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Paper Clay Air Humidifier

maximelouis.com

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Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#21

Post by exhilaration »

pmoriarty wrote: post #3

Be really careful with humidifiers. I cranked mine up too much and it caused a mold issue in my home, and mold in my home caused me health issues.

The rule of thumb is that if your humidifier is causing condensation on your windows, then you have condensation inside your walls as well, which is the necessary precursor for mold.

We have this whole house humidifier installed in our furnace: https://www.aprilaire.com/whole-house-products/humidifier/mo... It has a remote temperature sensor you install outside, then it automatically adjusts the humidity based on the outside temperature to keep it under the mold-growing level.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#22

Post by rubatuga »

physicles wrote: post #17
bootlooped wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would depend a lot on how much air is moving over it, and the temperature of that air. The surface area of it is pretty large (the whole thing is pretty ginormous also...). The reservoir size is an issue. I share skepticism about this being used in any serious way. An ultrasonic humidifier is going to be smaller, probably cheaper, and run laps around it in terms of output.

A word of warning: ultrasonic humidifiers used with tap water create high levels of indoor air pollution: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51859262_Indoor_par... Disclaimer: I work for a company that makes low-cost air pollution sensors.

Debatable whether salt crystals are considered air pollution or simply a problem with the specificity of the PM2.5 definition. Note that this isn't a problem with using distilled water, which is recommended for all humidifiers.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#23

Post by exclusiv »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #19
tofof wrote: post #6

This is an art project and nothing more. Humidifying only 600 square feet, the size of a studio apartment, takes about 5 gallons of water per day in winter. [1] The reservoir on this object looks to be no more than two gallons, and I would be truly shocked if it requires even daily refilling. If it actually moved enough water to make a difference, it would be a fundamentally flawed design in requiring multiple comple…

When I finally got a hygrometer I was amazed at how useless the powered one gallon air humidifiers are. They often can’t raise the humidity percent a single point with the hygrometer right by it in my rooms. If you want to really humidify a room it takes a big industrial sized unit. They had them in the rooms in our Colorado Airbnb cabin and they were totally necessary in the dry mountain air if you didn’t want to wa…

I have a rather small Honeywell cool mist that works well. I use it in our bedrooms and have taken the humidity up 20% easily. This is in the mountains where it's drier than the desert in the winter.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#25

Post by physicles »

rubatuga wrote: post #22
physicles wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A word of warning: ultrasonic humidifiers used with tap water create high levels of indoor air pollution: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51859262_Indoor_par... Disclaimer: I work for a company that makes low-cost air pollution sensors.

Debatable whether salt crystals are considered air pollution or simply a problem with the specificity of the PM2.5 definition. Note that this isn't a problem with using distilled water, which is recommended for all humidifiers.

It's not just salt though. In some countries, the tap water isn't safe to drink, so it's probably not safe to breathe.

Also, as another poster pointed out, humidifying a large room in winter requires several liters of water per day. The cost of distilled water would quickly dwarf the cost of the humidifier itself, so other types of humidifiers besides ultrasonic (namely evaporative ones, where the main danger is mold, which distilled water doesn't help you with) are more economical.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#26

Post by cameldrv »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #19
tofof wrote: post #6

This is an art project and nothing more. Humidifying only 600 square feet, the size of a studio apartment, takes about 5 gallons of water per day in winter. [1] The reservoir on this object looks to be no more than two gallons, and I would be truly shocked if it requires even daily refilling. If it actually moved enough water to make a difference, it would be a fundamentally flawed design in requiring multiple comple…

When I finally got a hygrometer I was amazed at how useless the powered one gallon air humidifiers are. They often can’t raise the humidity percent a single point with the hygrometer right by it in my rooms. If you want to really humidify a room it takes a big industrial sized unit. They had them in the rooms in our Colorado Airbnb cabin and they were totally necessary in the dry mountain air if you didn’t want to wa…

When I was a kid in the eighties we had these huge “console” humidifiers that held maybe 15 gallons and had a rotating belt and a big fan. Seems like they stopped making these in the nineties in favor of the useless tiny things.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#27

Post by jcims »

exclusiv wrote: post #23
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I finally got a hygrometer I was amazed at how useless the powered one gallon air humidifiers are. They often can’t raise the humidity percent a single point with the hygrometer right by it in my rooms. If you want to really humidify a room it takes a big industrial sized unit. They had them in the rooms in our Colorado Airbnb cabin and they were totally necessary in the dry mountain air if you didn’t want to wa…

I have a rather small Honeywell cool mist that works well. I use it in our bedrooms and have taken the humidity up 20% easily. This is in the mountains where it's drier than the desert in the winter.

They ‘cheat’ a little by lofting liquid water which then evaporates. We have a water softener and the cool mist humidifier left a smoke-like particulate floating in the air (i think it was either salt from the softener or minerals from the water)

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#28

Post by Dylan16807 »

numpad0 wrote: post #16
pmoriarty wrote: post #3

Be really careful with humidifiers. I cranked mine up too much and it caused a mold issue in my home, and mold in my home caused me health issues.

One one hand infection experts say humidity protects you, on the other hand they say most types of humidifiers are disease incubators. On top of it it’s a fact that humidifier additives effectively are chemical weapons that works on humans at lower concentrations than it works for pathogens. We’re sort of in a bind — so how are we supposed to have safe air? 6-hourly bleached, heater based humidifiers running off the…

Install a reverse osmosis system under your sink, and use that to fill the humidifier.

Nothing's going to incubate in that.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#29

Post by Zancarius »

samatman wrote: post #15

I don't know what the site author did to make it so the zoom button doesn't adjust the font size but I implore anyone similarly tempted: please don't do this.

I think it's the viewport "user-scalable=no" meta tag value?

That's a terrible thing to do to people who have poor or low vision, and the font size is small enough that it's almost a problem for people who have otherwise decent vision but require reading glasses!

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#30

Post by Dylan16807 »

xvector wrote: post #20
zweep wrote: post #13

To mildly humidify my baby son’s room without having to maintain a humidifier, I use a towel soaked in water, draped over a chair, with a fan pointed at it overnight.

I've used this in the summer to cool down in apartments with no AC. But is it actually effective for humidification? The top comment mentions that it takes 5 gallons per day to humidify a small studio apartment under ideal conditions...

Well, 600 square feet can be a studio but it's by no means a small studio. It's enough space for a perfectly comfortable 2 bedroom apartment. (Or 3 if you squeeze.)

For a single room, if that towel holds a gallon it should work fine for an overnight humidification job.

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