[VorpalWay]

Distilled water is somewhat expensive, and humidifiers chew through water in the winter (at least here). I quickly switched away from ultrasonic for that reason, 6-8 litres of distilled water per day for a medium sized apartment is not sustainable. Evaporative with tap water and biocides is the way to go.

The air outside is extremely dry (<5% relative humidity once heated to indoor temperatures), and the air is quickly replaced by the ventilation. I have anecdotely heard that in the US they have much lower requirements of rate of air replacement than here in Sweden though, so maybe that could work there, but then you would also have stale air, which doesn't sound great.

[peteyPete]

A reverse osmosis filter will provide plenty of water with nearly no minerals. They're available to install under the sink/counter for a few hundred bucks and provide clean drinking/cooking water and work fine with ultrasonic humidifiers without the issue of depositing minerals everywhere / clogging up the ultrasonic emitter. So its a lot cheaper than buying it plus you get great water.

[VorpalWay]

Those aren't exactly common here, since municipal water is high quality and everyone drinks it as is. It is not like some parts of the world where the tap water is full of chlorine and barely drinkable (I ran into that when I went to Athens).

And if you have your own well, you generally do a cheaper filter targeted at whatever impurity you have (such as an iron filter), rather than a reverse osmosis filter.

With reverse osmosis the water also gets too pure for drinking and you need to add back minerals to it for safety, it is not healthy to drink ultra pure water for any prolonged period of time.

[ssl-3]

Man. It seems like every avenue of humidification is paved with difficulty.

Ultrasonic humidifiers (and others) that spritz water droplets out? They need fed expensive water, or they spread particulates everywhere. Health aspects aside, it's nice living in a house that isn't bathed in something that looks like chalk dust.

Evaporative methods? They're similar in their lust for pure water, and the particles tend to concentrate at the humidifier instead of everywhere else. That accumulation needs to be cleaned up periodically (or parts replaced, depending on how rent-seeking the design is).

Distilled water from the store? That's gloriously clean water, but it represents a money pit that can never be filled up.

RO water? Sounds nice (is nice), but they're expensive and inefficient (producing 1 liter of RO water wastes in the realm of 3 or 4 liters down the drain). The systems need installed, and not everyone has the capacity to wrangle their own plumbing projects.

And as an added bonus: Drinking RO water saps our precious bodily fluids of the minerals and electrolytes that people crave to stay alive, so we also seek to deliberately impurify it.

I guess that means that an ideal path to RO-oriented humidification, we end up with 3 taps at the kitchen sink, then? One that provides demineralized for the humidifier, another that provides remineralized water for drinking, and one for everything else?

---

It's all ugly in some way.

Isn't there some kind of evaporative humidification method that is easy and inexpensive to clean? Something I can just feed cheap tap water into, and that I only have to deal with cleaning once a month or something? That sounds like the path of least pain for me in my neck of the woods.

[scorpioxy]

When I last looked, the evaporative methods were better than others. You don't need distilled water for it, tap will work. They do need cleaning and frequent disinfecting though due to the pad constantly sitting in the water. The prices of replacement pads are a bit expensive but it was cheaper than constantly buying distilled water.

There are a few brands out there but the Philips ones seemed better than the others and the prices were not as insane. I just disliked their marketing and buzzword filled content but otherwise they seem OK. Oh and you should know a lot of their stuff now are internet connected(disabling it will make you lose some functions but otherwise the device still works) and have touch buttons and screens etc. It's unfortunate but this seems to be where every device is heading.

I do agree with you that this seems overly complex. You can pretty much do it yourself if you'd like to take on a project. A fan and a constantly wet rag has the same function but is not as compact.

[ssl-3]

Thanks. I'll check out Philips. I wonder if third-party pads exist.

I prefer dumb, but I don't mind if it's smart. Especially if I can integrate the smarts into my Home Assistant rig.

I built a humidifier once. I just used the Instant Pot that was already on the countertop. I filled it with water, set it to "Keep warm", and it slowly evaporated the water and left minerals behind.

This worked fine (it was safe, if inefficient).

But monitoring the consumption of water and the improvement in humidity showed that to actually raise the humidity to a comfortable point would and do so throughout the house would use a lot of water.

And I want to do more with my time than fill humidifiers back up. :)

[yencabulator]

For truly dumb, Honeywell HCM350W/HCM350B https://amzn.to/4tSEAGy has just a multi-speed fan knob and a hidden UV lamp and nothing else. The 1.1 gallon tank gets through a couple of nights here, current outdoor humidity is 16% on an overcast day in the middle of "rainy" days (high altitude semi-arid). 6 non-brand wicks for $22 will last a long time: https://amzn.to/48EwKbb