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.
Why would someone need a humidifier? Though I live in a pretty humid place so I might be missing something.
Cold air can’t hold a lot of moisture. People who heat their homes heat cold air, which lowers the relative humidity of air that was already dry to begin with. So you end up with dry air if you heat your home.
If you live in a really dry environment, your lips will dry out and chap, and it’ll make you tend to get thick mucous as the air dries out your throat and lungs. It exacerbates irritation if you have some kind of respiratory condition, and exacerbates dry skin.
I mean, high humidity also has its obnoxious sides – mold, things tending to go bad more-quickly, harder for your body to shed heat by sweating. I’d rather be on the low side than the high side, but super-low humidity isn’t fun either.
I live in Canada. We get very humid summers but the winters are way below freezing. Below freezing temperatures make the air extremely dry, with outdoors plunging to 0% humidity.
Humidifiers are needed to maintain indoor humidity though you can’t raise it too much or you’ll get condensation inside the walls and on the windows, leading to mold issues.