AirCare MA0800 Mini-Console Humidifier

[TalentedTen]

I'm 50/50 on this thing.

I live in Phoenix and the air can get REALLY dry (obviously, living in a desert). It's not unusual for the air to be 15% relative humidity, so for my indoor grow, I clearly needed more humidity. I bought an AirCare MA0800 humidifier.

It works well in my 3' X 3' X 6' grow tent, in that it adds moisture to the air, but when set on 65% relative humidity, it just runs... and over-runs beyond the 65% RH I input as a setpoint. When set as 65% RH, I often find the tent at 85-90% RH. When set to an RH of 60%, it often provides an RH of 42-51%. Its built-in RH indicator is often wrong by 10-15% points as well, based on accurate hygrometers I have on the floor of the tent and the roof of the tent.

I could take the time to figure out where the AirCare MA0800 is accurate, and where its not, but I shouldn't have to.

Bottom line is that if you are growing in an environment that is dry, skip this model.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Isn't that thing advertised as a whole house humidifier, 2600 ft.²? Maybe it's just not set up to deal with nine square feet, lol. If my goal was to significantly increase the humidity of a large area like that, I'd naturally expect to have to evaporate more moisture than it'd take to do so for the immediate space that the device was actually sitting in, and then rely on either the building's HVAC (if present) or natural forces to spread that moisture out into the greater space as a whole.

In other words, I'm not surprised that you're seeing actual RH readings above your set-point. I wouldn't consider this a knock against the device - I'd, instead, start thinking that perhaps I merely chose the wrong one.

BtW, I just checked Phoenix's weather forecast for today. 103°F <SHUDDERS> - that's only 17°F lower than the DOE recommends people set their water heater's thermostat at . Me... Well, I'd move. But other people would probably be considering some kind of swamp (evaporative) cooler. Raise the humidity and cool the place down enough that any escapees from Hades don't end up stopping by on their way through. I'm told those things actually work well when the humidity is that low. Is it that they just don't raise the humidity enough?