Vicks Nursery 1 Gallon Vaporizer with Night-Light Warm Steam Vaporizer for Baby Room

EDIT: Still a good, 5 star worthy product, I just notice I have to add salt every time I fill up the tank (about once a day for a week now) to produce a respectable amount of steam. Epsom salt works too, but just heap table salt works fine. But if you add too much salt, it produces steam faster and will run out of water if you leave it running overnight. I just run mine for a bit before bed as I sleep with the door closed so if I left it running all night it would be way too humid. Original: According to the box it comes with, this model isn't necessarily meant for adding humidity to a room. However, I like a lot of others have found it works perfectly for this. I haven't tried adding vapopacks or anything like that, but it looks easy enough to do. It turns on as soon as it's plugged in, kind of a pain to turn off at night if it isn't plugged in nearby. It also says don't put on a wooden surface- I have it on hard wood floors, and I find the spot where the steam comes out is far enough up that not a lot of condensation actually lands on the floor and saturates it. I've had it on for about an hour straight now and there's no dampness around it. Mine didn't steam so I had to add some salt to the tank, and I think I'll add another pinch as I think it might be steaming slowly. But this thing is easy to use, easy to fill, and the cleaning directions look easy to follow.

I have purchased 4 of these units over the past 5 years, for both home and office. The units have been the 1 gallon and 1.5 gallon size. They work exactly the same, except the 1.5 gallon size holds 50% more water. They take a little getting used to because they rely on conductivity of water to allow electricity to pass between electrodes to boil water and create steam. The way you control how much steam comes out is to adjust how much salt you add (depending on the mineral contents already in your water). If you plug the machine in and after a few minutes, no steam is added, added a small pinch of salt into the water. If it the unit does still not create steam add more salt until it does. Unless you happen to have a defective unit, it will work. Next time using the machine, put enough salt in from the beginning to make sure the water can boil. If you don't have enough minerals of salt dissolved in the water, the unit will produce no to little steam. In that case the simple remedy is to add a pinch more salt, until the unit is producing sufficent steam. If you have too much salt or minerals in the water, the machine will put out a lot of steam and can make a room noticeably hot and very humid. If that happens, pour the water out, refill the machine and simply put less salt in so it produces less steam. It takes a couple uses to get comfortable with how these machines work. They are basic, they don't have switches to break, filters to replace, de scalers to buy or countless other go wrong. They are super easy to maintain and work for years. If you use the machine and the water is gone, there is no current to pass between electrodes, basically creating a self shut off switch. The light can stay on, by the way, but once the electrodes are not covered in water there is no current being passed. Maintaining these units is both easier and faster than cool mist humidifiers. These steam humidifiers boil water to create steam, boiling water should kill most bacteria, mold or viruses that are in the water, so even if you are not perfectly fastidious with cleaning the unit, not much "crap" should be going into the air. Since it's just steam, you won't find mineral particles around the room, like you would on cool mist humidifiers. To clean the units, I change the water daily and as long as I do that, I'll just fill up and rinse the water tank with very hot water. If i don't use the machine or forget to dump the water after a day, I'll add a few table spoons to a half a cup of white vintage and slosh it around and then rinse in cold water until there is no smell of vinegar. I will also swish water through the top part. I've poured down the top and turned up upside down and poured water in. To date, that hasn't broken any of the units. Once a year I'll cut the top off of a 2 liter soda bottle and stick the unit in filled up with hot water and white vinegar. If you leave the water in the tank for a long time, it will grow mold and mildew. The instructions say to use either some bleach and water or I use white vinegar and hot water to clean it. If you see black flakes or particles in the water, it's just carbon from the electrodes. This will happen day one and the unit is fine and should work for years. Every humidifier takes maintaince to ensure it's running well and is pumping clean mist out. These units make that part easy and forgiving in terms of not pumping out musty, moldy water. The downside if any is that you are boiling water through the conduction of electricity through water. Resistance to the current builds heat which boils the water. It's like the heating element of a toaster or an electric stove in terms of how the heat is generated. If you use the machines overnight in multiple rooms, you will most likely notice a difference in your electricity bill. If that's not a trade off you are comfortable making, don't use them. I also have one at my desk at work and keep it on the floor next to me and try to remember to breathe the steam in frequently. If you want to use Vicks or kaz's products to put some menthol or camphor type scents into the air, they work fine, I like to use a few drops of essential oils like eucalyptus instead. If you are sick and need to open your sinuses, cover your head with a towel and breathe the steam in. Start with your face about 18-24 inches away to make sure you don't burn your face. Slowly bring your face closer to the unit to breathe as much steam in as possible. Take care to move your face in carefully and slowly as you are breathing in steam not a cool mist and you can burn yourself if you get too close. Speaking of burns, I have small children and I use a unit in their room at night. My four year old knows not to touch it and my one year old is in a crib. If you have children who can get too close and or touch the steam stream, they can get burned, so take the necessary precautions to make sure that does not happen (move it away from small hands) or don't buy the unit. I hope that helps!

