How dumb am I?

[Vee]

I am feeling the dumbest person on Earth!

I bought an expensive humidifier, trying to make my office more "livable" and to get less static shocks (I hate these shocks) and the darn thing, in a couple of days, tainted all my things with the darn white dust!

Now my assembled sets are all white dusty!

Now I have a Herculean job of cleaning all of them, probably by disassembling them all, one by one, cleaning the most important parts, like the trans-clear pieces, and reassembling.

If regret would kill, I would be dead by now (this is a translation of an old Brazilian saying... "Se arrependimento matasse, eu já tava morto!").

[Timinchicago]

Yes those humidifiers and that white coating is a major problem. I used spray cans of air and it did a pretty good job, just have to be careful not to blow the delicate pieces all over the place!

[trippybrowneyes]

If you happen to have an air compressor, that will do a nice job of dusting Lego. Good luck :(

[Dayton]

I know a guy who has a general white dust problem and had left his Moc out for two months, it looked like it was covered in show. He never really told me how he fixed the problem.

Edited March 14, 2014 by Dayton

[Vee]

I have a small compressor, but strong enough to blow all loose Lego parts away. I used it to clean my computers every once in a while. I have not tested but I can't see it cleaning the white dust. The white dust is kind of glued to the surfaces, I am finding that only by using a soft cloth I am able to clean it, without resorting to a more drastic solution like washing the pieces. But then, it must be piece by piece. The "glasses" of the houses is where it shows the worse. Dang, I had everything new, recently assembled, now they look weird, depending on how the light reaches them.

If the white dust does not permanently damage the plastic, if left unremoved for a long time, then it is ok, sooner or later, one day, I will end up cleaning everything, after all, I don't have many sets, "only" around 20k pieces should have been exposed. But I am afraid this thing can permanently cloud my glasses, no basis for this fear, just a fear by looking at the glasses.

Anyway, I'll have to live with the issue for a long time I guess. Dang! I hate myself when I do dumb things.

[TheWarden]

Canned air, perhaps? Or a keyboard vaccum? They also make this "dust absorbing keyboard putty" that you can roll around on electronics and things and it cleans them. Light paintbrush? Statically charged handheld dust wand?

I use canned air a time or two a month for normal dust myself.

[Masked Builder]

Yeah I use a paintbrush, works nicely.

[Vee]

This is not a normal dust, it is called "white dust" but it is a byproduct of the process of generating humidity (vapor) by ultrasonic humidifiers. It is composed of the minerals found in tap water that are thrown into the air by the mist. Blowing compressed air seems not to remove it, at least at a pressure not strong enough to damage or disassemble the sets.

I am puzzled here in my office. I have removed the stupid humidifier, not run it for some days now, but I clean a surface, it gets clean, then after some hours it is cloudy again, as if the humidifier was still running inside the office. I don't know how to explain this. Well, I have a theory that the white dust is everywhere and as I move about or by itself it is still moving, in the air, somehow. I will wait some days, weeks, until this dust is gone somewhere then I will start cleaning and see if the sets keep clean.

Very weird. I should destroy with cruelty this humidifier but considering I paid $150 for it, I will not.

I've read that if I use distilled water, the humidifier would not generate the white dust but each gallon of distilled water costs $1. The humidifier can use 3 a day and I am not willing to spend tens of dollars a month with this.

[dr_spock]

Do you have a water softener? Sounds like you have hard water in your area and you are getting calcium deposits.

[Vee]

Yes, that is the problem. I don't know what a water softener is, although I read some articles that mentioned it. I need to search and learn about this subject. In Brazil, I remember that we used to use a lot ultrasonic humidifiers and I don't remember having this white dust problem. Here, it is the first time we buy and use this kind of equipment. I guess my water is extremely hard = too many of these minerals.

[dr_spock]

Here are some pics of my water softener to give you an idea what it looks like. It has one input and 2 outputs. One is the input from the city water supply going into my house. The 2nd pipe is the output from the softener after the minerals have been removed. There is a drain pipe that is hidden in the view. The softener works by ion-exchange. It has a resin tank that the hard water goes through. The resin exchanges the calcium, magnesium for sodium (or potassium). When the resin has depleted its sodium and full of calcium, it has be to recharged. This is done by washing them with a brine solution which the softener makes with the salt in the tank. The wash waste goes down your drain and not into your house water. The softener has a flow meter which helps determine when a recharge is necessary based on your water usage and hardness rating of the water. You can have your water tested to determine its hardness.

Removing the minerals will help prolong the life of your appliances like water heater, dishwasher, etc. Also you can soap up better in the shower. The drawback is there is extra sodium in your water which could be a problem if you or your family is on a sodium restricted diet. In those situations, you can buy potassium salt for your softener instead of sodium salt. Potassium costs more than sodium water softener salt. You could also buy drinking water for cooking and drinking. Or build a distillation column to make your own distilled water.

Here is under the cover. You can see the resin tank inside the salt tank.

I had the softener apart to replace a broken valve control motor the other day. It's pretty simple.

[Vee]

Thank you for the thorough explanation, with pictures, dr_spock, Based on the pics and how big the set of necessary equipment seems to be, I would have to find a way here because my basement is all finished and the water main inlet register has very little room around it, it is hidden behind a small wooden door in our fitness room. But I would love to have my water softened.

[dr_spock]

You're welcome. My water inlet is on the other side of the room. I had to run copper pipes to the spot where I have space to put the water softener. Kind of like routing traces on a PCB.

[-Hayden]

To get rid of dust I take away the small pieces, and dry rub them in a towel, then i get a cloth mesh put it over my hover nozzle and then hover the build, it gets rid of the dust and if any small bits you missed do get knocked or sucked off they don't get hoovered up :)