Wine Cooler Cave - Increasing Humidity

[steffb503]

I am using a wine cooler as a cave. I have a bowl actually two bowls of water inside and I can not seem to get the humidity up to 80%.
I figure if the cheese was in a container it would work but the whole cooler is full and I wanted all the cheeses to be at 80%.
Any other ides?

[zenith1]

Steff- some of the coolers have coils that allow the water vapor (humidity)present in the cooler to condense on the coils and drain out to a waste bin. That could be the case with yours(it was with mine). You can tell if you look for the bin,I am sure that it is full. Hard to keep the humidity where you need it with this type of cooler. The one I used also had two small muffin fans to circulate the air in the cooler. I placed a pan of water on the shelf immediately under the fans. I placed a dome of metal window screen in the pan and covered it with cheesecloth that went all the way down into the pan. That way the water would constantly wick. I was able to maintain ~80%. the downside is the constant emptying of the drain bin.

[Scarlet Runner]

I don't know if this is good or bad advice- but I started keeping a small bowl of saturated salt in my cooler. I don't have a wine cooler- it's just a large plastic cooler in my crawl space, lid closed but not latched. I keep a small bowl with maybe 1/4 cup salt (max) mixed with a little water (not so much salt dissolves, it just stays moist) in it, and at current temp = 55F, my humidity gauge reads a constant 75%. Last winter it read close to 90% humidity (probably crawl space was moister, or perhaps because the cooler temp was colder then, about 50F? I don't know- I suck at physics).