"Red Neck Room Humidifier"

[MaxDarkside]

Hey, don't laugh. OK, it's half a joke, half useful, because It works!

Story:
I returned to my place near the Black Hills, SD and the air was quite dry. I drew static electricity zaps off the light switch screws when I flipped the switch... almost 2" long. OWIE! I don't have a room humidifier, so I sez to myself, I sez, "I need to put some water into the air", so I soaked a bath towel in the sink, a lot but not enough it would drip when I hung it up, grabbed a plastic coat hanger (no rusting), tossed the towel over the hanger and hung it in the room where I sleep from the sliding closet door track so it was not touching anything. Within about an hour I was drawing very small arc's from the light switch screws. After two "towels worth" the entire apartment was non-zappy. Now I put up one wet towel per day and it does not completely dry because the humidity is high enough, that is, it's somewhat self controlling in that regard.

I'm a Chemical Engineer and if you touch the towel, feel how cold it is. That is called "Wet Bulb" temperature and is directly related to the rate of evaporation and room humidity. That is, if the towel is very cold, the air is very dry and the water is coming off the towel at a high rate. If it's just cool, then you are probably in pretty good shape humidity wise.

My ResMed humidifier took about 1/2 tank (2x normal) the first night, after doing this now it is using about 1/4th a tank a night, about normal.

Best part... really does not use any electricity, no pot boiling on the kitchen stove and we don't have a potbelly stove or such to put a pot on. No risks. No having to keep an eye on it. etc. Just works... fer me! Git 'er done!

LOL

[chunkyfrog]

I flip the dryer vent to exhaust inside in winter.

[MaxDarkside]

I flip the dryer vent to exhaust inside in winter.

I have a dryer in the apartment, but I can't flippy anything, so I use my towel. Also, I do laundry like once a week only. I think one downside is that the towel does accumulate from hard water, so need to wash it now and then before it gets stiff as a board if the water is hard.

[DrPepper00]

Add a fan blowing past the towel and you have a redneck air conditioner. Works best when the humidity is not already 98%.

[Lizistired]

For years we put a pan of water in front of the register for humidity. Can't possibly work now if it isn't on an Iphone app!

[xenablue]

Max, you must be related on my father's side LOL!!!

When we were growing up in Australia in the early 60s, Dad would hang hessian bags over the screen doors with a water drip system at the top. We were astounded at how cool our house was in heat of over 100 deg. F outside with no A/C except Dad's invention.

Made the house look like like hell, but it worked a charm.

Love it and thanks for taking me down memory lane.

Cheers,
xena

[MaxDarkside]

LOL ! Werks! Ya don't need much humidity help in 'sconsin in the Summer, now do ya? Ya hey, I partly be from MinneSnowta, don't cha know. If ya tried dat trick in 'sconsin in da Winter time, you'd have a frozen rock fer a screen door, eh? Have a Leinie or two fer me, the pride of Chippewa Falls. We have an Aprilaire in our MN home, don't cha know, so we'z got dat taken careof der, or head to the sauna wit da spruce bows. LOL.

[chunkyfrog]

My dad hung gunny sacks over sawhorses outside his and Mom's bedroom window.
Ran the breeze box in the window all night. Didn't really help a lot.
Of course, this was Cherry county, Nebraska---in July.
We had to break the crust in the sugar bowl every morning.
I think the humidity was too high.

[GumbyCT]

I flip the dryer vent to exhaust inside in winter.

I have a dryer in the apartment, but I can't flippy anything, so I use my towel. Also, I do laundry like once a week only. I think one downside is that the towel does accumulate from hard water, so need to wash it now and then before it gets stiff as a board if the water is hard.

You can also just hang your laundry around on doors and chairs or buy one of those wooden clothes drier racks you can find at Walmart for about $11.

