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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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a necessity not a luxury
The VENTA-AIRWASHER LW44 allows me to breath without gagging in my dry air winter time house. Cold water evaporates off the spinning discs instead of spraying water directly into the room like other humidifiers while the fan sucks in air and deposits the dust and grime where it is washed by the water. This ingenious method leaves my rooms (I have two AIR-WASHERS) with clean smelling air that is humidified at the right levels. (The dryer the air, the more the water evaporates off the discs giving the right level of humidity.)
Although the directions say change the water rinse out the unit, and add the water additive every ten to fourteen days, I do it every three weeks which works out fine. The AIR-WASHER is a great product and one that is truly essential for my families comfort and well-being. (my wife has asthma and it helps her breathing.)
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Expensive but works very well
Unit in use every night for a month. Works flawlessly, much better than the wick filter type it replaced. It is pretty dry here (30 - 40%) year around. This unit puts out almost 2 gal of water overnight. This is twice what the previous humidifier put out. It is quite expensive up front, but there are no filters to buy. We had to replace filters in our old unit every 90 days, and even then, they got moldy and the performance of the humidifier would slowly decrease. The Venta just keeps on chugging! Easy to clean and refill. Also like the low power consumption, water based air cleaning, and reasonable noise level, even at highest speed.
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The Best
I was so confused by all the information you can get on humidifiers I bought four and tried them all. I also have an AprilAire Central humidifier and spoke to our HVAC company as part of this. Here's the net:
When the humidity is right (40%-60%) it eliminates dry skin and stuffy noses. My dog also quit scratching. Guitar makers recommend it.
The Venta LW 44 is my favorite unit. It has no filter at all. It cleans the air using the water. It's easy to fill, and requires less attention in terms of filling and cleaning. Overall it's a simpler design. Visually it's the least obtrusive unit - the only one my daughter would allow in her room. It's also the quietest. It also cleans the air so it eliminates an air cleaning device. In some reviews it is criticized for not humidifying. Unlike the others it doesn't have a built-in hygrometer. The moisture it puts into the air is not as noticeable as the others. However, I got a separate hygrometer and it works as well as the others. The humidity can be the same level in a room, and it will feel more humid with one unit than another. The steam units make you feel the moisture the most. The feeling of moisture - by-the-way - is not good. The less it feels moist the better. Venta allows you to use scented oils, if you like that option. Others do not. Amazon has several hygrometers. I got the Honeywell TM005X Wireless Thermo-Hygrometer.
Central Unit - The central unit will not do the job alone. We have a two-story house and it really has no impact on the upper level, where the bedrooms are and where you most need it.
Air-O-Swiss U7142 Ultrasonic humidifier. I saw it at a Bed, Bath and Beyond while shopping and it looked so slick I got it. It's not obvious until you get it home, but the instructions require you to place it up 3 feet off the ground, even though it looks like a floor unit. This is going to be a problem in most rooms because it limits where you can put it and it becomes the visual focus of the room. It worked for one day, though it produced a lot of white powder that covered the unit itself and would have become a problem for every object in the room. It only got the room to 29% humididty. On the second day the red light was on, so I refilled it and could never get it to work again. After hours of effort and troubleshooting with the customer support line, I could never make it work. The good news is that Bed, Bath and Beyond was super easy to deal with on the return and had the Venta model I discovered when troubleshooting the Air-O-Swiss.
Honeywell QuietCare - This unit will definitely humidify a room. It has a built in hygrometer. So you can set it to get to a certain level and stop. The two big tanks make the job of filling it less frequent, and the two-tank design is a good idea since it would be hard for most people to handle a single tank with 11 gallons of water. On the downside, it's a bit loud on high and you need it on high when it's cold outside and the humidity inside is low. The tanks often don't work, as they have to be positioned just right and I've never mastered getting them on 100% right 100% of the time. It has a filter, so it's cleaning the air - but the instructions tell you to remove the (rather large) filter and re-wet it every time you fill it. That's such a pain I doubt anyone would do it. Another reviewer suggested just flipping it over each time - good idea! After a while it begins to smell a bit moldy, so you have to clean it and change the filter.
Honeywell Quick Steam - This unit also definitely quickly and noticeably humidifies a room. Since it's the hot steam type you can actually see the steam and you feel it more in the air. It has a smaller tank - needs refilled more often. Also has a filter, but only for the water, so it never has a bad smell. It gurgles and my wife can't sleep in a room with it. After a couple months of use, the heater element was caked with mineral deposits and it was very hard to clean. Some people have noted in these reviews that they just buy a new one every year.
Rating: 
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CR rates it low
Just saw a repost on it from CR and they were not impressed. I love the claim of "gets stuff down to 10 microns." 10 microns in the particle world is HUGE! Most debris that size is not even airborne. Even the most basic water filters, for example, are rated at 3 microns.
Rating: -
Sometimes cheapest is the best option
Used both this model and the smaller LW24 for a year.
Here's my experience:
- Good, not great humidification. Specifically, there's not a need for a humidistat, but they also take a while to get humidity up.
- Quiet at low speed (best for sleeping), tolerable at medium speed (best for maintaining humidity), noisy at high speed (best for getting humidity up to desired level)
- Seasonal maintenance cost is reasonable (about $10 for end of season cleaner, $20 for a season's worth of water additive)
- The biggie: ultimately no easier to clean than other humidifiers, which is a big selling point. If it was as simple as they make it out to be (rinse and wipe out the unit) it would be good, but I had the same experience as Amazon user djac "beantown boy" - a yellowish waxy residue built up on multiple inner surfaces, including nooks & crannies hard to clean, and to a lesser extent fan blades. This residue is difficult to remove. I got it even using filtered water, and not using their aromatherapy additives. On balance, this residue makes maintaining the Venta more effort than some other humidifiers.
A couple of caveats to the last point:
- I live in a brownstone New York City apartment. There is probably a higher than average level of dust/soot/cooking oil in my air, and perhaps that's what's causing the residue. So it's possible that other users won't have this problem.
- Strictly speaking, you might not have to clean that residue. It doesn't seem to impair the functioning. But I found it too yucky to bear leaving there. I would say I'm probably cleaner than the average guy I know, but I'm no obssessive.
My advice, which I'm about to follow, is to buy a $25 2 - speed warm steam unit (Duracraft DWM-250 / Honeywell DWM-910 is ideal, both available from Amazon Marketplace sellers) and stand alone hygrometer ($10-20). I've had several other humidifiers with built in humidistats - none were accurate, you might as well manage it yourself, just need to check once or twice a day. Don't fuss too much over maintaining the humidifier. Instead of weekly maintenance, which I dreaded, I plan to just wipe out the water tray each time I refill water.
When it stops working or requires too much cleaning effort, toss it out and buy another one next season. It's no more expensive than the seasonal maintenace costs for the Venta.
I also tried using a cast iron kettle. Problem was that the stove is not ideally placed from a circulation perspective to humidify my apartment, and it wouldn't keep steaming for long when placed on a trivet in my bedroom.
If you do want to try the Venta - buy it from a place where you can return it after a season. I know of a *b*ig *b*ox *&b*azaar that will let you do that :) These are just too expensive to risk w/o an open-ended return policy.
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