My own little world and a project

Tuesday, 9:24 pm

Jul

01

2008

Sometimes I think I live in my own little world. Joking, of course. Or maybe not.

This morning, I checked on the weather and all the local weather stations said the humidity was around 56%. And I thought...huh, wonder why everything feels damp if the humidity is only 56%. I opened the back door and closed it again really quickly because the air outside felt like a wet blanket. What the heck.

That got me to thinking that maybe today was a good day to acquire a hygrometer. Because this was driving me a little nuts and I had nothing to satisfy my curiosity.

While out and about I stopped by a couple of stores to see if anyone had a small hygrometer. I found a little digital one for a pittance and brought it home. Of course, one never knows how accurate these things are, but I plugged a battery in and let it go. Within an hour the thing was telling me that my household relative humidity was 77%. No way. Couldn’t be right. How in the world could my household relative humidity be 20 points higher than the several local hygrometers? So...quite possibly my little cheapo digital one was miscalibrated.

Well, now what to do, since my curiosity was burning holes in my brain by this time.

Why...make my own, of course. My Dad used to have a wet/dry thermometer set-up and a chart to figure out the relative humidity. They’re about as accurate as you can get. Low tech, too. I could sort of, kind of make one. If I could find a thermometer. I dashed over to K-Mart, thinking there might be a thermometer in the kitchen section. Shows what I know. All the kitchen thermometers are digital now. That wasn’t going to work. I wandered around the house repair and hardware section...no thermometers.

And then I passed by the summer clearance (already!) table and saw some swimming pool thermometers. They were encased in a plastic tube with a cute little blue rubber dolphin head on the top. I figured that I could tear it apart to get the thermometer out. And since it was designed for water, all the better.

I brought it home and tore it apart, wrapped a piece of gauze around the thermometer bulb, and plunked the gauze in water. Well, first I built a little hygrometer stand, roughly on the order of this cardboard one.

It’s not much to look at, but this is what I ended up with.

I forgot to mention that the swimming pool thermometer displayed the same temperature as the three other household thermometers, so that was a good start. After the thermometer’s gauze sat in the water for a while, the little red line dropped to a little more than 74°, but not quite 75°. The house temp was 80°. According to the chart on the above referenced page, that put the house relative humidity at....77%. (It later dropped to about 68%, bounced around for a bit, and is now heading toward 80%.)

Okay, so I guess the house really was almost moist enough to start growing clouds today. Still doesn’t explain why my relative humidity was so much higher than the several different weather stations in the area. By a rather significant amount. I must live in a special house. Opening the door only made the humidity go up to 79%, though. So maybe it’s just a special neighborhood. A different world or something. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m pretty sure that my two hygrometers were telling me the truth. It was humid today. Where I live...on this street...in this house. It wasn’t my imagination.