Curious what Wirecutter would have to say about this. I use them for a lot of my purchases if I don't know where to start and it does seem like some rare times they just miss the mark, though not so egregiously as this. Why stand on something that seems so widely disliked?
Affiliate revenue. The same reason they recommend all the other products on their site. It's advertising disguised as product reviews. You are a sucker if you believe anything an Amazon affiliate is telling you.
There are a dozen other humidifiers they can earn affiliate money through.
I have a low-end "Victsing" model and it works just fine (as evidenced by the hygrometer next to it), and isn't hard to clean. It isn't a complicated device to make.
I have found their reviews very extensive, more than any other free alternative that covers so many product categories, and typically they match what you get if you purchase one of the products. You'd think having NYT behind them would lend some legitimacy, at least as far as it concerns outright fabrications. Typically I don't mind if their recommendations are sourced from just a handful of retailers in that case.
Last time I read the Wirecutter review, they only looked at the wick style of humidifier. The stated reason for this was the propensity for steam and ultrasonic humidifiers to over-humidify. It's entirely possible that the Honeywell is the easiest to clean and most quiet of this type of humidifier.
[edit] Direct quotes from the Wirecutter post (emphasis added by me):
> We recommend the Honeywell HCM-350 Germ Free Cool Mist Humidifier because it’s quieter, more durable, and easier to clean than any other evaporative humidifier we’ve tested, with a 1-gallon tank that will last all day.
> ...In general, we prefer evaporative humidifiers because we find them less messy and less likely to over-humidify a space; however, you will need to replace the wicking filter on a semi-regular basis, and the fans might not be the best option for people who have pets or particularly dusty homes. The best one for you will be whichever one you’re actually willing to deal with and maintain.
There are ultrasonic humidifiers, at the same price point, that have humidity meters built in so they don't over humidify. It's completely dishonest for wirecutter to claim that the entire category over-humidifies. It's just not true.
I definitely think they need to revise that copy. The article actually has a recommendation now for an ultrasonic with an accurate hygrometer that wasn't there when I first read the article ~9 years ago.
Ultrasonic just sprays all the disolved minerals across your room. You won't notice it at first, but about 2 or 3 weeks into using the device, you'll find plenty of "white dust" all over your room.
In my experience, you get a smelly bacteria-infested humidifier if you keep using it for a few days. You need to regularly rinse ultrasonic humidifiers... or really any humidifier at all.
So, I have one of these running in my room right now (and have for the whole winter thus far). No white dust. That said, I don't run it at full power, I keep it where I can barely see any mist coming out.
It humidifies the room quite nicely, keeping it at about 40% humidity (our house averages 25% without humidifiers running, which is hell on skin and noses).
Maybe my tap water has more minerals than your tap water. A good bit of slag builds up in my warm-air humidifier, and the white-dust was noticeable after a few weeks of ultrasonic.
Warm-air humidifiers are less efficient: My room is ~25% without any devices running. An ultrasonic would bring it up to 35%+, but Warm-air humidifier only brings it up to 32% or so.
Another efficiency test: both units were 1-quart (EDIT: Not a gallon) units. The warm-air humidifier probably goes through the tank in ~12 hours, while the ultrasonic would go through in ~8.
> Maybe my tap water has more minerals than your tap water
Unlikely; my tap water is well water. I do clean the humidifier with vinegar every week to keep the mineral buildup down. Then again, I do that with the shower head and tea kettle too (though a bit less frequently).
The big thing, as I've found it, is keeping the output down to a visible minimum. A big plume of mist that visibly lands anywhere isn't adding more water to the air - it's putting water droplets on the surface much like a spray bottle. It looks good, but isn't doing the job you're asking it to.
Then it is probably a difference in ultrasonic humidifiers. I can tell you that mine barely builds up much slag at all. I switched to warm-air after I grew tired of the white-dust issue.
The white-dust issue is further confirmed as I use the warm-air (boiling-type) humidifier. A LOT of minerals are found every day from my boiled-away tap-water... minerals that clearly used to be sprayed into the air and dusting my furniture.
It's expensive, but distilled water will fix that. Cheaper is filling it up from an RO filter (not as low in minerals as distilled, but probably "good enough")
I typically have good experiences as well, but sometimes I know of an alternative that's very popular - when I go to check the "Competition" section it's almost always missing.
the TC video's conclusion is that the evaporative humidifiers are best, but TFA's main complaints would not be solved by that. It sounds like the TFA needs an air filter combined with an evaporative cooler. And maybe some expectation management concerning what happens to standing water at room temperature under a fan.
It's probably more likely that the humidifier in TFA is just a poorly designed POS and should be replaced with a better version of the same evap type.
If you notice, the evap ones TC covers in his video all have easily accessible fans with no grill blocking access to the blades, and in general are fairly cleanable, while the one in TFA sounds like a nightmare.
I bought an old Vornado Evap40 wicking unit from an estate sale some time back after concerns about using an ultrasonic unit with tap water that is high in silicates. The whole unit breaks down so it's pretty easy to clean if it gets slimy inside.
He made a video talking about that, basically he thinks he have the wrong impression and he doesn't think any version is "the best" per se, it all depends on your situation. https://youtu.be/HfFAiCMLJ14
Actually just discovered that channel a couple weeks ago. Kind of amazing how interesting he can make such mundane topics. (Though I do prefer to watch at 1.75-2x speed.)
Newpipe is the first video player I've found which has a trim-silence feature. I use the similar feature for (audio) podcasts all the time and according to pocketcasts, it saves me huge amounts of time. I've enjoyed having it for videos too.
He really does need to do a video on hair cutting technology though. For a bit the hair made him look younger, now he’s starting to look emo.
I’m not saying that to be catty. One of the little mercies of the quarantine is the number of people who have figured out how to keep making content. It’s a little bit of normalcy, or at least it was until everyone’s personal grooming limitations started causing that illusion to crack, along with bits of my sanity.
Does anybody know if it's safe to add copper sulfate to evaporative humidifier? I've checked some resources and based on what I read it should be safe and very cheap. Yet this doesn't seem to be popular so I'm wondering if maybe I'm missing something. I'm only talking about evaporative humidifier.
It does, but I would imagine amount of water droplets are negligible. I mean if it is used in cleaning products (presumably in higher concentrations that would be required in humidifier), it seems that droplets of those have higher probability of staying in the air after cleaning than whatever fan blowing on the surface can put there? Or am I understanding risks associated with it wrong?
I bought this (a few years ago) at Wirecutter's recommendation and had a bad experience with it as well. Like the medium post, the humidifier didn't work for me. Eventually, I got rid of it.
Wirecutter simply isn't that reliable. I do check their recommendations as one input source, but their top recommendation is not reliable (and will change from time to time).
Agreed. Recently bought a handheld vacuum cleaner. Wirecutter had some recommendations and said the Dyson one was “the strongest” (also most expensive), I got the Dyson and hated it (very cumbersome, heavy, short battery duration, not that easy to clean). Ended up returning it and got a random one at a local store instead. The random one was $50 (instead of $250-400 for the Dyson), has same or better suction, way easier to use and the battery lasts about 50-100% longer per charge (7-10 min instead of 4-5 min for the Dyson).
Similar thing happened with another appliance. Wirecutter is not very reliable.
Are you sure the Dyson you bought was real? I have owned a Dyson stick vacuum for over 5 years and it still runs for ~15 minutes on a charge. The newer versions of the same vacuum sold at Costco are advertised to run for up to 40 minutes.
