Review of the Holmes HM3501 Cool Mist Whole House Humidifier

We live in Connecticut and during the winter it gets very dry in our house. It starts in November with me waking up with a bloody nose and that is when I know it is time to turn on the humidifier. The last humidifier we had lasted about 10 years and it was a Hunter brand. We only had it in the bedroom and we thought it was working all of these years.

After getting the Holmes HM3501 Cool Mist Humidifier I realized how wrong we were and that we should have replaced our old humidifier years ago.

The reason I know is that along with the dry, bloody nose I get I also get extremely dry, itchy skin, the kind that when you lay down at night itches so much you just lay in one position and don’t dare turn over because of the pull on your skin. No matter how much lotion you put on you still have that itchy dry skin.

This year we decided to try a different brand of humidifier and settled on the Holmes Whole House humidifier. I noticed that in the living room the humidity indicator on the wall clock read around 35%. I never thought anything about it until we got this humidifier.

The Holmes HM3501 whole house humidifier is placed in between our living room and dining room and once we started using it the humidity levels went up to around 70%. Now, we don’t even need a humidifier in our bedroom because it works throughout the upstairs. We live in a basic, raised ranch house and our first floor is around 960 square feet. We are using this humidifier on the first floor.

You can set the humidifier to run constantly based on how high you want the humidity level but you can easily turn it down and it will cut on and off. It has a large fan that blows the air upwards and throughout the house. It also has wheels so you can move it around. There are two large water reservoirs to fill and we are filling them daily because of the level of humidity we want to keep the house at. There is also a filter indicator that will show you when the filter needs to be changed.

We found that we had to replace the filter after the first month and once again, I think this depends on how much humidity you want. I noticed that the Holmes HM3501 Cool Mist whole house humidifier also works as an air purifier because when we replaced the filter it will full of cat hair. This was great news to us since we have 2 long-hair indoor cats. Yes, the added expense of the filters might not be what some would want to pay but for us it is worth it and we only run our humidifier from November/December to probably sometime in March so it’s really not that expensive for what you get in return. Getting rid of that painfully itchy skin was worth it to me.

The Cost: The Holmes HM3501 Cool Mist whole house humidifier cost us around $100 at a local store

Filter Replacements: You can buy any brand of replacement filter as long as it is Type D. We did find that buy a cheaper brand made it so they didn’t last as long. In the Winter you will replace the filters a lot but it’s definitely worth it to keep your house at the right humidity levels. There’s nothing worse than dry, itchy skin and cracked skin. You can get the filters locally at stores like Walmart, Target, Lowes, etc and online at Amazon.com

Pros:

• Keeps the entire house (one floor) at ideal humidity levels
• Has wheels to move it easily
• Quiet for the size

Cons:

• Water reservoir needs to be filled every day or every 2 days (can be adjusted based on the humidity level you like)
• Filter needs to be changed monthly (added expense)

This is a review of the Holmes HM3501 Cool Mist Whole House Humidifier. This was a personal purchase and this is our opinion and review of it.