Just a humidifier

Author's Rating:

Pros: Large water capacity, visible fountain shows water is flowing

Cons: Somewhat noisy, humidistat not accurate

The Bottom Line: 
I'm going to try an ultrasonic/steam humidifier next.

Author's Review
Supposedly this humidifier will humidify a 3200 square foot area. I have a room about 900 square feet which is quite drafty, so I thought this would handle it.

Filling takes about 3 refills with the portable tank in order to fill the bottom reservoir. This can get tiring since you have to take out the filler, unscrew the cap on the bottom, fill, rescrew the cap, put the filller into the humidifier until it empties, and repeat. So I hooked up a hose to fill the tank which would take a few minutes, however a couple times I forgot to turn the water off and I made a huge puddle on the floor. In the future I'm going to try and rig up a fill switch or maybe a constant drip and drain system to make sure the humidifier stays full.

Humidity in the room is typically 25-30%. I would like it to be around 50%. When I turn the humidifier on, the fan is fairly loud. I definitely wouldn't use it in an office setting, even on the lowest fan speed. There are 3 speeds, and the highest speed sounds like a jet engine sitting in the corner of the room. The lowest fan speed is like a low, rumbling drone. If there's enough water in the tank, the window on the front shows water trickling down. I guess there's a pump which pumps the water up and lets it trickle down through the filter.

The humidistat reads within a few percent of another one in the room, and you can digitally set the setpoint to within 1%. However, within a few seconds of turning the unit on, the humidistat goes up to 40 or 50%. Obviously the humidistat in the humidifier is not in a good location and I have to set it to 70% just so the unit stays on and constantly humidifying. I rely on the humidistat across the room for an accurate reading. After an hour or so, the humidity goes up a percent or two and after a few hours it's up to 40% or so. The room humidity never goes higher than 40% and the 4.5 gallons of water need to refilled more than once per day.