That said, I switched to a Roborock S5 Max around March of last year and I have only used the Dyson once or twice since then.
I have used maybe a dozen vacuum cleaners over the last 10 years and nothing has come close to a Dyson coordless. I'd describe it as the exact opposite of "very cumbersome, heavy, short battery duration, not that easy to clean".
1. Warm Mist humidifiers work by boiling water. This has the downside of... well... boiling hot water hanging around the area. But otherwise, these are the simplest and are only ~$20 or $30.
2. Cool Mist humidifiers try to get around the boiling water issue. Since they humidify at room-temperatures, they're a lot more efficient... but now bacteria / mold is growing constantly. You can somewhat fix that with chemicals / filters / whatever, but now those filters need to be cleaned, or those chemicals need to be replaced on the regular.
In both circumstances: minerals in the water will harden into 'slag'. More so in warm-mist humidifiers actually (because boiling water separates water from minerals very naturally). Cool-mist humidifiers often carry the slag into the air, forming "white dust" all over your furniture.
The slag dissolves with vinegar in ~20 minutes or so (unless its been building up for a while). But its never an easy job to clean.
I prefer my warm-mist humidifier. Centralize the slag into one spot and clean it with vinegar every few weeks. Better than dusting off all my furniture in the room.
The slag issue can be solved by using demineralized water, and reverse osmosis water filter, which remove almost all minerals, can be had for pretty cheap these days.
RO doesn’t fundamentally need much energy or all that much waste. This system claims to be much less wasteful by recovering pressure using a “permeate pump”:
I have an under-sink RO/DI system, the whole system was about $200. It's a great investment for a place with hard water. I use it to get demineralized water for my house plants, fish tank, and drinking.
I use the RODI for expensive steam appliances like my Wagner, but I don't use RODI for regular old vegetable steamers or humidifiers. It's just not worth it. The scale buildup isn't a big deal and it's very easy to dissolve with an acid or just brush off.
For people with Ultrasonic humidifiers (which spray the scale across the room as white-dust), it is a much bigger pain to clean that up with regular dusting.
For warm-air humidifiers (aka: boiling water), where all the scale is concentrated onto the heating element: yeah... no big deal. A cup of cheap 5% vinegar and 20-minutes of waiting is all you need to clean that off.
------------
I think if you have RO water, it probably makes sense to use an ultrasonic humidifier.
Convincing water to just evaporate on its own was always going to be a bit tricky. The energy needs to come from somewhere so your best bet is to just get it into contact with enough dry air and hope for the best.
Besides if you're trying to restore humidity lost by heating your room then pure energy wise there's not that much difference in evaporating the required amount of water using ambient heat or evaporating the required amount of water using a different energy source. The only thing you'll achieve by using ambient heat is that your room will cool by the amount of heat required to evaporate the water (a good thing in the summer, somewhat pointless if your aim was to make a room both warm and comfortably humid).
Fundamental thermodynamics will probably mean the 'wait and see' approach is more efficient in the end, but it makes no promises on efficacy. The difference in efficiency probably lies in the fact that you can heat a room with an efficiency >100% if done right, if you haven't managed that yet it probably doesn't really matter which way you humidify the room.
Even without a system that has >100% efficiency (i.e. a heat pump), home heating systems often use a source of heat that is significantly less expensive per watt than electricity. (For example, natural gas.)
The evaporative approach will actually manage to do something that's generally impossible as it will actually cool down the air. Obviously this is the superior method to deal with hot dry air.
The use-case described in the article however:
>The east coast’s dry winter air, parched further by the radiators that can barely keep up with the chill, causes great discomfort to me and millions
suggests they're trying to heat the space they're in. At which point you'll need to recover any heat lost by evaporation anyway.
So, there are some unpowered options, none of which are as efficient individually as a powered humidifier, but may work in tandom:
1) Plants - they release the water you put into them into the air, as part of how they pull water up from the ground to the leaves.
2) Open Water - Aquariums, fountains, etc.
3) Humidifying balls - basically rough ceramic balls which sucks water up into them, and the water naturally evaporates. Slow, though, and if your water has any impurities they will accumulate on the surface.
4) Humans - we breathe out a lot of water, and if your house is well enough sealed, you'll actually have to de-humidify, even if the air outside is dry. Costly, though.
There is better way to humidify which is to just have cold temperature evaporation. It is slower and you need bigger machine for the same volume, but it requires very little energy and the only real electronics is a fan that moves air.
I got rid of all mist humidifiers because of residue, noise and some health concerns (no, I am not feeling safe inhaling those fine particles) and I am happy for it.
Most importantly, it doesn't get things wet and it is safe to just leave it 24h.
The Honeywell in question is this type-- it calls itself a "cool mist" humidifier, but it's an evaporative humidifier: basically all there is to the thing is a water tank, a wick, and a fan to move air over the wick.
Put some 3% H202 into a spray bottle. Then spray the humidifier once a week all over to disinfect.
Proper Bleach (Sodium hypochlorite) is probably cheaper, but there's a major convenience factor to just spraying H2O2, and Hydrogen Peroxide is pretty cheap as it is ($2 for 1-liter).
Its not so much that the disinfection was hard to do in my case... Its that it became somewhat of a hassle. Warm Air is nice since it auto-disinfects itself with boiling water. I still disinfect manually, but just once-a-week instead of every day.
> 1. Warm Mist humidifiers work by boiling water. This has the downside of... well... boiling hot water hanging around the area. But otherwise, these are the simplest and are only ~$20 or $30.
You're going to move your stove to your bedroom and leave it on while you sleep?
You're paying $20 to $30 for safety auto-shutoff features so that you can leave these things on all night long, and not have to worry about fumes, fire, or a myriad of other issues.
Yeah, its basically equivalent to a pot of boiling water + a stove. But... being able to move it to the locations you need (and safety features to boot) is the big advantage.
Depending on the size of your apartment and the amount of air exchange, running it for 20 min before you go to bed may be perfectly sufficient until morning.
But yeah, I see the point. Just wanted to point out this alternative - when it comes to humidifying through boiling, it's a matter of dumping energy into water, and your stove is excellent at doing that quickly. With a regular humidifier, you may need to wait hours until you get the humidity where you want to have it, a stove can be much faster.
I count myself among the victims of this wirecutter article. What a piece of garbage, I can't believe I got tricked into buying a humidifier that requires wick and heating element replacements when modern devices don't.
Heating element replacement? The Honeywell HCM-350 I got has a UVC bulb which will eventually need to be replaced, but there's no heating element since it's an evaporative humidifier.
Ha, I just threw out this humidifier after it lingered in storage for years. It gets really gross really fast. Our new warm mist humidifier can basically run the entire season without being cleaned since it's more-or-less boiling the water.
I understand there are "efficiency" gains with the evaporative style, but it's absolutely dwarfed by the horrible ownership experience. After my poor experience with this unit, I would only consider an evaporative humidifier if I had to humidify a large space.
A boiler humidifier has a nice random gurgle noise; that could be a plus for some. The water tank can be rather nasty and you know that the water vapor is safer because its steam.
Propane heat emits water vapor too; and if you can have a lot of plants around they add moisture and lots of other good and bad things to the air.
My issues are such that I can have happy plants and benefit from them. For about the power cost of a humidifier i can have an LED lit jungle shelf that transpires more than a gallon of water a day
When I was little, my grandma had a gigantic console style humidifier. This thing was a beast. There was a vertical conveyor belt that would go underwater (the tank held at least 10 gallons) and then it would pass in front of a low speed fan. The belt would then circle around and back down to the tank to pull up more water. That thing could humidify a damn hangar.
