I broke my humidifier, and until I can replace it, I need a substitute… it’s REALLY dry in my room!!! I mean, REALLY dry!
So, I have soaked a bath towel in H2O, and hung it up in the middle of the room. Assuming that I re-wet the towel when it gets dry, how effective will this be as a humidifier? Am I wasting my time doing this?
Anyone?
How about an old cigar humidor trick? Get a bowl, fill it with salt, and stir in water until it’s fully wetted, but still thick and slushy. The salt slush will automatically maintain 75% humidity.
–Tim
It won’t maintain 75% humidity in my entire room, will it? This makes me wonder: why would a bowl bull of salt water be a better hunidifier than a bowl full of plain old water?
Hmmmmmmm…
Fill a shallow pan (like a jelly roll pan) with warm water & set it on a heat source like a radiator or heat register. If you are conserving energy & not running the heat, set the pan on anything warm like a TV or stereo.
In case anyone who is going to try this has an IQ lower than a bar of soap: Do not spill the water inside your television or stereo. Also do not fully block the ventilation holes in said electronic equipment.
You’re probably raising the humidity a little by doing that, though I really can’t answer the question. How about going to a hardware store and buying a humidity-meter? You can get them for under $10.00, and that’ll tell you what methods work. I have one outside, and it seems pretty accurate. At least it matches what the weather report says as to humidity.
Probably not–the room would be too big. I have humidors, one of which wasn’t fully sealed. The humidifying unit inside (I use a propylene glycol and water mix) was always going dry without affecting the room’s humidity at all.
We retired that humidor, as you can probably guess. We also moved the humidifying unit into a new humidor, and have had no problems with it since. Mind, this time, it’s not trying to humidify a room.
I like Carina42’s suggestion about getting the hygrometer first. No matter what method you use (wet towel, pan of water, etc.) you’re going to want to find out how well your method is working. An inexpensive hygrometer might not be the world’s most accurate one, but you can at least use it to see if the humidity is rising or falling in your room.
Big enough bowl, small enough room… 
I believe most people use this trick with a standard four cup cereal bowl in a small, cedar lined, rubber insulated closet to maintain cigars without drying them out. Solution? Live in the closet*.
I think the salt water thing works better because once the room reaches 75%, it stops evaporating, thereby maintaining a constant level of humidity.
–Tim
[sub][sup]*Not recommended for homosexuals.[/sup][/sub]
Well shoot, if you can scrape together $10 for a hygrometer, surely you can come up with $20 and just buy a cool mist humidifier. Heck, here is one that only costs $9.39.
If you can really afford to splurge, $32.00 will get you a Honeywell humidifier, which I would expect to be almost top of the line.
I wouldn’t even be surprized to find one in my local CVS right next to the $4.99 hair dryers.
That first link doesn’t work, but you can see the product by going to http://shopping.yahoo.com and searching for “Vicks Vaporizer”.
I can scrape together $10 if I have to, but that won’t do me any good here in Korea!!!
A cheap humidifier (IE: mine) here costs about $40, and they go up to about $150!!! Why? Fucked if I know!!! But some electronics here are really fucking expensive! The same $150 dollar humidifier would cost about $20 in the States… I wish I had thought to buy one in the US when I was there a few weeks ago…
Calm down Astro, you’re using up all the exclamation points.
I once tried the “poor man’s humidifier” (wet towel) method a few times. It seemed to work pretty well, but I did not conduct scientific humidity readings or anything.
I’ve also used the “pan of water on the radiator” method. (Hardware stores also sell open-top containers that hook onto the side of radiators; you fill them with water for exactly this effect.) It worked okay too – but the wet towel, with its vast surface area, seemed like a more effective idea.
The science hobbyist in me compels me to tell you that you can make your own “wet bulb” hygrometer for little more than the price of two household thermometers. I’m sure there are hundreds of elementary school science web pages that will supply the details.
Good luck, buddy.
Why don’t you just get a nice person here to get one for you and send it over?? Surely you could just pay them back?
Only until someone opens the front door, thereby letting all that nice 75% humidity escape into the outside 10% humidity.
Here’s the table. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001434.html
BTW, here is how to build your own psychrometer, for 3rd through 12th graders. ASKERIC Espana -
This is what you’ll need: Tape, water, 2 identical thermometers (you can use any regular “stick this under your tongue” thermometer, I guess, or “hang down inside” aquarium thermometers), gauze (2" X 2"), rubberband, piece of cardboard (8" X 11"), Relative Humidity Table (included on the website, along with full instructions). Think you can handle that? 
FYI:
So a hygrometer is anything you use to measure humidity; a psychrometer is the specific science project thing with the two thermometers and the wet gauze.
Try a wet towel AND a pan of water. Put the bottom of the towel in the water to keep the towel wet.
As Bizerta said except have a fan blow on the blanket to keep the humid air moving away from the blanket. It should help.
A ski mag. I read suggest not wetting a section of the carpet as this encourages mold. They say any water container on a heat source should work fine.
Astroboy – I understand you are not a U.S. servicemember, so jaunting over to the BX to get a humidifier is definitely out of the question. I shall therefore attempt to suggest a few short-term solutions while you wait for a friend or relative to mail one to you from the states (that is your long-term solution, isn’t it?).
First, how is your house/apartment heated? Putting a large pan of warm water in a non-traffic area might help if you have the heated floors I found so wonderful during the cold weather. If your heating system uses a radiator (I never saw any in Korea) then the pan-on-the-heater system would work fine. Otherwise, I might suggest using towels instead of the blanket.
Definitely get a hygrometer ASAP, since you have no way to determine how effective your humidifying system is, apart from checking periodically to see if mold is starting to grow on the walls. Too bad you can’t run a pipe into summer and bring in some of that warm, humid air I remember. When I was stationed at Osan, they issued us dehumidifiers for summer use. Mine collected about 3/4 gallon each day.
~~Baloo
Yeah, unfortunately they won’t let me onto the US Army base to go to the PX (I’d be there a lot! Hard to find western food in the Korean grocery stores…). The long-term solution is to get the humidifier fixed (bought it here, and the part that is broken is the water tank, which I believe I can get replaced as soon as my fiancee calls the company that made it…).
The room I live in (a very SMALL dorm room provided by the university) does have a radiator, and I had thought of putting a pan of water on it; but my bed is placed right alongside the radiator, and I’m afraid I would kick the pan of water off during the night (I tend to thrash around a lot!).
I will buy a hygrometer (if I can figure out where to buy one here)…
For the moment, I guess I’ll stick with the wet towel trick.
But I like exclaimation points!!!