Bill, yesterday I used your CA method instead of epoxy on a bass bridge crack on an old spinet, and it worked great -- thanks!

--Cy--

Great! I'm glad you could use a method of repair appropriate for the situation and find that it worked adequately.

I have a dampp-chaser on my 2004 Steinway B and I run a dehumidifier 24/7. I live in Daly City, Ca. just outside of San Francisco and about a mile from the ocean. In my experience this extra attention to the humidity level in my house has made all the difference. However, it costs about $50 a month to run the dehumidifier. Has anyone here heard of the company Humidex atlantic and if so, do you think installing one of their products would be a better way to go. They claim the cost to run their system is $3 a month. Perhaps too good to be true.

If you have the Dampp-Chaser, you shouldn't need the dehumidifier at all: that's one of the system benefits.

If it's not working well enough without the dehumidifier, get your tech to add more heater rods, or add an undercover. I like to use at least 100 watts total (which will still be a lot cheaper to run than the dehumidier: just like a light bulb). A seven-foot piano might need three or four rods.

--Cy--

Dave Stahl says "The fact is, it isn't going to hurt anything, because the humidistat will shut off the current when the humidity gets below 42 %. I have never found a need to recommend a humidifier."

The matter is that the Dampp-Chaser system comes with both a Humidifier and a Dehumiditier and both operate to control the RH at a low level such as 54 down to 48 or so on my piano. I check the two during the day and it seems to work well. Though if the room gets overheated by the Ambient Temperature the D-C system struggles to lower it much under about 59 RH. I then have to use a room de-humidifier to help matters.

Alan

Alan,

Dampp-Chaser systems are custom-configured for each installation. Some people in certain areas, like Dave, don't install the humidifier side.

Likewise, your system can be custom-configured. More or bigger heating rods can be added to let the system handle humidity better. An undercover can be added to concentrate the air around the soundboard and make the whoe system more efficient. (This is for a grand; an upright can have a back cover added.)

--Cy--

I think that people worry about this dampp chaser system to much. When pianos are built at the factories, they get put into large rooms. Then they are crated and picked up and shipped to a port. They are then put into containers that are not climate controlled and stay hold up for sometimes weeks. Then the containers are put on a ship for a 3 or more week trip across the ocean from asia or Europe. Then the containers are once again sitting at the port waiting to be trucked across the country to importers or directly to dealers. Then the pianos are at the dealers sometimes for months or years before being sold. All of this without the aid of a Dampp Chaser system. I would think that because pianos are subjected to heat, cold, dampness etc from factory to ones house, that they would start falling apart during the journey. But they don't do they.

True. And they don't fall apart due to high humidity, they just get sticky. Keys get sticky, they don't return. Damper felts get sticky as if you are playing with the sostenuto pedal down all the time. Not very desirable, is it?

If the wooden sound board is exposed to extreme low humidity for a long period of time, then it can crack. But I think this case is rare if that ever happens at all between the factory and distribution point.

You're right; they are subjected to extremes during the trip. Most Asian pianos are sealed with plastic inside their crates, so humidity doesn't change during the trip (but relative humidity changes with temperature).

However, in the last month I have seen two new pianos on the showroom floor with cracks in the soundboard. This isn't because of stress during shipping; it's because the wood wasn't seasoned properly.

Humidity swings take a long time to cause damage, generally. It's more like the difference between parking your car outside and parking it in a garage. Outside, the paint will fade and crack, the dashboard will crack, and the upholstery will fade. All of these (especially re-painting) are expensive fixes. Since people usually keep pianos much longer than they do cars, it's worth it to protect them over the long run.

There's no good car analogy with the short-term effects on tuning, though. And there's no sun damage that keeps the car from running, unlike a cracked pinblock in a piano.

Haven't you ever had doors or windows in your house stick from humidity? Or dresser drawers that are hard to open and close?

--Cy--

　Are these all true? I have been thinking one or two dozens of crated pinas are picked up by a reefer container at the factory and the temperature of the pianos are kept constant all the way until the container is pulled to the dealership's headquater building in the destination country. Of course, the door of the container may be opend for a few times for customs inspections.

---
an amateur