How do you clean a humidifier?

Answer 1

In hard water areas where lime deposits and scale build up in your humidifier you need vinegar. Pour it in, the item that holds the water and leave it be. As inexpensive as vinegar is, fill the entire item instead of swishing it around to reach the other areas. If it is not full it will not clean out all the scale. And just leave it. Depending on the amount of scale perhaps a minimum of 4 hours to even 24 hours. You will see the hard water areas turn white and kind of look "fizzy", the vinegar is "active". If there is a big big amount of scale, after some time the vinegar will no longer clean the scale, becoming "inactive" and you would need to use more new vinegar. White vinegar is fine. By occasionally feeling the inside of the item, the surface or interior will be smooth when the scale is all gone. If your really ambitious or impatient you can help rid the scale by scraping it, like with a coffee spoon or something smooth edged but tough so it won't leave marks. If you let it sit long enough though it will remove scale from your humidifiers, bathroom faucets, kitchen sink areas and faucets, anything that pretty much has scale that the vinegar can sit in or on, like our coffee pots too, and it's not a chemical so you don't have that to worry about! Bacteriastat and humidifier water conditioners are available at Wal-mart and are inexpensive, usually by the humidifiers. If your water in the humidifier becomes slimy and has an odor you may most likely have bacteria. A quick fix til you get to the store to get your Bacteriastat if you run out is just a very tiny amount of bleach to temporarily freshen the water and hopefully rid the bacteria. And I do mean temporary and a "tiny" amount of bleach. My floor humidifier which humidifies an entire house would take perhaps 1 tsp to 1 tbsp bleach. Every time you fill your humidifier also, turn your filter and it will last longer. Never squeeze out your filter though. They are fragile.