Blueair - DreamWell Humidifier 1 Gallon

I have 4 small (one 2-gallon, 3 1-gallon) BlueAir evaporative humidifiers running 24/7. They are set to a desired humidity level (I have to lie to them a bit, but there’s a reason). I don’t screw with fan speed controls (the fan speed adjust automatically to maintain the desired humidity) nor timers. They only consume about 5 W each. I’m not worried about saving the electricity and it’s better just to have them going all the time. Unfortunately, I cannot particularly recommend BlueAir. It’s a very clever design, and the newer Dream Well models are better designed than the older H 35I, but it seems they still have mechanical bugs to work out. In current weather – hovering around 0F – I need to fill the 1 gallon ones every single day. So that is what you are getting yourself into if you were going to properly humidify. I have mine distributed around the house, one in each room, except for the kitchen and the bathroom. I don’t have much of a choice in the matter because I do not have a forced-air system. I have steam heat. And so FWIW, the reason I have to lie to the humidifiers is because I have placed them near radiators which increases the heat locally, and thus increases the humidity in the vicinity of the radiator, but that doesn’t represent the humidity in the room as a whole. Now, do you see why I am trying to talk you out of this if you do have the option of adding a humidifier to your forced-air system? I would suggest asking the same question in a sub about HVAC. Your problem is not specific to century homes. Be specific, and post pictures. Copy/paste what HVAC techs wrote (if they did) as to why this is “impossible”. A lot of of them just don’t like to work on old houses - you need to find the gems who will, and who are in fact expert at it. My neighbors who have newer (but still old just not as old as the steam age lol) homes seem to be happy with their humidifiers incorporated into their forced natural gas furnace systems. And all of them have it because it is necessary in the winter here. What a joy it would be not to have to carry humidifiers back-and-forth to the sink every single day! And yes, you could choose just to top them up – you might want to use a watering can to help prevent spilling on the floor. But if you don’t empty the remainder out of the humidifier, and at least wipe the inner surface of the reservoir, even evaporative humidifiers will get yucky eventually. One of the actually good things about the blue airs is that they say that the reservoirs are dishwasher safe. I haven’t felt the need to put them in the dishwasher though because simply wiping them down each time they are filled seems sufficient.

I did some research and bought Blueair Dreamwell. But it is not problem free either, just sounded better than the others. We wanted an evaporative device with filters.

Blueair evaporative humidifier. You just have to wash the tank with soap and water once a week. Very easy, easy to fill, no mold.

Didn’t do a thing. I returned it. Tried BlueAir evaporative next and also didn’t love. Ended up with Levoit sprout. I like it a lot.

I got the Blueair smart humidifer recently - can recommend that one. Avoid Levoit as their customer support is non-existent - I had to return the 6000S as it stopped working after 2 days

I got a small levoit one that had tons of good reviews on Amazon and was very underwhelmed. I had it halfway bn low and high and woke up just as congested as if nothing was on. I really just got it as a temp fix so I could research a bigger one. Got a blueair one and so far it’s working well.

I ended up with Blueair. The hacs integration works well (control of display light, fan, humidity target, and a drying mode for the filters they use when you turn it off. The filters work so well they don’t make my Dyson air purifiers go crazy.