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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.
Last time I checked (brought my sensor to the office to one room with ultrasonic) it showed 101/105 ug/m3 for pm2.5/pm10
In the next room (where there were none) it was 6.
Depends on the water, I guess.
How large is the space with the humidifier? My space is wide open and that might be the biggest reason for my lack of increased PM2.5 readings.
I think the parent poster is correct that it depends on the water.
I have a couple ultrasonic humidifiers, if tap water is put in them it immediately sends the AQI on my air quality monitor into the "Dangerous" level. I have the monitor upstairs and it detected it when my girlfriend put tap water in the humidifier downstairs.
Purified or distilled water works fine. I bought a counter top water distiller because it was a pain lugging 15 gallons of water into the house every week all winter. You can see the residue of whatever was in the tap water at the bottom of the distiller after it runs and it doesn't look like anything I would want to be breathing.
> any notable increase in PM2.5 particles
What's your PM2.5 baseline, and did you measure TDS in the water?
Since Nov it's been fluctuating between 5-7 ug/mg, with a few spikes hitting 9 and 10. At this moment its a 6.
I haven't checked the TDS but when I used a water test strip for an aquarium early this year it was in the hard water range.
Thanks to this post, I checked my ultrasonic filled with tap water. With it running all night in a bedroom with an open door, morning pm2.5 readings are ~30 and the meter is in the kitchen.
The ones I had for a bit basically fogged out the apartment immediately and left white (i’m guessing salt) deposits all over everything. I know you are supposed to use distilled but it’s cost prohibitive at the rate these blow through water unless you also have a home distillery.
> 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.
That's a permanent bachelor design aesthetic.
Turns out young me was on to something, I wasn't just leaving wet towels laying around, I was fixing the air humidity problem.
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)
My brother's house in Perth, Australia has an antique air conditioning system in the roof space that works in exactly this principle. 4 blankets that wick up water and have air drawn through them and into the house by a fan. It's in disuse now but I understand they were common and quite effective in the day.
I’m not sure that has a performance of 0.3L per hour (needed when it’s real cold outside).
But any thing beats nothing, I guess. Kudos to you
Don't use evaporative humidifiers(the motorized wet towel). I don't know if it actually cause legionellosis, but it's not very sanitary, and the sanitizing additives for those are known to be actually harmful.
Use boiling type humidifiers (basically just electric tea kettles).
Water evaporates alomost completely and is changed daily (I rinse both container and disks in the tub with high-pressure mode from showerhead), so I don’t think any contamination is likely.
Been doing this for years.
Alec from Technology Connections also has a great video comparing humidifiers here
Are pm2.5 particles a problem if they are water soluble? After entering the body they will just dissolve.
Hard water often contains hard to dissolve minerals. An evaporative humidifier over the time accumulates limescale and it’s very difficult to remove it, you cannot just dissolve it. With ultrasound humidifier all this limescale will be in the air. Admittedly not in all regions the water is hard but if it is then ultrasound humidifier will be a bad choice.
Depends whether you want that stuff in kidneys and what have you.
Bigger particles are known to irritate the lungs and even cause asthma (google or ask gpt)
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.
I’ve run dyson ultrasonic humidifiers for a few years. The whole appartment was in white dust.
Especially evident on some black leather bags in the wardrobe.
You can buy a cheap tester for TDS (total dissolved solids) for <$20. Test the water before pouring it into any ultrasonic humidifier.
I just switched to evaporative ones like smartmi I’ve mentioned.
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.
That’s a lot of refilling. You might want to look into a whole house humidifier, I added an aprilaire 700 evaporative to my hvac ducts, it costs a few hundred $. Plumbed in, automatic. So much less screwing around
What sort of maintenance do you have to do on it?
Once a season / 6 mo of running you replace the evaporator panel, which is ~$50 for branded or $10 for amazon copies.
Chinese I’ve mentioned blew Ventra out of the water. I’ve been using humidifiers for the last 15 years and switched to smartme around 5 or something like that (liked the idea of auto speed and was tired of aged squickness after many years of its predecessor).
