What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier(angelalashbrook.medium.com) |
What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier(angelalashbrook.medium.com) |
Model# HUMID16-WHT
Home Depot used to or still does sell them. They have a ceramic filter, anti microbial body, programmable for time or humidity level, and can produce mist. It’s actually quiet as well.
If you own your home and have central air, you might want to look into whole home humidifiers. They’re surprisingly not that expensive.
The vicks giant bulb thing for $20 that they recommend gets pretty gross because you can't get all the water out and the slag accumulates as it doesn't work with distilled water.
Am I wrong to only be worried about cleaning the parts that get wet, and not really care about the rest?
Right now in new york city it's 30°F, 87% relative humidity, and a barometric pressure of 29.45 in.
Using this calculator: https://www.rotronic.com/en-us/humidity_measurement-feuchtem...
We can calculate the specific humidity of NYC, that's around 21.42gr/lb right now. That's the mass of water vapour in the air.
However, most people don't keep their houses at 30°F! You heat up the air in your house to room temperature.
So if a New York City resident heat up air that has a specific humidity of 21.42gr/lb to 70°F, they end up with a relative humidity of 19.57% inside their house. This feels very dry! In fact, it's dryer than the Sahara Desert (approximately 25% relative humidity on average).
Maybe because... it doesn't have a motor.
It works well and puts a lot of water into the air. Once a week, I rinse it with a diluted bleach solution out of a spray bottle. Problem solved.
I understand there are "efficiency" gains with the evaporative style, but it's absolutely dwarfed by the horrible ownership experience. After my poor experience with this unit, I would only consider an evaporative humidifier if I had to humidify a large space.
* The only "active" element is a solenoid water valve.
* Since water flows through once and then out a drain there's no standing water to grow mold (at the cost of extra water usage; mine is 3 gallons per hour though the humidifier is rarely on 100% of the time).
* Maintenance is a new water panel yearly (about $20) and some cleaning, again yearly.
* You need smart controls or to regularly adjust a manual humidistat to not over-humidify your house based on outdoor temperature, though this is exactly the same as with "portable" humidifiers.
The "biscuit" in there was kind of old, so I went to some trouble to acquire a new one. Difference in humidification: None whatsoever. But while it doesn't impressively cycle the humidistat (I monitor that) like the old rotating foam drum humidifier did, the air quality is fine.
The previous "standing water" type humidifier was a nightmare. Some sort of microorganism in there caused copious amounts of yellow crud on everything and no amount of cleaning could get rid of it for good. Air quality wasn't affected, but... yuck. I didn't try bleach in there because I hate the smell of it.
Humidifiers are just inherently an iffy technology.
How? The water tank has a screw-on cap with a "plunger" in middle, and that plunger opens only if you push it (to let water flow when you lower it into the humidier). It doesn't splash water around when carried. This makes no sense.
The only explanation I can think is that this person carries the water tank cap-downward, and their "plunger" leaks. That seems just silly to carry it like that, why would you do that, especially if the end result bothers you.
What is it in the US that creates the need/demand for Humidifiers?
Today where I live, the relative humidity outside is around 50%, and temperature -5c. That puts the absolute humidity around 1.7 grams per cubic metre. At 20c indoor temperature, that equates to around 10% relative humidity. Far too low.
When you heat cold winter air to a comfortable room temperature you are increasing it's ability to hold moisture without adding any moisture. This has the effect of decreasing the relative humidity. The bigger the change in temperature the more you decrease humidity by heating it.
Winters are cold enough in some places that indoor relative humidity can easily get so low it effects humans negatively - dry cracked skin, dry cracked mucous membranes, sore throat, static buildup. Add to that low humidity aids in the spreading of viruses.
I started with distilled water, and it worked great - the wick/filter stayed in pristine shape for the 3 weeks I did so. However, buying distilled water was about twice as expensive as changing the filter every two weeks: $0.99/gal at 1-2 gal/day vs a $6.99 Walmart-brand filter. I haven't looked around to see if I can find cheaper reverse-osmosis water.
I have not had to clean the fan yet, but that does seem difficult.
My biggest issue is the fan noise. The machine only works well when set to the highest speed, but the fan is quite loud at that setting. I have the machine a few feet away from my bed, and High makes it hard to sleep. Medium/Low are no problem, so I just leave it on all the time on Medium.
Refills are only an issue if you carry the tank by the handle. I only use the handle to take it out of/put it into the unit, and carry it upside-down in my arm when taking it to the bathroom to refill.
Didn't see this mentioned in another comment, but when it's time to de-calcify the boiling chamber (very easy to access on this model) I squirt a little Lysol toilet boil cleaner in there and let it foam and sizzle on the scale buildup for about ten minutes, then wash it away.
Anecdotally, I saw this model in a couple different violin shops around the time I got it. Typically in one of these places there will be showrooms where you can try out bows and instruments, and they usually have about a hundred violins/violas/cellos hanging up in there.
Humidity control is extremely important for fine string instrument storage, so I figured if this is the model a shop has settled upon to protect $100-200K of their merchandise, it's probably a good choice.
Finally, I also own a cheapo hygrometer. It shows us hitting 15%-30% when running forced heat in the room. When I turn this on, it pushes up to 35%-40%. That's effective enough for me.
Honestly, this thing works. And I buy a six pack of cheaper meshes and just swap them out as the mesh yellows/gets a bit crusty, which usually takes a few weeks. No big deal, cost of doing business.
As a DIY project I would rate it’s difficulty as moderate.
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/crane-1-2-gallon-humidifi...
"Crane 1.2-Gallon Humidifier" -- 1.2 Gallon, cold mist ultrasonic, has those weird LCD buttons but has been pretty reliable. you clean it periodically with vinegar and a cloth. The only issue I've had is it's easy to accidentally overfill. The lid comes off so you can clean it super easily.
I also have one of these and the only thing I really dislike about it is the 'glug glug' sound randomly throughout the night. But it is worth pointing out that I live in Texas and so I don't have extreme low humidity very often or persistently.
I wonder how a tote full of water with an aquarium pump, washable furnace filter, and fan would do.
https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-humidifier/ID=30...
There's no wick to clean and they're nearly silent.
Last year I got the AairCare 831000. It's basically a large tub with wick and a fan on top. No gurgling, massive capacity, can humidify the whole apartment and you refill it with a bucket (so much easier and less messy). No nooks and crannies to clean and you can basically bleach the whole tub if you want to.
