It helps when you understand your local weather patterns, i.e. how outside humidity can change in various seasons. Some people live in areas where the weather stays relatively much the same for long periods of time, I on the other hand live in Holland near the coast and weather can fluctuate greatly. Both in winter and summer indoor Rh can fluctuate between 25 and 70 here, with summers usually a bit more steady if the weather stays nice.
You can't humidify one moment not knowing if Rh will climb to extremes, or vice versa. Adding humidity overnight when the weather may change to top peaks is more dangerous to me then waiting for a change in the weather.
Here sometimes it just lasts a few hours and then things clear up again.
One moment it's dry, the other it's abnormally humid. Since I know it will probably change in a few hours I just watch how it devellops, and if I see it lasts more then a day I will know my guitars have had an impact from it and I can take counter measures knowing that the guitar will need something extra to ballance things out. Even when the weather changes around I might give it a bit too much in a situation where the guitar just had too little but it won't do much harm in 8 hours.
It's a kind of after the fact type of humidifying, because there is no other way I can see, other then perhaps installing airco or like some put things in an airtight chamber, which probably wouldn't work here anyway. So most of the time I do nothing, except for monitoring humidity.
As I said, being aware of what the weather will do with your humidity levels in any given season will allow you to more or less forecast that behaviour by just looking at the sky and seeing clouds roll in or out.
Here temperatures behave the same too, up and down with most extreme peaks during summer. If you change your indoor temperature for whatever period, you will influence Rh accordingly even if the outside weather hasn't changed. However if it did change then your guitars may be in an extreme Rh for that time.
It's not something to worry about since 8 hours may not necessarily cause problems, but understanding how things work is just as essential as monitoring the weather and knowing what the forecast will bring. It will give you better control. I.e. I know what is coming on forehand for the next few days and I know it's nothing that should worry me.
Ludwig
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