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Paper Clay Air Humidifier

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Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#51

Post by mfkp »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #50
mfkp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and it will also release the impurities/minerals into the air, which is what we're trying to avoid by using distilled/boiled water. I live in an area with very hard water (around 300ppm), and the evaporated minerals are very visible in the air (and it leaves a white residue on the surrounding area).

Would filtering it first help with that?

Yes, my humidifier actually has filters you can buy, but it's a bit cost prohibitive (around $20/filter and with the hardness of the water they only last about 3 weeks).

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#53

Post by aliswe »

mrfusion wrote: post #8

Here’s an idea I had for a humidifier. It simply tumbles thousands of tiny beads through tumbler with water at the bottom. Since the sheer number of small beads creates a huge surface area you’d get a bunch of evaporation. Cool right? Feel free to use this idea as prior art.

Yes but energy intensive.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#54

Post by mothsonasloth »

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…

Correction: This is a "hipster" art project

Shouldn't even be on Hackernews

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#55

Post by MrGilbert »

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…

I was sick quite often in the past - what helped me was

a) tuning down the room temperatures to ~21°C in winter

b) drink a lot of water

The last time I got really, really sick was in 2017.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#56

Post by raverbashing »

peteretep wrote: post #35
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…

> 600 square feet Maybe most people already know this, but I only learned it recently: you can go (approximately) from sqft to sqm by dividing by 10, presumably because 1m = 3.28ft and 3.28 squared is ~10. So 600sqft is about 60sqm (55.7)

It's a bit easier if you think "the other way", so 1ft ~ 0.3m or squared it's 0.9m2 so, divide by 10 and take 10% off and you get the ft2 -> m2 (or multiply by 10 and add 10% for m2 to ft2)

Still approximate

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#57

Post by oska »

mfkp wrote: post #38
TeMPOraL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I discovered this when doing a post-assembly indoor test of a Luftdaten air quality sensor I built[0]. I kept it running for few hours and then looked at the data, and saw some ridiculously high levels of PM2.5 and PM5 in the evening. I've decided to investigate it. Over the next two days, I figured out that the increased levels happen at times when our air humidifier is running, which led me to discover that those u…

I've encountered the same issue (high plastic bottle waste along with high cost). Short of boiling your own water outdoors to avoid polluting the indoor air, it's challenging to find a source for bulk distilled water.

Rain is essentially distilled water (evaporation from terrestrial water bodies and then condensation in the atmosphere). It picks up some contaminants in the atmosphere and some dissolved gases when it condenses but it's going to be mostly free of minerals (i.e. not be hard). So collecting rain water is one source of bulk 'distilled water'.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#59

Post by oska »

OJFord wrote: post #43
mfkp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and it will also release the impurities/minerals into the air, which is what we're trying to avoid by using distilled/boiled water. I live in an area with very hard water (around 300ppm), and the evaporated minerals are very visible in the air (and it leaves a white residue on the surrounding area).

> I live in an area with very hard water (around 300ppm) Tangential, but being curious how hard that was relative to mine led me to discover that Thames Water (i.e. only useful to anyone reading in London) has a pretty good page at [0] - a summary on the site itself but the PDF is really worth a look, lots of numbers. Maybe it's a regulatory requirement, but I wouldn't have expected it to be so easy to get so much in…

It's actually quite common for water authorities to publish quite detailed analyses of the water they provide. Doing such analyses is a core competency of being a water authority and, since they are mostly publicly owned, then published for consumers, often at a fairly detailed level.

Re: Paper Clay Air Humidifier

#60

Post by OJFord »

oska wrote: post #59
OJFord wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in an area with very hard water (around 300ppm) Tangential, but being curious how hard that was relative to mine led me to discover that Thames Water (i.e. only useful to anyone reading in London) has a pretty good page at [0] - a summary on the site itself but the PDF is really worth a look, lots of numbers. Maybe it's a regulatory requirement, but I wouldn't have expected it to be so easy to get so much in…

It's actually quite common for water authorities to publish quite detailed analyses of the water they provide. Doing such analyses is a core competency of being a water authority and, since they are mostly publicly owned, then published for consumers, often at a fairly detailed level.

> water authority and, since they are mostly publicly owned

Not here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_water_companies

(E.g. Canada Pension Plan, Morgan Stanley, Hong Kong based investment trust)

As I said, it may be a regulatory (Ofwat) requirement, but it isn't just a public body doing right by its citizens.

Interesting anyway, not that much of it means anything to me. Though apparently if/when I try brewing beer again I should add some magnesium. (It even lists the range that's helpful as a yeast nutrient, and above which contributes unwanted taste.)

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