Benefits of Whole Home Humidifiers
Managing the comfort level in your home sometimes requires more than just increasing or decreasing the temperature using a furnace or air conditioner. Humidity can have a big impact on how it feels inside your living spaces. Whole house humidifiers provide better control over the comfort in your home, and can even save you money on energy bills. In order to get the most from one of these devices it’s important to maintain them and regularly change out the filter pads with a fresh replacement to keep the humidifier operating efficiently.
Here in Canada, the weather during the winter can be really unpredictable. Sometimes we have milder winters where we don’t get quite as much snow, while other times we get absolutely buried under the white stuff and temperatures plummet for weeks on end. Suffice to say, our home furnaces can get quite a workout when the weather takes a turn for the worse. Unfortunately, frequently running a home furnace to maintain a comfortable temperature inside your home can have the secondary effect of removing most of the moisture from the air, creating a very dry environment in your living spaces.
Why Would You Need a Humidifier in Your Home?
When the air in your home is extremely dry, it can affect your comfort in a variety of ways. Very dry air often causes people to experience physical discomfort in the form of scratchy throats and extremely dry sinuses. This is particularly pronounced in people who may suffer from respiratory sensitivity or allergies, as dust forms more quickly and can be stirred up into the air easily when the air is very dry. Many people find their skin to develop flaky or itchy patches when continually exposed to a very dry environment. Chapped lips are also common when the air is really dry, which can be painful and even lead to splits in the lips which may bleed.
In addition to these physical conditions that dry air can have on our bodies, it can also produce several other annoying effects. Very dry environments are much more prone to developing high levels of static electricity, resulting in unpredictable zaps when reaching for door handles or other people. Houseplants will certainly get dehydrated much more quickly in very dry environments, and pets will likely find it less comfortable as well. Extreme dryness can also cause damage to parts of the home, too. Wood furniture or flooring may begin to warp or distort, and certain types of paints may begin to flake or crack if the air is too dry for too long.
Fortunately, it’s easy to avoid the problem of extremely dry air in your home by using a humidifier to maintain an optimum level of moisture in the air. There are many different styles of humidifiers, such as small standalone units that simply plugged into a wall outlet, and whole house humidifiers. Let’s take a look at each style of humidifier and how they are used.
Different Types of Home Humidifiers
Standalone humidifier units are suitable for increasing the level of moisture in the air inside a single room, making them a good choice for temporary environmental control and providing relief for people suffering from colds. These humidifiers will have a refillable water tank attached to them, which is used to continually dampen a filter pad. When switched on, the fan in the humidifier blows air through the damp filter pad, thereby carrying moisture out into the surrounding air. Room humidifiers are a low-cost way to improve the comfort of a small space for short durations, but they are simply not an efficient way to obtain ongoing control over humidity in the house.
Whole house humidifiers are installed directly into the HVAC system and ductwork of the home, allowing them to deliver humidified air throughout all of your living spaces for enhanced comfort and consistency. Whole house humidifiers come in multiple different styles, but the most common types are evaporative humidifiers and steam humidifiers. Evaporative humidifiers are often installed in a bypass duct to use the movement of the air created by the furnace to pull air over the humidifier pad and draw out moisture. Evaporative humidifiers are also available in models that include their own dedicated fan to increase the efficiency of moisturizing the air as it moves through the ductwork.
In both types of evaporative humidifiers, the transfer of moisture to the air increases or decreases depending on the temperature of the air in the ductwork. This means that if the furnace is running and generating heat, more moisture will be transferred to the air than if only the fan is running. For homeowners who want to have more independent control of humidity, a steam humidifier may be the better option.
Steam humidifiers feature integrated heating functionality so that moisture can be infused into the air without the need for the furnace to be generating heat, only requiring that the HVAC system fan is running to move air throughout the home. Of course, this also means that steam humidifiers consume more electricity than an evaporative humidifier. Depending on the needs of the home and the desired functionality, each homeowner may choose to install one type over the other based on their preferences, however both styles of humidifier are able to significantly improve the consistency of home comfort during the dry months of a long Canadian winter.
Whole House Humidifier Pads & Replacement Humidifier Filters
Just as it’s essential to regularly change your furnace filter to ensure optimum air quality in your home and energy efficiency of your furnace, it’s also critical to regularly replace the filter pad in a whole house humidifier. In most cases, the recommended interval for changing a humidifier pad is about once per year if the use of the humidifier is limited to only the winter season. For homeowners who wish to manage the humidity and comfort of their home over a longer period of the year, then a humidifier pad change should be performed twice a year for optimum performance.
Finding the right replacement filter pad for your whole house humidifier is quite simple. The first place to look is in the owner’s manual of your whole home humidifier, which should list the parts and components in detail, along with the filter pad model and specifications. In the event that you’ve misplaced the owner’s manual, these are usually available for download from the manufacturer’s website. Just jot down the model number of your humidifier and search the manufacturer website to obtain all the available documents and information about the specific unit installed in your home.
Saving Energy with a Whole Home Humidifier
In addition to preventing the common problems associated with dry air that we mentioned earlier, installing a whole house humidifier can also have the added benefit of saving you energy on your home heating bills over the winter. You see, just like how increased humidity in the outdoor environment during the summer can make it feel hotter, the same principle applies to your indoor spaces during the winter.
By slightly increasing the ambient humidity in your home during the winter, you can make it ‘feel’ warmer than it would otherwise. According to statistics gathered by energy conservation organizations, the average household could save as much as 4% on their annual heating bill for each degree the thermostat is lowered during the winter. Using a whole house humidifier and lowering the thermostat setting by one or two degrees can produce a significant savings on your overall home heating costs each year, without any noticeable decrease in comfort for your family. In fact, you’ll likely find that it is in fact more comfortable thanks to the other benefits that consistent home humidity will provide.
If you’ve been noticing the effects of dry air in your home, it could be the right time to invest in a whole home humidifier to improve the comfort in your living spaces. Just be sure to maintain your whole home humidifier with top-quality replacement humidifier pads from Dan the Filter Man to keep it operating at maximum efficiency.
