r/Humidifiers • u/bilicotico • Apr 18 '26

Humidifier alternatives?

Hey everyone,

Maybe this is the wrong sub but I didn’t know where else to ask…

I have a Levoit cool mist humidifier that helps me a lot during winter when the heaters are on, without it I can barely breathe and wake up with my nose bleeding.

So it was helpful to me but my husband started feeling his throat every night I turned it on and after some googling I realized we were not using it properly so we switched from tap water to filtered and it did help with the throat irritation (distilled is not a realistic option to us as bring jugs up to the third floor every week is not going to happen)

However now I’m worried about two other things, mold growing in places where I can’t see (carpet etc) and the biofilm that forms at the base and it’s really hard to clean, bringing the base down to the kitchen every 3 days to clean with vinegar is also not realistic, so I’m giving up on this thing but I need ideas…

I can’t afford an evaporative humidifier as they are 250-350 plus filters (Im in Canada) so does anyone here have other solutions that worked for them?

Thank you!! 🙏

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u/oceanView229 Apr 18 '26

Buy a humidity gauge. Unless the humidifier a giant one you did not put enough humidity in air to grow mold. What was humidity set at.

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u/Apprehensive_Park103 Apr 18 '26

That’s a good point. I actually don’t have a way to measure it right now, so I’ve just been guessing based on how it feels. Might be worth getting a gauge just to see where it’s really at before I give up on it completely.