I also just boil water. It's easy to adjust the rate of evaporation. For night time I lower the fire to its lowest setting, and if needed I just use multiple pots. Over night at lowest setting only half the pot is boiled away.
What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
61–70 of 302 posts
Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
#62I'm in Australia, and I've lived in a lot of areas both inland (hot dry) and coastal and humidifiers are that common here. What is it in the US that creates the need/demand for Humidifiers?
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.
Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
#63[deleted]
Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
#64Technology Connections just recently made a really good video about humidifiers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeehYYgl28
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.
Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
We used Ultrasonic humidifiers in a server room (to cut down on static risk) and I can confirm they get covered in minerals
Amazon reviews on ultrasonic humidifiers complained that their expensive home electronics died because of the dust.
Hah, well I don't work there anymore. They did have reverse osmosis water filters on them, but no air filters.
Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
#66I 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 o…
How do you deal with cleaning the handle part of the tank? It looks like the end can pop off, but I haven't tried.
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.
Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
#67Sat 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.
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.
Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
#68I 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). * M…
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.
Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
#69I 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).
> Wirecutter simply isn't that reliable 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 Dys…
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.
Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier
#70What about this comically expensive https://www.venta-air.com and it’s ripoff: https://www.xiaomitoday.com/2020/06/30/get-the-xiaomi-smartm... 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
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.