I have the same model in a medium sized room, with the hygrometer on the other end of the room where it is open to the rest of the house and the second floor. About 3/4 of a tank yesterday bumped us from about 17% humidity to 22%, with a fire going in the fireplace.
I suspect what really kills you is the ventilation. If ventilations,air leaks, etc, turn over the air in a room once an hour, any humidty you dump in gets sucked right out in no time flat.
Generally I've been absolutely thrilled with Wirecutter's recommendations ever since their inception.
Admittedly, there were a few occasions where long-term usability and reliability were issues; the sorts of things you would expect reviewers to miss because it's simply impractical to expect them to use a product on a daily basis for a whole year or something like that.
By the way, in the winter we almost never use the dryer when washing clothes - always hang them up and they dry quickly and add their moisture to the air. We also open the dishwasher door as soon as it finishes and let the moisture evaporate into the air. Etc.
I wonder if this was part of the reason that the Honeywell unit was recommended.
1: https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...
2: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/our-response-to-nextdesk/
- it is not very thorough or strict (rather leniant)
- it has a really poor selection of product categories
- besides a table of comparing the products features it has very little editorial buying guides that go more into detail.
In the case of the German magazine, when you read through some of the guides they can be quite entertaining, they slap the wrists of even the most powerful (german) companies if something breaks or if they falsely advertise features, or if there are critical design flaws in the product. I really wish CR would be as critical.
Although they do come up with the testing protocol, I'm pretty sure they don't do the testing themselves, and contract it out to specialist labs/testing companies (not a bad thing).
In general though, I agree it's easier to trust them, being an independent foundation, and getting no commission. Wirecutter got acquired in 2016, too.
I've also found it hard to get that German experience in other places. At the core, it's just down to how much/how many people care about something like quality. I think the (German) federal regulations and Stiftung Warentest are a result of this culture, but also make it easier to care about quality. It's a nice feedback cycle. The internet can substitute, but it's much more effort.
Obviously I can't vouch for the reliability of these organisations, but it may provide a starting point.
> In it, the company claims that The Wirecutter initially picked NextDesk as an editorial recommendation but later downgraded the recommendation after NextDesk declined to set up an affiliate-revenue agreement.
>We want to be clear: NextDesk’s claim is false, and its representation of our editorial decision-making process is factually inaccurate.
That claim as described is in fact TRUE. NextDesk was picked, then declined an affiliate-revenue agreement, then the recommendation was downgraded. That was the order of events. The rest I don't know, but it's pretty ridiculous to have that kind of error when these kinds of things often result in lawsuits.
The phrasing implies a causal relationship, which is what Wirecutter disputes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141719
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408
I still use The Wirecutter, but in combination with other sources. I try to ask myself the question: do there appear to be competing products that wouldn't provide the affiliate revenue and therefore potentially be left out of the recommendations?
If I'm just deciding between a bunch of stuff on Amazon, then I assume there's no thumb on the scale.
I had the exact same issue with this humidifier. I got their upgraded version instead and that was better.
that's the most important. if you're looking for humidifier recommendations online and you find a community of people dedicated to humidifiers and there's one they recommend, then you're probably good. but there's no reason to trust any sort of general review site.
I blog and I take tips and Patreon and I sometimes hit the front page of HN. I make a pittance. This means that I have no real choice but to do other kinds of paid writing.
So I've thought long and hard about this and I've read the stuff on HN for years where people here don't want ads on the sites they visit, don't want paywalls, don't like content marketing and "pay for play" affiliate sites, etc etc etc.
And then also do not want to leave tips, support a person's Patreon, etc.
If you give writers and other creatives no means to earn an adequate income trying to meet your prissy high standards for so-called ethics [1], then don't be all shocked that they will do whatever happens to actually work to line their pockets, though it involves lying, writing reviews for pay without actually ever touching the product, etc.
People need to eat. Not everyone can be a programmer.
Make it possible for creatives to establish a middle class income. Stop telling people like me "Writing doesn't pay. You know that. Go get a real job." and find a way to make it pay such that doing the kind of writing you want to see is what gets rewarded and not sketchy garbage.
Writing does pay. It just pays for doing bad things and occasionally someone like J.K. Rowling gets stinking rich. It doesn't have to be that way. The world can decide it values good writing and that writers deserve a decent income and make choices to move the world in that direction.
[1] These so-called "ethics" seem to boil down to "we expect writers to write for free and find some other means to support themselves while producing quality content as...a hobby, I guess" -- aka slave labor. And then folks get upset if you frame it that way.
It has decided. The sad truth is just that “good writing” just isn’t that valuable (as can be seen in how much people pay) if you don’t have some killer content to back it up. Good writing is requisite but not sufficient.
Just because something is a sustaining profession for a few people doesn’t mean it should be for everyone who does that. Do you realize how many photographers and other artists are in the same category?
> aka slave labor.
Something that is voluntary is - by definition - not slave labor. Nobody is forcing you to write.
There are people who effectively tweet full time. Is that “slave labor”? There are people to play games full time. Is that “slave labor”?
> And then folks get upset if you frame it that way.
I hope you can see why.
Finally, people don’t get mad at writers because they want to make money. They get mad when the writers’ hide the fact that the money has tainted and shaped everything they are saying. A review site that is shilling products because of kickbacks corrupts the entire thing.
Can you imagine your friend recommending you a doctor and then you find out that the friend actually thinks the doctor is terrible but got $1k for the referral?
I’m not saying that to be catty. One of the little mercies of the quarantine is the number of people who have figured out how to keep making content. It’s a little bit of normalcy, or at least it was until everyone’s personal grooming limitations started causing that illusion to crack, along with bits of my sanity.
I got one because in Arizona, the water quality's terrible, but the air is bone-dry to the point it turns your skin to sandpaper. The hard water means that vaporizing humidifiers fill the air with white dust that coats everything, because they vaporize the minerals. Evaporative humidifiers don't; the minerals all end up in the filter. And, while an evaporative humidifier has no trouble going through a full tank of water overnight on the lowest settings in AZ, it phsyically can't oversaturate the air like a sauna in the way that a vaporizing humidifier does.
