I have had a cabinet humidor (5'X18"X31) for a number of years. I have battled the dry winters where humidity was difficult to control to summers where over humidification could be a problem. I've done the beads and fans etc. I decided this winter to make modifications to the cabinet to try to stabilize humidity and even it out top to bottom. The first modification was to take out the wooden shelves and replace with open wire shelving. I went to Home Depot and got 12 feet of shelving. The wire or rods are about 1/8 inch so I used a bolt cutter to cut the need dimensions. This made a very obvious change in flow from the bottom to top of the humidor. This alone helped even the humidity distribution in the cabinet. I had 2 cpu fans that pushed the air around and with the shelves opened up I opted for more fans. I initially bought 2 Holmes all metal 4" fans but found that True Value offered the same fan (their brand) for half the cost. The fan configuration allows you to move the fan about 280 degrees on its mount. This allows me to point the fans straight up into the cabinet towards the top. I found a Moist-N-Aire on Ebay for 56.00 that was in excellent shape and installed it. As an option I connected a Boyu high/low water alarm on the Moist-N-Aire. It alarms when the unit is empty or if you over fill (Ebay 6.00). On the bottom shelf I have a fan setup to blow over the Moisdt-N-Aire. Each shelf has a fan blowing up towards the top. The last thing was I put 2 trays of beads on ecah of the top two shelves. Humidity has been very stable at 65. The fans are timed to go on for 1/2 hour every other hour. I am extremely happy with the results. I just wanted to share what worked for me. [Reply]
For a cabinet that size I would recommend a few other active humidification devices as well such as Bob Staebell's Aristocrat humidifiers and also Avallo who have active humidification devices.
Had the same problems you had until I got the Aristocrat Active humidification. It has been perfect ever since. For reference by Cabinet is 28" W x 65" T x 14" D = 15 cu feet [Reply]
