i dont have a hydra, but ill just throw this out there.. perhaps there is a clog of some kind, somewhere??
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Tom, the hydra doesn't know if it has water in it or not. It just assumes it's empty and sounds the alarm when the RH doesn't rise.
See, hydras are designed to work in a certain small environment. It knows it should run x amount of time until the RH%age rises. If it's run longer than x amount of time it assumes the RH hasn't risen because it's out of water.
The same thing that's happening to Ian happens when I use a hydra to condition beads in my cooler.
The beads suck up water so fast that the RH%age in the cooler doesn't rise fast enough and the hydra thinks it's empty. The squealing is enough to drive a guy nuts. :-)
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Do you have any boxes in yet? If not I would add some and see if that helps.
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Turn the alarm off so it will quit beeping.

-OR-

Put a bowl of distilled water in the humi and take out the dang hydra until the humi stabilizes.

Is 4lbs. of beads big enough for that size humi?

What are the dimensions Bengal?
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Ian, you can get the RH up by adding a bunch of plates with wet sponges or wet paper towels.
If you want to season your beads with the hydra, place the beads and hydra in a tupperware container. It works great, I do it all the time.
I use a two gallon rubbermaid from walmart.
The small area won't let the alarm go off on the hydra and it'll stop making you crazy.
Once you've reconditioned the beads and you've alleviated the dryness in the cabinet with sponges, you can put the beads and hydra back in and it should keep up.
If it doesn't, your cabinet is leaking too badly for the stuff to keep up.
If I remember correctly you decided to use half the beads your cabinet calls for because friends of yours have gotten away with it. You may want to calculate your area again and make sure your cabinet has what it requires. :-)
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When the it's empty
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That's what I would have guessed, but didn't know for sure without researching it. Thanks, Scott. :-)
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Scott,

I ordered half the amount from you, I had more than the other half already from Heartfelt. I bought 2lbs from you, I have 4 in there. I will add sponges and plates tonight and see how things look when I wake up tomorrow.

Hopefully it's not leaking really bad. If it is, I just have to figure out how to seal the damn thing, lol

HK3,

You can't turn the alarm off, stupid design, lol.
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Huh... Mine has a button on the side that says "Audible, ON OFF"
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Indeed it does, but that only works when the alarm is actively going off. It's pretty much like the silent button for your cell phone.
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This makes complete sense, thanks for the info Scott. So I guess my question is, why the hell isn't the humidity raising? I think that then puts us back to the two likely scenarios: leak, or humidor is absorbing the humidity of 4lbs of beads and a hydra faster than all that combined can put it out. Somehow I don't think the ladder is true.....
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Unless the Hydra is defective?

Might be good to put it in a small container with a hygrometer to see?

Hope you get it figured out, Ian.
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Did you try closing the door? :-)

Sorry, I'm no help.
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So do I, lol.

I loaded the humidor up with all the beads I have, a charged Hydra, and 6 half sponges throughout and I'm going to see what it's at tomorrow morning. If things are still wacked then I'm going to have to look into the above issue and a leak I think.
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I will be honest and admit I dont know the first thing but Im rooting for you!

Travis
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Haha, thanks Travis!
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Ok, since adding the sponges and all the beads and setting the Hydra to 65, the hygro on the Hydra is now reading at 67.8 and the damn fan has turned off for the 1st time since I've owned it. I think at this point, the best thing to do will be leave the sponges in there and the Hydra on for the next 3-5 days at least and let everything in there level out. I will update the thread tomorrow when I wake up and see where things are at. Thanks again for everyone's help!
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It's hard to put the Hydra in a "sealed" environment like a plastic bag or tupperware since it has to be plugged in and the fan may fun and the alarm may go off while you're calibrating. Instead I just put a digital hygro that I know is calibrated correctly next to it in the humi and then adjust the Hydra to read the same after a day of sitting next to each other. Then I check them both a day later to make sure they're still in sink. I repeat this process until they consistently read the same RH %.

It does sound like the issue could be that the cabinet walls are still absorbing water. While I haven't dealt with a cabinet (yet :-) ) I do have a large humi which I felt got up to the proper RH level more quickly because I wiped down the walls & trays a few times with D-H2O not just once.
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i just wanted to say... we're all counting on you.
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Ok, got up this morning, and guess what, NO ALARM. lol. Not only was there no alarm, but the cabinet was at 69% (Hydra is set to 65%) so not only was the humidity finally up, but the hydra fan didn't even have to run. I pulled 2 sponges out, and will continue to pull 1 sponge per day until all 5 are gone. It seems to be that like some have said, the cabinet was still absorbing humidity, and then when I filled it up, the boxes were absorbing the humidity as well and the hydra just couldn't keep up. I think by the end of the week everything will be stabilized and fixed. Thanks for everyone's help!
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