The air in the north east just doesn't get dry enough (maybe in winter, but then you don't have the AC fighting your humidifier), and if boiling a pot of water is what the author's looking for, an evaporative humidifier just doesn't do that.
Tired of the moldy mess, we too now run an ultrasonic mist'er. I can't say it makes a big difference, but it is quiet. Also routinely airing the bedroom with window open and ceiling fan spinning before the bedtime.
Ah, also had to plug that toxic bright blue light on our humidifier. Someone thought it's a nicely looking design, but such blue shining is hardly conducive to sleeping.
1. Warm mist humidifiers boil water and generate steam which humidifies the air. But, they are a burn hazard and consume a lot of energy.
2. Cool mist (non ultrasonic) work like miniature swamp coolers. They are essentially fans which draw air through a wet paper wick. The Honeywell mentioned in the article is of this type. The fan is however very underpowered and it doesn’t work well in anything bigger than a small bedroom. Vornado makes a version with a much more powerful fan which works very well in large rooms, but their tanks are finicky and prone to breaking and leaking. The wick absorbs minerals in the water and will eventually have to be replaced.
3. Ultrasonic humidifiers: A vibrating diaphragm will aerosolize water. Unless you use distilled water, minerals in the water will turn into dust and reduce air quality.
I happen to like the non ultrasonic cool mist ones because they use less energy than the warm mist ones and replacing crusty wicks is cheaper than using distilled water in ultrasonic ones. The problem is everything currently on the market has issues. Any company making incremental improvements to existing cool mist humidifiers will probably get a lot of eager buyers.
It does reviews of portable air conditioners. A couple of years ago, it went into painstaking detail on how single hose AC is bad. They linked articles from the Department of Energy and so on. Their message was that single hose were easy to install but were absolutely not worth it. And recommended a dual hose system
I happen to agree with that. Portable AC units are already incredibly inefficient, so you don't want to make it any more inefficient than it has to be. I bought their recommendation, it was actually a decent one.
Next year, the completely backtracked. Not because new research came to light that contradicts the previous one. Not because new models came out that massively improved the losses (not even sure that's possible). No. Now they say that the difference is "minimal". It is not minimal, and their previous argument is that it wasn't minimal and they should only be used when there was no other option. They did not provide updated efficiency figures.
Here's the new text:
> While dual-hose models have been shown to outperform some single-hose units in extremely hot or muggy weather, the difference is usually minimal, and we don’t think it outweighs the convenience of a single hose.
Sure, one can reverse their position and that can be a healthy thing to do. But to take major pains in arguing one position one year, just to reverse the position and provide no new data, it's very fishy.
And, of course, the recommended models tend to be pricey too.
But her other complaints puzzle me:
I don't find it to be messy to refill. What is she doing wrong?
It's even more baffling that she thinks it "doesn't work". I mean, she refills the tank every night, so we know the water is disappearing from the tank... where does she think the water is going? Isn't that proof enough that it does, in fact work?
However, I agree that the Wirecutter's recommendations are suspect sometimes; mostly for the more expensive items that cost several hundred dollars for a "quality" item [0]. However for the smaller/cheaper things where it's exceptionally hard to stand out in a crowded field of products (e.g. routers, bath towels, basic kitchen equipment, home tool kits, etc.), the Wirecutter is a good way to narrow down the choices.
[0]: e.g. they recommend a $370 (at the time of publication) 27", 1440p monitor; for that price the monitor should be 4K https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-27-inch-moni...
It cost a tiny fraction of the high end models, has huge reservoir, easy to clean, easy to modify and repair.
It's a food grade 5 gallon bucket ($3) with a bathroom vent fan ($15) mounted to the lid with a pvc pipe section ($2 maybe) for adapting the fan the wick, a flour sack cloth towel (pack of 10 for $5). A couple of holes in the lid, some creative testing for holes in the cloth (made it a tube that is cut to the height of the bucket) and presto... industrial strength humidifier for about $25 with 3 gallon capacity.
I am never going to buy another commercial humidifier ever again. I will tweak this design until it's perfect.
1. Warm Mist humidifiers work by boiling water. This has the downside of... well... boiling hot water hanging around the area. But otherwise, these are the simplest and are only ~$20 or $30.
2. Cool Mist humidifiers try to get around the boiling water issue. Since they humidify at room-temperatures, they're a lot more efficient... but now bacteria / mold is growing constantly. You can somewhat fix that with chemicals / filters / whatever, but now those filters need to be cleaned, or those chemicals need to be replaced on the regular.
In both circumstances: minerals in the water will harden into 'slag'. More so in warm-mist humidifiers actually (because boiling water separates water from minerals very naturally). Cool-mist humidifiers often carry the slag into the air, forming "white dust" all over your furniture.
The slag dissolves with vinegar in ~20 minutes or so (unless its been building up for a while). But its never an easy job to clean.
I prefer my warm-mist humidifier. Centralize the slag into one spot and clean it with vinegar every few weeks. Better than dusting off all my furniture in the room.
I did that with 4-5 products: A shower head splitter, a shower->hose adapter, a mister, and anti-leak tape.
Splitter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064TXLHA/
Adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GYV8G7S/
Elbow connector: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003BZD03K/
Mister (I used just the nozzle and discarded the hose) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004INGNPG/
Anti-leak tape: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003D7K8E0/
Alternatively tried this fogger nozzle which put out too much water and wet my bathroom floor, may work in some shower setups though. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FNYNZZM/
It blows ambient air directly onto the wetted disks; it will empty a full tank in a day and haven’t cursed anymore that usual while cleaning.
I did use a disinfectant additive
I have eight of these Honeywells running in a couple of vacation rentals. I let guests know to run them till dry before refilling, and I make sure they don't sit wet between guests. I also run a large Holmes wick humidifier at my home. I've run the Honeywells for several years now, and the large Holmes for twelve years. In all that time, I've only had one episode of significant mold growth on a wick, which occurred when I accidentally allowed a wick to sit wet for several days on end.
If the wick stays wet for many days or weeks, it will mold. This is not a design flaw. It's unavoidable biology.
Also note that the UVC "disinfection" system in these Honeywells is useless. It might disinfect the tank water in transit to the wick, but that does nothing to address the innumerable bacteria and fungal spores supplied by the air passing through the wick. What the UVC lamp does do is slowly destroy the plastic base, so I always remove the UVC lamp when I buy one of these humidifiers.