Get thyself a 5 gallon bucket. And a thick (about 2" thick) piece of styrofoam. Discard thee of the 1.5 gallon plastic tub in which the vapourizer comes. It being useless to thou. Cut thy styrofoam into a circle that fits at the bottom of thy bucket. The top of thy bucket may be larger than the bottom, and thou wantst it to reach the bottom without rubbing the sides. Cut a hole in the middle of thy styrofoam so the blue vapourizer part fits snugly in thy hole. There are a couple of thin "wings" that will slice into the styrofoam as it seats firmly in thy hole. That's perfectly fine. Fill the 5 gallon bucket with about 5 gallons of water. Regular tap water is preferred. Plop thyself the bucket somewhere central in thy home but out of any path. Lest thou trip thyself over it at night. Place thy styrofoam on top of thy water and plug it in. Ensure there is enough slack in the power cord to allow thy styrofoam to reach the bottom of the bucket without getting hung up. Thy new 5 gallon redneck hot steam vapourizer will now fill the house with humidity at an extraordinary rate. I have dumped all 5 gallons into my house atmosphere in a mere 24 hour period - raising the overall humidity by as much as 30%. It is a trivial matter to remove the styrofoam part from the bucket and refill the bucket in the bathtub as necessary. And, with care and cleaning, the vaporizer may last 2 winters - the styrofoam, many years longer. Perhaps only one year with no care or cleaning. But even if it lasts but one year, this is cheap - super cheap, and you are not going to find another 5 gallon, super low maintenance vaporizer for anything less than 5X the price. An extra note is that this hot steam vaporizer is expensive to run - as it uses a lot of electricity. And the amount of vapor output depends on the amount of salts and minerals in your water. The more salts and minerals there are, the more vapor it will produce. If the last bucket vaporized too slowly, then keep the brackish water left at the bottom of the bucket when refilling. The extra salts and minerals in the water will ensure more output. Conversely, if the output was already adequate, dump out the remaining brackish water before refilling. Also worthy of note is the fact that the salts and minerals eat away at the carbon probes inside the vaporizer. These probes are what does the work, and this is why the unit only lasts 1 or 2 years at most. Salts and minerals collect on these probes and make them less effective over time. They also slowly dissolve the carbon. To prevent this, you have to take it entirely apart and clean the carbon probes before storing it. And there are supposedly no user serviceable parts inside. So you're left entirely on your own - only someone comfortable with taking electronics apart and putting them back together should attempt this. It's cheap - buying one every year should not break your bank. So cleaning the probes is merely an option, not a requirement. The big disadvantage is that it is an electricity hog, and is expensive to run. That is why boiling water vaporizers have all but disappeared these days. The two big advantages over evaporation and ultrasonic humidifiers are that 1. it does not dump salts or minerals into the air. It will not coat your home in powder. 2. by boiling the water, it will not put live mold, fungus, or bacteria into the air. You don't need special chemicals to sterilize the water, or worry about mold or fungus growing in the filters. There are also no filters to clog or replace. But that is offset by having to buy a new one of these every couple of years. I used to have a humidifier that used an aluminum encased heating element (like your electric stove has) that lasted 20 years. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have bought four of them way back then, to last me the rest of my life.