Humidifier adds moisture to the air in your home. It reduces dry air levels in your home by mystifying water in different processes like – evaporation, spinning rotating disc, vibrating water, etc. Some people say as a humidifier increases humidity levels, it also increases the oxygen level in their home.
Does a humidifier increase oxygen in your home? The simple answer is no. A humidifier does not actively increase the oxygen level in your home, but it can passively. How? This article will discuss your question with some related questions that will arise in your mind in the coming days.
Before that, you should know how does a humidifier works, right? Let’s go –
How Does A Humidifier Work?
There are five types of humidifiers, and every humidifier works differently. Let’s see –
Whole House/Central Humidifier:
It is attached to either the air duct system or the return air duct of your home and controlled by a furnace control board. A shutoff valve controls the water supply to the humidifier via the water supply line. When the air furnace blower fan runs, then the humidifier operates.
Due to the running of the blower fan, the humidifier gets current from the control board. When humidistat feels that air needs some moisture, then humidistat sends voltage to a water inlet valve or a drum drive motor.
There are two types of humidifiers such as -flow-through and reservoir.
The water supply line is directly connected with the water valve inlet in flow-through. The water is then distributed throughout the humidifier when the blower fan runs. In this way, water droplets add to the air and increase the moisture.
The water supply line connects to a float and valve assembly in the reservoir. This float and valve assembly controls the water level in the reservoir pan. A motor rotates the drum with a filter pad attached. The amount of air circulated through the drum is moistured at the running time of the drum.
Evaporative Humidifier:
The water blows through a wet filter to produce mist. Finally, the mist is added to the air by the fan.
Steam Humidifier:
The mechanism of this humidifier is the same as your daily cooking. When humidistat gets the signal of humidity in your room, it sends a signal to the humidifier. The humidifiers heat the water in the reservoir. Finally, water starts transforming into steam. Since the mist adds to the air, the humidity level increase.
Ultrasonic Humidifier:
A metal diaphragm plate vibrates high-frequency, breaking water into micron-sized droplets. The smaller-sized water droplets easily mix with the air of your home. As a result, humidity increases in your home. As the ultrasonic humidifier does not use any fan, there is no noise while running it at night.
Impeller Humidifier:
An impeller humidifier produces mist using a rotating disc. This disc permits water through a diffuser. Finally, the diffuser breaks water like an ultrasonic humidifier into water droplets. Water droplets mix with air in your house and increase the humidity or moisture level.
So, in our long study on the types of humidifiers, we found that all humidifiers add moisture to the air. No humidifiers increase O2 in your home. However, humidifiers can increase the oxygen level in your home passively. I will talk about it later in this article. Keep reading.
What Is The Function Of A Humidifier?
The primary function of a humidifier is – it adds moisture or increases the humidity of your home. Adding moisture to the air prevents the growth of molds, yeasts, and other micro-organisms in your home. It also keeps skin moisture, prevents coughing, nose bleeding at night, increases the lifespan of your expensive furniture.
Does A Humidifier Increase Oxygen?
No, a humidifier does not increase the oxygen levels in your home. Ordinary humidifiers only convert water into steam or vapor to increase your home’s humidity levels. Whereas, oxygen humidifier can increase the oxygen level in your home. It is also used in hospitals.
I will talk about the differences between regular and oxygen humidifiers in this article.
How To Increase The Oxygen Level In A Room With A Humidifier
As I have mentioned earlier, a humidifier can increase oxygen levels passively. Here is the illustration of my statement –
A humidifier can increase the oxygen level in a room in two ways –
- Many people want to have plants in their homes. If there has 30 to 40 percent humidity, plants will grow healthy. But if the humidity level is not at the recommended level, then plants will die out. Eventually, the production of oxygen will be stopped by photosynthesis.
So, having an air humidifier helps your home plants grow healthy and produce more oxygen in your room.
- Humidity increases the weight of the pollen, viruses, bacteria of air. As a result, these detrimental organisms settle down to the earth. Indirectly, your humidifiers increase the oxygen level in your house.
However, you can do it by mimicking the following strategy –
You have to use a concentrator with a humidifier. A hose connects the concentrator with the humidifier. The concentrator takes the environmental air and separates oxygen from other gasses. Then, it supplies oxygen to the humidifier, where oxygen comes out along with mists. In the meanwhile, the oxygen level and humidity level increase real quick.
How To Increase The Oxygen Level In Your Room Without A Humidifier
There are many ways to increase the oxygen levels in your house. Here, I will enumerate a few of them. Here we go –
- Open your window, especially in the winter season, to get fresh oxygenated air in.
- Close your pantries, closet while you have open windows or doors to prevent air from being trapped.
