AIRCARE Digital Whole-House Console-Style Evaporative Humidifier (Oak Burl)

This winter, my house has been particularly dry -- with the relative humidity consistently in the low 20s. I purchased this humidifier 1.5 weeks ago and it has worked like a champion! Once assembled and filled with water, I placed it beneath a cold air return in my house, set the unit to high, and turned on the furnace fan. I put a digital hygrometer on each floor to measure the relative humidity and temperature. After just a couple of hours, it was noticeably more comfortable in the house. Over the next five days, I left the furnace fan on and saw the humidity throughout the house go up and start to equilibrate from floor-to-floor. Since then, I turned the furnace fan to 'auto' and have turned-down the fan on the humidifier. My house is ~2400 square feet and has an additional ~700 square feet that is a finished basement that is partially above grade (~3100 square feet of living space), and the humidity has remained comfortably in the low 40s throughout the house.Assembly: It took less than 15 minutes from removing the unit from the box to putting in place a filled water bottle. Putting together was quite straightforward: (1) pop-in the casters, (2) slide in place the wick and float, (3) put the fan unit in place, and (4) fill the bottle.Filling the bottle: I find the bottle quite easy to refill in my kitchen or laundry sink. In both sinks, I have pullout faucets and I just hold the spout over the opening of the bottle. The bottle is translucent enough that I can see the water level as it nears the top of the bottle. The humidifier comes with a fill hose. I have never used it to fill the bottle, but the fill hose slips over any faucet that has an aerator that sticks out from the faucet. I put it on one of my bathroom sink and tub faucets and it seems like it would work OK.Humidifier water capacity: From reviews, I saw that there have been complaints that the bottle is only 2.5 gallons but the description says 5.4 gallons. The listed capacity of 5.4 gallons for the humidifier is correct and is the reservoir (the bottom of the main box in contact with the wick -- ~2.9 gallons, including the saturated wick) plus the bottle (2.5 gallons). The bottle keeps the reservoir filled and works on gravity/vacuum (think of the office water cooler -- when the reservoir level drops below a certain level some air is let into the bottle and water flows out to keep the reservoir level constant). If the humidifier is completely empty, you simply let the first bottle drain completely and then re-fill the bottle immediately.Frequency of bottle filling: The evaporation rate depends on many things (room humidity, fan speed, etc.), and at the beginning I filled the bottle frequently (~3+ times/day). Now that the humidity in the house has stabilized, I just check the bottle in the morning and evening. The tank does not have to be completely empty. The valve on the bottom is spring-loaded and can be removed and topped-off whenever needed. I usually make sure that the bottle is completely full before going to bed. I suspect that I could now let this go longer than a day on a complete fill, but I just make sure the main reservoir is running full all of the time.Noise: I placed this humidifier in the dining room, so it is out of the way. The fan moves a lot of air on the highest fan speed setting (4), but I would say it is quite a bit quieter than the vent fan in the bathroom or over my stove. I would not want it sitting next to the couch in my living room while running on high, but I have it tucked away in my dining room and, even on high, is not annoying. On the lower settings (1 and 2) it is barely audible in other rooms on the main floor.Humidity settings: Now that the humidity in the house has stabilized, the humidity read by the humidifier is ~8-12% higher than the rest of the house. That is not surprising since the air right around the humidifier would likely be higher humidity and the humidistat is located on the power cord a few inches from the controls. I set it at either 50 or 55% and the humidity in the rest of the house is always 40-45%.Design: It is a basic box with a fan. I chose the 'Copper Night' because it is similar in color to my dining room furniture and was the least "fake wood" looking of the three (the other colors being 'Light Oak' and 'Oak Burl'). The addition of casters is nice if you want to move it around. I certainly would not want to pick up the unit completely full of water. I might change some things if I were designing it (make the main body of the humidifier thicker/more rigid, change the float from a block of Styrofoam), but that would probably add to the cost.In short, this humidifier has worked extremely well with no problems at all. It was money well spent. I do not hesitate to recommend this product.