I don't use the my Honeywell humidifier regularly, but I use it from time to time and honestly I like it more than any other humidifier I've used. I've found it very easy to keep clean, works really well at increasing the humidity without turning the room into a swamp and I've never had any issues with the wick becoming gross. I exclusively use RO/DI water in the humidifier, never any tap water, so maybe that is helping with a lot of the issues.
I use my Honeywell 24/7 and also find it effective [1] and easy to clean [2], even with our "hard" tap water. It might help that I use a good air filter nearby, which solves the dust problem.
I used to use an ultrasonic humidifier like they suggest but definitely prefer the evaporation-based unit.
The article read a little like one of the clumsy actors in an infomercial. The tank slides out and has a screw top! How can they spill so much while carrying it from the sink that it forms puddles?
[1] It goes through a tank almost every day. That water is going somewhere.
[2] I replace the wick and do a light bleach clean roughly quarterly.
I used to live in China a decade ago and everyone used ultrasonic humidifiers there. When I moved back to the US, I searched for one of them and could only find steam and evaporative humidifiers like this Honeywell one. Having small children, I went for the Honneywell humidifier and hated it - I was stupefied that it had such good reviews. So I searched for "safe" steam humidifiers and couldn't find one, so I gave up.
Last year, I noticed that ultrasonic humidifiers were now very popular and cheap on Amazon, and got one. The review sites recommended against them, due to supposed calcium and bacteria build-up, but I haven't seen any problems, and the Honeywell was definitely worse on these fronts.
Get an ultrasonic humidifier - they are cheap and if they break, you can get another one. Just used filtered water in them.
I wonder if there have been waves of "fashion" in humidifier design. My parents used an ultrasonic humidifier when I was growing up in the US in the 1980s.
I was able to buy an ultrasonic humidifier six years ago from Bed Bath and Beyond. I think I had to order it online but it didn't seem to be too rare and it wasn't expensive, or at least it cost a reasonable amount.
I have had the opposite experience. I live in VT, and a humidifier is a real need. I used to use an ultrasonic device because, basically, that is what stores near me had available.
But I noticed that every winter I got bronchitis. I remembered that years ago I read in Consumers Reports that these can cause a reaction because they can break particles apart. (I remember it saying that it can break apart virus particles, but I'm not sure. I'm also not sure if that is correct.)
Based on that dim memory, I bought a Boneco AIR-O-SWISS Warm Mist Steam Humidifier S450. It has faults, and is expensive. But I don't get annual bronchitis any more. So we use that.
I have had a Venta LW15 for a long time, and like it. I have gone through many humidifiers, and the LW15 is the only one that has lasted more than five years and does not require filters. It is expensive, even with cleaning>
It does require regular cleaning, though -- that can be a pain. It pulled minimal power, too.
I have switched to a whole house humidifier this year and I really like not having to change water every day. I am not sure how it will work in the long term.
I don't know if the LW15 has a different mechanism than the LW45, but it shouldn't be difficult to clean. The entire machine literally comes apart (https://youtu.be/-f2FAI70BSk?t=154), leaving only plastic pieces that can be hosed down.
It is probably the same mechanism. The only thing that took time was wiping down both sides of than fan blades.
I would still be using the venta if I didn't have a new geothermal system installed. The ultrasonic humidifiers I had before the venta didn't last more than two years.
I owned a (different) Honeywell cool mist humidifier and ended up buying a Venta LW45 after getting fed up with the Honeywell. The Venta works _shockingly_ well, and requires basically no maintenance. The problem with most wick humidifiers is that minerals build up on the wick very quickly (even before anything starts to grow), and minerals prevent the wick from absorbing any liquid. Even if you don't see or smell anything growing on the wick, the efficiency drops dramatically within a couple weeks, unless you change the wick constantly.
In comparison, the Venta requires almost zero maintenance, and the entire machine is basically indestructible. The electronics pop out if you press the two buttons on top, which means you can hose the entire thing down in a bathtub if you want. You could probably put the whole thing in the dishwasher if you really wanted to, but I haven't tried that myself.
Yeah, I run two Venta air washers in two small rooms. They are expensive but the only option for me that is easy to fill, easy to clean and has a nice noise profile.
I have two ventas, both purchased off ebay used, and they really are the best. Simple, reliable, cleanable and no expensive wick refills.
That honeywell lasted about one season. The wick refills are ridiculously expensive. It was cheaper to trash it and use anything else. I'm also upset with the wirecutter for that trash recommendation.
Do your airwashers make clicking noises? I had one that did, but was kind of old and beat up. I bought a new one and, sure enough, like 2 months later the clicking was back.
I’ve tried replacing the... little walking thing that moves the discs? (not sure what to call it) that makes the noise but it didn’t help.
I had this issue too at one point. I ended up soaking that part in vinegar (to remove the gunk on it) and then rinsing it off with water, which ended up fixing it. I assume it was just grinding due to mineral build up. Seems like it's a pretty common issue, as it's even listed on their website in the FAQ.
Okay I could’ve sworn I scoured their website for this information. Granted it was a few years ago so maybe it’s new...? I’d found the “push the rubber coupling” tip, which has helped before, but I am breaking out the vinegar as we speak - thank you! I owe you one.
It’s definitely comically expensive. But I’ve had mine 15 years and it’s still the best least fuss humidifier I’ve ever owned. Oh and I never use their additive. Little dish soap (drop of two) in each refilling keep the water “sticking” to the disks nicely, nothing else to replace. Never had a mold problem with them either.
Sat in a damp London flat, with condensation permanently dripping down the windows (despite the dehumidifier running virtually 24/7), I struggle to relate to a world where you would deliberately want to put moisture into the air.
Yep, as a Kiwi, people deliberately owning humidifiers is bemusing - but then, that's probably because our rather shitty housing stock leads to far more humidity than is healthy, in every season.
Also because our winters never get cold enough to freeze all the moisture out of the air - I experienced that when living in an alpine village that turned into a giant ice box over winter / early spring (Arthur's Pass), but that was a village of 37, the rest of NZ is not experiencing that.
Heck, I used to run two dehumidifiers in a previous house of mine during winter, just because the amount of condensation and dampness we got was ridiculous and very unhealthy.
I'm Irish by descent and people who are, genetically, adapted to the environment you're describing and show up to, say, parts of the US northeast can have a hell of a time, especially in the winter. There's really no comparison between the UK and environs where it bascially doesn't get cold (really cold air more or less doesn't carry moisture) and where the climate is just really damp and the climate here. Add in radiator heating that is pretty intensive and you'll start seeing hte plaster crack off the walls due to the dryness, let alone what happens to your body.
Being from NZ, I thought the same. But now I live in the Netherlands in a modern building with radiators for heat. In the colder parts of winter, just taking damp outside air in at around 0° and warming it up to room temperature lowers the relative humidity enough that I can find it pretty dry. It'll be somewhere between 35-45% at this time of year, which is on the low side for me.
The best humidity solution I've found is to set my shower up as a humidifier. Puts out a lot of humidity that spreads throughout the house. Doesn't need any cleaning, refilling, etc. Total cost on Amazon, like $40 (probably cheaper from Home Depot). Picture of my setup: https://imgur.com/a/Oca4USg
I did that with 4-5 products: A shower head splitter, a shower->hose adapter, a mister, and anti-leak tape.
The larger humidifiers come with a humidistat which will keep humidity within say a 5% range. A solution like this may over humidify and requires more frequent intervention.