I agree the fan should be more accessible, but it can easily be blown out with a computer duster or compressor.
Wirecutter simply isn't that reliable. I do check their recommendations as one input source, but their top recommendation is not reliable (and will change from time to time).
Agreed. Recently bought a handheld vacuum cleaner. Wirecutter had some recommendations and said the Dyson one was “the strongest” (also most expensive), I got the Dyson and hated it (very cumbersome, heavy, short battery duration, not that easy to clean). Ended up returning it and got a random one at a local store instead. The random one was $50 (instead of $250-400 for the Dyson), has same or better suction, way easier to use and the battery lasts about 50-100% longer per charge (7-10 min instead of 4-5 min for the Dyson).
Similar thing happened with another appliance. Wirecutter is not very reliable.
That said, I switched to a Roborock S5 Max around March of last year and I have only used the Dyson once or twice since then.
"With Excellent ratings for moisture output, convenience, and energy efficiency, this humidifier gets the job done. Excessive noise, often a problem with evaporative models because they use fans to moisten the air, shouldn’t be a major problem. One caution: Its performance using hard water is just average, so anyone with mineral-rich water can do better elsewhere. Plus, this model won’t shut off automatically when the tank is empty. Output 5/5, Convenience 5/5, Noise 4/5, Efficiency 5/5, and Hard water 3/5."
So it seems like a good model among those available. But having used multiple different humidifiers over the years, I hated all of them for one reason or another, and returned or threw them out within days or weeks of purchase. I think that a good humidifier is an unsolved problem. It's probably the same for the author of the article.
[1] Consumer Reports is a decades-old non-profit organization which puts out a magazine (and website) which does unbiased product testing, has zero advertising, pays for all the products they test, never takes sample products, buys all their products anonymously (so they can't be given better samples for testing purposes), and has extensive laboratories, procedures, scientist/technicians for testing (a private track for testing cars, for example). I never heard of anyone claiming that Consumer Reports was fraudulent or pay-for-play.
We run our aircon on the de-humidify setting haha
Also because our winters never get cold enough to freeze all the moisture out of the air - I experienced that when living in an alpine village that turned into a giant ice box over winter / early spring (Arthur's Pass), but that was a village of 37, the rest of NZ is not experiencing that.
Heck, I used to run two dehumidifiers in a previous house of mine during winter, just because the amount of condensation and dampness we got was ridiculous and very unhealthy.
Propane heat emits water vapor too; and if you can have a lot of plants around they add moisture and lots of other good and bad things to the air.
My issues are such that I can have happy plants and benefit from them. For about the power cost of a humidifier i can have an LED lit jungle shelf that transpires more than a gallon of water a day
If you elect to do this (I also did this, at one point in my life), think twice if your stove is gas. There's increasing evidence that gas stoves lower the air quality in your home, especially in apartments with poor ventilation:
https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/nitrogen-dioxides...
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/indoor-air-pollut...
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.122-a27
Instead, I recommend this humidifier, which is easy to clean (distilled water only, please) and refill (albeit on the smaller side):
[0] I wouldn’t worry so much about viruses — viruses that infect humans probably don’t reproduce in water.
I'm seeing this all over - does nobody add just a bit of bleach to their water? It solves the mold/bacteria issue quite handily.
- I was able to pop the fan grille off for cleaning, it took me a while to figure out how, but once I did it was pretty easy.
- The wick does get crusty with mineral deposits, but I just soaked it in a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water (with a good subsequent rinsing), and it was almost as good as new.
- The rest was pretty easy to clean. As easy as any other humidifier I've owned, at any rate.
- I had it in a small bedroom (couldn't be more than 200 sq. ft), and it was perfectly humid in the room. Granted, it was a tiny room.
Last year, I noticed that ultrasonic humidifiers were now very popular and cheap on Amazon, and got one. The review sites recommended against them, due to supposed calcium and bacteria build-up, but I haven't seen any problems, and the Honeywell was definitely worse on these fronts.
Get an ultrasonic humidifier - they are cheap and if they break, you can get another one. Just used filtered water in them.
But I noticed that every winter I got bronchitis. I remembered that years ago I read in Consumers Reports that these can cause a reaction because they can break particles apart. (I remember it saying that it can break apart virus particles, but I'm not sure. I'm also not sure if that is correct.)
Based on that dim memory, I bought a Boneco AIR-O-SWISS Warm Mist Steam Humidifier S450. It has faults, and is expensive. But I don't get annual bronchitis any more. So we use that.
[edit] Direct quotes from the Wirecutter post (emphasis added by me):
> We recommend the Honeywell HCM-350 Germ Free Cool Mist Humidifier because it’s quieter, more durable, and easier to clean than any other evaporative humidifier we’ve tested, with a 1-gallon tank that will last all day.
> ...In general, we prefer evaporative humidifiers because we find them less messy and less likely to over-humidify a space; however, you will need to replace the wicking filter on a semi-regular basis, and the fans might not be the best option for people who have pets or particularly dusty homes. The best one for you will be whichever one you’re actually willing to deal with and maintain.
It is quite difficult to fully clean, as the main component is an array of thin plastic discs arranged closely together. If I wanted to clean it I would have to use a pipe cleaner to get between the discs.
Rather than doing this I have just started submersing it in a bleach or vinegar solution to kill whatever grows on it every 2-3 months. I've also started caring less about it being perfectly clean. My rationale is that it uses evaporation rather than dispersing water droplets, so it should be less likely for whatever grows on it to get into the air. I've used this humidifier every night for about 2 years, and so far I've only gotten sick when I travel away from home.
I used to have the honeywell unit described in this post. I don't understand the author's complaints. It was easy to clean. You can open the upper fan compartment from underneath, although I'll admit it does look inaccessible at first glance. I don't know if the author is being hyperbolic, but the fan noise was a low-pitch drone, not too loud and honestly drowned out by other ambient noise. I got rid of mine because I wanted to use it for a bigger room and I wanted something I didn't have to buy a wick for every N weeks.
I used to use an ultrasonic humidifier like they suggest but definitely prefer the evaporation-based unit.
The article read a little like one of the clumsy actors in an infomercial. The tank slides out and has a screw top! How can they spill so much while carrying it from the sink that it forms puddles?
[1] It goes through a tank almost every day. That water is going somewhere.
[2] I replace the wick and do a light bleach clean roughly quarterly.
