Protecting Valuables from Environmental Damage
Keeping Your Valuables Safe by Monitoring and Maintaining Proper Environmental Conditions.
Perhaps you’ve spent good money on musical instruments, firearms, an art collection, fine wines, baseball cards, and comic books, or maybe you’re into cigars. Maybe you keep important documents in your home, or enjoy photo albums and scrapbooking. And what about that classic car or motorcycle lovingly tucked away in your garage?
Whatever your passion, it makes sense to protect your investments. A big part of preserving valuables and collectibles is storing them in a safe environment and striving to maintain conditions that are stable. That means keeping close tabs on conditions like temperature and humidity that can have a negative impact on sensitive items. And if your valuables stay in a storage area like a basement, attic, or garage, it also helps to strategically install leak detectors. That can help provide warning in time to move things to safety in the event of flooding or water leaks.
Monitoring Wine Storage Temperature and Humidity
Problem
Temperature can negatively affect the taste of wine, particularly rapid changes. In addition, some wine experts suggest that low humidity can cause corks to dry out. Exposure to sunlight is also something that can lessen the taste of a fine wine.
Solution
Wine collectors, generally speaking, mention 55°F as a perfect wine storage temperature. They add, however, that any wine temperature between 45°F and 65°F will likely be fine. Keeping relative humidity above 50% should be adequate to protect the cork, most agree, but be careful to not keep humidity so high that you'll be in danger of attracting mold. Use a humidifier to increase humidity or a dehumidifier to decrease humidity. Rapid changes in conditions are the main thing to worry about, so always strive to keep your wines in a stable environment. Lastly, don't store wine where it can be exposed to direct sunlight. If storing expensive wines, particularly for long periods of time, definitely do your research to achieve proper “cellar” conditions.
AcuRite Solutions & Tips
- Monitor Wine Storage Conditions: Place an AcuRite Monitor near a wine rack or in a wine cooler to measure ambient room conditions. For a walk-in wine cellar, simply set up a Room Monitor inside the wine cellar.
- Install a Temperature and Humidity Sensor(optional) inside a wine cabinet, wine cellar or wine fridge to monitor conditions where the wine is stored.
- Use a Home Environment Display for convenient viewing of conditions measured by Monitors and Sensors in multiple rooms around your home.
- Set alarms to alert you of undesirable conditions. These can include:
- Undesirably low or high temperatures
- Undesirably high or low humidity
- Set alarms to alert you of undesirable conditions. These can include:
There are many great resources on keeping valuables safe. Here are a few options we recommend:
- Wine Spectator offers wine storage basics, including wine storage temperature
- Cigar World provides some basics on caring for cigars, such as using a humidor hygrometer in a cigar humidor
- Hagerty Classic Vehicle Insurance offers these steps for proper car and motorcycle storage, including winterization and long-term storage
- Bikebandit.com has 10 steps for winterizing and long-term storing a motorcycle
- Premiere Guitar offers these tips on guitar storage and using a guitar humidifier