- Get a higher efficiency reporting value air filter.
- Install an air extractor fan.
- You can use a portable oxygen tank.
- Plant trees in your house.
- Use an oxygen concentrator or get compressed gas or liquid oxygen.
- Burn beeswax or use a salt lamp, though they are not proven to increase house oxygen levels.
Oxygen Humidifier Vs. Regular Humidifier
As I have said before, an oxygen humidifier increases the oxygen, whereas a regular humidifier increases humidity. I think you should know the difference between them. Here we go –
- Regular humidifiers are used in the house. Oxygen humidifiers are used in hospitals during oxygen therapy.
- Regular humidifiers merely add moisture to the environment. Whereas oxygen humidifiers add moisture and increase the oxygen level of a room.
- You can run regular humidifiers with normal or hard water. You have to use sterile water to run an oxygen humidifier.
Benefits of humidifier
The most frequent question from the consumer side is- “Is an air humidifier good for health? Benefits of humidifier are given below in short –
- It prevents air-borne disease.
- It prevents skin from drying.
- It prevents snoring and nosebleeding at night.
- It warms your home.
- It increases the service of your furniture.
- It prevents static electricity.
- It eases the symptoms of allergy and other diseases.
- It adds moisture to your houseplants.
- It keeps your sinuses soothe and cilium healthy.
- It reduces coughing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is A Humidifier Good For The Lungs?
A humidifier is good for the lungs till it is clean. It will help clear your lungs so that you can breathe well. However, when it is dirty, it spreads the flu germs. That is eventually harmful to both healthy and sick people. Keeping your humidifier clean helps with improving breathing and reducing lungs problems.
People with allergies or asthma may face “hypersensitivity pneumonitis” when they inhale bacteria containing vapor.
Does A Humidifier Give Fresh Air?
No, the humidifier neither gives fresh air nor clean air. However, it emits water vapor or mist to air. The mist then increases the weight of pollen, viruses, and other micro-organisms. So, they settle down to the earth. We can say that a humidifier directly adds moisture to the air but cleans the air indirectly.
Do Humidifiers Help With The Shortening Of Breath?
Humidifiers can ease your respiratory problems, but you should reach out to the physician to know the root cause of your short breath. Humidifiers help with preventing snoring, coughing, dyspnea. However, you should take consultation from physicians when needed.
Does More Humidity Equal More Oxygen?
No, more humidity means less oxygen in the air. This condition leads to hypoxia. If the hypoxic condition is stable for a long time, the death rate will increase. Why? Because in hypoxic condition, blood does not get enough oxygen to supply to the cells. As a result, necrosis of cells occurs. Finally, cells go to the state of no return.
Should The Humidifier Run All Night?
It depends on you. If you have a nose bleeding problem at night due to dry air or trouble breathing while supine, you should run your humidifier all night to balance humidity levels 30 to 50 percent humidity levels. On top of that, the air becomes dry during winter, so you should run your humidifier all night to obtain optimum humidity levels.
Right now, there are different automatic humidifiers. You can set your desired humidity level and have a great night. Most people reports, they get the optimum humidity level within 12 hours.
Do You Need An Air Humidifier With An Oxygen Concentration?
There has no cut-and-dried answer to it. You do not need an air humidifier with an oxygen concentration if you do not want to increase oxygen levels in your home along with humidity. On the flip side, you should connect an air humidifier with an oxygen concentrator by a hose to increase oxygen levels.
What Is Better For An Asthma Air Humidifier Or Air Purifier?
An air purifier is better for asthma because it traps the dust, smoke, pollen, pets dander out of your home by filtering them. Excessive humidity is even worse for your asthma. So, an air purifier is the best option here.
Is An Oxygen Level 94 Is Bad?
No, 94 percent blood oxygen level is good for your health. If you see your blood oxygen level is lower than 90 percent, you should contact with physician. Between 91 to 94 percent oxygen saturation level in blood indicates you to do either X-ray or heart test.
Do I Need A Plant Humidifier?
Yes, you need a plant humidifier if you want to see the healthy growth of your indoor plants. Plants like rubber plants, Aloe vera, etc., are high oxygen-producing plants. And, they need around 40 to 60 percent relative humidity for optimum growth. So, you should buy a humidifier if you want to have optimum oxygen in your room.
Conclusion
My final words on your question, “does humidifier increase oxygen” is that the humidifier is not made to increase oxygen levels. Instead, it is designed to increase the humidity level of a house or room. If you severely need to improve your house’s oxygen level, you in your house you can connect an oxygen concentrator with your humidifier. Besides, you can practice indoor planting, get an oxygen tank, or install an extractor fan, and so on.
