Slept without water in humidifier!

Omg, what an idiot i can be,
I slept without any water in my humidifier last night, woke up with weird throat feeling (kinda) sore all day.
I wish the machine would tell me about my water lvl. you know....idiot proof

Anyone ever do that?

If the humidity in my home is lower than 20%, and I sleep longer than eight hours,
(but I'm retired!) my tank will run dry--every doggone time.
As long as I forget to add H2O when I ought to, it gets weird-smelling.
The longer it's been since I washed the tank, the weirder it smells.
Solution: Clean it often, keep it full. It seems to be harmless,
but one has to wonder why these expensive machines can't include a low water level alarm.

chunkyfrog wrote: but one has to wonder why these expensive machines can't include a low water level alarm.

Better yet, a water reservoir big enough to take care of high humidifier settings and low room humidity. Doesn't seem like rocket science to me...

But the machines are not designed by rocket scientists. Therefore, hthey do not come with redundant back-up systems.

i think they just want anything to go wrong with the machine, so you can buy another one,

after all this "machines" are things we need, not want. so we must get them, so they want them to die out fast and frequent, they would love it to go out the next hour after the warranty is out.

That's a great suggestion Chunkyfrog. I wonder what they monitor all other variables so closely but not that one? It's almost like building a car without a gas guage.

Jeannh wrote:

chunkyfrog wrote: but one has to wonder why these expensive machines can't include a low water level alarm.

Better yet, a water reservoir big enough to take care of high humidifier settings and low room humidity. Doesn't seem like rocket science to me...

I think there's a real balancing act going on in the design of these machines. There's a premium placed on making the blower+humidifier small enough to be easy to travel with. Water reservoirs seem to be one area where the size has shrunk in an effort to make the machines more portable.

There also seems to be a premium placed on trying to design the machines to look "less medical" and more like a clock radio or an iHome. In other words, the seems to be a strong effort to design these things to look "nice" in the bedroom. And that's led to the a big change in the visual design of the humidifier units and where the water tanks are placed. The humidifier tanks for most of the older machines, including the Resmed S8's were prominently placed at the front of the machine and the water level in the transparent water tank was easily visible by just glancing at the machine. (The M-Series seems to be the exception for very visible water tanks in older machines.) But both the S9 and the System One humdifier tanks are put inside of a unit that has is covered up by a non-transparent lid. Hence it's impossible to judge the water level by just glancing at the top of the machine.

The System One Humidifiers have attempted to get around this problem by having the front of the transparent tank visible, even thought this is part of what makes the System One "uglier" than the S9. But in order to see the water level, you've got to crouch down and look at the side of the machine. If your machine is on a low table, in a drawer, or on the floor, that may be difficult to do.

So in conclusion, the idea of a low water alarm is intriguing for water tanks that are not clearly visible with a glance at the machine. But the fuel gauge in your car is a float that is inside the gas tank that is also attached to the car's electrical system; likewise cars with a low windshield wiper fluid detector have some kind of detector in the tank that is hooked into the car's electrical system. To try to incorporate a low water level alarm might require having something inside the tank that measures the water level which is also hooked into the machine's electronics, and that may make it harder to design a totally removable water tank that is both easy to fill and easy to clean.