My father built a new house and has humidifier built into the HVAC (I guess newer systems have this). One day, I'll have that. One day...
If you notice, the evap ones TC covers in his video all have easily accessible fans with no grill blocking access to the blades, and in general are fairly cleanable, while the one in TFA sounds like a nightmare.
What I do instead is use a nose clip (the kind swimmers wear).[1]
It doesn't look great, but when I'm alone I don't care. The price is right (only $6), there's no maintenance, no noise, no energy costs, no risk of developing mold in you home from too high a humidity.
It works great. Whenever my nose gets too dry I put it on and in maybe an hour or even less it's fine again. I also sometimes sleep with it on, when the air is dry enough to cause my nose pain.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Speedo-Competition-Nose-Clip-Charcoal...
I don't buy that. Japan has a ton of high quality air cleaner combo cool mist humidifiers. We don't see these units sold in the US because Americans are cheap. The idea of paying 200$ for an air cleaner feels like a scam to American ears.
And thus the American market continues to race to the bottom.
I just learned more about humidifiers from your comment than from reading zillions of reviews.
I seem to recall my brother's fish tank increased the humidity. Could a bucket with an aquarium style aerator also work?
--
Adding my thoughts here ("Yes, and...") because your input was most constructive.
Review sites could go even further. Start with the most basic DIY home build solutions possible. Just to show how things work. Like a reverse teardown. Even include some basic metrics and science. Like watts consumed, evaporative rates, etc.
Per the AQI problems, in China and Western USA (forest fires), there was a semi-viral video for a DIY air filter using just a box fan and bog standard air filter.
So many other products, appliances could receive similar treatment.
It'd be nothing to use a stove top to mock up at a warm mister. Ditto cool mister (bucket, old t-shirt, fan). And maybe repurpose a sonic tooth brush for an ultrasonic mister.
To be fair, HVAC is very efficient (about x5) to heat compared to just a heater(Warm mist humidifier) so it's not efficient but acceptable for me.
The power usage is offset if you're primarily using them during the winter in that the energy used is all converted to heat. It's not gonna be as efficient as a heat pump so there is some loss, but the heat added is heat your HVAC doesn't have to provide so it's not exactly wasted. I haven't actually run the numbers to calculate the effective power used (how much energy it uses to generate the same amount of heat versus if a more efficient heat pump did it), but my hunch is that it ends up being quite a bit more competitive than it might first appear.
Single hose models have to work harder two ways. First, in pumping the air out of the conditioned environment, they're basically throwing away work they've done. Not all of it, but some. More the bigger the difference is between the interior and exterior.
Another thing they have going against them is that they need to pull air from somewhere -- the exterior. So their fans have to work a bit harder due to the pressure difference.
Dual hose models suffer neither drawback. Single hose portable ACs are an abomination that should not exist.
Edit: I found some numbers, but they seem to support the 'minimal' theory. This page[1] says that SAAC ratings take the air infiltration into account, and that SAAC for a single hose model is 55-58% of a simpler rating, while a dual hose model is 63-70%. That's only about a 15% loss in efficiency. But the difference between a good model and a bad model with the same number of hoses can supposedly exceed 50%!
[1] https://www.pickhvac.com/portable-air-conditioner/best-dual-...
I'm repeating this advice a lot in this thread, it surprises me it's not better known.
A calculator I use is here. Tap water is about 2 ppm.
https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/health-topics/environm...
Looks like you are doing about 30 ppm so maybe that isn't that much really.
And unless there's some kind of catastrophic failure of the gasket on the lid, you're really talking about a few drops of water leaking out, at most, if you carry it by the handle.
If your humidifier can't push a 1/4 gallon an hour it's probably not doing that much.
I think the wick type humidifiers likely suck because at low humidity the dew point is really low, the wick gets cold and the water doesn't can't evaporate very fast.
Do you have carpet where you use it and do you have pets?
From fairly limited observation on computer fans, those two factors make a huge difference in how messy fans will get. Apartment with hardwood floors, air duster once a year is fine. Apartment with carpet, monthly minimum still leaves the fans gunked up.
- How to make it not look like an animal food barrel in your living room, aka WAF, although I do find that term somewhat demeaning as I get older - I used to not care about such things either when I was in my 20's, but nowadays I do, even if it's just because of the realization that people around me care.
- How to make a mechnism to easily fill it, without spilling. This is related to size - you can have a huge one so that you only have to fill it every few days, but then you'll need to shlepp around buckets or watering cans. If it's smaller, you need a separate tank, which you now have to hook up to the rest.
- How to moisten the wick. It's called a 'wick' because it, well, wicks, of course, but you need a relatively large surface contact area to get lots of water into the wick(s); or you need a pump that will keep vertical 'wicks' wet all the time.
- The fans need to be on the top, and large for minimum noise, but the largest Noctuas are only 20cm. But you need air intake from the bottom, somehow, while still maximizing volume efficiency (i.e., you don't want 75% of the volume of the device to be unused because you can only have water in the lower 25% because of the airflow design).
- You need something that can be cleaned and filled without too much (preferably no) disassembly, and you don't want moving parts like floats or fragile things like measuring water level with metal strips because those will break within a year or two; or faster if you don't have a water softening device in you house.
Overall, I think humidification is a job of proper devices that are part of the indoor climate control system along with heating and cooling, but I don't know of residential systems that combine all, and if they do/would exist, it would be much more expensive than the few 100 at most people want to spend on this, and require extensive plumbing to get installed.
Now, I don't care. I just want to sleep well, and my bedroom is the only room that actually really matters for my skin not to be dry and sleep comfortable.
I don't need to add any treatments, chemicals to my bucket system, so I would say it's far and above safer and more effective than all the other systems I've tried.
I just wanted to share that it's not only possible to make your own, your first try doing a terrible job can be better results than store bought stuff. But it's ugly and a bit loud for most people I think.
I have the steam humidifiers for the small rooms. But my winter has been so much comfortable since using the swamp cooler. I just turn it on a few times a day and within minutes, the humidity jumps a few percentage.
I've made my own aswell.
It's cheap, and very effective even for a larger space. I also have the humidifier the article mentions, and found it to be useless for a large area.
