Plugging a Vino Drain.

[shilala]

I've thought for a long time about making this post. I never wanted to because I'm not a big fan of raising a controversy, and it's always been something of an argument every time I see it come up.
Thing is, I get at least one or two calls a week and multiple pm's about humidity problems and a huge percentage of the time the problems are cause by the same thing, and that's because the drain hole in the Vino (or other type of winador) hasn't been plugged.

I'm going to try to answer why things sometimes work without the drain plugged and why it normally doesn't.
I hope everyone will take this information in the spirit it's given, and that's to help my brothers avoid problems, or solve some ongoing problems that have been sapping the enjoyment out of keeping a winador.

First off, the vino drain is a hole. It's a hole in my humidor.
If I had a half inch hole in the front of my desktop it'd make keeping the humidity stable a real challenge. Being as I know it's not supposed to be there, I'd plug that sucker up.
Now if I choose to leave it there, I can use lots of beads, a hydra, sponges, voodoo, and lots of effort and manage to keep the humidity where I want it. If that's okay by me and I have the time or enjoy doing it, by all means I should keep my hole and go along being happy.
There's certainly nothing wrong with that, and if it brings me joy to do it, I don't care what anyone says, I'm gonna keep my hole.
If it's causing me grief and sleepless nights, I'm going to plug it up.

There are lots of reasons why some folks can get away with it.
I already mentioned some.
There are also different reasons for different situations that are far less obvious. Being as there are so many different factors at play, I can't possibly outline them all, but I can throw out a couple simple reasons and if anyone has questions I'll certainly help answer them the best I can.

In a lot of cases the drain hole can be left unplugged because the ambient (surrounding) RH is sufficient to reintroduce water vapor into the vino.
Other control measures (such as beads) are sufficient to overcome the changes and no fluctuation in RH is witnessed because of that.
In some cases the ambient RH is sufficient to remove water vapor from the vino, and couple with beads and so forth.
Lots of folks keep their homes at a relatively stable temperature and RH all year. I try to, because I know what temp and RH keeps me comfortable.
When I have a reasonably stable temperature and RH all year, I can figure out just the right combination of beads and hydras and other stuff to cover all the bases. It works, and that's great.
Despite that, I'm still going to have a constant and large exchange of fresh air in and out of my vino. That's a whole 'nother ball of wax as to whether that's good or bad. It's great if I'm trying to get smokes out of their sick period quickly, but if I want to go slow it's really going to take the "life" out of my cigars quickly and quite possibly remove the potential for seeing the benefit of long term aging.
For me, that's not a realistic problem because I don't choose to long-age anything. For serious brothers, it's probably a serious situation.
In this situation I'm also going to stand the chance of things changing very quickly if I change the ambient. If I open the windows in the house and let the warm, wet outside air in, and that's vastly different from the normal temperature and RH in my house, conditions in my humi can destabilize very quickly. Once I close the windows and get back to niormal, so will my Vino.

The whole bead/humidity control thing is wrapped up in math and a few physical principles. The cool thing is that they can take care of a certain small range of variations very well, no matter what kind of beads (or hydra or PG or gel or anything else for that matter) they are.
Problems rear their ugly head when the demands exceed the bead's natural abilities.
If the beads have a small area to take care of, they can work wonders.
When I drill a little hole in my humi, I make their job harder. The bigger the hole, the tougher the job. Eventually the job is just too hard and they fail, no matter what I'm using. That's also why cracks and bad seals and leaky windows make things so difficult.
By plugging the holes, I'm helping my humidity control device to do it's job to it's best ability.

Lastly...
If your Vino is working great without the drain plugged, I'm by no means suggesting for anyone to go run and plug the drain. By doing so, you'll likely create an entirely new set of dynamics and you'd have to learn how to deal with them.
On the other hand, nothing bad may happen at all.
I know it sounds crazy, but that's the way it is. There are so many variations that literally anything can happen.
If you choose to go ahead and plug the drain, then you'll create a small environment that is the same as everyone else with a plugged drain. That little environment is very easy to control, and it has a very small amount of variables. As such, it offers a certain measure of safety, and to me, that's a good thing.
There are lots and lots of guys in the Plugged Drain Club, and together we've figured out how to tame the humidity beast and it's become very easy to keep things stable all the time with a very small amount of effort.
In many cases, it requires no effort at all.
If you're having any trouble at all, there's tons of guys here who do it the same way and have great success. They're all eager and happy to help, but you gotta plug the drain.