[Techtalk] finding a warm-mist humidifier that isn't garbage

[Miriam English]

Hi Carla,

I have an "OdeV Water of Life" water distiller here and it seems to 
humidify the air fairly well when it's running. We have highly 
mineralised well water (hence the distiller) so it does build up some 
crust in the large boiler, but so will anything that boils water that 
has dissolved minerals. It's pretty easy to clean though. As you say, 
boiling with a little bit of vinegar in the water does the trick (use 
much less volume because vinegar+water boils much more easily). If you 
don't need the distilled water then you can simply pour it back into the 
boiler, which would eliminate the scaling problem... until you need to 
top up the water with new stuff to replace the vapor lost to the atmosphere.

This machine seems pretty sturdy, though I've only had it about a year 
and don't run it constantly. It holds about 6 litres, taking about 5 
hours to boil all that away. It has an electronic counter on the side to 
let you know how long it's been running this session and switches itself 
off when done. I assume larger ones could be found which would run longer.

I don't need a humidifier so had never thought of it this way before, 
and it might not dump enough vapor into the air to be what you need. The 
air here is already pretty humid and I notice it becomes noticeably more 
heavy when the distiller is working.

The top has a fan forcing cooling air past the distillation piping. You 
could always leave the top off and just let it boil into the air instead 
of collecting the water from it again. But it might be an expensive way 
to have a temperature controlled, auto-off boiler with timer.

Cheers,

	- Miriam

Carla Schroder wrote:
> hey all, yeah, this is probably off-topic, but I'm getting frustrated. All I 
> want is a warm-mist humidifier for my bedroom. I already tried a couple of 
> inexpensive ones, and they were both junk. They worked fine for a few nights, 
> but were hard to clean, and both gave up the ghost in a few days. 
> 
> I've been searching all over the Internet for reviews and information, and 
> it's the same all over-- no matter what price range you're in, there are many 
> complaints of unreliability, poor build quality, and hard to clean. We have 
> moderately hard water, and plain old white vinegar gets rid of any scale in 
> short order. But you have to be able to take the thing apart in a sensible 
> way to do this, which is not possible with a lot of these devices. I'm not 
> going to buy distilled water because that is financially insane, and then you 
> have to add salt to get any steam, and then you're making mineral buildup 
> again.
> 
> I don't want a cold-mist vaporizer, must have warm-mist. WTF is so hard about 
> heating water and making steam? I tried using a crockpot-- I made a lid with 
> a little hole in it to keep the heat in and let steam out, but it doesn't get 
> hot enough without being completely covered. 
> 
> So. Any and all creative notions are welcome. I thought of trying a hot plate 
> and a little cast-iron kettle, but I don't trust hot plates to be safe for 
> long periods of time. But I'm open to trying it, or other methods, if anyone 
> has tried them.
> 
> thanks,
> Carla
> 
> 

-- 
My time wasn't completely wasted last year.
I went on a 940 million kilometer journey.
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Website: http://miriam-english.org
Blog: http://miriam_e.livejournal.com