Nightmares disturb you during the night, throat is tickling and you feel stuffiness in your nose? This is not a commercial for cold remedy. Most likely it’s a sign for air being dry and needed to be humidified. Of course, you may trust your grandmother’s advice and place wet towels or even put water in bowls around. But in our high technologic century there are some more effective methods, at least manufacturers of the air humidifiers announce it.

So, air humidifiers kinds (in other sources another classification may appear):

• humidifiers (cold steam)
• steam humidifiers (hot steam)
• ultrasonic humidifiers

Let’s look through the highs and lows of each kind.

The basic principle of air humidifier using the cold steam is natural cold evaporation. Water from the tank is fed to the special evaporating elements. Air, absorbable by built-in ventilation fan, goes through humidifier and achieves the room humidified. Work efficiency of such air humidifiers is not high in comparison with two next kinds, but it’s quite cheap and power consumption is not big. The shortcomings might be noise and unhandiness (some models).

Steam humidifiers work like kettle. Special tank with water is heated, turning water into steam, which is cooled before entering the surrounding air. Advantages of this kind humidifier are: high efficiency, comparatively small sizes of the machine; the kit might be supplied by attachment for inhalations (which makes your treatment easier than sitting in front of the stew pan with towel).This is an ideal variant for aromatherapy lovers. About disadvantages: big power consumption, potential danger for kids, who can burn themselves with hot water, and somebody might not like the gurgling sound. Choosing such kind of air humidifier, pay your attention to the humidistat - sometimes climate control device are already built-in into the humidifiers, in other case you should buy it separately.

Ultrasonic humidifiers are considered as the most efficient up-to date devices. The principle of operation is the next: there is a special membrane inside the construction of the device, which fluctuates with high frequency. Water stream is put to the membrane, which turns into small fractions almost becoming into gaseous state, appearing into usual steam. Merits of ultrasonic humidifiers: total absence of any sounds during the work, small power consumption, compactness, presence of built-in humidistat, which allows you regulate the level of humidity in the room. The demerits: the best results ultrasonic humidifier will show with boiled or distillated water. And even this problem may be solved. Air humidifier has a filter inside, which contains ion-exchange resins (that makes water softer), and it needs to be changed each 1-3 month or you can buy packs with granules for filter filling.

Before purchasing obligatory decide for what kind of room you need air humidifier. If you need it for the bedroom, that it is better to choose the quiet one, for the nursery it is better to choose humidifiers, which work on cold steam or ultrasonic humidifiers.

Materials used in this article are taken from:
http://www.airwethome.net/uvlaszniteli-vozduha-goryachego-parap!9.htm
http://www.vibiralkin.ru/news/detail.php?ID=22777