Honeywell Cool Moisture Humidifier HMC-350B

Unlike many of the other UV humidifiers, this one does not create a glow that disturbs sleep. Its low fan speed is pretty quiet. It is very suitable for use in a bedroom. The water tank is a little small and I fill it daily running it 24/7. We have only had the unit for a month so I can not speak to its longevity, yet.

My one gripe is that, due to the small tank, you can run out of water and it does not shut off. A low level shutoff switch would take care of this but there is not one. When the unit runs out of water, the filter dries out and turns brown. The filter is supposed to last for a year (or a season of use) but the drying out limits its effectiveness.

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Bionaire BAP1412-U PERMAtech Mini Tower Air Cleaner

My Bionaire arrived on time & in excellent condition. It works so quietly that even though I am a light sleeper I can sleep with it on. I am no longer stuffed up when I wake up and do not need my nose spray before going to bed. I ordered a 2nd one and it works just as well. I use the 2nd one in the living room.

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Kaz V1700 Mini Plug-In Waterless Vaporizer

This is a little heart shaped diffuser as shown. There is no on/off swtch. You just plug it in. It works like one of those Glade plug-ins, only using essential oil instead of a little chemical packet. Although they sell these pre-scented pads to go with it, I bought some blank pads, with nothing on them, and cut one down to fit. You can add any essential oil you want to them and you can re-oil the same pad again and again.

Essential oils are sold as single oils or as blends. Buying the oil is a lot cheaper than buying refill pads that are pre-scented, especially since the oil on a pad dissipates overnight. And for those who are worried about using essential oil, they come in dropper bottles so you never touch the oil, you just dab it on the pad using the dropper bottle and pop the pad into the diffuser/waterless vaporizer.

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14x14x1 (13.5 x 13.5) Accumulair Emerald Filter

these filters are a hard to find size (never available at home depot, lowes, walmart, etc) and they do the job. I would probably by them again, they're pretty cheap.

iRobot Roomba 550 / 551 AeroVac Technology Vacuum Cleaning Robot

I have had Roomba's for years... They do require a little maintenance (Brush cleaning, cleaning the pet hair from the ends of the rollers) but overall they are pretty great. Cleaning the brushes is no big deal, I do it when I empty the bin. It takes a minute or two to empty the bin and clean the brushes, and it's ready to go.

We have two pugs, and they shed constantly. The 500 series Roomba's are a pretty huge improvement in design (I am a mechanical design engineer) They have redesigned the roomba to make everything modular, so if something does wear out, it is very easy to replace. My old Roomba was the first model with the scheduling ability, and I did have to replace a few things. I had to replace some transmission parts, and the batteries. Of course, I had to replace the brushes and filters many times over the years. I upgraded the batteries to give it more time to vaccuum, but the 550 seems to be pretty great right out of the box. It can run for almost two hours sometimes, depending on how big the space is I want it to vaccuum. It is also much easier to program than the old Roomba, it took just a couple of minutes and you program it right on the Roomba itself.

The Roomba 550 is also much quieter than the old Roomba was... MUCH QUIETER! It slows down before it bumps into things and the vaccuum itself is not bad. That was the biggest improvement I saw initially, with battery life and ease of replacing parts coming in right after that... (It's nice that the parts are easier to replace, time will tell how useful that is... Hopefully, it won't need much beyond brushes and filters. :-0 )

The virtual walls are also improved... They only take 2 C cell batteries, and the batteries seem to last longer. On my old Roomba, you had to schedule the virtual walls as well as the Roomba using the remote, and it was a little clunky. The new virtual walls don't require any programming. The only thing that has ever malfunctioned with the virtual walls is the dogs have apparently played with them and they occasionally are not pointing in the right direction... It is also not as obvious as they used to be regarding which side is the front... I have found the roomba cleaning the room I wanted it to stay out of because the Virtual wall was aimed at the doorjam instead of across the doorway; apparently it got kicked and whoever set it back got it backwards.

The Roomba 550 is $250 at Costco, and if the thing does ever break, you can return it to Costco for a replacement or your money back. (One of the little perks of membership, if you are not satisfied they will take it back fairly indefinitely...):-)

That is the primary focus of this review... Why would you pay over $315 with shipping plus tax at whatever your states rate is?

I think the Roomba is a pretty cool little device, and I recommend that people who want to keep their house vaccuumed all the time buy it... But I would recommend buying it at Costco.

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Metro Vacuum MS-4C 115-Volt DataVac PC Desktop Electronics Cleaner

Worst accessory ever! DON'T BUY IT. It doesn't have power to blow or vacuum a smallest piece of styrofoam or paper. It'just doesn't work, it looks nice, but is utterly loud and gets clogged in a second, I mean if you somehow manage to scratch some dust of your equipment.

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BestAir A35W Aprilaire 35 Paper Wickl Waterpad

This BestAir pad solved a problem that was making me an unhappy Aprilaire user.

My Aprilaire system could not keep up with my home's humidity needs, but it sure did run through the hot water. With this pad, there's much more moisture transfer to the air supply. Now instead of most of the hot water going down the drain, it goes into the air (where I want it to go).

I won't even buy the standard water pad anymore. This BestAir version is the only one I will buy. In fact, if somebody gave me a stack of standard pads I would throw those away and still buy this one. The savings in hot water cost alone would justify that. With the BestAir, I get the increased comfort I am really after.

I have verified the huge performance increase by using humidity meters. Of course, the numbers vary with the amount of heating required. But here's an example of a sort of side by side test I ran in 2010. The outside temperature was consistently around zero degrees for several days (with the forecast, I saw this coming so decided to run tests).

I have a Trane heat pump system, with variable speed blower to provide a constant (but minimal) flow of air when heat or AC isn't running. This constant flow means my Aprilaire is always running also (I removed Aprilaire's original controls, which essentially render the system pointless, and installed my own system and yes I am an engineer with a significant controls background).

With the standard pad, the humidity dropped to 37%. That is well below the recommended minimum. Even the morning warmup furnace blast, which gives you the best humidification with this system, couldn't nudge it much past 40.

I changed to the BestAir before going to bed, noting a humidity of 38%. I got up just before the furnace kicked on and the humidity was at 41%. After the initial warmup blast, the humidity was 45%. It dropped back to 42% under normal low demand.

Then I reversed the situation by installing the standard pad, and the previous condition resumed. I already knew how the standard pad ran from previous, pre-test conditions of the previous couple of years. And that's what I got upon going back to it. So then I reversed again, and again got the better results with the BestAir. Even over several days, these results were consistent.

Then it warmed up outside, and the humidity hit 47%. I put the old pad back in, and the humidity slowly dropped to 39%. Changed pads, and it went up again.

I use supplemental humidifiers to get the humidity up to 48% to 52% (50% is recommended), but can stay above the low-H danger zone using just the Aprilaire but only if it has this BestAir pad installed.

If you have an Aprilaire system, this BestAir pad is the only one you should be using.

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