can result in rusty strings and tuning pins. In Florida on the coastline - pianos subject to the salty humid air are very prone to this. You may want to use 3 dampchaser dehumidifier rods and a control unit in addition to the dehumidifier you already have.

Hi Bob,

Just curious by having 3 dehumidifier rod in the piano, does it help on the exterior part of the piano ie, fallboard, case, panel.

Hi Jay - the rods really don't help much with exterior cabinet parts. Dehumidifier rods dry out the air adjacent to the rods by heating it slightly. They are not a cure-all for poor humidity control, but help somewhat. Controlling the ambient humidity in the room is the ideal solution.

Having reviewed past posts on the effects of high humidity on pianos, it occurred to me that the ambient humidity might in part be responsible for the unresponsive action in my piano (see my post on 9 Jul, titled "Year-old piano's "touch" leaves something to be desired")

My piano already has a heating rod installed somewhere near the keys, and I also put a pot of dehumidifying pellets inside, but the overall humidity in my piano is still around 70% at best. It rises to 75-80% whenever I flip back the front portion of the lid to play.

My Schimmel dealer is also the agent for Damp Chaser, so I could get them to install more than one system (as Bob suggested), if necessary. Would I need to install the entire Damp Chaser system (humidifier as well as dehumidifier) or would I simply need more heating rods (may or may not be Damp Chaser brand)? Where would the extra rods go, since I already have one rod near the keys? Can I put another in the vicinity to make sure the action is kept as dry as possible?

Hi Roxane,

I'm no tech, but I've been following your dilemna on both rmmp, and on this forum. Both Bob, and Rick Clark have given you pretty much the same advice.

I have a lot of faith in Rick, as he has helped me quite a bit in the past through private correspondence. And Bob has always given solid, good advice to the readers of this forum.

If you're not familiar with coastal Florida, I would bet the climatic conditions are very similar. I bet this helps with your problem!

Jolly, yes, thanks , I just read Rick's reply on rmmp. I will definitely try out his suggestions. If it works, it would be cheaper than moving to a new house (for the extra climate-controlled room) and buying a new piano. I just hope the tech they send out to do the installation knows what he's doing.

One of my teacher's students recently bought a Steingraber (spelling?) for about US$35K and wanted a heating rod installed. The guy they sent out actually *drilled* a hole in the case for some reason or other (wire, perhaps). This installation was done when my teacher's student was out at work and you can bet she was fuming when she came back and found out!