Author Topic: New walk in cave question  (Read 2477 times)

elkato

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New walk in cave question
« on: July 09, 2012, 02:27:00 PM »
Hello
I just finished building a 400 sq ft cave built on an existing room with 4" insulation covered with polished concrete, equipped with a 2HP compressor (outside) condenser(inside)
It is working great, I have blue cheese inside that is blooming nice, and RH is at a surprising 95-99%
yesterday I told the installer to set the condenser fans to blow only when the compressor kicks in so it would not blow 24/7 like it originally was doing
this morning I found that the RH had dropped to 79%
so my question is; should the condenser unit blow 24/7 like it was doing when the RH was great, or can it be set to blow when the compressor starts and then use another source for the humidity?
I might have answered my own question since blowing 24/7 was working great, but I want to hear it from someone who knows this
« Last Edit: July 10, 2012, 02:31:14 AM by elkato »

linuxboy

  • Guest
Re: New walk in cave question
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2012, 02:41:57 PM »
You have to try and imitate natural conditions as much as possible. In nature, the following happens:

1) Air enters cave
2) Air is humidified as it slowly moves in, with a mixing zone up front, finally reaching 80%+ RH as it goes in deeper
3) Ideally, constant air flow is maintained for air exchange, with a variable air velocity based on season and location

So in your scenario, consider
1) How are you humidifying the air as it moves from the outside in? Especially as it relates to a condenser, is it freezing on the coils? Where is the buffer/mixture zone for humidifying the air?
2) How are you slowing down air velocity to evacuate air?
3) How are you distributing old and new air and evacuating the old? What is the convection path?
4) And regarding temp gradients, how does the air distribution ensure even temp through the space?

If you think through all these considerations, you should be in a very good place figuring out the right interplay. Also, RH is sometimes misleading, especially with electronic gizmos. Water saturation or a psychrometer reading sometimes yields more usable results. I'm not sure which way you should go, not completely understanding your setup and pic did not come up.

elkato

  • Guest
Re: New walk in cave question
« Reply #2 on: August 10, 2012, 07:33:38 PM »
Thank you LB!
sorry for answering late... I already solved the problem by setting up the condenser fans (the ones inside the cave) to run 24/7 (like they where before) and the RH immediately returned to a 95%
 I had  changed the setting so the compressor fans (inside) only ran  when the compressor unit (the one outside the cave) starts to work , which is only for a few minutes once the temperature climbs up  (to try to save on electricity) the RH dropped to 65% (hence the topic of this thread)
The photos are not loading but the setup is in this tread...
http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,9844.msg72346.html#msg72346