A Cigar Lounge Where the Cooling and the Humidor Want Opposite Things

A cigar lounge has to hold two incompatible climates inside one tenancy, and they sit metres apart.

The guest areas want ordinary comfort cooling. The humidor wants roughly 70% relative humidity held steady at cellar temperature. Those are not merely different targets — they are opposed ones, because dehumidification is not a feature of comfort cooling that can be switched off. It is a by-product of how the equipment works: a refrigerant coil running below the air's dew point condenses moisture out of every cubic metre it touches. The system that makes the room pleasant for guests is the same system that dries out the stock.

The tolerance either side is narrow. Let a cigar sit too dry and the wrapper shrinks, splits and the cigar is unsellable. Let it sit too damp and the risk becomes mould and tobacco beetle. Neither failure announces itself on the day it starts.

Two things made it harder. The humidor is small — 27 m³ — and small volumes swing fast, so an error that a large room would absorb over hours shows up here in minutes. And it has a door that opens all evening onto Malaysian ambient air, which is warm and frequently above 80% RH. So the room has to be defended in both directions: humidified when the cooling pulls it dry, dehumidified when the door lets the outside in.

The comfort side was zoned by function rather than sized across the floor area. The main hall took five 5.0HP ceiling cassettes at 42,000 Btu/hr each, carrying the crowd load and the ceiling height. Each cigar room and the VIP room were given their own units — 2.5HP at 20,500 Btu/hr, and 3.0HP at 24,200 Btu/hr for the larger of them — specifically so each room could hold its own setpoint instead of inheriting the hall's. Stores were served by wall-mounted units where a cassette was not appropriate.

That zoning is what makes the humidor solvable at all. A room cannot be given its own climate if it shares a thermostat with the space next door.

The humidity scope followed as a separate phase. The humidor received both humidification and dehumidification — both, because in this climate the room has to be pushed back toward the middle from either side — under a dedicated control panel with its own temperature control, so the room runs on its own loop rather than as a slave to the venue's comfort system.

A dewpoint air curtain was fitted at the door. It does not seal the room, but it substantially cuts the volume of ambient air exchanged each time the door opens, which is where a small humidor loses control fastest.

The comfort installation was delivered first, in July 2025: twelve indoor units across main hall, cigar rooms, VIP room and stores, with installation, copper runs, insulated condensate drainage and commissioning.

CASS returned in October 2025 for the humidity scope — the control panel, the humidification and dehumidification plant for the 27 m³ room, the air curtain, and an additional wall-mounted unit with 20ft of insulated copper, tested and commissioned.