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Comment by leetcrew | Hacker News Reader

I just bought a (different) honeywell humidifier. so far it works, but not as well as I expected. I hoped it would be able to maintain a somewhat stable humidity for the sake of my guitars, but it can't really keep up with the desiccating power of my central heat. I wonder if part of the issue here is mismatched expectations with evaporative humidifiers?

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I went through early parts of my life thinking little humidifiers were doing something and not until I got a relative humidity meter did I see how little they do unless you either a.) have a very big humidifier or b.) a very small sealed room. One of those "I'm sick" humidifiers can be going full blast and not budge the RH right nearby.

If you have a central HVAC and valuable things that are sensitive to humidity you really need a whole-house humidifier. A bunch of manufacturers make them, I have the Aprilaire 400 ($741 professionally installed in 2016), you can see all their products here: https://www.aprilaire.com/whole-house-products/humidifier

I think the problem is your humidifier needs to be able to keep up with the rate of air turnover in your house.

If your humidifier can't push a 1/4 gallon an hour it's probably not doing that much.

I think the wick type humidifiers likely suck because at low humidity the dew point is really low, the wick gets cold and the water doesn't can't evaporate very fast.

I have never seen relative humidity budge more than a few percent using any portable humidifer. Sitting at 10% here, hard cases with humidity packs is the only way I can keep acoustics in one piece, though as a result I hardly ever play them anymore.

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