Please redirect if there is a more appropriate community for this question.
I’m dealing with dry air, and the humidifiers I had bought before got the tiniest grits of dust or something in them and leaked their whole tank of water. Turns out they needed purified water or distilled water to function long term.
I just want to put tap water into a thing and get humidity into the air. Any suggestions?
Edit, they were indeed ultrasonic humidifiers.
I’ve never heard of a humidifier leaking because of not using purified water.
Humidifiers that use ultrasonic elements to vaporize water can, as I understand it, get buildup from residue. You can get a white dust from them. But I wouldn’t expect them to leak.
I’ve never had any issue with use of tap water in humidifiers. I’ve used the variety that just wicks water up into a material and has a fan blow through it. Those shouldn’t even have the dust potential.
It depends on how hard your water is. The calcium can cause any seal to not be a seal for long
I can’t think of a humidifier I’ve owned that had seals for the water, just a bucket/bowel to hold the water and a thing on top that blew air out.
I’ve had one that had a big bucket that had a valve at the bottom. If that doesn’t sit flush, I can picture it leaking pretty easily.
Could you link me to one of these bucket or bowl type of humidifiers?
I have this one
https://amzn.to/4gUR4qX
have had it 2 years due to dry ass winters.
This is the most recent one I’ve had, the water tank is one solid piece and the electrical bits go down into the water from the top. I had a larger one with the same solid tank with the bits on top as a kid that held a gallon of water, but that was decades ago and I don’t see anything like it on a quick search.
https://www.amazon.com/Vicks-Vaporizer-Nightlight-Auto-Shut-Moisturized/dp/B0000TN7ME&tag=amzfinder-20
It cannot leak unless the tank cracks.
This is very interesting. Does it clog up with hard water?
I couldn’t remember if it cycled water or not and peeked at the user manual which is linked on that page. It says to use tap water and if it is working to slowly to add some salt!
It does have directions for cleaning if hard water causes issues, and I remember it being pretty easy to clean as we did so once a month or so.
You don’t have to add any of the vicks stuff either. We just used it as a plain old humidifier.
Why would calcium cause a seal to leak? I just searched for “calcium seal leak water” and nothing comes up.
Hard water tears up plumbing.
https://beyerplumbing.com/9-ways-that-hard-water-affects-your-plumbing-and-appliances/
If any seal, o-ring, gasket, etc… in a system comes into contact with excessive scale from hard water, the rubber is going to lose its elastic properties, get dirty, and ultimately stop working as well.
And more basic: if you attach a hard scale lump to a rubber surface, that rubber surface simply won’t seal anymore.
Also toxic to use ultrasonic vaporised tap water due to metals and contaminants
The white dust is supposedly not OK to breathe, offsetting the benefits of increased humidity.
So I guess you shouldn’t take showers
It’s not steam, it’s a mineral dust