
Paper Clay Air Humidifier - tonymarks
https://maximelouis.com/paper-clay-air-humidifier
======
tofof
This is an art project and nothing more.

Humidifying only 600 square feet, the size of a studio apartment, takes about
5 gallons of water per day in winter. [1]

The reservoir on this object looks to be no more than two gallons, and I would
be truly shocked if it requires even daily refilling. If it actually moved
enough water to make a difference, it would be a fundamentally flawed design
in requiring multiple complete fillings per day, carting entire gallons to it
(as you can't simply take the reservoir to the faucet). In fact however, I
would be shocked if it made any measurable difference at all.

It speaks volumes that no information about the rate of water consumption and
no measurement figures of RH are present on the page.

1: [https://www.generalfilters.com/support/humidity-
calculator.h...](https://www.generalfilters.com/support/humidity-
calculator.html) (settings: St Louis MO values for outside temperature and
humidity. Inside 74, 50%, 8' ceilings, standard 0.5 air changes, 1 fireplace)

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
When I finally got a hygrometer I was amazed at how useless the powered one
gallon air humidifiers are. They often can’t raise the humidity percent a
single point with the hygrometer right by it in my rooms.

If you want to really humidify a room it takes a big industrial sized unit.
They had them in the rooms in our Colorado Airbnb cabin and they were totally
necessary in the dry mountain air if you didn’t want to wake up in pain from
dried out mucus membranes. Very loud and used many gallons of water in a
single night.

~~~
exclusiv
I have a rather small Honeywell cool mist that works well. I use it in our
bedrooms and have taken the humidity up 20% easily. This is in the mountains
where it's drier than the desert in the winter.

~~~
jcims
They ‘cheat’ a little by lofting liquid water which then evaporates. We have a
water softener and the cool mist humidifier left a smoke-like particulate
floating in the air (i think it was either salt from the softener or minerals
from the water)

~~~
mfkp
Yes, that's the minerals in the water. Using distilled water prevents this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I discovered this when doing a post-assembly indoor test of a Luftdaten air
quality sensor I built[0]. I kept it running for few hours and then looked at
the data, and saw some ridiculously high levels of PM2.5 and PM5 in the
evening. I've decided to investigate it. Over the next two days, I figured out
that the increased levels happen at times when our air humidifier is running,
which led me to discover that those ultrasonic air humidifiers essentially
atomize everything that was mixed with/dissolved in the water - and we were
using filtered tap water with ours. With distilled water in the humidifier,
the sensor did not show increased particulate levels.

We've mostly stopped using the humidifier now, because I can't find a source
of distilled water that doesn't involve buying plastic bottles.

\--

[0] - [https://luftdaten.info/en/home-en/](https://luftdaten.info/en/home-en/)

~~~
mfkp
I've encountered the same issue (high plastic bottle waste along with high
cost). Short of boiling your own water outdoors to avoid polluting the indoor
air, it's challenging to find a source for bulk distilled water.

~~~
oska
Rain is essentially distilled water (evaporation from terrestrial water bodies
and then condensation in the atmosphere). It picks up some contaminants in the
atmosphere and some dissolved gases when it condenses but it's going to be
mostly free of minerals (i.e. not be hard). So collecting rain water is one
source of bulk 'distilled water'.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
Depending on where he lives, that might actually be illegal to do.[1]

[1] [https://bestlifeonline.com/illegal-collect-
rainwater/](https://bestlifeonline.com/illegal-collect-rainwater/)

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samatman
I don't know what the site author did to make it so the zoom button doesn't
adjust the font size but I implore anyone similarly tempted: please don't do
this.

~~~
_Microft
It's worse. The size of the text depends on the height of the window. Resize
the window and it quickly becomes illegibly small.

~~~
vezycash
If you're using chrome or it's derivatives, install the extension ZOOM TEXT
ONLY.

For Firefox no extension is needed on desktop. Google how to do it. For
Android Firefox, I use the add-on called LEGIBILITY.

~~~
sm4rk0
There's built-in "Reader View" in Firefox (both desktop and mobile).

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-
clu...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clutter-free-
web-pages)

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pmoriarty
Be really careful with humidifiers.

I cranked mine up too much and it caused a mold issue in my home, and mold in
my home caused me health issues.

~~~
numpad0
One one hand infection experts say humidity protects you, on the other hand
they say most types of humidifiers are disease incubators. On top of it it’s a
fact that humidifier additives effectively are chemical weapons that works on
humans at lower concentrations than it works for pathogens.

We’re sort of in a bind — so how are we supposed to have safe air? 6-hourly
bleached, heater based humidifiers running off the tap?

~~~
adrianN
Heat your homes a little less. There is a big humidity difference between an
18° room and a 24° room.

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onemoresoop
This is a very good idea, it uses no external energy and can potentually last
forever. It’s a very simple and efficient thing. The only thing that I wonder
is if this could be washed and whether mold can form in the pores. My
ultrasonic steam humidifier can be easily cleaned but it makes an audible
sound that happens to not bother me.

~~~
dugditches
What I was wondering too. Especially with the rough surface and slits in the
back. Maybe putting a small amount of Bleach in the water would prevent it.

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fred_is_fred
Completely unrelated the content - which I cannot read due to the tiny font,
but can anyone recommend a plugin/extension for Firefox that can take webpages
like this and trim out the excessive whitespace? I cannot read the text and
increasing the size (control-+) just makes the white space bigger too.

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mrfusion
Here’s an idea I had for a humidifier. It simply tumbles thousands of tiny
beads through tumbler with water at the bottom. Since the sheer number of
small beads creates a huge surface area you’d get a bunch of evaporation.

Cool right? Feel free to use this idea as prior art.

~~~
aliswe
Yes but energy intensive.

~~~
mrfusion
Couldn’t be worse than the ones that heat up water to make steam.

~~~
aliswe
That would need to be assessed, I think.

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everyone
Is this actually practical or is it some art project? It _looks_ like the
latter.

~~~
tjmc
HVAC engineer here. Hard to tell as they don't provide any details on the rate
of evaporation. One issue for ongoing use would be scale buildup -
particularly in areas with hard water. Probably the best option would be to
fill it with demineralized or RO water.

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h2odragon
Pretty! A bucket full of perlite and half full of water does a decent job too.
The trouble lies in keeping the water topped off and keeping it clean, as with
anything else evaporative.

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phyzome
Depending on your water supply, this design may fill up very quickly with
mineral deposits and stop wicking.

~~~
aliswe
This actually relates to my question, do capillaries clog?

~~~
phyzome
They sure can! You can do an experiment with a paper towel hanging over the
side of a bucket that has water in it. Check out how quickly it clogs up.

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zweep
To mildly humidify my baby son’s room without having to maintain a humidifier,
I use a towel soaked in water, draped over a chair, with a fan pointed at it
overnight.

~~~
xvector
I've used this in the summer to cool down in apartments with no AC.

But is it actually effective for humidification? The top comment mentions that
it takes 5 gallons _per day_ to humidify a small studio apartment under ideal
conditions...

~~~
Dylan16807
Well, 600 square feet can be a studio but it's by no means a small studio.
It's enough space for a perfectly comfortable 2 bedroom apartment. (Or 3 if
you squeeze.)

For a single room, if that towel holds a gallon it should work fine for an
overnight humidification job.

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ivanhoe
get an open top aquarium, it's much more rewarding and efficient way to
increase the humidity of a room

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pkaye
Is this the same thing as a swamp cooler?

~~~
nightfly
No, a swamp cooler would actually work.

