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Humidifiers add moisture to your home or business’s air to help with the discomforts of colds and allergies and prevent static electricity from building up on your clothes and furniture. A humidifier helps to decrease the amount of pollutants entering your lungs by adding moisture to the air.
How to measure humidity?
Whether it is hot and muggy or cold and dry, you need to know how to measure humidity. Humidity is a measure of the amount of water vapor in the air, which contributes to discomfort, regardless of the temperature. The following tips will help you determine humidity levels and help you maximize comfort throughout your home.
#1 Get a Digital Hygrometer
A digital hygrometer is an excellent tool for measuring humidity. These compact instruments are available in hardware stores and online. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for installation and use.
#2 Measure Relative Humidity
If you only need to know the relative humidity, a cheap hygrometer can be useful. Non‐Dispersive Infrared (NDIR) Hygrometer. The Non‐dispersive infrared technique is based on the fact that the presence of water vapor influences the refractive index of air.
How Can You Tell If You Need a Humidifier?
Here are some of the reasons you should think about having an air humidifier
- Your throat is scratchy, or you are sniffling and sneezing in the morning.
- You’re coughing, or your nose is stuffy, and you’re not sure why.
- You have seasonal allergies.
- You have asthma, bronchitis, or other lung conditions.
- You have a cold or influenza.
- You have a fungal infection.
- You have a breathing disorder, such as emphysema or COPD.
- You have a sinus infection.
- You suffer from dry skin, nosebleeds, or cracked lips.
- You have a baby, sick person, or pet at home.
Benefits of an Air Humidifier
An air humidifier works by pulling air from the room and passing it through a filter. The filter is designed to trap dust and pollen while allowing the air to pass through. This is especially important for people with lung diseases like asthma. While humidifiers do not treat the underlying cause of your symptoms, they do help relieve them. Humidifiers can also keep your home warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, thereby reducing cooling and heating costs. Humidifiers are for people who have dry skin and itchy noses. These devices are known to have many benefits, and they are used widely.
Downsides of an Air Humidifiers
All humidifiers help you add moisture to the air in a room, which helps relieve dryness and cold symptoms, among others. But air humidifier isn’t a perfect solution: it generates a lot of noise, costs a lot of electricity, and may not be a permanent fix for your dry air. If used without proper care, an air humidifier can have adverse effects on your health. If you’re thinking about purchasing one, keep these potential drawbacks in mind before you do.
Which humidifiers to choose from?
There are four major types of air humidifiers: warm mist, cool mist, whole house, and ultrasonic. These four types have in common the only thing that they all use vapor to humidify the air.
Warm Mist Humidifier: A humidifier that produces a soothing, warm mist can be seen and felt. These humidifiers are excellent for treating colds and the flu and are generally quieter than cool mist humidifiers. Furthermore, the mist that is produced is usually cleaner than that produced by cool mist humidifiers. However, warm mist humidifiers need to be cleaned frequently and are generally more difficult to clean. Additionally, they tend to cover a smaller surface area than their cool mist counterparts. You should keep them away from children since some produce quite hot steam. This is a good choice to provide a little warmth and soothe a dry area.
Cool Mist Humidifier: Cool mist humidifiers utilize a filter to capture minerals and impurities and then release a cool, invisible mist into the air. They are generally easy to clean, more effective in larger areas, and better suited for warmer climates. Many people also believe that in a cool-mist it is easier to breathe. As a rule, though, cooler mist units can be noisier than their warmer mist counterparts, as well as requiring more maintenance, since filters must be changed frequently to avoid mold and algae build-up.
Whole House Humidifiers: A whole-house humidifier will cover a large area. Many people tend to confuse these point-of-use units with the ones attached to furnaces or HVAC systems. This is not the same as that. They can cover large areas without the additional expense of adding them to your HVAC system. These units are typically larger and, therefore, will not be moved from room to room. However, with a large tank (generally around 5 gallons), you can wait a few days before filling again. It would help if you kept in mind when getting a large unit like this is that you have to clean the tanks at least once a week and change the filters and wicks every three months.
Ultrasonic Humidifiers: The ultrasonic humidifier uses a metal diaphragm to vibrate at an ultrasonic frequency, like a speaker. This creates water droplets that are then dispersed through a fan. These units generate a cool fog and are typically silent. If you use distilled, filtered, or bottled water, you can avoid the “white dust” issue as with whole-house humidifiers. These also require less maintenance and are more convenient to own and care for.