Haven’t used the first generation. Had a couple of the second (they notoriously had water level sensor issue that could be fixed just enabling “drying mode” that always ran for 8h after the sensor thought there were no water).
Third gen is the charm.
Cheap, effective (pump, double-bottom for rounded instead of flat tank — uses evry last drop), quiter, 5L tank, less creak after a few years.
tldr; I only wish it lasted whole 24 hours when it is -5C and lower outside, but I guess that requires 7-8L.
Also, having a few helps with the noise (I have total of three in my apartment).
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
I bought two Ventas well over a decade ago, and they still work as well as the day I bought them. They're an expensive initial investment, but IMO worth it over the long run.
They are also mechanically simple, so I trust that if they ever break, I will be able to repair them.
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.
It's funny in an ironic way because the original purpose of air conditioners was to remove humidity from the air, the mechanism used was to cool the air down thus forcing some of the moisture out. The general public quickly caught on that having cool air was nice in it's own right and that is the main purpose these days. however the dehumidifying function is still sometimes used, people are surprised when their air conditioner turns on at the same time as the heater (why are they fighting each other?) but that is because the system is trying to remove moisture from the air before it is heated. Mainly seen in cars so the windows don't fog up.
Probably something wrong with me but I just find it humorous trying to add moisture to a system designed to remove it. Really a reasonable request however, depending on where you live the air can get quite dry.
You’d need a reverse osmosis system, not just he charcoal filters like that
And the condensate water from an AC evaporator coil is not anything like distilled water, dust/bacteria are also in it.
> I also wonder why mini-split heating systems drip and pool water outdoors instead of pumping that distilled water back indoors for humidification.
Do you want Legionnaire's Disease? Because that's how you get Legionnaire's Disease.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Philadelphia_Legionnaires...
During summer dehumidification is needed in most areas.
And it is really not distilled water. It gathers dust and so on from air. Distilling in more so closed circuit, where as those are very much open.
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.
The real pro tip is to get a whole home humidifier. They aren’t even that expensive. But I haven’t taken the plunge yet.
They avoid all these issues and require way less maintenance than any other solution.
Can’t do that in the city :-)
I've seen multi-unit condos with the ability to modify your own HVAC, but I get where you're coming from.
Comment was deleted :(
How did we survive the last 3.5 billion years?
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 ;)
The age 40 includes childhood mortality! It's difficult to get records from prehistoric humans for obvious reasons, but as early as Ancient Greece you had the upper class living about as long as we do now a days. A study of men of the time found the average life expectancy to be 71.3 years. [1]
And while the Bible includes plentiful mythological components, it also includes many historical and contemporary accounts. And this verse is certainly of the latter: "The length of our days is generally seventy years, or eighty years if one is strong, yet even the best of these years are filled with toil and sorrow, for they pass quickly and we fly away." That is part of the Old Testament (Psalms 90:10) that is believed to have been written somewhere from 1400-1200BC.
If you want more contemporary stuff that's completely indisputable you can also take random selections of people of renown. For instance the main Founding Fathers are a great example because they all were relatively young when their names become inexorably etched into history, yet their final life expectancy is again well into the 70s. The youngest major founding father to die was Hamilton, in a duel - at 49. Then Hancock died at 56 - likely of gout which can be caused by things like excessive indulgence. Next up was Washington who died at 67, probably more of the cure than the disease - he was leeched to the point of being pale as a ghost on his death bed. Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Sam Adams, John Jay all lived to their 80s. John Adams made it to his 90s.
---
I am not trying to claim these samples are representative. These were wealthy individuals who would be relatively immune to famine, war, and other such factors that could have a catastrophic effect on lower classes. But when speaking of life expectancy, I think we are implicitly asking the question 'how long could somebody reasonably expect to live xxxx years ago without access to modern medicine and technology.' And that's what this sampling of people answers.