Besides if you're trying to restore humidity lost by heating your room then pure energy wise there's not that much difference in evaporating the required amount of water using ambient heat or evaporating the required amount of water using a different energy source. The only thing you'll achieve by using ambient heat is that your room will cool by the amount of heat required to evaporate the water (a good thing in the summer, somewhat pointless if your aim was to make a room both warm and comfortably humid).
Fundamental thermodynamics will probably mean the 'wait and see' approach is more efficient in the end, but it makes no promises on efficacy. The difference in efficiency probably lies in the fact that you can heat a room with an efficiency >100% if done right, if you haven't managed that yet it probably doesn't really matter which way you humidify the room.
1) Plants - they release the water you put into them into the air, as part of how they pull water up from the ground to the leaves.
2) Open Water - Aquariums, fountains, etc.
3) Humidifying balls - basically rough ceramic balls which sucks water up into them, and the water naturally evaporates. Slow, though, and if your water has any impurities they will accumulate on the surface.
4) Humans - we breathe out a lot of water, and if your house is well enough sealed, you'll actually have to de-humidify, even if the air outside is dry. Costly, though.
I got rid of all mist humidifiers because of residue, noise and some health concerns (no, I am not feeling safe inhaling those fine particles) and I am happy for it.
Most importantly, it doesn't get things wet and it is safe to just leave it 24h.
Also consider: it takes ~4 gallons of water to make 1-gallon of reverse-osmosis water. All water-purification methods have their own issues.
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If you plan to make distilled water (aka: boil water to remove impurities)... that's basically what a warm-mist boiling-type humidifier does _anyway_.
All good water-purification methods either take up a ton of water (ie: reverse osmosis) or a ton of energy (ie: distilled).
Or $0 if you have a pot, a stove, and a tap.
You're paying $20 to $30 for safety auto-shutoff features so that you can leave these things on all night long, and not have to worry about fumes, fire, or a myriad of other issues.
Yeah, its basically equivalent to a pot of boiling water + a stove. But... being able to move it to the locations you need (and safety features to boot) is the big advantage.
Boneco makes ultrasonics I like but the humidity on the other hand makes mold more viable. Plus you have to buy filters and cleaners.
Proper Bleach (Sodium hypochlorite) is probably cheaper, but there's a major convenience factor to just spraying H2O2, and Hydrogen Peroxide is pretty cheap as it is ($2 for 1-liter).
Its not so much that the disinfection was hard to do in my case... Its that it became somewhat of a hassle. Warm Air is nice since it auto-disinfects itself with boiling water. I still disinfect manually, but just once-a-week instead of every day.
In comparison, the Venta requires almost zero maintenance, and the entire machine is basically indestructible. The electronics pop out if you press the two buttons on top, which means you can hose the entire thing down in a bathtub if you want. You could probably put the whole thing in the dishwasher if you really wanted to, but I haven't tried that myself.
That honeywell lasted about one season. The wick refills are ridiculously expensive. It was cheaper to trash it and use anything else. I'm also upset with the wirecutter for that trash recommendation.
I’ve tried replacing the... little walking thing that moves the discs? (not sure what to call it) that makes the noise but it didn’t help.
It does require regular cleaning, though -- that can be a pain. It pulled minimal power, too.
I have switched to a whole house humidifier this year and I really like not having to change water every day. I am not sure how it will work in the long term.
> Convenience 5/5
How does this go together? Spoiled Dyson user here.
I seem to recall Technology Connections also complaining about the auto shutoff in his videos...
All that is to say, that's quite alright with me.
I have a low-end "Victsing" model and it works just fine (as evidenced by the hygrometer next to it), and isn't hard to clean. It isn't a complicated device to make.
(I have no affiliation with the manufacturer).
But for some products they had/have really weird metrics. E.g. an early smartphone would be punished because the battery was not replaceable, so a shitty feature phone took the crone (a little exaggerated). But still, they are focused on customers.
And a lot of the non-test editorial focuses on updating the consumer about warnings of faulty products, new regulations, test candidate updates, etc.
But yeah, I see the point. Just wanted to point out this alternative - when it comes to humidifying through boiling, it's a matter of dumping energy into water, and your stove is excellent at doing that quickly. With a regular humidifier, you may need to wait hours until you get the humidity where you want to have it, a stove can be much faster.
The use-case described in the article however:
>The east coast’s dry winter air, parched further by the radiators that can barely keep up with the chill, causes great discomfort to me and millions
suggests they're trying to heat the space they're in. At which point you'll need to recover any heat lost by evaporation anyway.
I would still be using the venta if I didn't have a new geothermal system installed. The ultrasonic humidifiers I had before the venta didn't last more than two years.
This is every air quality device in the industry. I have an old vornado air purifier that uses furnace filters for its media. $30 for the allergen level filters, when I can find them. When the electronics crap out in that thing will be when I learn to repair fans.
I had a prototype I built before I discovered these that used a 12V Molex power supply brick and a bunch of case fans to draw air through a furnace filter. I had it in a triangular box, intending to put it under a bed or a chair so it was dead silent. Then I found the Vornado and that went into storage. Higher cfm.
Unfortunately the Vornado filter was built at the height of the blue LED craze. But at least it’s low lumens.
I did not have much exposure to many. Previous to the Honneywell we had the "boiler" kind of humidifier, the one that uses two graphite electrodes submerged into water tank. Not many consumables, except that this does not work much, unless one keeps it right at their noses (as pictured on the box :). The electrodes develop some grime eventually which further decreases 'efficiency', but can be cleaned somewhat.
As for the ultrasonic one we use now, there does not seem to be any consumables as such. Maybe the ultrasonic element itself. In three years of seasonal use I can notice some either corrosion or build up on the black ring of the element, but not much difference from that.
There is some kind of filter ring, made of hard plastic, filled with small beads. But as I said in the 3 years we had no reasons to change it. Clean it, yes, but not replace it like with Honneywell.
Cleaning the thing is a drag as always. Two usual problems: the reddish mold above the waterline and inside the "gorge" and nozzle. Also the limescale, though a moderate one. We fill it with just the cold tap water, which is not too bad here.
https://www.theperfectwater.com/home-master-hydroperfection-...
I personally think an evaporative humidifier is the way to go, as long as you are okay with the evaporator getting gross over time.
I use the RODI for expensive steam appliances like my Wagner, but I don't use RODI for regular old vegetable steamers or humidifiers. It's just not worth it. The scale buildup isn't a big deal and it's very easy to dissolve with an acid or just brush off.
