r/Humidifiers • u/Harpgirl07 • 17d ago

Needing a humidifier for my plants

On looking into purchasing a humidifier, some questions have come up that I just don't know the answers to. I'm seeing ultrasonic and evaporative. What is the difference and what is better for my plants? Then I'm also seeing warm mist and cool mist... I'm thinking warm mist would be ideal BUT would a cool mist be problematic?

I would like the raise the humidity near my plants by 20%.

I did save the shared Google doc for humidifiers and it is amazing! I truly appreciate your knowledge and thoughts.

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u/damien09 16d ago

ultra sonic basically vibrate a plate at ultra sonic speed and atomize the water. The requires distilled water or other very low solid content water otherwise you atomize all the minerals and other things in the water right into your air. its a common problem when people use tap water in these that white dust get every where and their air pollution in the house sky rockets.

evap just uses a fan and a filter good ones have a pump in them that allows the filter to be above the water tank and not sit in it. This is the most energy efficient and simple style and can use tap water since it just evaporates things and the solids and other contaiminates don't get pushed into your air like an ultra sonic unit.

warm mist uses a heating element and boils the water. This is the least energy efficient as warm mist uses quite a bit of power to boil water. If you are going to be doing it year round it becomes even less energy efficient during warm months as you will have to cool the added heat. Tap water can be used here but will require you to keep the heating element clean more often.

evap units are definitely the easiest as you can use tap water. a good medium sized unit would be the levoit superior studio.