humidifier water

[buff69]

Hi all silly question I know but what water do you use for the humidifier (h5i) do you use tap water straight from the tap or do you boil it first or do you buy water that can go straight in it ??? I boil my tap water first then use that but its so lime scale here that I can taste it so not really good so just wondering what you all do many thanks in advance cheers all

[c0reDump]

Welcome to the forum! I used distilled water (see my profile).

[mjbearit]

I use the cheapest distilled water that is available in the store. I've never really understood why distilled water has different prices for different brands. You are paying for a bottle of steam! Anyway, I have used filtered water before when in a pinch, but I try to always have extra distilled on hand.

[JWR]

Same here, use Home brew Distilled water .

[trish6hundred]

Hi buff69,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
I use distilled water in my humidifier.
Best of luck to you.

[PollCat]

Like mj, I use the cheapest distilled water I can find - usually from Menard's for 84 cents a gallon.

[buff69]

Thanks all sounds good im going to get some I thought about filtered water but thought it might not be sterilised?? Enough but im going the distilled water way thanks everyone really pleased i found this forum it's excellent:grin:

[nunanie]

Hi all silly question I know but what water do you use for the humidifier (h5i) do you use tap water straight from the tap or do you boil it first or do you buy water that can go straight in it ??? I boil my tap water first then use that but its so lime scale here that I can taste it so not really good so just wondering what you all do many thanks in advance cheers all

I live in an area where the water is very hard - I can see how the coffee pot gets coated because of the mineral buildup and we constantly are de-scaling it. A coffee pot is only $80 or so for the kind we have so replacing it every 2 or 3 years is alright. However I don't like the fact that all these minerals will be blown into my lungs so I use distilled water - the cheapest ones I can find - it's all the same.

Be careful though - a few months ago my hubby came home with 2 bottles of distilled water, had a cute picture of a baby on it. Yes it was distilled water but the company had added minerals to "make it taste better" for your baby when it was used to make formula.

[Memo to self: "read the labels" ]

[APAAW]

I just learned something here - I'd never thought I'd need to read the label for distilled water - that sounds like "Distilled water - with impurities added!!" Yikes.

It's a good question, not silly at all. I faithfully use distilled water, as it's one fewer thing to go wrong. It's a tiny fraction of the overall cost of keeping CPAP going well.

Using distilled water might even prolong the life of the humidifier tank, tubing and mask - but even if it shortened the life of other supplies, it's about your life.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure" and I've have to re-learn that the hard way enough other times. YMMV.

[APAAW]

I've learned from this board also to dump out any water remaining in the humidifier tank each morning. I don't believe the standard CPAP filters were designed to stop all bacteria or contaminants, so that's an easy measure to help keep anything unpleasant from building up. (Thanks, DocWils!)

One (long ago, pre-CPAP) respiratory infection was enough for me.

(Editing time expired before I could add this to my previous post.)