List Price: $162.00
Sale Price: $119.95
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After doing a LOT of reading/research on portable humidifiers, i decided on a Holmes unit. Unfortunately, it appears that Holmes is no longer making the large (whole-house) size units any more. There were a few still on Amazon, but one was over $200, not in my budget. This one was more reasonable, but didn't have many reviews, so knew it was a bit of a gamble. But everything else I've read about similar Holmes humidifiers of this size/type were good. The positives and negatives I read on other units seem consistent with this unit.
Positives:
Overall, it seems like a well-built unit, not flimsy. Vapor output is substantial. It does a good job of keeping the first floor of our 2500 sq. ft. home above 50%, and that is with the forced hot air furnace blowing dry, hot air all the time. It holds enough water to run 24 hours non-stop before refilling. Has a built-in humidistat, (not sure of accuracy, but seems close.) Has an indicator light for when it needs re-filled.
Negatives:
Auto-setting is not great. As has been said elsewhere auto mode allows it to cycle on and off when it reaches a desired humidity level. But when it gets there, it cycles on-and-off non-stop. Seems like this would be hard on the motor. But I knew this going into the purchase, and just figured on turning on/off manually (like all our old humidifiers), so this was not a deal-breaker for me. Water tanks are not flat on top, so when you re-fill, you have to help hold them up, or they could fall over and crack. This isn't really that big a deal either, but it could have been more convenient. (Tanks are on the left & right sides of the unit in the photo.)
That's pretty much it. Unit comes with wheels that snap in on the bottom, which seem sturdy. But I've read that people have had these snap off on some units (not on a Holmes, but still made me nervous), so we don't wheel it around.
On other thing to be aware of. The directions say to place this on an interior wall. I believe that's to prevent condensation on a cold exterior wall (or inside the wall?). We didn't have a lot of interior wall space that was free. So, if that's an issue for you, just something to consider.
Overall, despite a couple of minor (for me) issues, I feel like this is a well-made unit that should last for many years. Not a cheap/disposable piece of plastic junk that so many manufacturers are putting out these days. Noise from the unit seems a little louder than on a room-size unit, but we have it a room we don't watch tv in, so that's not an issue for us. On Low, it's not bad at all, but on Medium, it would be distracting, and on High, would really interfere with watching tv. Again, I don't think it's abnormally loud for the size of the unit, just something to be aware of.
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We have had this unit for about 6 weeks. It's very easy to operate & move to different locations. It has a great filter indicator which displays when it needs to be changed. The water tanks need to be filled every other day. Cleaning the unit is very easy as well. There is a humidity indicator on the main panel. We do not run the unit during the day so in the morning we can see that the humidity level has risen from the high 40s to well into the 60s. We live in Arizona and it becomes very dry here during the winter season. This QUIET humidifier does the job in keeping sinuses, nasal passages moistened. Our brother-in-law who lives in Denver, Co (very,very dry) had the unit and was very happy with it. Since he is a respiratory therapist we thought that his recommendation and experience was was quite a positive review in our decision to purchase the unit. We were surprised by very negative review. We only use the unit on the constant cycle of 1(lowest cycle) and have not had a problem. We do agree the intermittant cycle would be annoying. We HIGHLY recommended this Holmes unit.
