We picked up a relatively inexpensive evaporative console humidifier off amazon recently to try to bump up the humidity in our apartment for the winter. We've been hovering around 40-45% typically. I wanted to test out what the humidifier could do so I put the hygrometer about 10ft away and ran it at max humidity and max fan speed for about 24 hours. It brought the humidity up to about 57%, a 15% increase from where it started, in about an hour and then maintained that the rest of the time. At this humidity setting the fan didn't shut off once and the unit emptied around 3.5gallons of water in a day. It is a 9gpd system running in a ~1200 sqft apartment.
So the 15% increase is definitely nice, I appreciate it already, but I was hoping for a bit higher and from some of the reviews I was reading I got the impression it should be able to do more in an apartment this size. Does anyone have any ideas how I could make this unit more efficient so it can bump the humidity up a bit more?
Two thoughts I had and no idea if either would do a thing. The first was to run another small fan near the humidifier, hoping more air circulation will allow more air to get through the unit faster.
Second idea was when I was looking inside the unit. It draws water up from the base of the unit and pours it into a sort of trough over the top edge of the filter/wick pad. The trough has 4 small holes in it allowing water down into the wick/filter which the air passes through. Watching the unit while operating it looks like a lot of the water is just sort of spilling over the end of the trough. If I drilled a couple additional holes and allowed more water into the wick would that do anything to help?
Oh and the apartment is mostly an open design so shutting doors to lightly used rooms won't work, they already stay shut most of the time.
So the 15% increase is definitely nice, I appreciate it already, but I was hoping for a bit higher and from some of the reviews I was reading I got the impression it should be able to do more in an apartment this size. Does anyone have any ideas how I could make this unit more efficient so it can bump the humidity up a bit more?
Two thoughts I had and no idea if either would do a thing. The first was to run another small fan near the humidifier, hoping more air circulation will allow more air to get through the unit faster.
Second idea was when I was looking inside the unit. It draws water up from the base of the unit and pours it into a sort of trough over the top edge of the filter/wick pad. The trough has 4 small holes in it allowing water down into the wick/filter which the air passes through. Watching the unit while operating it looks like a lot of the water is just sort of spilling over the end of the trough. If I drilled a couple additional holes and allowed more water into the wick would that do anything to help?
Oh and the apartment is mostly an open design so shutting doors to lightly used rooms won't work, they already stay shut most of the time.