It’s easier to conserve energy and save money when you know how much you’re actually using. However, we often tend to overlook some of the small appliances in our home, because we think they won’t use enough power to actually impact our electric bill. In reality though, these little appliances can make a big difference in our bill each month.
How Much Energy Your Humidifier Uses
If you’re trying to discover how much it costs to run your humidifier, it’s important to first understand how much electricity it uses. This depends on two important factors:
- Efficiency: The more water your humidifier puts into the air, the more effective it is. As such, efficiency is the energy, in watt-hours, needed to emit a gallon of water into the air. Here’s where cool mist and ultrasonic humidifiers work better since they use fans.
- Room size: This is important as you want your humidifier to “fill” the room with humidity. The larger the room, the more time this will need. The more time required, the longer your humidifier will need to run.
You must also take into consideration if your humidifier has a stand-by mode and if you actually use it. This is typically included if your humidifier has convenient electronic controls, such as; timers, humidity sensors, and stored presets. If you have these features, your humidifier enters stand-by mode when its supply tank runs out of water. During this time, your humidifier is still “on” even though it isn’t running. To reduce this energy you’ll need to turn the unit “off.”
Determining the Cost of Running Your Humidifier
Now that you know what draws the electricity out of your humidifier, you can decide how much it will cost to actually run your humidifier. This will actually depend on the type of humidifier you use. There are three main types today:
- Cool mist humidifiers use a wicking method to create about two gallons of output in 500 sq. ft. area within a 24 hour period. It uses about 50 watts of electricity to do so. At ¢10/kWh running your unit for 10 hours/day, it will cost $4.50 to run for three months.
- Warm mist humidifiers steam one gallon of water into the air of a 1,000 sq. ft. room in about 12 hours. This requires 260 Watts of electricity, which when left running for 10 hours a day over a three-month period you’ll pay $2.70 if you pay ¢10/kWh for your electricity.
- Ultrasonic humidifiers work in a similar fashion to warm mist humidifiers, so their electricity usage will cost you about the same amount of money.
With all these considerations in mind, if you want to run an inexpensive humidifier you should opt for either a warm mist or ultrasonic model.
