I’m looking for a large humidifier, but am starting to think boiling pots of water on the stove will be cheaper and less likely to break.
All I want is something that can handle 2400 square feet or so. Used to be, you could go to Sears and buy a big console humidifier that held about 20 gallons of water and had a rolling fiber belt. No more.
Now, the options are either to buy a fleet of ultrasonic units that will coat everything in the house with a white film, or evaporative pad units that are labeled “12 gallons” but in reality, that’s what they can put out per day, but they only hold four or five gallons, so they will need refilling several times a day. The dominant brand of these seems to be Essick / Bemis, and all of the reviews say they’re flimsy, noisy, prone to breaking and usually need shimming and other monkeying out of the box to make them work.
One thing I have found with cold humidifiers is that they make the room cold. This is the same process that swamp coolers use and a re a alternative to air conditioning.
According to a fleet of respiratory therapists at my daughter’s last hospitalization for pneumonia, you’re far better off with a pot of water boiling on the stove. Why? Because it’s not a petrie dish for bacteria and molds.
We came home and threw out all the humidifiers in our bedrooms. I was horrified that the thing I used to try to give her relief during her head cold may have (not definitively, but *may *have) lead to the pneumonia that required hospitalization for a week on an oxygen mask and IV antibiotics.
ETA: I use a pot of water boiling on the stove now, sometimes with some citrus peels and cinnamon sticks thrown in for scent. Another thing I do is put the plug down while showering, and leave the bathtub full of water after I get out. The water continues to evaporate for a while, and with the bathroom door open, adds a lot of needed moisture to the air.
Consumer Reports (or Guide) just did a review of humidifiers. There were two that they rated as excellent, but I can’t remember the brands. One was $30, the other was $170.
The steam-based humidifiers are contraptions that do exactly that, boil water and let off the steam, and they are safe. Evaporative humidifiers are safe.
Impeller-based or ultrasonic, however, can potentially throw microbes around the air.
I’m extremely pleased with the Vicks Warm Mist humidifier. Doesn’t seem like it could harbor bacteria, since every other day I scrub the heating element with white vinegar and clean the rest of it like that. It also has a little hole where you can pour in liquid Vicks, which is just camphor.
Whole house ones aren’t a great idea for mold reasons. You’re best off getting bedroom ones and doing things like filling the bathroom tubs with hot water and leaving the door open to evaporate.
ETA: I think my Vicks humidifier is the steam-based ones; I previously did have weird bacteria in a cool mist one.
I’m concerned that I’m molding up my lungs by using an electronic humidifier. But what if you need the humidifying in a certain room? Boiling a pot of water on my stove isn’t going to help humidify my bedroom at night.
I’ve found that by leaving the bedroom doors open and humidifying the whole place by stovetop and bathtub methods, the bedroom doesn’t need a dedicated humidifier. Of course, I live in a one level apartment, with all the rooms pretty close to each other, so YMMV.
If you’re absolutely diligent about cleaning it out every single day, then you might not have a problem with a room humidifier. I wasn’t (I cleaned them every 2 or 3 days, with a bleach soak once a week), and I did.