I am in the situation where I have to store a Standard player outside
my house (too little space, as always).  From older postings, I gather
that more or less constant humidity is much more important than
constant temperature.  I even remember someone claiming that it is
better to store a piano in a shack (with watertight roof), where it
might be freezing in the winter and 30 or more deg. C in summer, than
having it in a centrally heated and maybe even air-conditioned house
with tight windows, where the humidity swings wildly between summer
and winter.

So: Is it better to store the piano

in a non-heated, non-climate-controlled ground level storage room
of a farm, which is
- cool in summer (up to 20 deg. C)
- almost non-freezing in winter (down to maybe -2 deg. C)
- dry (the floor above contains living rooms etc.)
- also used to store furniture, books, films etc. without problems for
the last 3 years;

or in a floor-heated (--> very dry in winter) living room with modern
(--> tight) windows and healthy people (--> no humidity "control" of
any sort except opening/closing windows; cooking in nearby kitchen;
three children dropping snow and water cloaked clothes on the floor)?

My other (=really used) piano with its still unrestored player actually
must live under these conditions; I'll see what happens...  Is a
standard humidifier (which is, as far as I know, not using a feed-back
loop to maintain some defined humidity level, but simply blows water
vapor into the air whenever the inhabitants of the house feel free to
switch it on) a good choice?  Or at least a hygrometer on the wall?
And where should I then try to keep the humidity?

Harald M. Mueller