DIY case humidifiers

[walker]

I made a couple of these things via the soap dish & sponge method, but the sponges can get moldy pretty quick. Anyone else have mold problems with their case humidifiers? And subsequent solutions... would adding a little bit of bleach to the water before soaking the sponge and wringing it out help?

[kiramdear]

I'd be worried to lock up some bleachy anything with my guitar's finish.

[T.A.R.]

I've been using a sponge in a plastic baggy leaving the zip mostly open. So far no mold. To keep the schooner water tanks fresh I use a less than a cap full of bleach to fifty gallons of water, I wouldn't think you'd need very much. The other trick I've heard of is micro waving the sponge to kill bacteria and mold spores (never tried it).

[walker]

I would definitely be careful about using too much bleach or allowing the bleached water to come into direct contact with the guitar. Last night I noticed that the sponge was smelling moldy again, so I did the microwave trick after soaping and wringing out the sponge thoroughly. I used "Anti-bacterial soap" and left a bit of it in the sponge before wringing it out again, putting it back in the holder then into the case.

[cjj]

Yes, I seem to recall that it's been mentioned in the past that chlorine is particularly detrimental to CV finishes...

[rickenbrother]

The microwaving trick that Ted mentions is probably a good way to go.

[DriftSpace]

There's something that is sold at health food stores called GSE, (Grapefruit Seed Extract) and it has a lot of applications; it's plant-based, safe for human consumption, and is a natural antiseptic. I use it in the bedroom humidifiers to curb microbial growth, as a mouthwash, as an additive for nasal irrigation, and I have also used it in those water filtration pitchers to keep them from growing algae. Using GSE in the humidifiers has significantly reduced cleaning frequency, and when I do clean them: there's virtually no growth to clean-out. The same goes for our drinking water pitcher, which used to turn green if the sun was on it for a couple of days before we started adding 2 drops of GSE per fill. The bottles seem kind of expensive, but they are pretty economical, considering that just a few drops will do for most applications.

I'd suspect a sponge soaked in a small dish of water containing maybe 5-10 drops of dissolved GSE and then wrung-out would do well to curb microbial growth, but I haven't tried it myself. It's got to be better than bleach, considering it's just seed extract suspended in vegetable glycerin.

[cassius987]

GSE is interesting stuff. One of my good friends is about to finish her PhD showing its efficacy in treating late-stage colon cancer. In my department, we look on stuff like GSE like snake oil because most of it is... and yet GSE has by and large lived up to a lot of the hype around it. I can't think of too many other herbal products that have done that besides the cannabinoids.

[johnallg]

There is also this type product:

http://www.cigarsinternational.com/sear ... erpage=all

[BuddyDog]

Use distilled water!

Your sponge will last a lot longer before it molds up.