Vicks Warm Mist Humidifier

The basic concept of this humidifier is great. Unfortunately, it is also highly impractical and expensive to operate. The first thing to realize is hidden cost. This is a water boiler with a heating element going 24 hours a day. The electricity cost alone of such a device needs to be considered. At 248 watts, this consumes 1kwh every 4 hours. That means if you run it 24 hours a day (as many will in the winter), at a standard cost of 10 center per kwh this unit will cost $18.60 per month to operate. That is almost double the cost of a standard filter-based humidifier of the same size. Then there's the deal-killer: calcium in tap water. This unit has no way to filter calcium and other hard minerals. The heating element isn't buildup-resistant, so it literally bakes minerals onto the heating element, requiring one to either use distilled water, or to take time every day to clean the unit. Few people have that much time, as it requires dismantling the unit and using a brush (not provided) to get down inside the small spots and scrub away what calcium has accumulated. If you don't do this, if you wait say, a week to clean it... the calcium builds up so thickly even straight vinegar won't remove it. My unit lasted about a month and a half before I had to just give up on it, as it got to the point that even with effort the mineral deposit removal became impossible. It was so encrusted that soaking it overnight in vinegar didn't help. If you use distilled water it works great. But this unit can easily go through 2 or 3 gallons of water a day... bringing monthly operating cost to well over 60 to 90 dollars just for water (in addition to sucking down electricity). All in all the unit simply isn't practical. If they had a way to remove the calcium and other minerals from the water, some kind of filter (as my replacement unit has), then it would be great. If they had used a heating method a bit less intense than 240 watts (one would think 100 watts sufficient), it would be less-expensive to operate. But as it is, this is a unit that will either cost a fortune to operation... or is doomed to failure as the calcium and other minerals encrust on the heating element beyond all fixing. I definitely do not recommend this unit. Vicks had a great idea, but didn't bother to address the problems of water contamination and power consumption. The idea of using distilled water is ridiculously expensive, and there's simply no way to keep it clean when using tap water. That they didn't include a cleaning brush is simply inexcusable.