The big project for today was figuring out why the humidifier had stopped working. Before turning it on for the winter a few weeks ago, I gave it a wash. Perhaps mistakenly, I used the shower head to get into all the nooks and crannies on the inside, where pet hair and dust had settled and coagulated. When I plugged it in and turned it on, it didn’t work at first but then it started spewing out warm mists of hydration.
Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that the machine wasn’t responding properly. It would say it was empty when there was still water in it. Then, it would say it was full when there wasn’t any water in it. Sometimes, it would say that the room was properly humid, when the hygrometer I bought clearly showed that the relative humidity was below 40%, sometimes even 30%. This morning, the latter was true.
I went downstairs and grabbed a bottle of vinegar from under the sink. I poured out what water was left in the humidifier, down the tub drain, and placed the machine in the bath. When I took out the funnel stack, the calcification revealed itself to be severe, resembling a pale mustard coloured shale. I opened the bottle of vinegar and drenched the innards of the machine, and left it to soak for well over an hour.
When I got back, I looked inside to find foam had bubbled its way to the surface, with small bubbles still rising from below the shale and breaking at the surface. I decided to intervene, so I took a flathead screwdriver and started prying the rock from the plastic. Worried that I’d clog the tub drain, I put the pebbles into a plastic produce bag. Once I was satisfied that I removed all that I could safely, I poured in more vinegar and left it to soak while I fiddled with the hinges on the bathroom door so that it would close when shut.
The humidifier ended up not working. It showed that the room was properly humid when it wasn’t and it never started humidifying. I decided that the right move was to get a new humidifier. We needed some milk and break, as well, so I went out to buy a new one.
It’s strange how that ten-minute drive each way was the quietest part of my day. It’s Toronto traffic so it wasn’t without noise. Unnerved, I called my sister to check in.
That particular Walmart is always busy but I was mostly unaware of other people around me. I just went about my shopping, meandering through the isles looking for where the humidifiers were kept. Some were in main trunk but not the one I was looking for. Eventually, I found them and spent a good twenty minutes reading over the various features, asking AI for its opinion, and finally settling on one that looked like it offered the most, while avoiding the one with a digital hygrometer built in for fear of being overwhelmed with data. This time, it was more important to me to get one with a removable reservoir. The last one was top filling, requiring several trips from the sink to the humidifier before it was full.
After filling it up and plugging it in, it started up right away. I’ve been checking the hygrometer every hour or so and the humidity level is slowly climbing back up toward 40%.
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