This Is Why My Wineador Leaked - Cigar Asylum Cigar Forum

I had a problem with my wineador and i sent the Scott Shilala a message to help me figure out the problem. Here is his response and as he requested i am posting his response in this thread for everybody's future reference.

Originally Posted by shilala:
Hi Jason,
Sorry about your mess, brother. I feel your pain.
I wish I could draw a picture, it'd save a thousand words, but here I go...

When we create a humidor, we create a sealed environment with a very finite amount of water in there.
You'd probably say "Opening the door adds and subtracts water!!!", and it does. But that water is in the form of water vapor.
That's where a guy like me goes to math, volumes, and the properties of water in the two states, solid and vapor.
When I start massaging all those numbers, I find that opening and closing your door (or lid) only adds or removes a very, very, very, tiny amount of water vapor. I can literally open and close the door hundreds of times before there's an appreciable change in the RH inside the humi.
If those openings and closings happen across the seasons, things balance out. In most places humidity in the home is higher in the summer and lower in the winter, everything considered.

So now we have to look at time. More math. Ugh. :-)
If we add up the time we've had the door open all year long, it isn't much. Let's use a ridiculous example. I go to my humidor 3 times a day, leaving the door open for 5 minutes each time because I never know what I want to smoke, and I do that every single day of the year.
If I total that up, it means that the door has been opened a grand total of 4 days time across the entire year.
If I left my humidor open for 4 days straight, I'm probably going to have an issue. With beads, I can fix it overnight. They can handle 4 days of water vapor, no problem. They'll only rise to the RH of the room around it, and I can dry that out in the fridge or freezer.
Fridge or freezer? Hmm. The water will go out of my beads and go into the fridge or freezer. How?
That's simple. The RH in the fridge or freezer is lower than that of the beads, so the water comes out of my beads as water vapor and into the air in the freezer. Once it's in the air in the freezer, it condenses on, get this, THE CONDENSER!!! :-)
Oddly enough, our winadors have a condenser, too.

In freezers and fridges, the water drips off and collects in a pan, then goes out a drain.
In our winadors, we plug our drains. Why?
Because in winadors, we need a perfectly sealed, or hermetic environment, so that we can control the humidity. That's why they're called humidors.
In refrigerators and freezers, nobody cares. The drain is a wonderful thing, or water would run on the floor.

So, now we covered everything that goes on, at least to a degree. The things we have discussed, so far as the math and properties of water and how it acts, those things are static. When God's hand created all this, He made it all real simple. There are laws that do not change. We can count on them, and we can use those laws to help us live successful lives, and not be complete knuckleheads. I'm not even talking about The Commandments, I'm talking physical laws.

When I figure this stuff out, and Michael does the same, cause he knows all this crap, we look at what folks say.
Personally, I like to assume everything you said is solid accurate. But if that's the case, I have to assume you missed something.
The water you have puddled in there absolutely had to come from outside the humidor, because it didn't exist inside it until recently.
If the seal is okay, then there's probably a fist sized hole in the side or back of the unit. I can guess this cause you Texans like your big guns.
If there's no big holes, then we have to assume the seal isn't seating, because they fail after a year or two. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but they fail. Or the unit gets racked cause it's not level, and the seal just isn't seating right.

Honestly, there could be a crack or seam anywhere that opened up. But it's big. Real big.
We know that for two reasons. It takes a HUGE volume of outside air to create that much water, especially in the dry winter.
So that unit is leaking 24 hours a day. So much so that it's changing the unit's temperature, making the cooling run all the time, condensing water and dumping it in the bottom.

Sorry, my brother. It happens. To avoid this misery, I use modified compressor driven refrigerators to store my sticks, and a big display humidor in our nice, cool basement.
You can start from scratch, fix that thing if you can, or drive up here and get this winador I built that I'm getting rid of.

