Too dry air in a room has a negative effect on health: the skin and mucous membranes begin to dry out, especially the eyes and respiratory tract suffer, efficiency decreases, immunity decreases.
Unfortunately, with the beginning of the heating season, most apartments with central heating become much drier than a person needs for normal well-being. However, it suffers from “air drought” not only humans: wooden pieces of furniture, parquet flooring and wooden structures begin to lose moisture, dry out and even crack.
To remedy this situation, you can purchase a special device – a humidifier. Why do you need a humidifier? It will bring the humidity values to an indicator that is optimal for human well-being and maintaining the apartment in a normal state..
Operating principle
You can achieve an increase in humidity in an apartment in various ways. They produce devices based on different modes of action – there are three of them.
- Steam. The device heats the water to the boiling point, hot steam enters the air, due to which humidification occurs. In this case, the temperature of the outgoing steam usually does not exceed sixty degrees. This is the cheapest class of devices, moreover, it has the lowest price..
- Ultrasound. The most modern of all types of air humidifiers is based on the use of ultrasound. Under the action of high-frequency vibrations, water forms very small droplets, the so-called “water mist”, which fills the air with the missing moisture. Such devices are less noisy than those working on the steam principle, but they are more difficult and more expensive to maintain. So, to purify water from hardness salts, a special cartridge is built into the device, which will have to be changed quite often. When used without a cartridge, it quickly deteriorates.
- Evaporator. The easiest way to humidify dry air in a room is to install an appliance that naturally evaporates water. In fact, even a large flat container filled with water will somewhat correct the situation, but a special device equipped with a rotating drum will increase the efficiency of the device due to constant stirring and additional blowing.
Choice
Why do you need a humidifier, for which you have to pay money, if you can just put a saucer in the room and fill it with water as it dries? The answer is simple: a special device can “Keep” exactly the humidity at which you are comfortable living and working.
Devices based on steam and ultrasonic principles allow you to obtain any value of humidity in the room. Devices operating on the evaporative principle do not make it possible to set the percentage of humidity at your own discretion, always maintaining it at the same, but optimal level – 45 – 55%. But they have their own plus: due to the settling in the water reservoir of room dust, the air becomes cleaner. So each type of humidifier has its own benefits..
There are several criteria for a successful selection of a humidifier.
- Area. This is the first and main criterion. Each device is designed to maintain humidity in a certain volume of space. Therefore, you need to proceed from the room in which the device will work. Its power depends on this, and, therefore, the price. The bedroom does not need an expensive apparatus capable of “humidify” a whole store or a large office.
- Price. To get rid of dry air in the room, you can choose any type of appliance, but do not forget about reasonable savings. The lower price category is evaporators, steam generators of humidity will cost a little more, and the most expensive today are devices that operate on ultrasound. Is it worth equipping all rooms with ultrasonic devices? It makes sense to put them in the bedroom, since they are much quieter than others and will not interfere with your sleep. But for work in the kitchen, the steam principle is quite suitable. Vaporizers can be used in the living room.
- Quality. Any type of humidifier can be equipped with additional functions – for example, ionization, air purification, aromatization. There are also additional options that make it easier to control the device: the ability to set constant humidity for a long time or program its change, touch control and some others. They also differ in design. All these improvements increase the quality of products, but it is worth remembering that the simplest of them can cope with the main function, namely, air humidification..
Caring for humidifiers is simple: remove plaque (scale) that forms when drinking hard water in time, change filters and cartridges (if provided by the device).
