Any quick suggestions/ideas about wood stove steamer/humidifier?

I bought one of those cast iron decorative tea kettles. It sits in the corner unused and I use instead an inexpensive Holmes Air/Sunbeam evaporative humidifier. The tea kettle held about a quart of water and I'd keep forgetting to fill it, the Holmes holds 5 gallons and I still forget to fill it.

I use a Kenmore console modem humidifier I got off Ebay. Fill the bottles once a day. Does really good in my place 2666sf. A little stove top kettle would never cut it here.

Hogwildz said:

A little stove top kettle would never cut it here.

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Ja, a lot of folk don't realize how little one of those puts out versus a humidifier.

My wife complains about the low humidity. She also claims the dust is worse when we heat with wood. I run my gas furnace with its humidifier for a while every morning but it doesn't get enough run time. I proposed getting a combination HEPA filter and humidifier but she balks at it, concerned about the noise and cost.

I went to an old antiques barn and found me a 3 gal aluminum pot.I saw those iron tea kettles but without the enamel coating they will rust FAST and you'll smell it.Also i found an old tea kettle(aluminum) where the opening in the spout points up so the dripping would be at a minimum.This pot is about 16"wide so i picked up an 8" trivet at Reny's.It sits low enough to the stove for the water to get hot enough to steam some.This pot has a handle also which makes it easy to refill in the tub.

I was wondering the same thing as it is dry as a bone in here since the new stove is cranking The old stove had a cast iron trivet with a large cast iron pot on it. Both rusted and made rust marks on the stove. Don't want that to happen to my new pretty Englander! I was thinking of one of those enameled cast iron ones but after reading these posts, maybe not? We have a lot of lime deposits from our water so that was an issue in the old pot too. Perhaps a small humidifier with one of those silver anti bacterial things in it might be the ticket.....

You want some nice smells in your house...get a container of some sort, and a trivet/whatever if needed, put some potpourri and water in there and let it steep/simmer atop your wood stove. Can be most pleasant. If you're serious about increasing the relative humidity in your home, get a humidifier. Rick

For those that have it available,go break some 3' to 4" branches off a fir tree and use it in the pot.The smell is wicked good.It also prunes the tree.

fossil said:

You want some nice smells in your house...get a container of some sort, and a trivet/whatever if needed, put some potpourri and water in there and let it steep/simmer atop your wood stove. Can be most pleasant. If you're serious about increasing the relative humidity in your home, get a humidifier. Rick

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A friend of mine blanches and freezes all of his tomatoes. Come winter, they simmer them down into tomato sauce on the stove. Make for an interesting smell. Not quite potpourri, but it gets the job done, adds a bit of moisture to the air, and the heat is free.

Toss a cinnamon stick in the pot. I love that.

fossil said:

You want some nice smells in your house...get a container of some sort, and a trivet/whatever if needed, put some potpourri and water in there and let it steep/simmer atop your wood stove. Can be most pleasant. If you're serious about increasing the relative humidity in your home, get a humidifier. Rick

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+1 . . . I still fill the steamer on my woodstove . . . but the humidifier my wife bought this year definitely puts up more moisture in the home and according to my wife has made a notable difference (I didn't notice things too much . . . but then again I can be pretty oblivious to things.)

Bub381 said:

For those that have it available,go break some 3' to 4" branches off a fir tree and use it in the pot.The smell is wicked good.It also prunes the tree.

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Just don't make a mistake and put in "cat spruce" branches . . . .

And no . . . never happened to me . . . but when I was a kid my Dad was responsible for bringing in the Christmas tree into the class (back when real trees, heck any trees were allowed in schools) . . . and the tree he picked was a perfectly formed Christmas tree . . . that also happened to be a cat spruce . . . the classroom reeked like cat pee.

Oh believe me, i know what a cat spruce is. :-S

Is ceramic the way to go???

Fredo said:

Bought a ceramic steamer from Lowes. I am going to a local Wood Stove company next week to purchase a ceramic trivet. I hope that it doesn't rust the top of my new Osburn?

Fredo

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Good to see you posting again Fredo.

For something to set the steamer on it is hard to beat soapstone. You can get some at Woodstock. www.woodstove.com
We use the ones that are called boot driers.

13 month old thread...let it RIP.

Geeze, usually I see that but this time did not look...

I thought OLD was good!