Essick Air HD1407 Whole-House Humidifier, Black/Honey Oak

There's a trick to making this work correctly
I purchased this last year and it worked fine once I figured it out. At first it would shut off after the first of the two tanks emptied. I thought it was broke. However, the trick is that it needs to be leveled out just right such that second tank can kick in after the first tank is empty. This took some experimenting with shims under the left side front wheel. It's an interesting design. The two tanks are offset such that the right side tank always empties first. But, if the unit is not leveled correctly the second tank will never drain. Actually, even if this is the case it will still "work", you'll just find you are constantly filling the first tank.

OK, but cleaning is a pain
OK, first a few basic physics things you should realize about humidifiers.

1) They move lots of air.
2) They handle lots of water.

Given the above, they are going to get dusty and want to grow mold and mildew.
That is just the way it is and ALL humidifiers of this type (cool air) will
have these issues. The heat type have their own separate set of problems,
not addressed here as this is not that type of unit.

This means two things:

1) They need complete cleaning regularly
2) They need new "filters" (actually moisture wicks) regularly

So this unit does work and gets the room it is in reasonably moist.
The unit is able to raise the humidity by about 5-20 percent. 20 close to the unit,
5 further away. It is way too noisy on the high setting, quite nice on the low setting,
OK on the middle setting as long as you do not need to be in that room for a long time.

I have found that after...

good for our entire house
We purchased this humidifier to use year round (we moved to Nevada) and have used it daily for the last 6 months. The 2 tanks are fairly easy to carry, and are easy to fill. This system is much easier than bringing the entire unit to the sink. For the setting and the lack of humidity in the desert I need to fill them every day. We have had to change out the filters twice so far, and as long as you are gentle with installing them, there are no issues putting the new ones in. (we have very hard water, which does deposit minerals on the filters requiring replacement) The fins of the filters are glued on one side so that they flex to fit the holder.
The actual humidifier has 3 fan speeds and is quite accurate in measuring the humidity output. If you place the unit at a central location, or near an air intake for your HVAC system, it does do the entire house up to 2000 square feet. It can be cumbersome to clean out the interior of the unit which holds the 2 tanks (there is a left and...

Click to Editorial Reviews