Having traveled for many years I learned that many hotels are parched dry during winter. So first thing I would do is to use the coffee pot to add water to the carpet on the perimeter of the room and under the bed. If/when coffee pots or water were not avail. I would use ice from the ice machine. The waste baskets carry the ice

OR for a quick air humidifier - turn the shower to HOT

But the weekly laundry is a steady way to keep the air breathable during the winter months and a Green Way to keep your air healthy. You will be surprised how quickly they do dry too.

Me thinks the towels are more absorbent when dried w/o the dryer softeners.

HTH

[MaxDarkside]

Having traveled for many years I learned that many hotels are parched dry during winter. So first thing I would do is to use the coffee pot to add water to the carpet on the perimeter of the room and under the bed. If/when coffee pots or water were not avail. I would use ice from the ice machine. The waste baskets carry the ice

LOL ! I have traveled a bit, about 2,500,000 miles on just Delta (was NWA) but I never tinkled water about a room. I do turn on showers now and then, but mostly to de-wrinkle my clothes. The places I most frequent are fairly damp (Singapore, Amsterdam) though last year I went to the DRIEST PLACE ON EARTH. You know where that is? Sahara? Nope, the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Now THAT place is DRY! You could spit and it would be gone before hitting the ground

Me thinks the towels are more absorbent when dried w/o the dryer softeners.

That's fer sure.

[paleolith]

Put a bowl under the towel -- something elongated, like a small trough -- and the towel should take up just enough to continue the evaporation and you don't have to wring out the excess.

Yes, there are parts of the Atacama Desert where rain has not been recorded in the hundreds of years that humans have been waiting for it there. Have you seen the movie "Nostalgia de la luz"?

Edward (don't need humidifiers in Florida, well, not most of the year)

[MaxDarkside]

Yes, there are parts of the Atacama Desert where rain has not been recorded in the hundreds of years that humans have been waiting for it there. Have you seen the movie "Nostalgia de la luz"?

No sir, but I'll certainly look into it. They may make a movie of my life someday. I've been from Malaysia to Moscow, the later courtesy of a minister of finance, who took me to the Bolshoi for opera and gave me a personal tour of the Kremlin, have used oxygen masks on a plane plummeting from the sky, had my hotel catch fire once, emergency landed in a DC-10 in an Inuit Eskimo village, enjoyed our 20th wedding anniversary in the jungles of Borneo chest deep in bat guano (look up Mulu Resort), detained as a currency smuggler at an airport once, but got off by bribing the Russian with cognac and chocolates. Those are a few of my stories... I have many more, including a visit last year to the Atacama.

LOL!

[Kairosgrammy]

Seldom have to worry about humidity in these parts. I believe humidity was invented here in Mississippi.

Hey, don't laugh. OK, it's half a joke, half useful, because It works!

Story:
I returned to my place near the Black Hills, SD and the air was quite dry. I drew static electricity zaps off the light switch screws when I flipped the switch... almost 2" long. OWIE! I don't have a room humidifier, so I sez to myself, I sez, "I need to put some water into the air", so I soaked a bath towel in the sink, a lot but not enough it would drip when I hung it up, grabbed a plastic coat hanger (no rusting), tossed the towel over the hanger and hung it in the room where I sleep from the sliding closet door track so it was not touching anything. Within about an hour I was drawing very small arc's from the light switch screws. After two "towels worth" the entire apartment was non-zappy. Now I put up one wet towel per day and it does not completely dry because the humidity is high enough, that is, it's somewhat self controlling in that regard.

I'm a Chemical Engineer and if you touch the towel, feel how cold it is. That is called "Wet Bulb" temperature and is directly related to the rate of evaporation and room humidity. That is, if the towel is very cold, the air is very dry and the water is coming off the towel at a high rate. If it's just cool, then you are probably in pretty good shape humidity wise.

My ResMed humidifier took about 1/2 tank (2x normal) the first night, after doing this now it is using about 1/4th a tank a night, about normal.

Best part... really does not use any electricity, no pot boiling on the kitchen stove and we don't have a potbelly stove or such to put a pot on. No risks. No having to keep an eye on it. etc. Just works... fer me! Git 'er done!

LOL