Essick Air 4D7-800 Whole House Evaporative Humidifier

It does the Job.
I have used it all this winter and it did the trick. My wife was suffering from nose bleeds and cracked skin before we bought this and now she is fine. It holds enough water to only need changed about every other day. The lights that tell you when the resivour needs changed can be seen from across the room. I run mine at the lowest fan speed and it is like it isn't there when the TV is on. With the room quiet you know its there but it isn't annoying. I was dissapointed with the airfilter. It looks like one on a furnace and is loosley attached to the back. It's deffinitly not HEPA quality if thats what your looking for.

good while it worked---but poor reliability
This is a big humidifier for adding moisture to several rooms or an entire house. My house is ~1800 sq feet and gets very dry in the winter. This humidifier did a nice job of adding a lot of moisture to the house before it died. Within the first year, the motor stopped working, and I had to send the entire motor unit in for repair. Then it died again---same problem with the motor failing. Very frustrating, and now I have a large piece of useless plastic. I would not recommend Essick/Bemis products because of very poor reliability.

The Best Bet
Tropical is not a word that comes to mind when thinking about Boston in the winter (although, with the magic of global warming, it may not be so far off...). One thing that has been very difficult for us the past few years has been the dryness of the winter months with the associated dry nose, throat and eyes. We bought a Venta Airwasher and, I must confess, this is largely a waste of money. It's well-intentioned, but just didn't really add much moisture to the air. At the same time, the Venta was very expensive to buy and expensive to operate needing lots of additive. As one reviewer put it: "Holy mother of G*d! $439 and for what?!"

That about sums up our experience with the Venta...

So, as per usual I spent days and days reading about humidifiers and learning that, basically, they all have craptacular aspects, but a few emerged as really promising. One of them was the Vornado, which a friend has and enjoys. We really liked the design and the technology of this...

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