Hi All,  At the outset, let me state that this posting is not about how
to convince a customer to change their ways.  It's about how to deal with
a bad situation.

It's fairly well accepted that extreme environmental conditions are not
good for player pianos (or pianos), but yesterday the question was posed
to me, "What can I do about _it_?"  Here's the situation in a nutshell:

  Temperature:
    constant 80 degrees F (27 Celsius)
  Relative humidity (RH):
    during the winter: virtually zero percent RH
    during the summer: as much as 90 percent RH

Mind you, the temperature cannot be lower than 80 degrees for health
reasons as there is a very elderly man living in the home.  (I know
what you're thinking, but the customer cannot be convinced otherwise
and, as previously stated, that is not the point of this posting.)

The problem is that the extremes in humidity are devastating the
exhauster assembly.  The question is, short of rebuilding the assembly
from scratch out of wood that can handle the extremes (like marine
grade plywood), what would you do?

My recommendation was to seal the wood inside and out with Phenoseal.
It's the only product I know of that will shrink and stretch -- forever.
What other products might be used?

Musically,
John A Tuttle
Player-Care.com
Brick, New Jersey, USA