On a tangent note: don’t use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5 particles.
Use evaporative humidifiers (just disks with myriads of small notches for water to cling on and a fan): https://us.smartmiglobal.com/pages/smartmi-evaporative-humid...
> On a tangent note: don’t use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5 particles.
Not according to my uHoo air quality monitor. I have had one running a few feet from the monitor for over a week and there hasn't been any notable increase in PM2.5 particles.
> any notable increase in PM2.5 particles
What's your PM2.5 baseline, and did you measure TDS in the water?
Alec from Technology Connections also has a great video comparing humidifiers here
> Use evaporative humidifiers
You don't have to buy one either. A suspended wet towel with a fan blowing on it will work very well. If you want to get fancy, have the last inch or two of the towel sitting in a tray of water.
But then I have to buy the towel and the fan, the tray, something to suspend the towel at the right height …
This is cheaper, and the towel and fan can be repurposed. Just buy a 3D printer for making the the suspension part (/jest)
The best solution I've found a few years ago is one Venta LW 45 for every 30 m² of space. That's enough to run them on the lowest speed while maintaining acceptable humidity and CO₂ levels.
Higher speeds are too noisy. Smaller machines evaporate less.
For sub-zero outside temperatures, it's necessary to add at least 5 g of water to each cubic metre of air coming from outside.
The recommended ventilation rate of 30 m³/h per person requires to evaporate 4 liters of water per day.
Which venta are you referencing here?
They are referencing https://www.venta-air.com/en_us/product/lw45-original-humidi...
I also have one and love how easy it is to clean.
For $500 it better clean itself
Distilled water isn’t strictly necessary. I use mine with purified water with a reverse osmosis purifier. I periodically test the TDS of the water to confirm it is low. It’s fine.
That Smartmi model seems to have toxic IoT in it.
I'm currently using the Vornado EV100 non-IoT evaporative humidifier, and my only complaints are relatively minor, as humidifiers go (consumable wick, fan noise, insanely bright blue LEDs). https://www.vornado.com/shop/humidifiers/evaporative/ev100-e...
You don’t need to connect it — works completely offline.
Also no consumable parts there: just plastic disks which you clean with couple of spoons of citric acid dissolved in water from time to time.
Couldn't you just use vinegar?
I found this too. I wonder why they don't just accept a PUR water filter on the input side.
I also wonder why mini-split heating systems drip and pool water outdoors instead of pumping that distilled water back indoors for humidification.
This is pretty crappy one-size-fits-all advice in itself.
If you’re willing to use distilled water, ultrasonic humidifiers have their own advantages over evaporative.
I’m personally willing to buy distilled water. It’s a dollar per gallon, and we only need the humidifier during a short few months. You can even buy a small countertop water distiller for under $60.
I'm thoroughly unconvinced.
Doing some basic research... hard water is overwhelmingly various carbonate and bicarbonates of magnesium, calcium, sulfur, iron, maganese, and aluminum. All of which are essential nutrients and readily soluable in water.
The other proposed problem was pathogen aerosols- however I was unable to access anything but an abstract. So, I don't know if they survived being aerosolized, produced more and/or worse pathogen count than evaporative humidifiers, Nor the size of the pathogens.
It seems to me the known risk is mostly mechanical (Asthma, exacerbated COPD, etc) and nonpersistent (particles dissolve and are used or excreted via the same pathways as when consumed). With an unknown risk on the pathogen side.
> If you’re willing to use distilled water, ultrasonic humidifiers have their own advantages over evaporative.
Unless you are anally retentive about cleaning it, ultrasonic humidifiers vaporize microbes into the air. There have been loads of studies about this.
The only real way to avoid this is to use the humidifiers that are boiling the water.
How did we survive the last 3.5 billion years?
Quite poorly in fact
We didn't have access to modern technology... like ultrasonic speakers?
Also we died at a young age. Everyone dying at 40 isn't incompatible with the species surviving but it's what advice like that is usually trying to avoid (and even less extreme outcomes).
The concept of everyone dying at 40 is a myth/misunderstanding anyways - the reality was a lot more bimodal than that.
Eh, here it's more of a simplification than a myth as used in my comment. There are two effects:
1. We've reduced infant (and childhood) mortality. My comment isn't talking about this effect but it did drag down average life expectancy substantially. Including this effect life expectancy at birth in the stone age might have been as low as 20... but as you say the bimodality means this is a deceptive statistic when used this way.
2. We've made it so you on average live longer even if you survive childhood, my comment is really just about this part of the effect. It's still a simplification because saying "on average if you survive childhood you die at 40" isn't the same as "everyone dies at 40" but closer to "adults die at all ages in a reasonable smooth monotonic curve and 40 is about the average age they live to but some get lucky and live to 80 or whatever". But then "don't use ultrasonic dehumidifiers" is like this too, using one won't kill you at some specific age, it will just slightly increase your chance of death every year for the rest of your life however long that ends up being.
The number 40 was picked out of a hat, too. It should be right for some areas at some times just by coincidence though and since I was non-specific that makes me right ;)
A lot of us didn't
Glad to know that's solved now
Can you do HP printers next
Yup! Step 1: fill your printer with two liters of distilled water.
A humidifier needs network capability incase someone discovers a new version of water, or for the manufacturer to be able to patch remote exploits.
Hah! How exact
It's becuase Xiaomi integrated it just like all of it's other smart home products with Mijia - Xiaomi's smart home mesh [0].
In Asia (but arguably the same in the West given the proliferation of Ring and smart home hubs), consumers have less of an aversion to smart home and connected products in general.
Keeping IoT devices on a separate segmented network with strict DMZing, turning off unused features, and not sharing passwords would provide enough security for most home users. I recommend reading James Micken's essay "The World is Ours" [1] on the diminishing returns of certain security features at the expense of user experience. I also agree with it as someone who used to do edgy stuff with SHODAN as a teenager.
HNers tend to be the minority amongst consumers, which is assuming the opposite of the HN herd mentality tends to be a fairly successful strategy.
[0] - https://www.mi.com/global/smart-home/
[1] - https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf
Xkcd for everything as always
I'm all for KISS.
But in a rare instance, xkcd is missing the point here. People do not live in their rooms 24/7, but they do want to be able to, e.g., turn stuff on or off remotely, or based on environmental conditions (turn on/off based on outside sensors or the current electricity price...) or to get status alerts ("tank empty, refill").
Now, I do that via Home Assistant and keep anything "smart" on a highly-restricted vnet ... but not everyone is a geek. While the standard implementation (some cloud service) comes with a bouquet of problems, it basically acts as a simplified Home Assistant, and ultimately as a necessary crutch. Preferably we'd be in IPv6-land, where ISPs would not NAT everything to death and we could talk to our devices remotely without an intermediary ... but well ... it cannot be helped.
"You're not going to need it" and "In my time, we just flipped a dumb switch" is paternalistic hogwash, not clever social commentary. Back in my days, we also didn't need satnav (just read a paper map), or cell phones (write them a note, leave it on the fridge, nothing is so important to demand imminence), or dishwashers (just do your dishes by hand)