danielHeadShotDear Daniel,

I am confused about humidity. One friend says that the bathrooms and kitchens in modern homes provide enough humidity and I don’t need a humidifier. Another friend keeps a pan of water under their piano.

Help!  

Leila T.

Leila, consistency is the most important thing regarding humidity with a piano.

Although there are lots of ways to create a consistent environment for your instrument we wouldn’t suggest a pan of water; it creates too many other damage risks. In fact we have some history with this sort of approach.

Several years ago we had a customer who had recently moved to Arizona. She had her piano annually tuned at the beginning of the summer. Three months later she called saying her piano was “out of whack”. When we went to check on it we found a kiddie pool set up full of water in the middle of her living room. She had left for the summer and was worried about the piano drying out, forgetting about monsoons. She had over humidified the room causing the wood to swell sending the piano out of tune and creating a need for other repairs. However, her houseplants were beautiful.

We do use a room humidifier here in the shop but truthfully it is about the commitment you can make for the maintenance of the piano. There are humidifiers you can attach to the piano through musical retailers but we use a room humidifier we purchased at Sears. We also suggest purchasing a humidity gauge to track the areas in the room that are most consistent.

You can purchase a gauge at any hardware store. Here in Tucson the big question is does your home have air conditioning or evaporative cooling? If you have a swamp cooler we would suggest using a humidifier of some kind during our non-monsoon months and schedule your tuning for early fall when monsoons are over. An interesting fact, air conditioning units also have a drying effect to the air as heaters do. So that is also something to keep in mind.

Humidity and temperature is something that needs to be tightly regulated even during the building of the piano. Moisture issues can create problems with the pianos tuning. Pianos are string instruments and so the moment the tuning is done it begins to fall out of tune, similar to guitars. Also the kind of piano it is and the condition it currently in will also affect how well it holds tune.

Daniel Ley

Daniel Ley is the owner of Ley Piano Company in Tucson Arizona, where he carries on a tradition of quality piano care, service, and restoration. In addition to full service piano care, he and his craftsmen have designed and built a new American grand piano, the Monserrat. The goal has always been to design thinking as a technician, to purchase high quality parts from businesses with longevity, and to make an instrument that is reasonably priced for all piano lovers. The Monserrat is a labor of love built with the customer in mind.

 

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