Humidity Control

Your piano is made primarily of wood, a versatile and beautiful material ideal for piano construction. However, being made of wood, your piano is greatly affected by humidity. Seasonal and even daily changes in humidity levitra buy cause wood parts to swell and shrink, affecting tuning stability and touch. Extreme swings in humidity can eventually cause buy cheap flagyl wood to crack and glue joints to fail.

Other Online Levitra buy materials in your piano also are affected by changes in moisture content in the air. The many felt and leather parts in your piano’s action can change levaquin medicine dimension, affecting regulation and friction, or stiffness of the touch. Very high humidity can even create condensation on metal lasix 40 parts such as strings, tuning pins and hardware, eventually causing them to rust.

PTG TECHNICAL BULLETIN #3 Buy Viagra, Buy Cialis, Buy Levitra Without Prescription – HUMIDITY CONTROL
© 1992 & 1994 how to buy viagra without prescription buy pfizer viagra online | buy cialis pills online | buy levitra vardenafil href=”http://www.ptg.org” title=”The Piano Technicians Guild, Inc.” target=”_blank”>The Piano Technicians Guild, Inc.  [revised 8/26/94]  [ Additional Bulletin Credits ]

How does humidity Buy Antibiotics medications level affect my piano’s tuning?

Swelling and shrinking of the piano’s soundboard is the most immediate and noticeable effect of humidity change. The soundboard, a sheet of wood approximately 3/8 of an inch thick, is made with a slightly crowned shape. The strings pass over the soundboard and are connected to it by a wooden piece called a bridge. buy Cialis online buy Drugstore cheap online acomplia The upward crown of the soundboard presses the bridge tightly against the strings.

As the moisture online viagra level in the soundboard increases during periods of high relative humidity, the crown expands and pushes the bridge harder against the strings. The strings are stretched tighter buy Amoxil generic and the piano’s pitch rises. Because amoxicillin amoxil this increase in crown is greater in the center of the soundboard than at the edges, the pitch rises more in the middle octaves than in the bass or treble registers.

During periods of low relative humidity the soundboard shrinks, cutting cialis pills reducing the crown and decreasing pressure against the strings. The pitch drops, again with the greatest effect noticeable in the center of the keyboard. When relative humidity returns to its previous level, the average pitch of all the strings will return to normal, although the exact pitch of individual strings will be slightly changed from their original settings. Thus, a piano only Buy Viagra online will stay in tune as long as the relative humidity generic diflucan level in the air surrounding the soundboard remains constant. Extreme humidity changes require making greater changes in string tension to bring the piano into tune. This upsets the equilibrium between the string tension and the piano frame, and the piano never becomes stable.

Go to top

Viagra vs cialis vs levitra name=”what”>What is relative humidity?

Wood acomplia swells and shrinks in response to changes in the relative humidity of the air around it. Relative humidity (RH) is the amount buy phentermine of moisture contained in the air, compared to the maximum amount of moisture that the air is capable of holding. The moisture content of air is affected by weather as well as conditions and activities within the home, while the moisture- holding capacity of air varies with temperature. online pharmacy One way of thinking about RH is that it is a measure of air’s tendency to absorb or release moisture to its surroundings. Thus when the RH of air in a room increases, moisture will tend to transfer from the air to wood and other absorbent materials in the room. When the RH of air decreases, moisture will transfer from other materials back into the air. The RH of the atmosphere is always changing by the hour, and more dramatically, with the seasons. Consequently, the wood and felt parts in your piano are constantly changing dimension as they absorb and release moisture.

Since RH depends upon the temperature 0nline pharmacy and moisture content of the air, it is not possible to maintain a constant RH by controlling room temperature alone. In fact, maintaining Ampicillin Drugstore buy online cheap an even temperature while moisture content varies will cause RH to change.

Go to top

What can be done to minimize humidity problems?

Keeping buy augmentin the humidity level around your piano as constant as possible will help it stay in tune longer as well as slow such damage as soundboard cracks, loose tuning pins, and glue joint failures. The first and simplest precaution you can take is to position your piano away from areas where it would be exposed to extremes of temperature and humidity such as heating and cooling vents, stoves, doors and windows. price levitra Direct sunlight is especially damaging. If your home is not well insulated, an interior wall is preferable to an outside wall.

Controlling viagra sales the humidity within the home is another step you can take to preserve your instrument. In most areas of the country the relative humidity is very low during the cold viagra female winter season, and very high during buy cytotec the spring and summer. In other areas these humidity cycles are reversed. Wherever you live, you have probably noticed the symptoms of low RH (shocks from static electricity when sliding out of a car or after walking across carpet), and the signs of high RH (limp, soggy feeling newspapers and sticking doors). To monitor RH changes in your home, you may wish to purchase a moderately priced wall hygrometer available from most instrument supply companies or electronics cialis online stores.

Use of a room humidifier buy amoxil during dry seasons will help somewhat. However, too much moisture added to a room during winter months can cause condensation to form on cold surfaces such as windows, eventually causing mildew, rot, and in extreme cases, damage to the buy cialis overseas building structure. During the humid season de- humidification is needed. If your humid season is winter, keeping the home evenly heated will help. However, humid summer situations require much more elaborate de- humidification systems. Unfortunately, it is seldom possible to adequately control the relative buy buy amoxicillin propecia cheap humidity of a piano by controlling the room environment alone.

A very practical and effective answer to humidity problems is to have a humidity control system installed in the piano itself. These systems consist of three parts: a humidifier for adding Viagra online deals moisture to the air, Buy Cialis a dehumidifier for eliminating excess moisture, and a humidistat or control unit which senses the RH of the air within the piano and activates the system to add or remove moisture as needed. These systems are designed to maintain the buy cialis generic online RH of the air within the piano at the ideal level of 42%. The components are installed out of sight, inside the case of a vertical piano or under the soundboard of a grand. They are easy to maintain, and can be installed by your piano technician.

Brand Cialis Go to top

How will humidity control benefit my buy acomplia piano?

While not eliminating the need for regular piano maintenance, humidity control will allow more stable tunings by reducing the radical pitch changes your Tadacip piano may experience through the seasons. When your piano stays closer to its correct pitch level of A440 (A-440 cycles Buy online amoxil online Viagra per cheap levitra second), your technician does not have to perform a large pitch raising or lowering procedure prior to fine tuning. Thus, a balance of forces is maintained between the strings and the frame of the piano, allowing more accurate and stable tunings to be buy real viagra without prescription done.

In addition, a stable environment will help to preserve your piano through the years. Wood parts, glue joints, metal parts and your piano’s finish will all last longer if not subjected to excessive humidity swings. Maintaining Buy Levitra online the correct environment will preserve your piano investment for a lifetime of enjoyment.

Go to top


The preceding article is a reprint of Technical Bulletin #3 published by the Piano Technicians Guild, Inc. It is provided on the Internet as a service to piano owners.

Piano Technicians Guild is an international organization buy cialis jelly of piano technicians. Registered Piano Technicians (RPTs) are those members of PTG who have passed a series of examinations on the maintenance, repair, and tuning of pianos.

For a copy of this or other PTG Bulletins and Pamphlets, buy proscar or a list of PTG members in your area, vist the PTG web site or contact Piano Technicians Guild, Inc., 4444 Forest Ave, Kansas City, KS, 66106. Ph: (913) 432-9975 Fax: (913) 432-9986 E-mail ptg@ptg.org

return to top