For warm-air humidifiers (aka: boiling water), where all the scale is concentrated onto the heating element: yeah... no big deal. A cup of cheap 5% vinegar and 20-minutes of waiting is all you need to clean that off.
------------
I think if you have RO water, it probably makes sense to use an ultrasonic humidifier.
> In it, the company claims that The Wirecutter initially picked NextDesk as an editorial recommendation but later downgraded the recommendation after NextDesk declined to set up an affiliate-revenue agreement.
These are NextDesk's "claims". Wirecutter does not acknowledge them. According to Wirecutter this is what happened:
> Without the editorial team’s knowledge, NextDesk and our business team exchanged communications about setting up an affiliate agreement, and ultimately NextDesk declined to do so. That fact was never communicated to our editorial team until NextDesk itself made it known to them by email in November 2015, long after the new pick had been made.
Update: I'm not saying that I'm buying it; just clarifying their response.
Looking at the email exchanges I can't honestly think this is a coincidence. I've been shaken down before (unrelated to this topic) and that's exactly how it looked. My own experience going through Wirecutter's reviews kind of supports the idea that it's "pay to win".
That’s a overly specific denial, their saying the editorial team wasn’t informed. However, it doesn’t actually mean the events where unrelated, as long as the editorial team assumes no agreement was reached at which point nothing needs to be communicated.
If they had actually chosen a new pick before the deal was canceled they would have said that. Instead they refer to internal emails rather than the actual timing of the events. Which where #1 Pick, #2 request for a kickback, #3 no agreement reached, #4 new pick. They don’t even deny the actual content of the emails posted.
yeah, i'm curious as well.
In America KC-850U: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003BF665Y/ref=emc_b_5_t
In Japan KC-H50-W: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B077TC5PM8/ref=ppx_yo_dt...
The American offering is an extra 150$, but that buys you marketing videos with a fake scientist pouring baby powder through a filter onto a hepa filter. Japan gets no video at all. Otherwise the Ozone generator, carbon + hepa filters, wheel driven wick humidifier, and canister water tanks are all the same.
The Japanese model also includes modes to disable all lighting, switches between displaying humidity or energy consumption in either KWh or yen per day.
In my experience, you get a smelly bacteria-infested humidifier if you keep using it for a few days. You need to regularly rinse ultrasonic humidifiers... or really any humidifier at all.
It humidifies the room quite nicely, keeping it at about 40% humidity (our house averages 25% without humidifiers running, which is hell on skin and noses).
Warm-air humidifiers are less efficient: My room is ~25% without any devices running. An ultrasonic would bring it up to 35%+, but Warm-air humidifier only brings it up to 32% or so.
Another efficiency test: both units were 1-quart (EDIT: Not a gallon) units. The warm-air humidifier probably goes through the tank in ~12 hours, while the ultrasonic would go through in ~8.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Broan-NuTone-50-CFM-Wall-Ceiling...
Cut 2 holes on top of a 5 gallon (food grade) pale lid and stick this in it. Screw/nail/tape a towel on the other side of the lide making a tube of the towel. Fill 2/3 with water. Plug in the fan. (the fan I bought had an actual 120v wall plug built into it.)
I am more inclined to try a design more similar to this one next time:
https://steemit.com/growing/@guanyu/cheap-diy-humidifier-for...
Another design:
https://www.dudegrows.com/grow-hack-diy-humidifier-bucket/
I think this may have been one of the original designs I saw that sparked trying it myself:
I often get messages from readers saying that they depended on the content I write and read it like the bible. They used it to start a business or get a residence permit.
There's a donation button under every post, out of 100k visitors, around 3-6 will donate. I get more emails with extra questions than I get donations. When I patiently answer those, maybe half will donate 5-15€, and only since I added a line about it in my signature.
By comparison, affiliate income pays roughly 100x better if you stay neutral. If you can't get paid to sell your content, you get paid to sell your audience. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
I want to be uncompromisingly helpful, but the incentives are often at odds with this. It's also not surprising that many websites get greedy and fall apart.
If the maintainers of critical open source projects have to beg for enough money to keep the lights on, I don't think the problem is the lack of value, but the expectation that digital content is free.
I write because it's something I can do. I'm seriously handicapped and there are a lot of things I simply cannot do.
That's a lousy argument. I use myself as an example for various reasons, but the reality is this a widespread problem and the state of journalism is a real problem, as I noted above.
I'm well aware of why people don't like hearing they basically want slave labor. I've listened for years to the reasons people on HN do not like ads, do not like content marketing, etc. I removed ads from my sites and I don't typically use affiliate links.
I use myself as an example in hopes of elucidating the problem space and making it clear that I've studied this for years and I'm not blowing smoke. It's not just me. Writing generally has terrible pay even when it's good quality, etc.
Find some way to help writers pay their bills. The fact that writers exist and that's what they know and there aren't other middle class jobs with good benefits they can readily apply for is an actual issue which negatively impacts the world.
Gig work is up. Benefits are down. Lots of people are underpaid, underemployed, etc. It isn't just writers.
As for medicine, our medical system is probably even more messed up than what we do to writers. We actively incentivize a system of keeping you drugged up and limping along and yadda.
But I'm sure people are even less interested in hearing that than in hearing "If you don't want the shitty internet we've chosen to create, then make other choices that support some other outcome."
I don't intend to spend a whole lot of time arguing it. I've been here a lot of years. I know people don't like hearing this, quickly turn to dismissive personal attacks and ugly justifications. This is hardly some original rebuttal to my points.
I chose to say it anyway because I know most folks here are business people or IT people and haven't thought it through as much as I have. Each individual case of criticism of how people here don't want to support writers seems logical and not a problem in isolation. Most folks here are not on the receiving end going "Wait a minute. This is part of why I remain poor. There's no good means to get paid for what I do, though there is certainly demand for good writing."
This is me telling folks I write, the world makes it really hard for writers to make ends meet, that's part of why you get certain kinds of garbage on the internet.
People can do with that info what they choose, including nothing at all. I've occasionally said such things for years and it seems to make no difference.
But I will likely continue to say something from time to time anyway, even though people think it's appropriate to attack me instead of taking my points seriously. And that's why I say it boils down to an expectation of slave labor because, yeah, people basically get mad at being told "this is why this goes on" rather than going "oh, I had not thought to connect those dots. I shall have to keep that in mind going forward."
