07:54 – As it turns out, our official low the other night was 6F, tying the record from 1970. We finally replaced the roll-around humidifier we’d been using for several years. We got that one when the one built into the furnace failed and would have cost $1,000 to replace. The furnace guy recommended the roll-around unit and said it was what he used at home. It put about 2.5 gallons (10 liters) of water into the air per day, but required filter replacements a couple times a year that cost $30 or so.
Barbara wanted to replace it with an ultrasonic unit that didn’t require filters, so we checked Consumer Reports and ended up buying this one. Consumer Reports classifies it as a small, single-room unit, but rates it to put out 2.1 gallons per day, which is nearly as much as our old roll-around unit. So we decided to give it a try. So far, so good. The reservoir holds 3.0 liters and on high lasts about seven hours, so the actual output is about 10 liters or 2.7 gallons per day. It’s kept the relative humidity in the house at 43% or higher even during the frigid weather the other night. At under $30, if it lasts even one full season it’ll cost no more than replacing filters in the old unit, so we’ll see how it does.
We continued watching The Great War Diaries on Netflix streaming last night. So far, it’s one of the best WWI docudramas I’ve seen, second only to Black Adder Goes Forth. As always, I find myself wondering how the UK ended up allied with France and Russia instead of its natural ally, Germany. The world would have been a very different place. The UK and Germany would have won the war, the Bolsheviks would have been wiped out and the Romanovs reinstated if indeed they’d ever been overthrown, the US would have remained neutral, Hitler would have remained an obscure laborer, WWII would never have happened, and nuclear weapons would probably never have been developed.