Humidifiers are used to help you ease nasal and chest congestion because of allergies and common cold. However, you should be careful if you do not maintain humidifiers properly since they can lead to some health complications.
Humidifiers are a perfect home for mold since these are also adding moisture to the air in the house. Water in closed dish with heat from motor and a foam filter or fabric makes ambiance that mold would progress.
There are some ways to inhibit mold growth in your humidifier and most of these are basic humidifier maintenance.
Ways to Maintain Humidifiers Properly
Cleaning humidifiers isn’t hackwork. Collocate this to your weekly and daily tasks and it will make the work less daunting.
Each day, you must dry, empty, and refill with clean water your humidifiers so bacteria do not have a chance to grow and collect. While in use, cleaning the entire unit on a weekly basis can make a difference.
Make sure not to clean the device if there’s someone who has a mold allergy or lung problem. Clean your unit’s tank with warm soapy water and wash it away.
Adding one cup of white vinegar to your tank when filling your humidifier can help you prevent mold growth. Vinegar is an antibacterial and antimicrobial. It won’t harm the different parts of humidifiers while it kills the mold spores.
In addition to that, you may purchase humidifier tablets to drop in and this is the same effects for higher prices. Several supplements include hydrogen peroxide, tea tree oil, and chlorine bleach can help. But, using bleach often may harm your humidifier hoses.
Basic humidifier maintenance would surely keep the contaminants from forming in the tank as well as getting released to the air.
However, the water also possesses the substances that make the cleaning necessary. Water has lots of minerals and can carry the risks of leaving layers in the tank.
Therefore, to keep the minerals that enter the tank to minimum use distilled water. In some cases, if you are using hard water, you must be careful when you are cleaning your unit.
Best Tips to Prevent Mold Growth In A Humidifier
Below are some of the tips you can consider to prevent mold growth:
Clean your humidifier thoroughly
Use the gentle cleanser and soft-bristled brush when you are cleaning out the inside of the water tank of your device. You should wipe down outside using a clean and wet cloth. Wait for every component to dry entirely. Then, fill the unit with fresh water as well as turn on.
Change water in your humidifier everyday
For those who don’t know, backwater is basically a convenient environment for mold spores and bacteria. Wipe down the water tank of your unit and empty it daily. For refill, make sure to use clean and fresh water.​
Use natural cleaning solution
In particular, this is advantageous to allergy and asthma sufferers. A rough chemical cleaner may typically leave rests and smell that might irritate the symptoms.
If you’re thinking of a better solution, you may use natural white vinegar for disinfecting any surfaces and eliminate buildup of minerals.
Use distilled water for filling in your humidifier
Distilled water contains less mineral content compared to faucet water. If you use distilled water, this makes the unit drive out white mineral dusts rarely to your indoor air and less likely for dust and dirt particles to invade your lungs.
What are the Reasons Why You Should Maintain Your Humidifier?
Every humidifier carries a risk of bacteria and mold growth. It can be due to the use of tap water and lack of cleaning. Not cleaning the components of the humidifier and changing water often would encourage mold growth.
As bacteria and mold thrive in the humidifier, they may integrate in the air you breathe in.
Tap water is rich in minerals and once it’s used for filling a humidifier, it may cause films that materialize as white dust. Dust mixes with moisturizing mist as well as originates a part of indoor air.
Ways to Destroy Humidifier Mold
Killing the mold spores in humidifiers reduce the risks of several health issues like inflammation of lungs or respiratory allergies. Thus, there are things you’ll require for destroying mold in humidifiers.
These are the easy steps and ensure that your humidifiers would be mold free:
- Turn off humidifiers and empty out your unit’s tank. Take your appliance outside in well-ventilated areas where you could work. Put on the rubber gloves to protect all your hands.
- Put scrubber, sponge or cleaning brush dipped in a 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide and scrub the hard plastic surfaces with it. After that, wipe off treated regions with clean and damp cloth.
- Combine a solution, which contains same parts chlorine bleach and water. Fill the mix to the tank and let that sit for about fifteen minutes. Soak clean cloth to the solution and wipe the outside and inside of the tank.
- Then, turn on your unit to the outside outlet. Let your unit run for thirty minutes.
- Spill the bleach solution and rinse the tank thoroughly under running water. Pour your unit’s tank with clean water and consider it running for 3 minutes to flush out bleach rest.
- Let the device to air-dry thoroughly or wipe surfaces dry with clean and soft cloth. After that, fill the reservoir to proper level with filtered or distilled water.
- To avoid mold growth reoccurrence, keep your unit clean. You should turn off the humidifier and soak reservoir in a 10% bleach solution for twenty minutes. Wipe dry with clean cloth and wash it thoroughly.
Clean thoroughly and ordinarily dry your humidifier before storage. See to it that you store your unit in dry location to inhibit mold growth. You should be cautious not to get water into the motor of the device during the process of cleaning.
Conclusion
Now that you know the best ways to maintain your humidifier to prevent mold, make sure to follow all of them. Dry air is not good for one’s skin and health, but neither is an environment with high moisture.
High level of humidity can result to worse dust mites and mold growth, so keep an optimal level of humidity.
