If it’s not the heat...

As we get used to working here in the Reinventorium, we’re getting better at adjusting the office climate. Ye olde office up on Fitzroy Street varied between too-cold and too-hot over the years, but the humidity was always pleasant. Here in the new place the heat varies betwen too-hot and much-too-hot (there’s a service call about this imminent), and the humidity is airplane-like.

To attach to metrics to this, I invested in a thermometer hygrometer combination over the weekend ($9 at Canadian Tire) and what I found was this:

That’s about 23 degrees and 24% humidity (and the temperature was lower than usual because I’d had the window open for a while).

I went back to Canadian Tire on Sunday afternoon and bought a Honeywell humidifier, one advertised as being good for “medium-sized rooms” (with no definition of what that meant), for $46 and left it running overnight. When I came into the office this morning the humidity was up to 30%, but with no signs of going any higher. The office was more pleasant, but the hygrometer was still in the “very dry” zone.

So I returned the humidifier, and found another Honeywell across the parking lot at Future Shop, for $49, that was advertised as suiting “large rooms.” It’s been running for the last 3 hours, and the humidity is now up to 42%:

It’s not quite as high as I’d like it, but 42% humidity is much, much more comfortable to work in than 24% humidity, so I’ll leave the new humidifier in place overnight and see where we’re at in the morning.

If I can get things to 45% humidity and down in the 20 degrees range, I’ll be a happy worker.

Apologies to my father for mocking his seeming obsession with humidity when I was a kid: our house was full of hygrometers and humidifiers and dehumidifiers and I believe there may have been graph paper involved at times. I had no idea what the fuss was all about. Now I do.