> The length of our days is generally seventy years, or eighty years if one is strong
Which translation is that? Or are you paraphrasing?
Most translations don't include "generally," and therefore read more as an upper bound "if one is strong" than an average.
Just a poor memory translation. Yeah, generally is incorrect - though I think the correct phrasing also implies an average age of natural death, rather than an upper bound. There were certainly plenty of people living past 80. In the aforementioned study of Ancient Greeks, there were at least 3 centurions - Aristarchos, Democritos, and Gorgias. Granted 1400BC is a thousand years yet prior to that already ancient time, but life peaks seem to be relatively unmoving for humans, and so I don't see any major reason to think there would have been a major difference between 400BC and 1400BC.
So up until about two or three years ago when everyone suddenly became terrified of "particulates", people died at 40?
The Victorians called, they want their Night Air Panic back.
Quite poorly in fact
A lot of us didn't
Glad to know that's solved now
Drying clothes indoors is also effective. When I set up my laundry rack rh can surge by 30%. I imagine setting up a tray of water under a ceiling fan might be similarly effective.
This got me thinking about how my AC is somewhat ticking me off. A couple years ago I bought a smart AC, and when I got around to wanting to use the smart feature (via the app), I learned that I need to create a Tuya account and connect via that. Today I'm still manually pushing the buttons, as I wasn't having any of that, and the community Tuya tools I found out there are dependent on an account.
A couple weeks ago I took a preliminary look jailbreaking it. Main thing holding me back is a fear of bricking it and being left with an expensive, oversized paperweight, as the electricity here tends to chip at random times and could do so just at a critical point of the process. It also bugs me that I can find 0 information about the device; it's like the "Bluesonik" brand doesn't have an internet presence. But perhaps one day I'll just throw caution to the wind and attempt a Tasmota flash (without even knowing if the board is supported) and hope for the best, similar to when I rooted and flashed my first Android phone for the first time 15 years ago.
There is no danger of bricking the device by messing up a Tuya module firmware update; the module is always separate from the main device and communicates with it via a UART; even if you were to brick it the device would still work as a non-smart device.
I see. Thanks for that.
Tangential rant: It’s becoming hard to buy dumb appliances.
I was looking at robot vacuums, and most need internet connection at least for setup - by which point it’s already uploaded your floor plan and who knows what to the cloud.
The project was recently discussed on HN as well. It has its issues but it works.
Not sure that’s a great example when you can easily buy a regular vacuum. Robot vacuums are sort of by definition already the “smart appliance” version of the “dumb appliance regular vacuum”.
I understand what you mean, but I disagree. The technology allows for robot vacuums to exist and I don’t see the cloud connection as a mandatory need for it. Similarly, I want my car to have say lane assist but we don’t expect to have cloud connection with it.
Pretty shocked that Xiaomi publishes the protocol: https://iot.mi.com/new/doc/accesses/direct-access/embedded-d...
A humidifier needs network capability incase someone discovers a new version of water, or for the manufacturer to be able to patch remote exploits.
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
“Smart” is useful in many ways:
— you get notification on a phone when water is low;
— you can set automations for stuff like lower speed (noise) at night;
— make it turn off once the desired humidity is reached based on the other sensor (internal one is always off by 8-10% compared to a reading even 1m away).
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)
Obviously all these smart appliance are about remote management, but I have to question how much usage it's getting in real life. My parents got a few smart devices for their holiday home, as my dad didn't want to drive 45 minutes both ways to check up on things during the winter. I think he probably ended up spending more time managing the IoT stuff that he ever did driving.
It create to have the option to manage something remote, but when remote become the only option, the usability takes a dive. When I have to go find my phone, unlock it, find the app, possible update the app, find the right setting or menu, stare at "Failure to connect to device", and whatever else might go wrong, it's quicker and easier to just manage the device directly. We got rid of our robot vacuum clear, because it's literally quicker and better to go get our 20 year old regular vacuum, and the floor is done in 3 minutes, not the 20+ the Roomba needs (and I needed to clear the room for it). When we used the Roomba, 99% of the time I pushed the "Start" button on the device, because it's way quicker than using the app.
