davismanLV said:
I've been using one of these in the basement (the room adjacent to my Guild cave) for the last five years or so. The wicks aren't cheap... but I can get thru the winter with two wicks (I am pretty anal about using a bacteriostat in the water... as long as I do, I don't have problems with mildew or bacteria. Just hard water deposits). I really like it. The only thing I don't like, if the power goes out, the unit goes off. For a while, I actually had mine on a cheap uninterruptable power supply (UPS; battery backup like might be used for a computer)... but the humidier outlived the UPS. They used to make a somewhat smaller one... 6 or 8 gal, as I recall. During the dead of winter, I have to fill it ~every two days. It's right under the cold air return to my furnace, so sort of gets the whole house. I have a smaller "Moist air" brand evaporative humidifier in my cave... just as a top off. In winter, I only have to fill it about once a week.
I WOULD ONLY use an evaporative humidifier (the ones with wicks/filters).
The warm mist ones are courting disaster... IMO. Because they heat the air they are "moisturizing," it will hold more water than the surrounding air. Condensation will then form on cooler surfaces, like walls... and expensive guitars. I never ruined a guitar... but I peeled some wallpaper using one of these once. Because our water is very hard, we also get a good coating of limestone on the heating element.
I have also tried the "Cool mist" ultrasonic humidifiers... these use ultrasound to form tiny water droplets that are expelled from the device, and evaporate in the room air. The problem is... anything in the water (bacteria, minerals, etc) also ends up in those droplets, and when the water evaporates, is left behind in the air to settle on every surface in the room. The water in Utah is hard as a rock. Despite all attempts to use deionizing filters (either built into the device, or separate on the faucet), everything in the room becomes covered with a fine white (slightly abrasive) mineral powder.
So, an evaporative humidifier is my recommendation... in principle, the only thing added to the air is water. Minerals are not volatile, tho' they will harden the wicks (reducing efficiency) after a while. If you use a bacteriostat, you can keep bacterial growth under control.