Oh and the only reason a house in the winter that burns really fast is not due to the wood per se, but many of the older dwellings have radiators that are steam driven, and the steam does not leave the thing, and if you check the humidity of the old sawn rough lumber you'll find it might be 10 percent. Thus when a fire gets inside a wall that is lath and plaster, the low humidity plus the fact that the structure is one of balloon construction with no fire stopping between floors, the old 3 story homes built over 100 years ago here, with brick veneer, tend to go up quickly. Now that every responding vehicle has a FLIR camera, they can scan the exterior of the building and determine the location of the fire, pierce the brick, and insert water into the lower part of the vertical space, and extinguish it without the old method of opening the roof to vent it, making entry, and hoping to find the fire. Of course, I'm talking about local construction methods, this changes from area to area when moving south to another country.

I admit to not having spending thousands of hours examining construction methods employed in the Usa. I have done that here, and have a 100 page manual written and in use on construction and fire protection.

That said EVERY museum that's involved in the display of anything wood, including instruments, stores them and displays them in a temperature and humidity controlled environment. I also have a lengthy paper on that subject, part of the "Loss Prevention Best Practices for Cultural Institutions on the Matter of Fires, Flooding and Natural Disasters", used as a sort of handbook by museums and art galleries, and libraries in our area..

I would defer however to you Mac on the electrical electronics side.

John Conley
Musica est vita