Gotta say, I’ve had the Honeywell for a couple years and I’m quite happy with it. I haven’t had any of the problems that the article cites — it works well, easy to clean, easy to refill.
I’d be quite confused about whether article has the same product, except that the photos match my model.
Same here. I have the same model as the OP. It’s been on pretty much continuously all this winter and last. The filter only needs replaced every couple months and I’ve only had to wash the base once. And it keeps our 900 sq ft NYC apartment at a comfortable 40-50% humidity. I think the OPs main issues could be fixed by just keeping a cleaner house.
As someone living on the east coast and having a very sensitive nose, I have tried different humidifiers and sadly no humidifiers have been perfect. There are three main types of humidifiers:
1. Warm mist humidifiers boil water and generate steam which humidifies the air. But, they are a burn hazard and consume a lot of energy.
2. Cool mist (non ultrasonic) work like miniature swamp coolers. They are essentially fans which draw air through a wet paper wick. The Honeywell mentioned in the article is of this type. The fan is however very underpowered and it doesn’t work well in anything bigger than a small bedroom. Vornado makes a version with a much more powerful fan which works very well in large rooms, but their tanks are finicky and prone to breaking and leaking. The wick absorbs minerals in the water and will eventually have to be replaced.
3. Ultrasonic humidifiers: A vibrating diaphragm will aerosolize water. Unless you use distilled water, minerals in the water will turn into dust and reduce air quality.
I happen to like the non ultrasonic cool mist ones because they use less energy than the warm mist ones and replacing crusty wicks is cheaper than using distilled water in ultrasonic ones. The problem is everything currently on the market has issues. Any company making incremental improvements to existing cool mist humidifiers will probably get a lot of eager buyers.
They basically do that internally already, there's not much point.
The power usage is offset if you're primarily using them during the winter in that the energy used is all converted to heat. It's not gonna be as efficient as a heat pump so there is some loss, but the heat added is heat your HVAC doesn't have to provide so it's not exactly wasted. I haven't actually run the numbers to calculate the effective power used (how much energy it uses to generate the same amount of heat versus if a more efficient heat pump did it), but my hunch is that it ends up being quite a bit more competitive than it might first appear.
Ah, good point. The real cost difference is the difference between heating your house with electricity or gas (or your landlord's gas). I think of that when I run my oven in the winter too.
I have a very sensitive nose as well, and have stopped using humidifiers completely since one caused mold issues in my home.
What I do instead is use a nose clip (the kind swimmers wear).[1]
It doesn't look great, but when I'm alone I don't care. The price is right (only $6), there's no maintenance, no noise, no energy costs, no risk of developing mold in you home from too high a humidity.
It works great. Whenever my nose gets too dry I put it on and in maybe an hour or even less it's fine again. I also sometimes sleep with it on, when the air is dry enough to cause my nose pain.
Breathing through your mouth is a terrible thing to do for your health. The nose does much, much more than just bringing oxygen into the lungs. Look it up.
> Any company making incremental improvements to existing cool mist humidifiers will probably get a lot of eager buyers.
I don't buy that. Japan has a ton of high quality air cleaner combo cool mist humidifiers. We don't see these units sold in the US because Americans are cheap. The idea of paying 200$ for an air cleaner feels like a scam to American ears.
And thus the American market continues to race to the bottom.
The American offering is an extra 150$, but that buys you marketing videos with a fake scientist pouring baby powder through a filter onto a hepa filter. Japan gets no video at all. Otherwise the Ozone generator, carbon + hepa filters, wheel driven wick humidifier, and canister water tanks are all the same.
The Japanese model also includes modes to disable all lighting, switches between displaying humidity or energy consumption in either KWh or yen per day.
Yup I have several of these sharp air filter/humidifiers and I find that they really improve the indoor air quality. It's very subtle, and for the most part you don't even notice a difference when they are running. But when I have accidentally left one turned off for a while I have definitely noticed when I woke up with a horrifically dry throat and nose, or come home to a very stale smelling house.
In case anybody is wondering, it looks like the KC-H50-W can be shipped to the US straight from Amazon, but with the 11.4k yen shipping fee the total comes to ~$317.15. About $30 less than the American model.
I wouldn't use an ultrasonic humidifier with non-distilled water in a living area. Those minerals will end up in your lungs and I'm not confident it won't accumulate and cause long term problems. The body can't eliminate at least some of them like silica. I don't know if you can actually end up with silicosis from that but that does not seem worth the risk.
Warm mist humidifiers consumers higher power but other humidifiers make air cooler by evaporation so anyway more heating is needed. So it's not too bad as you saw in specsheet.
To be fair, HVAC is very efficient (about x5) to heat compared to just a heater(Warm mist humidifier) so it's not efficient but acceptable for me.
I just learned more about humidifiers from your comment than from reading zillions of reviews.
I seem to recall my brother's fish tank increased the humidity. Could a bucket with an aquarium style aerator also work?
--
Adding my thoughts here ("Yes, and...") because your input was most constructive.
Review sites could go even further. Start with the most basic DIY home build solutions possible. Just to show how things work. Like a reverse teardown. Even include some basic metrics and science. Like watts consumed, evaporative rates, etc.
Per the AQI problems, in China and Western USA (forest fires), there was a semi-viral video for a DIY air filter using just a box fan and bog standard air filter.
So many other products, appliances could receive similar treatment.
It'd be nothing to use a stove top to mock up at a warm mister. Ditto cool mister (bucket, old t-shirt, fan). And maybe repurpose a sonic tooth brush for an ultrasonic mister.
FWIW I have an AirCare humidifier and no complaints. It has a fan and a big cellulose filter/wick of some sort for the water to evaporate from. Works fine.
I found that one to be junk too, it grows mold everywhere unless you are super on top of adding chemicals. Maybe I'd have had better luck if I ran distilled water only. I use a warm mist honeywell/vicks one now and it's great cost about $35. But I'm pretty sure that I will add steam to my hvac though next season and be done with it.
The vicks giant bulb thing for $20 that they recommend gets pretty gross because you can't get all the water out and the slag accumulates as it doesn't work with distilled water.
I have one of these; the complaint about the fan being inaccessible is legitimate, but it's otherwise clean, and easy to clean - the tank and the base can be scrubbed by hand or just thrown in the dishwasher, unlike any vaporizing humidifier I've used. I think the other complaints may be regional - and the fact that the proposed solutions all seem to be vaporizing humidifiers (or boiling water) seems telling.
I got one because in Arizona, the water quality's terrible, but the air is bone-dry to the point it turns your skin to sandpaper. The hard water means that vaporizing humidifiers fill the air with white dust that coats everything, because they vaporize the minerals. Evaporative humidifiers don't; the minerals all end up in the filter. And, while an evaporative humidifier has no trouble going through a full tank of water overnight on the lowest settings in AZ, it phsyically can't oversaturate the air like a sauna in the way that a vaporizing humidifier does.
The air in the north east just doesn't get dry enough (maybe in winter, but then you don't have the AC fighting your humidifier), and if boiling a pot of water is what the author's looking for, an evaporative humidifier just doesn't do that.
I don't have a problem getting my fingers down everywhere but the corners of the handle, so just pushing a paper towel down there works fine; I wouldn't be surprised if people with bigger hands than mine have more trouble, though. In practice, I've mostly just been throwing it in the dishwasher.
I have one too and cleaning the tank was never an issue. Instead, my problem was the wick always got moldy on me within a couple weeks. I went through a couple cycles of buying new wicks from them, but it kept happening and I gave up on it. Went back to my old ultrasonic one, which isn’t great, but it doesn’t get black mold and is better than nothing.
