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.
Using a Humidor Hygrometer for Proper Cigar Storage
Problem
Cigars, if not properly stored, can dry out. This can cause the wrapper to crack and/or unravel. Perhaps more importantly, much of the flavor is lost. Some argue you can revive a dried-out cigar, but most agree it will never taste as good as cigar which was properly stored.
Solution
Cigar storage is meant to mimic the hot and humid climates where tobacco is grown and cigars are made. Therefore, temperature around 70°F and 73-74% relative humidity is generally considered ideal. Since these are levels above where we generally keep our homes, a cigar humidor will be necessary for longer-term storage, particularly if you have a large or growing collection. There are humidors that you can purchase, or you can construct your own.
AcuRite Solutions & Tips
- Monitor Cigar Storage Conditions: Place an AcuRite Monitor near a humidor to measure ambient room conditions. For a walk-in cigar humidor, simply set up a Room Monitor inside the enclosure.
- Install a Temperature and Humidity Sensorinside the humidor to view conditions where the cigars are 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
