Will A Whole-House Humidifier Take Care Of Extremely Dry Air? You Bet

A whole-house humidifier is the front line of defense against winter dryness in your home. Although Midwestern winters can get very sloppy, the air inside your home can actually be relatively dry. That’s partly because the heated indoor air is already dry, but also because cold air leaking into your home through windows, doors and other small gaps mixes with the warmer indoor air, and the ultimate effect is lower relative humidity.

How do you know the air is significantly drier? Maybe your skin is itchy, or family members are experiencing nosebleeds. Have you noticed more static electricity, and have your prized wood floors cracked in spots? Dry air feels colder, which might have already caused you to turn up the thermostat. For every added degree on the thermostat, your heating costs increase 4 percent.

Room humidifiers treat only limited areas, but dry air affects your entire home. A whole-house humidifier helps to keep your whole home comfortable. Here’s how it works:

• Installed directly into your heating and cooling ducts, a whole-house system draws water from a supply line attached to your plumbing, converts it to water vapor and injects it into the ducts. Because all the air in a home circulates through the ducts many times daily, the entire air volume is humidified.
• The whole-house approach incorporates a digital humidistat to control humidity levels. Just as a thermostat senses room temperature, a humidistat monitors the relative humidity in the air and activates the humidifier as required. Any desired level can be dialed up on the humidistat, which displays a continuous readout of relative humidity on a LCD screen.
• Because whole-house humidifiers operate by converting water into vapor, there’s no reservoir of standing water providing a breeding ground for mold and requiring frequent cleaning and disinfecting.

For more than 25 years, Fred’s Heating & Air has provided home-comfort sales and service to Nebraska and Iowa residents. Give us a call, and let us tell you more about the benefits of a  whole-house humidifier.