Someone getting mad doesn't mean they disagree with you in that specific worst-case way.
> These so-called "ethics" seem to boil down to "we expect writers to write for free and find some other means to support themselves while producing quality content as...a hobby, I guess" -- aka slave labor. And then folks get upset if you frame it that way.
If you give no money and demand they keep doing it, that's slave labor.
If you give no money and suggest that if they're unhappy they should stop doing it, it's not slave labor.
You're talking about the former, but I'm pretty sure people are actually saying the latter.
> If you give writers and other creatives no means to earn an adequate income trying to meet your prissy high standards for so-called ethics [1], then don't be all shocked that they will do whatever happens to actually work to line their pockets, though it involves lying, writing reviews for pay without actually ever touching the product, etc.
> People need to eat. Not everyone can be a programmer.
The problem with this reasoning is that you could replace "writer" with almost anything and make the same analogy. Even something like "hitman"! Having ethics doesn't mean you starve. It doesn't even significantly reduce the number of jobs you could take. Someone asking for ethics isn't asking for free labor.
This is some extraordinary specious reasoning, comparing "writer" with "hitman". How is "hitman" a creative force for good for society?
There is value in good writing. We haven't figured out how to judge and pay for it directly. It's not hard to see that if you continue to not pay for something, it doesn't get done. And one day a billionaire will pay for it, as some special project. Bezos owns the WaPo, I'm not making any statement about editorial influence, but is it a reach to surmise the WaPo is more hesitant in publishing negative articles about things in Bezos' influence? He can probably give the paper away for free, or subsidize it. Then you will say, is everything bought and paid for by the billionaires? Do I declare for the fiefdom of Elon or the barony of Zuckerberg? It's miserable. This was literally a comment on HN last week.
There's value in writing, music-making, art, cooking, photography. That the world doesn't pay well for these things, or the pay curve is depressed except for the very few, is not a convincing argument that they are inherently not valuable. The HN crowd is in the Maslow hierarchy to be able to afford to pay for it.
Pay for the things you want more of. If you don't pay for independent writing, someone else will pay for it, and it's not to support your interests.
They don’t like it because it’s a bald faced lie. You’re accusing them of supporting slavery.
Just a quick refresher on what slavery is (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery)
> Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person and is treated as property.
I implore you to read that article to grasp how horrific and life smothering actual slave labor is. You comparing writing voluntarily for free to that is offensive and smacks of first world entitlement. Perhaps you’re just trolling and I fell for it, but there are people surviving today in slave labor conditions that can only dream of quitting and spending their days arguing on the Internet (after they learn to read and write of course!). Until then they’ll just keep working 12 hour days of hard labor 7 days a week.
Wanting something for free is not the same thing as wanting slavery.
I use hacker news and read the comments here under the expectations that I will not pay for them and nobody will be writing them under coercion. The same applies to reading random blogs, etc. I don’t want to pay for that because it changes the entire nature of the relationship and I frankly just don’t care about any one particular piece of information.
I will pay for deep expertise (e.g. books or even substack). But as I said before, the ability to write is necessary, but the subject is what I’m paying for.
I bought the Harry Potter books because of the world she built, not because of her writing ability. The same applies to most of her fans, as born to out by the tepid performance of the pseudonym book.
You can argue that colloquialism is a crass juxtaposition of horrifying slavery and things far less horrifying, but it’s clear to me the OP was using it in that informal sense, and is probably quite aware slavery was a terrible thing.
Risible. What made that world if not the writing? The Harry Potter Wikipedia contains all the substantial plots, characters, worlds they inhabit. Same world. Pay for that, would you? Read that for pleasure, would you?
GP is competing with people who write as a hobby rather than a profession. Responses above are about the crass hyperbole in GP, not misunderstanding the colloquialism.
The story supposedly came to her in a flash "fully formed," I think on a train trip. And then she worked -- for a long time -- at trying to figure out how to tell that story well in written form.
Before the Harry Potter books, writing for children's books hardly paid anything. The series was so good that it changed the industry.
One of the things about good writing is that it's something even a poor person can do.
JK Rowling was on welfare while writing the first Harry Potter book, living in some kind of government housing for poor people I think. She would take her small child for a walk in a stroller and when the kid fell asleep she would go to coffee shop or eatery owned by friends and sit and write and joke that "When I'm famous, your place will get famous as the place I wrote the book."
Telling stories via film tends to take money for equipment if nothing else. Not paying independent writers adequately is not only a means to undermine democracy, it's also a form of class warfare.
The argument I quoted doesn't care if they are a creative force for good.
There are other reasons to want to pay writers, but those reasons don't conclude that it's slave labor to not want to pay. That's why I criticized the specific argument, not the value of writers in general.
Unlikely; my tap water is well water. I do clean the humidifier with vinegar every week to keep the mineral buildup down. Then again, I do that with the shower head and tea kettle too (though a bit less frequently).
The big thing, as I've found it, is keeping the output down to a visible minimum. A big plume of mist that visibly lands anywhere isn't adding more water to the air - it's putting water droplets on the surface much like a spray bottle. It looks good, but isn't doing the job you're asking it to.
Then it is probably a difference in ultrasonic humidifiers. I can tell you that mine barely builds up much slag at all. I switched to warm-air after I grew tired of the white-dust issue.
The white-dust issue is further confirmed as I use the warm-air (boiling-type) humidifier. A LOT of minerals are found every day from my boiled-away tap-water... minerals that clearly used to be sprayed into the air and dusting my furniture.
I believe you're taking "after" in this sentence way too literally. The order of events isn't in dispute, what's at issue is whether Nextdesk's declination to enter a revenue sharing agreement caused Wirecutter to downgrade their ranking.
This comment by geofft convinced me Nextdesk (RIP) was in the wrong in this dispute. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144078
Please be clear that I have no opinion on the truthfulness of the Wirecutter's response. Perhaps they're truly corrupt as all hell. I have no inside knowledge of how they operate.
However, it is absolutely clear you're reading something into the "after" that was not intended.
Instead, Wirecutter has made a factually incorrect statement. That Thing 1 happened, then Thing 2 happened, then Thing 3 happened is not in dispute. Also not in dispute: Thing 3 happened after Thing 2, which happened after Thing 1.