Same experience here. My conclusion was that the Honneywell model is just a vehicle to sell more filters, which are not that cheap in the long run.
Tired of the moldy mess, we too now run an ultrasonic mist'er. I can't say it makes a big difference, but it is quiet. Also routinely airing the bedroom with window open and ceiling fan spinning before the bedtime.
Ah, also had to plug that toxic bright blue light on our humidifier. Someone thought it's a nicely looking design, but such blue shining is hardly conducive to sleeping.
> My conclusion was that the Honneywell model is just a vehicle to sell more filters, which are not that cheap in the long run.
This is every air quality device in the industry. I have an old vornado air purifier that uses furnace filters for its media. $30 for the allergen level filters, when I can find them. When the electronics crap out in that thing will be when I learn to repair fans.
I had a prototype I built before I discovered these that used a 12V Molex power supply brick and a bunch of case fans to draw air through a furnace filter. I had it in a triangular box, intending to put it under a bed or a chair so it was dead silent. Then I found the Vornado and that went into storage. Higher cfm.
Unfortunately the Vornado filter was built at the height of the blue LED craze. But at least it’s low lumens.
> This is every air quality device in the industry.
I did not have much exposure to many. Previous to the Honneywell we had the "boiler" kind of humidifier, the one that uses two graphite electrodes submerged into water tank. Not many consumables, except that this does not work much, unless one keeps it right at their noses (as pictured on the box :). The electrodes develop some grime eventually which further decreases 'efficiency', but can be cleaned somewhat.
As for the ultrasonic one we use now, there does not seem to be any consumables as such. Maybe the ultrasonic element itself. In three years of seasonal use I can notice some either corrosion or build up on the black ring of the element, but not much difference from that.
There is some kind of filter ring, made of hard plastic, filled with small beads. But as I said in the 3 years we had no reasons to change it. Clean it, yes, but not replace it like with Honneywell.
Cleaning the thing is a drag as always. Two usual problems: the reddish mold above the waterline and inside the "gorge" and nozzle. Also the limescale, though a moderate one. We fill it with just the cold tap water, which is not too bad here.
Winter in a house with a forced-air heating system just makes everything far worse. If you have the opportunity and the means, you want to go with a boiler, radiant in-floor heat, etc. Anything but forced-air.
By the way, in the winter we almost never use the dryer when washing clothes - always hang them up and they dry quickly and add their moisture to the air. We also open the dishwasher door as soon as it finishes and let the moisture evaporate into the air. Etc.
The problem with low humidity in winter isn't forced air heating, it's air leakage. But since most houses have poor thermal envelopes, your statement turns out to be mostly true.
It is heating. Forced air doesn't make any difference. Forced air is the most energy efficient (electric is slightly better, but much more expensive), so in cold places you get forced air and also the need for humdification
Cold outdoor temperatures cause indoor humidity to get extremely low, because cold air can't hold humidity well.
Today where I live, the relative humidity outside is around 50%, and temperature -5c. That puts the absolute humidity around 1.7 grams per cubic metre. At 20c indoor temperature, that equates to around 10% relative humidity. Far too low.
Thanks for the info... It's rare to see regular temperatures here much below 10 deg C and even then, most people live on the coastal plain so humidity rarely gets very low. Good to learn the conditions others have to deal with.
Without a humidifier, you can actually feel the dry air and it gets pretty uncomfortable at night. The skin looks dry and flaky in the morning. If you happen to catch a cold, your symptoms get worse because your mucus tends to dry out (the only remedy is to then go and stand in a high humidity bathroom for some-time or inhale vapors. You need it for at-least 2-3 peak winter months in the eastern part of the US.
Winter temperatures in the US midwest and northeast with average daily temps far below zero (C), combined with leaky old houses. The stack effect draws in cold, extremely dry air at a rapid rate.
Cold air has less of an ability to hold moisture, the colder the air the less moisture it can physically hold. So 100% relative humidity at 20°F is much less moisture than 100% relative humidity at 80°F
When you heat cold winter air to a comfortable room temperature you are increasing it's ability to hold moisture without adding any moisture. This has the effect of decreasing the relative humidity. The bigger the change in temperature the more you decrease humidity by heating it.
Winters are cold enough in some places that indoor relative humidity can easily get so low it effects humans negatively - dry cracked skin, dry cracked mucous membranes, sore throat, static buildup. Add to that low humidity aids in the spreading of viruses.
Saying it doesn't work is misleading. If you need to fill it up every so often then it is working. By working I mean it is converting water into vapor, and that's all a humidifier can do. They can't magically make a desert climate humid. Most build-up in humidifiers is due to crappy water. They can't do a whole lot about that either. Yes, they should be easier to clean, but when they are that cheap, then yes, they are easier to just throw away. But you get what you pay for.
I had a different Honeywell Humidifier which was hard to clean, didn't humidify enough and made a lovely (read: annoying) gurgling noise every so often.
Last year I got the AairCare 831000. It's basically a large tub with wick and a fan on top. No gurgling, massive capacity, can humidify the whole apartment and you refill it with a bucket (so much easier and less messy). No nooks and crannies to clean and you can basically bleach the whole tub if you want to.
I bought one last fall and have been using it quite regularly during the winter. The humidity in my bedroom has been dipping down to 20-30%, and I prefer it to be 40-50%.
I started with distilled water, and it worked great - the wick/filter stayed in pristine shape for the 3 weeks I did so. However, buying distilled water was about twice as expensive as changing the filter every two weeks: $0.99/gal at 1-2 gal/day vs a $6.99 Walmart-brand filter. I haven't looked around to see if I can find cheaper reverse-osmosis water.
I have not had to clean the fan yet, but that does seem difficult.
My biggest issue is the fan noise. The machine only works well when set to the highest speed, but the fan is quite loud at that setting. I have the machine a few feet away from my bed, and High makes it hard to sleep. Medium/Low are no problem, so I just leave it on all the time on Medium.
Refills are only an issue if you carry the tank by the handle. I only use the handle to take it out of/put it into the unit, and carry it upside-down in my arm when taking it to the bathroom to refill.
I purchased this exact model a few months ago, and agree with all of the criticisms. One curious point, however, is that while I don't see any difference in the hygrometer readings even when I put the hygrometer right above the device, the water tank does empty quickly. It's not clear to me how much water the air in my apartment can hold, such that a few gallons doesn't change the humidity even by more than 1-2%.
Either a bad reading or you have forced air heat and a lot of air exchange sucking out all the moisture you just added.
I have the same model in a medium sized room, with the hygrometer on the other end of the room where it is open to the rest of the house and the second floor. About 3/4 of a tank yesterday bumped us from about 17% humidity to 22%, with a fire going in the fireplace.
Well, a 500sqft aparement with 8ft ceilings is ~30,000 gallons of air.
I suspect what really kills you is the ventilation. If ventilations,air leaks, etc, turn over the air in a room once an hour, any humidty you dump in gets sucked right out in no time flat.
I know it's not an option for a lot of people but a simple bypass flow-through humidifier attached to forced-air central heating is pretty hard to beat:
* The only "active" element is a solenoid water valve.
* Since water flows through once and then out a drain there's no standing water to grow mold (at the cost of extra water usage; mine is 3 gallons per hour though the humidifier is rarely on 100% of the time).
* Maintenance is a new water panel yearly (about $20) and some cleaning, again yearly.
* You need smart controls or to regularly adjust a manual humidistat to not over-humidify your house based on outdoor temperature, though this is exactly the same as with "portable" humidifiers.
