Can You Use Tap Water In A Humidifier?

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If you are someone who is willing to buy a humidifier (or an old user), you should know that a humidifier is a simple device. It does a simple thing: humidifying the air. Well, how does it do that? It converts water into vapor.

But, a lot of people are confused about which type of water is best to use in a humidifier. Thus, questions such as “can you use tap water in a humidifier?” are commonly found on the internet. To answer this question,  we would like to say that you surely can use tap water in a humidifier. But, you shouldn’t.

Now, you should know that we are not suggesting this for no reason. There are facts behind this recommendation. In order to tell you exactly why you shouldn’t use tap water in your humidifier, we’ll have to go into a detailed discussion on the general mechanism of a humidifier. So, to have a crystal clear idea of whether you should use tap water in a humidifier or not, Read this discussion till the very end.

Which Water Is Best Suited To Use For Humidifiers?

You need to understand that a humidifier only has the ability to disperse the water molecules in the atmosphere in the form of vapor. Other than that, It doesn’t have any ability to filter or purify the water you’re putting inside it.

Which Water Is Best Suited To Use For Humidifiers

That’s why the best water to use in a humidifier is 100% demineralized and distilled water. Now, it’s not to say that you cannot ever use other kinds of water in a humidifier. To be more specific, a humidifier can handle any type of freshwater. But, if you want long life out of your humidifier, the only way to do this is to feed it with demineralized and purified distilled water.

How Can I Ensure The Best Water For The Humidifier?

The simplest way to supply your humidifier with demineralized and distilled water is to buy distilled water from your local store in gallons. Now, if you don’t like the idea of spending money on buying gallons of water, you can just boil the water in your home or use a reverse osmosis filter to generate demineralized water.

Remember, if you buy a reverse osmosis filter, you can easily generate demineralized water no matter which source you take the water from. For this job, we recommend that you use the APEC Water Systems ROES-50. It’s a very capable water system that can supply you with demineralized and filtered water 24/7. What’s more, this product comes with 2 years of service warranty. So, once you buy this, you don’t have to worry about pure water supply anymore.

Furthermore, in case you don’t want to spend a large chunk of money for a full-fledged water system, you can just use a demineralizing chemical(Alum) to instantly demineralize your tap water. In this regard, we recommend that you use the McCormick Alum. It’s the top choice of many households for immunizing water in a short time.

Is It Safe To Use Tap Water In A Humidifier?

Humidifiers are devices that can usually use tap water to humidify your atmosphere. But, tap water is not the ideal choice to use in a humidifier. It’s because tap water contains many contaminants and various types of minerals in it. Furthermore, many types of microfibers from nature can be present in tap water as well. What’s more, tap water may contain many types of pathogenic bacteria and fungi too.

Is It Safe To Use Tap Water In A Humidifier

As a result, using tap water in a humidifier opens the possibility of spreading diseases in the atmosphere by these contaminants. In addition to that, you might also face other difficulties such as below:

Dust Dispersion In The Atmosphere:

The minerals in the tap water can get dispersed in the atmosphere by the humidifier. As a result, you may notice dust accumulation on your furniture and floor. When the tap water is converted into vapor, It gets dispersed in the atmosphere and cools down. Therefore, the dust that was hoarded in the tap water gets dispersed in the atmosphere as well. That, in turn, will cause dust accumulation on your home furniture.

Now, dust accumulation isn’t directly harmful to your health. But, it might cause breathing problems for people with weak lungs and respiratory diseases. Furthermore, it may also cause difficulty for children to breathe. And, at last, if excess dust is accumulated on your furniture surfaces, you’d have to spend extra energy to clean off the excess dirt.

Mold Accumulation In The Tank:

Health issues are not the only matter of concern if you use tap water in your humidifier. Constant usage of tap water can cause the accumulation of slime or mold inside the water reservoir of the humidifier. What’s more, you may also notice an accumulation of moss inside the humidifier as a result of the constant usage of tap water.

Moreover, the generation of moss fungi, and bacteria inside the tank of the humidifier can spread various diseases in the home atmosphere.

Now, because of these alarming reasons, it is necessary that you use only demineralized water in the humidifier. Although a humidifier may be capable of using tap water to humidify your home, using tap water will surely shorten its lifetime.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will My Humidifier Get Damaged If I Use Tap Water?

If you occasionally use tap water on your humidifier, the likelihood of your humidifier getting damaged is very low. But, if you use tap water on a regular basis, moss and slime accumulation inside the humidifier can cause it to get damaged.

Furthermore, some humidifiers get permanently damaged for the lack of routine cleanup. This is why, if you do use tap water, experts recommend that you frequently clean your humidifier.

Will My Humidifier Last Longer If I Use Distilled Water?

Most probably, yes. The likelihood of your humidifier lasting longer is higher if you use distilled and demineralized water in the humidifier. But, you also need to remember that a humidifier is an electric machine. So, it can get damaged for various reasons such as electric shock, physical damage, improper usage, etc.

Therefore, it would be illogical to expect the humidifier to last longer on a huge margin just by using distilled water. Rather, we can expect a humidifier to offer us an expected lifespan if we regularly put distilled water in it.

Final Summary

The bottom line is, it is completely fine to occasionally use tap water as a humidifier. But, for the humidifier, you should never permanently use tap water as the prime source of water. Otherwise, you run the risk of having pink mold or slime accumulation in the humidifier.

On the other hand, if you use distilled water, you’ll get a longer life from your humidifier. And, using distilled water saves you from the drudgery of frequent clean-up of the humidifier as well.

However, whichever source of water you use for your humidifier, we hope you can stay away from air-borne diseases. And, we wholeheartedly wish that you can take full advantage of your humidifier. Best of luck!!

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