Hacker News Reader

Comment by phs2501 | Hacker News Reader

I 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).

* Maintenance is a new water panel yearly (about $20) and some cleaning, again yearly.

* You need smart controls or to regularly adjust a manual humidistat to not over-humidify your house based on outdoor temperature, though this is exactly the same as with "portable" humidifiers.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com