There's a place for smart devices, but they need to be much better and have local controls.
I still think the value prop is dubious for a device like this.
> turn stuff on or off remotely
Why? Nearly all modern humidifiers have a sensor to measure humidity and will cycle on and off based on the setpoint. Getting to the setpoint also takes time so I don't see any reason someone would want to turn it on and off based on presence.
> (turn on/off based on outside sensors or the current electricity price...)
Not sure why the outside sensors would matter, it's concerned with the inside humidity which again it has a sensor to read. The amount of electricity these take to run isn't worth even mentioning.
> get status alerts ("tank empty, refill")
So you can refill it remotely? You have to be present to fill it anyway - just look at the thing and you'll know its water level
I say all this as someone who also run Home Assistant and automates various things.
It's a good thing personal choice exists and you don't make the rules for everyone.
> I don't see any reason someone would want to turn it on and off based on presence.
Maybe someone doesn't want the noise when they are present? Some people like white noise, some don't.
> The amount of electricity these take to run isn't worth even mentioning.
Not everyone lives where you do and pays the electricity rates you do. What about people who generate their own electricity, live off a grid, or just plain want to conserve energy for a myriad a reasons? Turning off specific loads based on XYZ is useful.
> So you can refill it remotely? You have to be present to fill it anyway - just look at the thing and you'll know its water level
Maybe the humidifier is in a low visible or less-trafficked area, and getting a reminder to fill it up would be useful.
What a terrible take you have on people's use case not exactly matching yours.
Hm, I have the opposite setup - I operate a dehumidifier. The building I live in gets humid quickly, and that causes mould quickly. My tank fills. When the tank is full (and, depending on outside conditions and number of humans present, that happens anytime between 16 and 40 hours), the device stops dehumidifying to prevent tank overflow.
Yes, I do still need to be present to empty the tank. But automated warnings when the tank is full (in combination with more intense 'room's LED lightbulb flashing red' when BOTH the tank is full AND humidity rises above 60%) are nice - otherwise, I'd have more mental load to check a little tiny LED on the device itself every two days or so, which, surprise, I would keep forgetting.
Why are outside sensors relevant in my use-case? Because running the dehumidifier is pointless when the window is open AND outside humidity exceeds inside humidity (and electricity is expensive where I live).
Secondary use-case: mould and 'rentee did not air out the humidity correctly' are some of the more common points of conflict between landlords and rentees over here. With my smart dehumidifier (and a few more sensors placed around the apartment and outside), I have a paper trail should this ever come in front of a judge that yes, in fact, I correctly fought humidity.
Is my use-case everyone's use-case? No. Am I probably over-engineering this? Sure, it's possible. Is it nice and kind to make broad paternalistic assumptions and snarky jokes on what and what not "anyone" really needs? Doubtful.
You're arguing from device capability. I’m arguing from human cognitive load and failure modes. The question isn't "can the (de)humidifier regulate humidity on its own?", but "how many low-level checks and mental reminders does it eliminate over months of use?". For people who forget, get distracted, or simply want fewer things to keep in mind, that's not dubious value - it's the entire point.
Hah! How exact
Xkcd for everything as always
Great project! This resonates with me - been using ESPHome for a year now and it's solid. One tip: if you're concerned about reliability, pair it with a PoE switch for your ESP devices. Makes recovery much easier if something goes wrong.
Also curious about your power consumption - did you measure watts before/after switching from Xiaomi's cloud solution?
A whole ass esp32 module in the board? Never seen something like that. I mean I've seen esp32 iot devices but with chips directly in the board, not as a separated module. It looks like hobbyist job.
Can you do HP printers next
Yup! Step 1: fill your printer with two liters of distilled water.
I have an hp envy 5030. It has done nothing dystopian so far. Just acts as a dumb wlan printer it seems.
Crafted by Rajat
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