Kitty Litter Bead Incident

[xrundog]

Had an interesting thing happen yesterday. I checked my humidors maybe a week ago and everything was fine except the coolerdor. RH was in the low 70s. That's a no-no. Should be 65-67%. I stuck some small containers of beads in there to take up slack. Checked yesterday and it was still high. Looking at the large container I could see beads on top. But after about 11 years they looked pretty grungy. So I pulled them out and gave them a stir. To my surprise the majority of the container held silica powder! I dumped that out, cleaned off the sticky container and refilled it with fresh kitty litter beads. The jug originally held seven pounds and I still have lots left. Anyway, checking today, the RH is back at 65%. The fresh beads are doing their job.
So, to answer a question asked long ago: Q: How long do kitty litter beads last? A: The kitty litter beads do in fact seem to have a finite life expectancy. And it seems to be around 10 years.
The humidifiers I have made with Climaxx or Heartfelt beads are older than that and are still doing the job fine.
And if you are reading this and thinking: Gee, I have one of Tim's humidors, do I need to check the beads? The answer is: Probably not. I always used Heartfelt beads in refurbs I did.