I have one of these. They typically fail because a tiny amount of crud in the feedwater, whether it came from the city supply or somewhere in the domestic water supply, plugs up the flow restrictor. I've fixed two like that. I replaced the flow restrictor on mine with an adjustable needle valve. 3 gallons per hour is a lot. I have mine adjusted to emit just a slight dribble. I think too much and the water on the biscuit is too cold to evaporate well, too little and the biscuit is not wet enough. I've considered making an Arduino circuit to flood the thing thoroughly at startup and then pulse it, but it works well enough as it is with the slight dribble. I think the newest fanciest humidifiers may actually have the pulse feature.
The "biscuit" in there was kind of old, so I went to some trouble to acquire a new one. Difference in humidification: None whatsoever. But while it doesn't impressively cycle the humidistat (I monitor that) like the old rotating foam drum humidifier did, the air quality is fine.
The previous "standing water" type humidifier was a nightmare. Some sort of microorganism in there caused copious amounts of yellow crud on everything and no amount of cleaning could get rid of it for good. Air quality wasn't affected, but... yuck. I didn't try bleach in there because I hate the smell of it.
Humidifiers are just inherently an iffy technology.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 286 ms ] threadI have a low-end "Victsing" model and it works just fine (as evidenced by the hygrometer next to it), and isn't hard to clean. It isn't a complicated device to make.
(I have no affiliation with the manufacturer).
All that is to say, that's quite alright with me.
[edit] Direct quotes from the Wirecutter post (emphasis added by me):
> We recommend the Honeywell HCM-350 Germ Free Cool Mist Humidifier because it’s quieter, more durable, and easier to clean than any other evaporative humidifier we’ve tested, with a 1-gallon tank that will last all day.
> ...In general, we prefer evaporative humidifiers because we find them less messy and less likely to over-humidify a space; however, you will need to replace the wicking filter on a semi-regular basis, and the fans might not be the best option for people who have pets or particularly dusty homes. The best one for you will be whichever one you’re actually willing to deal with and maintain.
In my experience, you get a smelly bacteria-infested humidifier if you keep using it for a few days. You need to regularly rinse ultrasonic humidifiers... or really any humidifier at all.
It humidifies the room quite nicely, keeping it at about 40% humidity (our house averages 25% without humidifiers running, which is hell on skin and noses).
Warm-air humidifiers are less efficient: My room is ~25% without any devices running. An ultrasonic would bring it up to 35%+, but Warm-air humidifier only brings it up to 32% or so.
Another efficiency test: both units were 1-quart (EDIT: Not a gallon) units. The warm-air humidifier probably goes through the tank in ~12 hours, while the ultrasonic would go through in ~8.
Unlikely; my tap water is well water. I do clean the humidifier with vinegar every week to keep the mineral buildup down. Then again, I do that with the shower head and tea kettle too (though a bit less frequently).
The big thing, as I've found it, is keeping the output down to a visible minimum. A big plume of mist that visibly lands anywhere isn't adding more water to the air - it's putting water droplets on the surface much like a spray bottle. It looks good, but isn't doing the job you're asking it to.
Then it is probably a difference in ultrasonic humidifiers. I can tell you that mine barely builds up much slag at all. I switched to warm-air after I grew tired of the white-dust issue.
The white-dust issue is further confirmed as I use the warm-air (boiling-type) humidifier. A LOT of minerals are found every day from my boiled-away tap-water... minerals that clearly used to be sprayed into the air and dusting my furniture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeehYYgl28
If you notice, the evap ones TC covers in his video all have easily accessible fans with no grill blocking access to the blades, and in general are fairly cleanable, while the one in TFA sounds like a nightmare.
I’m not saying that to be catty. One of the little mercies of the quarantine is the number of people who have figured out how to keep making content. It’s a little bit of normalcy, or at least it was until everyone’s personal grooming limitations started causing that illusion to crack, along with bits of my sanity.
Wirecutter simply isn't that reliable. I do check their recommendations as one input source, but their top recommendation is not reliable (and will change from time to time).
Agreed. Recently bought a handheld vacuum cleaner. Wirecutter had some recommendations and said the Dyson one was “the strongest” (also most expensive), I got the Dyson and hated it (very cumbersome, heavy, short battery duration, not that easy to clean). Ended up returning it and got a random one at a local store instead. The random one was $50 (instead of $250-400 for the Dyson), has same or better suction, way easier to use and the battery lasts about 50-100% longer per charge (7-10 min instead of 4-5 min for the Dyson).
Similar thing happened with another appliance. Wirecutter is not very reliable.
That said, I switched to a Roborock S5 Max around March of last year and I have only used the Dyson once or twice since then.
1. Warm Mist humidifiers work by boiling water. This has the downside of... well... boiling hot water hanging around the area. But otherwise, these are the simplest and are only ~$20 or $30.
2. Cool Mist humidifiers try to get around the boiling water issue. Since they humidify at room-temperatures, they're a lot more efficient... but now bacteria / mold is growing constantly. You can somewhat fix that with chemicals / filters / whatever, but now those filters need to be cleaned, or those chemicals need to be replaced on the regular.
In both circumstances: minerals in the water will harden into 'slag'. More so in warm-mist humidifiers actually (because boiling water separates water from minerals very naturally). Cool-mist humidifiers often carry the slag into the air, forming "white dust" all over your furniture.
The slag dissolves with vinegar in ~20 minutes or so (unless its been building up for a while). But its never an easy job to clean.
I prefer my warm-mist humidifier. Centralize the slag into one spot and clean it with vinegar every few weeks. Better than dusting off all my furniture in the room.
Also consider: it takes ~4 gallons of water to make 1-gallon of reverse-osmosis water. All water-purification methods have their own issues.
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If you plan to make distilled water (aka: boil water to remove impurities)... that's basically what a warm-mist boiling-type humidifier does _anyway_.
All good water-purification methods either take up a ton of water (ie: reverse osmosis) or a ton of energy (ie: distilled).
https://www.theperfectwater.com/home-master-hydroperfection-...
I personally think an evaporative humidifier is the way to go, as long as you are okay with the evaporator getting gross over time.
I use the RODI for expensive steam appliances like my Wagner, but I don't use RODI for regular old vegetable steamers or humidifiers. It's just not worth it. The scale buildup isn't a big deal and it's very easy to dissolve with an acid or just brush off.
For warm-air humidifiers (aka: boiling water), where all the scale is concentrated onto the heating element: yeah... no big deal. A cup of cheap 5% vinegar and 20-minutes of waiting is all you need to clean that off.
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I think if you have RO water, it probably makes sense to use an ultrasonic humidifier.
Besides if you're trying to restore humidity lost by heating your room then pure energy wise there's not that much difference in evaporating the required amount of water using ambient heat or evaporating the required amount of water using a different energy source. The only thing you'll achieve by using ambient heat is that your room will cool by the amount of heat required to evaporate the water (a good thing in the summer, somewhat pointless if your aim was to make a room both warm and comfortably humid).
Fundamental thermodynamics will probably mean the 'wait and see' approach is more efficient in the end, but it makes no promises on efficacy. The difference in efficiency probably lies in the fact that you can heat a room with an efficiency >100% if done right, if you haven't managed that yet it probably doesn't really matter which way you humidify the room.
The use-case described in the article however:
>The east coast’s dry winter air, parched further by the radiators that can barely keep up with the chill, causes great discomfort to me and millions
suggests they're trying to heat the space they're in. At which point you'll need to recover any heat lost by evaporation anyway.
