What is your experience with single room humidifiers?

This dry weather is killing my sinuses. I am considering buying a humidifier.

I am looking for advice on how well they work and the best one to buy. I am not overly concerned about cost.

Thanks.

They work. As a kid they were all the old fashioned steam type, the newer ones use a fan. How well they work depends on the size of the room and how much loss there is to drier areas of the house. Considering how dry homes can get in the winter there’s a practical limit to how humid the room will get. When it really gets to me I just go in the bathroom and turn the water to full hot in the shower and let the room steam up. I’ll also put a big pot of water on the stove to boil to humidify the main portion of the house. But a humidifier in the bedroom at night is helpful.

All my friends use them for their kids, and some of them even got their own humidifiers for their own bedrooms.

Just make sure you keep the water clean. They can turn in to mold dispersers pretty quick. If you read reviews, like on Amazon, people will probably mention how hard or easy a model is to keep clean.

  1. Don’t get a “cool mist” humidifier. I’ve tried them and “Cool mist” is apparently a term of art in the humidifier industry that means “Doesn’t work very well.”

  2. Totally ditto on cleaning them.

  3. The humidifier will be rated to humidify a space of a certain size. You should believe this number. A $40 humidifier rated for a 150-sqft room will make that room feel much better but if asked to do a whole house you will notice no difference at all anywhere more than arm’s reach from the unit.

My wife runs one in out bedroom all the time. If it gets turned off she does not sleep well.

It is the type with a fan and a media pad to evaporate the water off of.
How often you will have to change the pads will depend on the amount of minerals in your water. I use RO filter water in ours so they last quite a while. Not only check the store your are buying the humidifier from but also other stores that you shop in if they sells replacement pads. WE always keep extra on hand and order new ones when we use the last one. Not every store carries the type pad our humidifier uses.

I have both the cool mist and warm mist (sans filter) types. They both work good but the warm mist one is noisy. It sounds like a coffee percolator. Contrary to RickJay’s experience, the cool mist one works great.

How well they work also seems to depend on the type of heating system in your house. I have a boiler and the air doesn’t seem to get as dry as it does with forced air.

I have forced air heating but I’m in Santa Barbara so the heat isn’t running constantly even when the weather is at its coldest. On the other side of the coin, we are in a severe drought so I can’t justify the run the hot shower and breathe the steam method as much as I would love to do so.

One issue you will have with room units is filling them. I have to fill mine twice a day (I am in the Northeast). If you are intending to do every room, I might go to a whole house unit, or even an Aprilaire, or similar unit (works through your furnace and is attached directly to water source).

I notice that you are in Santa Barbara CA. I would think that you would need it only at night in the bedroom. You should get a hygrometer. Maybe the humidity is not your problem.

I recommend the steam type; the others get moldy easier, have pads that clog up with water minerals, or send those minerals into the air along with the water, giving you a nice fine white dust all over everything.

The steam ones get the water hot enough to not grow mold, and any mineral crud stays within the reservoir and can be rinsed out later.

Plus, if you have a cold, you can put that Vicks stuff in the reservoir and medicate the steam, which seems to help.