Why Your Home Needs Indoor Humidity Control
Comfort you need
Depending on the geographical location of your home and the time of year, your home could have uncomfortably high or low humidity indoors. The two basic solutions used for these two conditions are humidifiers and dehumidifiers:
Humidifiers add humidity to the home (typically in the colder months) to improve occupant comfort level, and dehumidifiers remove humidity from the home.
Your home could have problems without humidity control
Using a humidifier, especially in cold, dry winter months, improves indoor comfort throughout the home. A comfortable humidity level can help reduce common symptoms that may be associated with low humidity levels:
- Dry skin
- Scratchy throat, or
- Electrostatic shocks
Increasing your home’s relative humidity may also allow you to lower the setting on your thermostat and still provide the same level of comfort. Lowering the thermostat setting saves on heating costs.
How Does Humidity Control Work?
Basics of humidity control
During cold winter months, a low humidity level in your home can make it feel like a desert. Whole home humidifiers add moisture into the ductwork of the heating system in one of two ways: by boiling water into steam and directing that steam into the ductwork, or by drawing warm air from the furnace / air handler through an evaporator pad covered with fresh water and delivering this moisture-laden water into the ductwork.
Professionally installed whole-home humidifiers are a more effective way to humidify your entire home compared to portable units, which can only deliver humidity in the proximity of the room where they’re located. Whole-home humidifiers from Clean Comfort help ensure humidity control throughout your entire home.
What types of humidifiers are available?
Clean Comfort whole-home humidifiers use one of two technologies to humidify your home: Electrode Steam humidifiers (HS Series) or Evaporative HE Series evaporative (“evaporative flow through”) humidifiers.
What does humidification do for my home?
Both HE Series evaporative and HS Series electrode steam humidifiers supply moisture to the air in a dry home in winter without the mess associated with portable humidifiers. By maintaining the relative humidity in your home’s air at the right level, humidifiers help protect humidity-sensitive hardwood floors and wood moldings around doors and windows from shrinking or cracking during the dry, winter months. Portable humidifiers also require frequent water re-filling and pad cleaning. Plus, our whole-home humidifiers do not deposit dried mineral dust on the floor like portable humidifiers can.
The HS Series humidifiers are the preferred solution for larger homes as well as homes with variable speed and modulating heating systems, since the amount of humidity they deliver does not rely on the temperature or flow rate of the air leaving the furnace to deliver the right amount of humidity to the home in the way evaporative humidifiers do.
The HE Series humidifiers are a cost-effective and easy-to-install option to add humidity to your home‘s indoor air. This makes the HE Series humidifiers a good choice for smaller homes, homes with a single stage furnace or heat pump, newer homes with tighter construction and continuous vapor barrier, or for installations where a low installed cost is the highest priority.
Both HE and HS Series humidifiers can be configured with a digital humidistat and outdoor temperature sensor to automatically adjust the home’s humidity level to help prevent condensation on your windows on the coldest winter days.