1) Plants - they release the water you put into them into the air, as part of how they pull water up from the ground to the leaves.
2) Open Water - Aquariums, fountains, etc.
3) Humidifying balls - basically rough ceramic balls which sucks water up into them, and the water naturally evaporates. Slow, though, and if your water has any impurities they will accumulate on the surface.
4) Humans - we breathe out a lot of water, and if your house is well enough sealed, you'll actually have to de-humidify, even if the air outside is dry. Costly, though.
I got rid of all mist humidifiers because of residue, noise and some health concerns (no, I am not feeling safe inhaling those fine particles) and I am happy for it.
Most importantly, it doesn't get things wet and it is safe to just leave it 24h.
Boneco makes ultrasonics I like but the humidity on the other hand makes mold more viable. Plus you have to buy filters and cleaners.
Proper Bleach (Sodium hypochlorite) is probably cheaper, but there's a major convenience factor to just spraying H2O2, and Hydrogen Peroxide is pretty cheap as it is ($2 for 1-liter).
Its not so much that the disinfection was hard to do in my case... Its that it became somewhat of a hassle. Warm Air is nice since it auto-disinfects itself with boiling water. I still disinfect manually, but just once-a-week instead of every day.
Or $0 if you have a pot, a stove, and a tap.
You're paying $20 to $30 for safety auto-shutoff features so that you can leave these things on all night long, and not have to worry about fumes, fire, or a myriad of other issues.
Yeah, its basically equivalent to a pot of boiling water + a stove. But... being able to move it to the locations you need (and safety features to boot) is the big advantage.
But yeah, I see the point. Just wanted to point out this alternative - when it comes to humidifying through boiling, it's a matter of dumping energy into water, and your stove is excellent at doing that quickly. With a regular humidifier, you may need to wait hours until you get the humidity where you want to have it, a stove can be much faster.
I understand there are "efficiency" gains with the evaporative style, but it's absolutely dwarfed by the horrible ownership experience. After my poor experience with this unit, I would only consider an evaporative humidifier if I had to humidify a large space.
Propane heat emits water vapor too; and if you can have a lot of plants around they add moisture and lots of other good and bad things to the air.
My issues are such that I can have happy plants and benefit from them. For about the power cost of a humidifier i can have an LED lit jungle shelf that transpires more than a gallon of water a day
I used to use an ultrasonic humidifier like they suggest but definitely prefer the evaporation-based unit.
The article read a little like one of the clumsy actors in an infomercial. The tank slides out and has a screw top! How can they spill so much while carrying it from the sink that it forms puddles?
[1] It goes through a tank almost every day. That water is going somewhere.
[2] I replace the wick and do a light bleach clean roughly quarterly.
Last year, I noticed that ultrasonic humidifiers were now very popular and cheap on Amazon, and got one. The review sites recommended against them, due to supposed calcium and bacteria build-up, but I haven't seen any problems, and the Honeywell was definitely worse on these fronts.
Get an ultrasonic humidifier - they are cheap and if they break, you can get another one. Just used filtered water in them.
But I noticed that every winter I got bronchitis. I remembered that years ago I read in Consumers Reports that these can cause a reaction because they can break particles apart. (I remember it saying that it can break apart virus particles, but I'm not sure. I'm also not sure if that is correct.)
Based on that dim memory, I bought a Boneco AIR-O-SWISS Warm Mist Steam Humidifier S450. It has faults, and is expensive. But I don't get annual bronchitis any more. So we use that.
It blows ambient air directly onto the wetted disks; it will empty a full tank in a day and haven’t cursed anymore that usual while cleaning.
I did use a disinfectant additive
It does require regular cleaning, though -- that can be a pain. It pulled minimal power, too.
I have switched to a whole house humidifier this year and I really like not having to change water every day. I am not sure how it will work in the long term.
I would still be using the venta if I didn't have a new geothermal system installed. The ultrasonic humidifiers I had before the venta didn't last more than two years.
In comparison, the Venta requires almost zero maintenance, and the entire machine is basically indestructible. The electronics pop out if you press the two buttons on top, which means you can hose the entire thing down in a bathtub if you want. You could probably put the whole thing in the dishwasher if you really wanted to, but I haven't tried that myself.
That honeywell lasted about one season. The wick refills are ridiculously expensive. It was cheaper to trash it and use anything else. I'm also upset with the wirecutter for that trash recommendation.
I’ve tried replacing the... little walking thing that moves the discs? (not sure what to call it) that makes the noise but it didn’t help.
We run our aircon on the de-humidify setting haha
Also because our winters never get cold enough to freeze all the moisture out of the air - I experienced that when living in an alpine village that turned into a giant ice box over winter / early spring (Arthur's Pass), but that was a village of 37, the rest of NZ is not experiencing that.
Heck, I used to run two dehumidifiers in a previous house of mine during winter, just because the amount of condensation and dampness we got was ridiculous and very unhealthy.
I did that with 4-5 products: A shower head splitter, a shower->hose adapter, a mister, and anti-leak tape.
Splitter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064TXLHA/
Adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GYV8G7S/
Elbow connector: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003BZD03K/
Mister (I used just the nozzle and discarded the hose) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004INGNPG/
Anti-leak tape: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003D7K8E0/
Alternatively tried this fogger nozzle which put out too much water and wet my bathroom floor, may work in some shower setups though. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FNYNZZM/
1. Warm mist humidifiers boil water and generate steam which humidifies the air. But, they are a burn hazard and consume a lot of energy.
2. Cool mist (non ultrasonic) work like miniature swamp coolers. They are essentially fans which draw air through a wet paper wick. The Honeywell mentioned in the article is of this type. The fan is however very underpowered and it doesn’t work well in anything bigger than a small bedroom. Vornado makes a version with a much more powerful fan which works very well in large rooms, but their tanks are finicky and prone to breaking and leaking. The wick absorbs minerals in the water and will eventually have to be replaced.
3. Ultrasonic humidifiers: A vibrating diaphragm will aerosolize water. Unless you use distilled water, minerals in the water will turn into dust and reduce air quality.
I happen to like the non ultrasonic cool mist ones because they use less energy than the warm mist ones and replacing crusty wicks is cheaper than using distilled water in ultrasonic ones. The problem is everything currently on the market has issues. Any company making incremental improvements to existing cool mist humidifiers will probably get a lot of eager buyers.
The power usage is offset if you're primarily using them during the winter in that the energy used is all converted to heat. It's not gonna be as efficient as a heat pump so there is some loss, but the heat added is heat your HVAC doesn't have to provide so it's not exactly wasted. I haven't actually run the numbers to calculate the effective power used (how much energy it uses to generate the same amount of heat versus if a more efficient heat pump did it), but my hunch is that it ends up being quite a bit more competitive than it might first appear.
What I do instead is use a nose clip (the kind swimmers wear).[1]
It doesn't look great, but when I'm alone I don't care. The price is right (only $6), there's no maintenance, no noise, no energy costs, no risk of developing mold in you home from too high a humidity.
It works great. Whenever my nose gets too dry I put it on and in maybe an hour or even less it's fine again. I also sometimes sleep with it on, when the air is dry enough to cause my nose pain.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Speedo-Competition-Nose-Clip-Charcoal...
I don't buy that. Japan has a ton of high quality air cleaner combo cool mist humidifiers. We don't see these units sold in the US because Americans are cheap. The idea of paying 200$ for an air cleaner feels like a scam to American ears.
And thus the American market continues to race to the bottom.
yeah, i'm curious as well.
