Humidifier rainout,....

I keep reading here about 'rainout' and use of heated hoses to remedy the problem, and it has made me wonder about my situation, and if possibly I have an issue with my machine/machines.

I typically leave the humidifier set at 4 on my machine. I have a heated hose that came with my private purchase machine, but I am still using the plain old slim-line hose that I started with.

I have used two Airsense 10 Autosets, and now have used my backup Airstart 10 ( only to make sure it works properly) on the same setting, with no heated hose, and have yet to see the first trace of moisture in my hose. I look at it against the light every morning to see if I need to rinse it and hang dry, but nothing is ever there. I keep my bedroom around 75 degrees in the summer, and leave the heat at 68 in the winter,.....for the amount of winter we get here that is.

I don't see how I could have had three bad humidifiers, but am a bit puzzled that I have never seen any signs of moisture in my hoses considering my setting and lack of a heated hose. My guess is that the humidity in Florida is so high on its own, that the humidifiers never really go into 'full on' mode, regardless of the setting? As usual, any input is welcome!

Edit to add: On an average night, the water level only drops a small amount. Typically less than a quarter of an inch, and I DO use distilled water.

You may have been smart off the bat - positioning your machine lower than yourself (below the mattress) so water runs back to the machine instead of into your mask.

Also, there is really no need to wash, rinse (or any other cleaning method) your hose ,,, many of us haven't done so in decades, real decades, and are still here to tell about it , If a few water drops remain there after you wake up, so what? They'll be gone by bedtime or get dried by the machine when it runs and unless you see something that actually got into the hose via the mask, there's really no point in bothering.

Mark55 wrote: My guess is that the humidity in Florida is so high on its own, that the humidifiers never really go into 'full on' mode, regardless of the setting?

Mark55 wrote:On an average night, the water level only drops a small amount. Typically less than a quarter of an inch,

You are correct. Your machine does't have to work much to maintain your selected humidity.
Your ambient humidity is high enough that the machine doesn't sense the need to add much extra moisture to the air coming from the humidifier.

I don't know what the humidity % setting of 6 is supposed to deliver but let's say it is 85% just for picking a number and if your ambient humidity is say 75% then the machine only has to add 10% more moisture to reach that 85%.. So it's not going to use much water because it doesn't need to.
The humidity setting isn't going to be on top of what the ambient humidity is...it's a setting that starts with ambient humidity as the starting point and only adds enough moisture to bring it up to the humidity that the setting represents.

Your lack of condensation is simply from the ambient bedroom temp being low enough to cool the air down to the point of releasing the moisture.
Count your blessings.
If you lived where I live and in a house that was horrible to try to heat and bedroom temps often dropped below 60 degrees you would be able to experience the "joys" of rain out first hand.

Just an anecdotal note. I'm in central Texas and have the same room temperature regime as you use. In the past 10 years, I have never had rainout.

As far as the humidifiers, There is not a huge temperature range from 1 to 5 or six or whatever the top number is. For condensation to occur, you need a significant temperature difference between one side (inside) of the hose to the other (outside) or top too bottom if it is really cold in the room. I can't prove it, but I would imagine there is a differential condensation rate based on pressures used as well.

Good Luck.

Oh...for those of you who haven't seen or used the AirSense machine and experienced condensation first hand.

Positioning the AirSense machine lower does absolutely nothing to really help with water in the hose...been there, done that myself.
The way the hose attaches to the humidifier makes it so that gravity doesn't help us out as much as it did in the past in terms of getting the water to drain into the humidifier.

Couple of weeks ago I got to experience a lot of rain out because I increased the humidity (had a head cold and more humidity always helps) but I forgot to increase the hose air temp and it turned off cold that night and I had the windows open...
Got MAJOR rain out in mask and hose. Even woke hubby with all the racket.
I couldn't get the water out of the hose enough to shut the damn thing up.
I even took the mask off and held the hose totally vertical to try to get the water to drain back into the humidifier.
It simply wouldn't drain well enough because of the way the hose attaches to the machine.

The only thing that helped was taking the hose totally off and draining it onto a towel. I really enjoyed (so did hubby) having to turn on the light and go and get a towel and unhooking the hose from the machine and draining the water into the towel and spilling some of it on my bed so it was cold when I finally got back to bed.
If totally vertical hose doesn't help then having the machine lower than the bed isn't going to help much.

Now maybe it (machine being lower) would help other brands that don't have a right angle connection at the hose to humidifier but with the AirSense ...it's next to useless in terms of actually draining the water out of the hose. Won't hurt but won't help either.

Well thanks folks for confirming my suspicions. I figured it had to do with 'dewpoint' and the humidity%/temperature angle. I'm in Central Florida, so it's a little less humid than S. Florida where I lived prior to 1992. Inside ambient humidity here (under climate controlled conditions of course) is usually between 40/55%.

Summertime will see levels of 80/95% (outside) during the wee hours of the night. Thank God for air conditioning!! You northern folks need to send us some cooler weather,...it's 81 degrees here in December!

Mark55 wrote:Well thanks folks for confirming my suspicions. I figured it had to do with 'dewpoint' and the humidity%/temperature angle. I'm in Central Florida, so it's a little less humid than S. Florida where I lived prior to 1992. Inside ambient humidity here (under climate controlled conditions of course) is usually between 40/55%.

Summertime will see levels of 80/95% (outside) during the wee hours of the night. Thank God for air conditioning!! You northern folks need to send us some cooler weather,...it's 81 degrees here in December!

It's only fair if you send us that global warming in the winter. Jim