We have had one of these humidifiers in our living room for 4 years, with no maintenance needed other than adding a capful of a bacteriostatic solution (which comes with it) to the removable water refill container about once a month and replacing the wick every two years (Don’t know if this will be necessary for you; we have really hard well water, so it seemed to be a good idea.) We got this new one for the great room of our new addition, and it makes the house so much more liveable. Properly humidified air is just easier to breathe and better for your skin.The units are identical, and both work great. The noise they make on the low setting (which is where most people will leave it) is negligible and easily blends into typical household background noise. You can crank it to the high setting, and it certainly makes more noise then, but I’ve only done that when the room was miserably dry after a weekend away, and I was trying to make it tolerable for sleeping. In fact, it was so dry, that we just left it on the high setting for a couple of hours and went to the other side of the house. Two hours later, the room was 25% more humid and much more pleasant to be in.The average winter humidity in our house WAS 16-19% (for reference: the average year-round humidity in the Sahara Desert is 24%), and we always had typical winter colds, with dry eyes and scratchy throats. Since we started using these, the average humidity in our house is now 45-60%, and we have far fewer “winter crud” symptoms. We also have fewer colds transmitted between the 6 people in the house, which we thought was just a coincidence, but it turns out that the flu virus cannot survive on hard surfaces with an ambient humidity over 43%. (The more you know.) As a plus, our houseplants thrive over the winter instead of turning gray.When the unit is "empty" it still has 0.1 - 0.2 gallons in the well at the bottom, so the wick doesn't dry out completely- which ruins their longevity. It can hold about 3 gallons of water in the well (which is basically the bottom of the unit) and an additional 2.5 gallons of tap water in the removable water refill container. This container has a handle so 20 lbs. of water is easily toted. It also has a pushbutton detent valve as a cap, so it self-empties and keeps the well topped off. I just fill it from the tub or sink (the tub is much quicker) with water somewhere between cold and lukewarm (you shouldn’t use hot water, but don’t panic if you do it once or twice) and dump the first one in the fill side near the front. There’s a mounting bracket hole midway up the back, and if you dump water against it, it’ll leak a bit.Remember I said that it’ll hold about 3 gallons in the well? This mounting bracket is just above that point, so don’t overfill it or you’ll make a mess on the floor. It’s there deliberately - because if you overfilled it, the wick would be submerged and the machine wouldn’t work properly.Once it is filled to about 0.25 gallons, it automatically starts the fan and runs until the desired humidity is reached (there’s a dial setting on top), it then maintains that level until it runs out of water. A full refill lasts between 24 and 72 hours, depending on how dry your house was when you started. If you're tired of refilling small humidifiers all day, this is the one for you.

It does what it says it will, it humidifies. However, it does have some flaws that I'm not sure I'd consider acceptable given that this is a $200 product:* On arrival, the knobs are already worn out like they've been used before* The fill tube was not packaged well, resulting in a kink that means it's nearly useless. If you don't use one hand to hold it to the faucet and the other to keep it from kinking, it will just spray water everywhere* The fan is VERY loud even on the lowest setting and it runs a lot more often than you'd think (though this may reduce after it's run for a day or two - I'm not sure on that yet)* For some reason the fan speed isn't adjustable mid-cycle, but only sometimes? It's very strange.* Fill/drain opening for the water tank is a bit bent. It's possible this is intentional, but I do not think so.* Overall fit and finish is just not great. Parts feel a bit loose, some areas of the plastic look like they may be chipped, etc.If I'm paying $200 for a plastic box with a paper filter in it and a fan, I'd expect it to be a bit more well put together honestly.

Whole house humidifier,very good machine a little bit noisy

Being a single gal I was a little intimidated to order this and put it together, however, did so with no problems. (Except for the floating device arm, which I had not pulled out far enough the first couple times I tried to troubleshoot why it was telling me to "Fill" it. I am very happy with this unit. I keep it on the lower fan choice and leave it running constantly when the heat is on and it is not loud. It definitely is more attractive than a lot of other humidifiers on the market. I was also pleased with the YouTube video that was helpful in setting it up and the on-line contact information available if needed. I am very happy with this product.

Not as big as we thought, but it's great, since we've had it our humidity has gone up & I dont find myself waking up with a dry throat and needing to drink water during the night, I love it.Our house is 1300 sq feet & this unit does it well. It's a bit loud if we turn it up high but we have it set at F2 and it's good, background noise. I only wish that the water tank was bigger, but it's ok, we fill it up 2 or 3 times a day so it's not a big deal. We haven't cleaned it yet, so I dont know how easy or hard it is to clean.

does a ok job

Works better than other models of aircare units, my only change would be that the container should fit in a sink and not be so tall