AIRCARE - H12-400HB

There are a few high end brands that might be superior, but most are very similar, within their categories. No BIFL humidifiers, and better ones will be costly. For longevity, evaporative seems to be the best type. I suggest you narrow it down to what will work for you and check reviews online. I wanted to add one lower priced gallon size evaporative model for my kitchen area and concluded they all suck and don't last too long. I'm guessing you're looking for a room size, vs whole house. First consider the type: warm mist, ultrasonic, evaporative. Warm mist will cost the most to operate. Ultrasonic often leaves a white dust on surfaces. Evaporative can be noisy due to the fan. Ease of use is key - filling and cleaning, lugging to sink, capacity. Every stinking plastic contraption that deals with air has a ridiculous amount of nooks, crannies, and fins that can be impossible to clean. Check consumables for cost of replacement wicks, filters. I use two whole house evaporative humidifiers along with water additives to inhibit bacteria. One is twenty years old, a Bemis hamper style, now AirCare. In winter they run 24/7 along with woodstoves. Wicks need cleaning or replacing monthly, $25 each. Some can hold up to a vinegar soak to give it another month.

I have an Aircare 831000, 6 gallon supposedly whole house but ok for an open first floor (wood burning fp insert running). It's fine and on year 3 or 4. What I like about this model is that you can pour water directly into the reservoir (I use 1 gal water jugs to which I add bacteriostat). On low it goes through about 3 gallons/day. The fan is noisy above that, so I sometimes crank it when I leave the area. The filters go into a reusable flimsy housing. I carefully soak in vinegar after a month and get another month out of it, about $23. Like anything with a fan these days, the grid areas are annoying to clean. I also have a 21 year old Bemis console hamper type. It's now made by Aircare. Not sure if they make 'em like they used to. Entire filter with housing is replaced. I think the removable tank is 2 gal and I think it goes through more than that per day on low (used on another floor with woodstove). Not sure about current models of this hamper style (Aircare Alliance 5.4 gal) but I dislike hauling that tank to a sink, using a tube at the faucet to fill and hauling it back to the unit. It's also more intrusive looking than the first mentioned white one but seems more solid.

https://a.co/d/0easuRBi This unit is very similar to the one I have had for many years. There are cheaper ones available but this 5 gallon capacity means you're only adding water every 2-3 days once the humidity level is achieved assuming a well insulated home. If forced hot air furnace, 1 will be fine for the whole house. If ductless mini splits then one for each level. The other way is to call your local HVAC contractor and have one installed and serviced annually.

I have the H12 and it does a good job. The only issue is that running on anything other than the lowest fan speed is quite loud.

I would likely recommend an evaporative humidifier, not a warm mist one. The mist ones have a lot of problems, such as being more prone to bacteria growth and harder to clean. They also try to add more moisture than the air can actually hold, resulting in mineral condensation (white dust) appearing everywhere over time, especially if you have hard water. Aircare makes a decent console-style evap humidifier with a decent tank size and is pretty easy to clean. I used one for years until we moved to a house with a humidifier on the furnace. Now I use a smaller Honeywell evaporative humidifier upstairs only. It gets filled each evening, runs constantly all winter, and cleaned each weekend. I went through about half a dozen of those warm mist ones before converting. It didn't matter the brand, how much I treated the water of cleaned them, they were all pieces of junk that lasted only 1-2 years. Crane ones were probably the worst.

Had this exact situation, bought a ultrasonic in for a small room and all others were evaporative. We have hard water. I have a very good Airthings monitor, which had been showing perfect PM 2.5 with all humidifiers running. From the day the ultrasonic humidifier was on, PM 2.5 went off the charts well away from the room itself. Took 1.5mos to figure it out. It was driving me crazy. The minute I turned it off, dropped precipitously back to 0 from 100+. Insane. Also, it was impacting the combustion of our natural gas stove - yellow flame. Back to blue now without a blip. I threw that sucker out and bought a couple monster capacity air cares and a steam one to replace in the small room. Zero issues. I was completely shocked how fast and how far those particles traveled, via hvac.

I own this and my wick turned orangey from my hard water so quickly. I use bacteriostatic additive so I don’t think that bacteria is the issue but the wick changing color certainly doesn’t give me confidence so this humidifier doesn’t feel low maintenance to me, at least not with hard water

I have a whole house evaporative humidifier that I use year round that has been going strong for 4 years so far. The warm mist humidifiers I've used last only a year before my very hard water breaks them. And ultrasonic humidifiers coat everything in a sticky dust that's hard to clean. The humidifier I use (older version of this one: https://share.google/fFdK2WzaIkj0Lc09W) has a wick that needs replacing about once every other month, so long as I keep it saturated. I buy a cheaper generic wick from Walmart to save money. Other than that, I just need to clean it occasionally to remove dust and prevent bacterial growth.

Evaporative is the solution. Once you try one you will never go back willingly. I had one for several years that used a single wick replacement each season. The only maintenance I had to do was add the anti microbial solution to the tap water i dumped into the container every other day, it was spotless inside after months of continuous use. I had a fairly large aircare console that had a humidistat as a controller, it ran through 5 gallons in about two days all winter long.m Before I got an evaporative I went through several cool mist, ultrasonic, style humidifiers. Without fail they all became a petri dish of slime and mold within a week on average. I cleaned these things with vinegar, dish soap, antibacterial solutions, and finally bleach which only extended the average by a couple of days. These require DI water since any dissolved salts will get misted as well, precipitating as dust and being an irritant for many people. I've also read some comments about the slime and bacteria getting turned into mist and either spreading spores or endotoxin to cause problems. Tldr: evaporative is cheaper and easier to use

my dumb whole house humidifier is on all the time. to make it smart, this video helped [AIRCARE Large Evaporative Whole House Humidifier is good. but here's how to make it great!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qp7Ak0-T2M) basically, a smart plug to monitor energy. if power is low, the unit stopped, time to fill it with more water.

I used to love our evaporative humidifier by Aircare. It's just a bin of cold water, a filter to wick up the water, and a fan to pull the moisture out and blow it into the room. The fan has a nice drone to it to create a white noise effect.