Selecting Electric Humidifiers was a BLACK and WHITE Choice For Me

Let me tell you why...

I received a call a few weeks back from an energy consultant looking to replace the electric humidifier in a church with an ultrasonic humidifier to reduce the parish’s electric bills and possibly reduce maintenance costs.

I contacted Condair to see what their position was on ultrasonic humidifiers and if they had information that I could take back to the engineer. My timing it turns out could not have been any better in that Condair Engineering had just finished testing two ultrasonic humidifiers in their lab.

Right away I was informed that the price for ultrasonic is a serious issue. Two twenty pound per hour units cost almost $20,000. This makes payback hard to justify. The testing also showed that the minimum absorption requirement was 12 feet and in some cases well over 16 feet. At all conditions the unit had water droplets touching the floor from the space unit for the first 5 feet.

It was also observed that the units had to be installed perfectly level. The tanks are not sealed and will leak otherwise. On top of that the tank is open to the controller board and splashed it in testing.

Now this was interesting. The instruction manual requires that you fill the unit at start up and do a manual drain to make sure you remove any metal filings from manufacturing. The units Condair received did not come with manual drains so they had to wait 72 hours for the auto drain to kick in before operating the unit.

I called Condair in the afternoon and asked if they could put together a payback comparison. I got the attached report back from Chris Habets, one of Condair’s new Product Mangers the very next morning. This sealed the deal. Electric humidifiers stay and ultrasonic is out.

Oh and one other thing about ultrasonic that you need to know. Condair tested
the sound levels of the space unit at minimum 75.2 dB and as high as 79.1 dB.

Using electric humidifiers was a black and white choice for me.