Piano Dehumidifier: Why Control High Humidity?

Pianos in rooms of humidity above 50% can experience damage to both wooden and electronic parts that should be avoided.

Though, most damage due to high humidity is no cause for concern, it will have an impact on the appraisal value of the instrument and may warrant replacing electronic components.

Please consider monitoring the humidity within the room where the piano belongs and implement dehumidifiers/humidifiers as needed. Prevention is key when it comes to preserving the health of the piano.

Piano Dehumidifier

There are many different dehumidifier brands, models, and features that may or may not be effective for your pianos needs.

Get the best value out of the dehumidifier you select by following a few of the criteria listed below.

Piano Dehumidifiers must haves:

• Large tank (2 Gallons)

• Drainage features (hose to drain)

• High capacity/square footage (4,000ft+ or 50pints/day)

• Silent functionality (Important for music rooms)

Dehumidifier Features that are nice to haves:

• Smart features

• Wi-Fi connectivity

• Humidity record graphs

• Energy efficiency

The must haves are the bare minimum features needed from a dehumidifier in order to be effective at protecting your piano from dangerous humidity. I elaborate on some of the damages that can be incurred from high humidity below.

Buy Smart Dehumidifier

The Dehumidifier listed above meets all of the bare minimum requirements to keep a piano safe from dangerous levels of high humidity.

This dehumidifier includes additional smart features that are unique to 21st century appliances.

How Does High Humidity Negatively Affect Acoustic Pianos?

If a piano is in a space where the humidity is too high, there will be a few different things that will be effected given enough time.

• Pressure Ridges on the soundboard

• Piano Tuning instability

• Pianos will drift sharp

• Slightly more difficult to tune

Pressure Ridges: These are raised grain lines along the soundboard that make the surface of the soundboard feel like there is a "bump" when you run your fingers across the soundboard. The bump that goes along the grainlines is inconsequential to the sound, though it does mean that the wood fibers have forever been damaged.

Piano Tuning Instability: A piano room that has humidity above 50% is simply a room that is not humidity controlled. Many piano owners will believe that the AC plays a role to reduce high levels of humidity. To control the humidity at a professional level, using the air conditioner is simply unacceptable.

Piano Tuner Observations: While tuning the piano, tuners can feel that the tuning pins feel/respond differently to force due to high levels of humidity. This makes it more difficult to set the pins with consistent stability across the pin block of the piano.

How Does High Humidity Negatively Affect Electronic Pianos and Pianos with Electronics?

• May effect internal circuit boards

• May need to replace circuitboards

• Storage facilities must remain dehumidified

Humidity and electronic components do not mix. The same goes for keyboards and pianos with electronic components.

Replacing circuitboards: Extra humidity due to a variety of environmental factors may be culpable to some extent to the failure of circuit boards. Therefore, replacing select circuit boards may be necessary at times.

Piano owners should take good measure to prevent high levels of humidity in the piano room.

A fantastic way to prevent damage is by operating a dehumidifier in the same room as the piano.

Gel silica bead packs are only effective for initial/short-term high humidity shocks, and are not protective against sustained high levels of humidity.

Perfect Dehumidifier for Piano Living Rooms

Whether the dehumidifier is chosen from this blog post or elsewhere, please take note of the bare minimum requirements necessary to protect against high humidity levels.

Buy Dehumidifier

The dehumidifier above meets all of the requirements necessary to sufficiently protect against the negative impacts of high humidity to a piano.

Both acoustic and electronic pianos should be protected from high levels of humidity in addition to relative humidity levels that are too low.

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