In America KC-850U: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003BF665Y/ref=emc_b_5_t
In Japan KC-H50-W: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B077TC5PM8/ref=ppx_yo_dt...
The American offering is an extra 150$, but that buys you marketing videos with a fake scientist pouring baby powder through a filter onto a hepa filter. Japan gets no video at all. Otherwise the Ozone generator, carbon + hepa filters, wheel driven wick humidifier, and canister water tanks are all the same.
The Japanese model also includes modes to disable all lighting, switches between displaying humidity or energy consumption in either KWh or yen per day.
To be fair, HVAC is very efficient (about x5) to heat compared to just a heater(Warm mist humidifier) so it's not efficient but acceptable for me.
I just learned more about humidifiers from your comment than from reading zillions of reviews.
I seem to recall my brother's fish tank increased the humidity. Could a bucket with an aquarium style aerator also work?
--
Adding my thoughts here ("Yes, and...") because your input was most constructive.
Review sites could go even further. Start with the most basic DIY home build solutions possible. Just to show how things work. Like a reverse teardown. Even include some basic metrics and science. Like watts consumed, evaporative rates, etc.
Per the AQI problems, in China and Western USA (forest fires), there was a semi-viral video for a DIY air filter using just a box fan and bog standard air filter.
So many other products, appliances could receive similar treatment.
It'd be nothing to use a stove top to mock up at a warm mister. Ditto cool mister (bucket, old t-shirt, fan). And maybe repurpose a sonic tooth brush for an ultrasonic mister.
The vicks giant bulb thing for $20 that they recommend gets pretty gross because you can't get all the water out and the slag accumulates as it doesn't work with distilled water.
I got one because in Arizona, the water quality's terrible, but the air is bone-dry to the point it turns your skin to sandpaper. The hard water means that vaporizing humidifiers fill the air with white dust that coats everything, because they vaporize the minerals. Evaporative humidifiers don't; the minerals all end up in the filter. And, while an evaporative humidifier has no trouble going through a full tank of water overnight on the lowest settings in AZ, it phsyically can't oversaturate the air like a sauna in the way that a vaporizing humidifier does.
The air in the north east just doesn't get dry enough (maybe in winter, but then you don't have the AC fighting your humidifier), and if boiling a pot of water is what the author's looking for, an evaporative humidifier just doesn't do that.
Tired of the moldy mess, we too now run an ultrasonic mist'er. I can't say it makes a big difference, but it is quiet. Also routinely airing the bedroom with window open and ceiling fan spinning before the bedtime.
Ah, also had to plug that toxic bright blue light on our humidifier. Someone thought it's a nicely looking design, but such blue shining is hardly conducive to sleeping.
This is every air quality device in the industry. I have an old vornado air purifier that uses furnace filters for its media. $30 for the allergen level filters, when I can find them. When the electronics crap out in that thing will be when I learn to repair fans.
I had a prototype I built before I discovered these that used a 12V Molex power supply brick and a bunch of case fans to draw air through a furnace filter. I had it in a triangular box, intending to put it under a bed or a chair so it was dead silent. Then I found the Vornado and that went into storage. Higher cfm.
Unfortunately the Vornado filter was built at the height of the blue LED craze. But at least it’s low lumens.
I did not have much exposure to many. Previous to the Honneywell we had the "boiler" kind of humidifier, the one that uses two graphite electrodes submerged into water tank. Not many consumables, except that this does not work much, unless one keeps it right at their noses (as pictured on the box :). The electrodes develop some grime eventually which further decreases 'efficiency', but can be cleaned somewhat.
As for the ultrasonic one we use now, there does not seem to be any consumables as such. Maybe the ultrasonic element itself. In three years of seasonal use I can notice some either corrosion or build up on the black ring of the element, but not much difference from that.
There is some kind of filter ring, made of hard plastic, filled with small beads. But as I said in the 3 years we had no reasons to change it. Clean it, yes, but not replace it like with Honneywell.
Cleaning the thing is a drag as always. Two usual problems: the reddish mold above the waterline and inside the "gorge" and nozzle. Also the limescale, though a moderate one. We fill it with just the cold tap water, which is not too bad here.
What is it in the US that creates the need/demand for Humidifiers?
By the way, in the winter we almost never use the dryer when washing clothes - always hang them up and they dry quickly and add their moisture to the air. We also open the dishwasher door as soon as it finishes and let the moisture evaporate into the air. Etc.
Today where I live, the relative humidity outside is around 50%, and temperature -5c. That puts the absolute humidity around 1.7 grams per cubic metre. At 20c indoor temperature, that equates to around 10% relative humidity. Far too low.
When you heat cold winter air to a comfortable room temperature you are increasing it's ability to hold moisture without adding any moisture. This has the effect of decreasing the relative humidity. The bigger the change in temperature the more you decrease humidity by heating it.
Winters are cold enough in some places that indoor relative humidity can easily get so low it effects humans negatively - dry cracked skin, dry cracked mucous membranes, sore throat, static buildup. Add to that low humidity aids in the spreading of viruses.
Last year I got the AairCare 831000. It's basically a large tub with wick and a fan on top. No gurgling, massive capacity, can humidify the whole apartment and you refill it with a bucket (so much easier and less messy). No nooks and crannies to clean and you can basically bleach the whole tub if you want to.
It works well and puts a lot of water into the air. Once a week, I rinse it with a diluted bleach solution out of a spray bottle. Problem solved.
I started with distilled water, and it worked great - the wick/filter stayed in pristine shape for the 3 weeks I did so. However, buying distilled water was about twice as expensive as changing the filter every two weeks: $0.99/gal at 1-2 gal/day vs a $6.99 Walmart-brand filter. I haven't looked around to see if I can find cheaper reverse-osmosis water.
I have not had to clean the fan yet, but that does seem difficult.
My biggest issue is the fan noise. The machine only works well when set to the highest speed, but the fan is quite loud at that setting. I have the machine a few feet away from my bed, and High makes it hard to sleep. Medium/Low are no problem, so I just leave it on all the time on Medium.
Refills are only an issue if you carry the tank by the handle. I only use the handle to take it out of/put it into the unit, and carry it upside-down in my arm when taking it to the bathroom to refill.
I have the same model in a medium sized room, with the hygrometer on the other end of the room where it is open to the rest of the house and the second floor. About 3/4 of a tank yesterday bumped us from about 17% humidity to 22%, with a fire going in the fireplace.
I suspect what really kills you is the ventilation. If ventilations,air leaks, etc, turn over the air in a room once an hour, any humidty you dump in gets sucked right out in no time flat.
* The only "active" element is a solenoid water valve.
* Since water flows through once and then out a drain there's no standing water to grow mold (at the cost of extra water usage; mine is 3 gallons per hour though the humidifier is rarely on 100% of the time).
* Maintenance is a new water panel yearly (about $20) and some cleaning, again yearly.
* You need smart controls or to regularly adjust a manual humidistat to not over-humidify your house based on outdoor temperature, though this is exactly the same as with "portable" humidifiers.
The "biscuit" in there was kind of old, so I went to some trouble to acquire a new one. Difference in humidification: None whatsoever. But while it doesn't impressively cycle the humidistat (I monitor that) like the old rotating foam drum humidifier did, the air quality is fine.
The previous "standing water" type humidifier was a nightmare. Some sort of microorganism in there caused copious amounts of yellow crud on everything and no amount of cleaning could get rid of it for good. Air quality wasn't affected, but... yuck. I didn't try bleach in there because I hate the smell of it.
Humidifiers are just inherently an iffy technology.