Do me a favor and post this, will ya?
Maybe a "This is why my winador leaked" thread or something. That'd help guys a lot, cause I seldom want to type all this. :-)
Hope this helps, my friend!!!
God Bless you and yours,
Scott

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It's interesting, even though I 'know' all the stuff Scott just said, hearing him explain it this way just makes it all 'click' in my head. Thanks for posting this Jason and I hope you find the issue with your wineador brother!
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:-) Scott surely has a way explaining things that makes it easy.
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the scott shilala is quite a bright creature :-)
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They don't give those the away for everybody. :-)
It's gotta be earned. :-)
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Originally Posted by 14holestogie:
They don't give those the away for everybody. :-)
It's gotta be earned. :-)

:-)

i just saw that...trust me if it was intentional it would have been capitalized and his full title

:-)

The Great Scott Shilala :-)
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I just read it and I didn't really understand it.
-the Scott Shilala
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that is what happens when i type something and don't proofread before i hit post. more then likely i was tying something and didn't like the way it sounded so i deleted it and kept going...obviously i didn't hit delete enough.
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Mentioning God in science! I say sir you have it all wrong by mixing the 2! :-)

"A good scientist is an atheist and natural laws explain everything but a great scientist proclaims to never truly know that answer but is open to the concept of a creator and like most men and women are searching for the answers to the questions we all should have. It's in our nature and is just as natural as natural laws" ~my college biology teacher~

Great post and very well explained :-)
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Ya know, I should mention that that whole diatribe relates to a bead regulated thermoelectric winador. That matters. Things are a lot less complicated in a humidor that doesn't have a cooling mechanism. :-)
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But have you found the leak?
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nope....

i pulled out the putty and if i have time i will go to the hardware store to see if i can find some small corks/plugs and try that....

and if not i will blow it up on New Years!! i wonder how many black cats i will need??? :-)
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Why not just turn it off for a couple of weeks? It is unlikely that you need any cooling this time of year. Set your hygrometer so you can see it without opening the door. Also, if your hygrometer has a high/low feature check the range, if its within a reasonable number you are still good to go. :-)
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Bob has great ideas.
I'd take it outside, block it up in the air a bit, and start filling it with water.
Throw a couple ratchet straps around it once it's about half full, then roll it on every side and see where it leaks.
Then go crazy with silicone.
You may even be able to adjust the door to get it to close right. They usually leak at the seal on the hinge side.
I've fixed lots of humidors by filling them with water, I wouldn't be afraid to do the same with a winador. If there's solid state panels that might get wet, I'd think about taking them out.
You want to move fast because the foam lining can get waterlogged. :-)

You have a BIG leak, Jason. I don't think it's your drain if you had it puttied up good. You could just use duct tape if you go ahead and water test it.
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im sure i could do that...but doesnt sound like it would be as fun as blowing it up....

all kidding aside. if it is going to be that much of a hassle just to get it serviceable as a wineador again, i would rather just use an ice chest. less worry, just toss in some beads and i am good to go.

thanks for all the tips, hints, and ideas
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I hate to contradict someone I do respect, and I do respect Scott and his help at this site and to the cigar community as a whole. However as the owner of two wineadors in the same environment as the OP fact is nothing may be wrong. Mine sit unopened for months and can collect water. I can see the evidence inside.

Imo it could be Texas coastal weather and the leak is the cooling system exhaust/intake itself.

Only in the last two years has water stopped collecting. The change? I run a home humidifier now to keep home humidity between 40 and 50% year round. Turn it off for vacation and I usually come back to water.
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Originally Posted by big_jaygee:
im sure i could do that...but doesnt sound like it would be as fun as blowing it up....

all kidding aside. if it is going to be that much of a hassle just to get it serviceable as a wineador again, i would rather just use an ice chest. less worry, just toss in some beads and i am good to go.

thanks for all the tips, hints, and ideas

I use one and it's absolutely hassle free.
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As I learned from a friend who works in the service dept for a large appliance store, a quick fix for a worn out or leaking gasket is a small amount of Vaseline wiped around the seal.
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Originally Posted by kydsid:
I hate to contradict someone I do respect, and I do respect Scott and his help at this site and to the cigar community as a whole. However as the owner of two wineadors in the same environment as the OP fact is nothing may be wrong. Mine sit unopened for months and can collect water. I can see the evidence inside.

Imo it could be Texas coastal weather and the leak is the cooling system exhaust/intake itself.

Only in the last two years has water stopped collecting. The change? I run a home humidifier now to keep home humidity between 40 and 50% year round. Turn it off for vacation and I usually come back to water.

I don't think you contradicted me at all, brother. The leak could very well be around the peltier unit. (As an fyi, there is no transfer of air across a peltier unit, or any other refrigeration system, for that matter.)
As a normal part of operation, any cooling unit will make condensate. It's the volume of condensate that's the question.
A small amount is normal.
A giant puddle and mold growing on stuff, as happened with Jason, that's a leak. :-)
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Well I didn't see the puddle so I can't compare. But I have had water fill all the channels on the bottom of an edgestar to where it leaked when the door was opened.
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