Recommendations on room humidifiers
 

While I have never had a problem (knock on wood) I do leave my Martins out in my home office/studio and am not as diligent as I could be with sound hole humidifiers, so.............

please recommend room humidifiers. I don't care about price as much as a good unit that is quiet and does the job, probably would help my dry eyes allergies as well. I live in North Texas, appreciate any feedback with actual room humidifier experience, thanks.

Is it a room where do or can keep the door closed to the rest of the house? If so, a small one will keep it up around 50% on all but the very coldest/driest overnights maybe. If it is a room open to the rest of the house (like our music room) the humidification spreads out almost immediately and very uniformly, i.e. you can not raise the humidity in the guitar's room any more than you do in the whole hole, i.e. you need a whole-house humidifier which is absolutely a huge unit.

A mist unit will be the quietest. Hot mist will run up the electric bill. Cool mist will get white dust all over everything, especially CRT screens, unless you use soft water or distilled water or hard water with the recommended filter tablets. In my experience the filter tabs lasted a couple days (!) and cost $15. Distilled water at $1 per gallon also was too much $$ as I need about 6 gallons per day for my 1,000 square foot ranch-style house.

I now use an evaporative humidifier. Mine's a Sears floor model. I'va had it for several years and it works fine. Also very reasonable cost. It's noisy if you're in the same room with it running but the filters last for months at $15 each and the internal fan doesn't use a lot of electricity.

If I were a rich man or lucked into free electricity I'd get another hot mist unit.

Humidifying the whole house is great for my sinuses and eyes and for my worldly possessions as well. The humidity makes the air feel warmer so you can lower the temperature a bit.


Ed

I had a humidifier added to my centeral heating system.
Don't remember the cost but it wasn't all that much.

I also use a Wal-Mart room unit in my bedroom.
It has a 1 1/2 gallon reservoir that gets filled once a day.
That's where my guitars are kept.

The room units last about 2 years of every day use and cost about $ 45.00.

The house stayes at about 35% to 40% and my bedroom stayes at about 45% to 50% with the added unit.

Might want to start with a hygrometer in the room where you keep your instruments. Then you will know if there is an issue and how big an issue it is going to be. I use the sponge in a covered travel soap dish approach. Sits in the case under the headstock and needsd to be wet down about every 5 days this time of year. In addition, I run a room humidifier all winter here in Washington. Prefer the warm to the cool mist as it is more comfortable. It is a bit of an effort in that it has to be filled in the morning and at night. It is a bit of a struggle to keep the room at 40+ when its in the low 30s or colder outside and the heat pump is running. Without the humidifier, it can get down in the 20s in the room in a day. The sponge in the case raises the RH in the case another 5-10. I never leave my guitars out. My friend accross the street started doing that this year and his guitar cracked already.

jeff

I am using a large room fountain to humidify the air this year. I also keep bagged sponges in the cases.

charlie

I use one of these units which was top rated by Consumer Reports. Easy to use, does a great job.

http://www.kaz.com/kaz/store/product...610c5855d078a/

Bought mine at Home Depot

This is what you want:

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_1...+Dehumidifiers

Or the larger version:

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_1...+Dehumidifiers

Hi Rich!
I have been using this model for a few years:

https://humidifierstore.essickair.co...7v826-800.aspx

It is way overkill for the room I have it in now as it is a "whole house" humidifier, but it works well and has a built in hygrometer. I have a second hygrometer in the room too and it's funny how often they disagree!

Matt

That's what I use. I would highly recommend using the suggested water treatments to extend filter life.

Humidifiers are a pain in the butt, but they're a necessary evil in many environments. I have a central unit and a room unit and need both to keep the humidity where I want it to be. Here in NC, the well water is very acidic. So, to neutralize the acidity, you have to dump chemicals into it (not the well, but a water treatment reservoir) which hardens the water. So then, you have to soften the water (which was nice and soft to start with but acidic enough to dissolve copper pipes and leave a blue film in the shower). I've found that any humidifier becomes fouled with minerals pretty quickly. For my room humidifier, I use distilled water rather than spending an hour every week scraping minerals out. Chemicals like CLR that are supposed to dissolve minerals don't touch this stuff. The whole process is a nightmare. But I'm not going to let my instruments go bone dry, so distilled water and a bunch of hassle it is. I've tried every type of humidifier made -- ultrasonic, warm mist, evaporative, etc. When the water has minerals, they're all a pain.

Thanks for letting me vent. Feel better now.

This unit is the besthttp://www.iallergy.com/product541/p...23183a55403223

Small footprint, loooooooooooow noise, sleek package, etc. Heck my mother liked them so much she bought two of them.