OT- Home humidifier choice

Good morning. I have a question about a home humidifier. I know this is way off topic but I have seen this sort of thing discussed here and it seems that there are quite a few people with HVAC experience. As of late my wife and I have been experiencing the side affects of very dry air. I was thinking of adding a humidifier component to my heat pump system. I called the company that installed the system and they said this could be done. They mentioned two types of humidifiers and this is where I need help. One sounds like a relatively simple pan of water that the air handler distributes. The other is a steam injection system where there is a separate unit that connects to the air handler/duct work and injects steam. The salesman told me this was a better system (and I'm sure more expensive). Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Thanks so much for any replies.

I worked for 25 years as an engineer at a pharma manufacturing plant and did several high end humidification projects. Generally speaking it's my opinion that steam is the best. It's pretty much guaranteed to be sterile and it very effectively gets the moisture into the air. An evaporative system, which I think is the first option you listed does neither of those.

Maybe 20 years ago I installed a Nortec Resdelux humidifier in our house. The motivator was that we bought a Steinway grand piano and the goal was to keep the house pretty well humidified. The Resdelux is no more but Nortec morphed into another company and still makes similar humidifiers you can find all this out googling. These type humidifiers have a plastic drum inside with two electrodes in the drum. The unit is powered by 240v and this voltage, through a contactor gets put right into the water. No heating element just the current passing through the water heats the drum. The current is controlled by the level of the water in the drum and it has some logic internally to flush some of the water now and then to keep the hardness of the water in a certain range. Mine has worked great. I can keep the house at 50% RH all winter. The down side is they are not cheap to start and not cheap to operate. The plastic drum replaced every few years, I just replaced mine last night after 3-4 years of use.

My experience with the evaporative units you'd be better off investing in more hand cream.

Also, ultrasonic humidifiers have the issue that they basically throw the water droplets into the air. Along with these droplets go any microbes that are in the tank and anything that's dissolved in the water goes too so you wind up breathing all this.

We have one of these and it seems to work.

Whole-House Humidifier Solutions

dee

;-D

I have a general Aire powered humidifier which has an electric valve, no ducts and no reservoir. It can make it rain in the house..not really. Works so well with zero maintenance. Liked it enough t have it reinstalled on a new furnace. Stay away from anything that has a reservoir. They are high maintenance and have mold issues.

Aprilaire was always the best in upper midwest, but they are a warm air furnace add on evaporative type. They require heated air to work. They will not evaporate as much water with a heat pump because the air is not as warm. Should still work well depending on where you are, tightness of the house , insulation levels, vapor barrier in walls and ceiling, and quality of windows. You should back off humidity level in extreme cold weather to prevent damaging building components. If you see moisture codensing on windows, humidity is too high. Problems have become worse with tighter buildings and higher insulation levels. See your local contractor for advice.

Rickyb...is that the steam type or evaporation type?

I have an Aprilaire 500 that uses the heated air from the plenum and a fan to blow air over a aluminum mesh filter that works well. The moisture level is controlled by a a humidistat that opens a valve to allow water from the water heater to trickle down over the mesh. The overflow from the mesh is discarded to the drain. At the end of the season the filter is replaced. My water is hard enough that the filter is almost solid with mineral.

Tom

I spent over 25 years in computer rooms with controlled temperature and humidity repairing IBM equipment. On one university campus with a central steam plant for campus wide heating, cooking and humidification, the air handler for the computer room failed. It took several days to get parts for repairs. During this time additional chillers on the floor kept the room in operation but at elevated temperature. When the air handler was put back in service, we discovered that the steam had not been turned off while the air handler was down. As soon as the fan started water poured out of the ceiling air vents. Fortunately the cooling fans in the IBM processor were strong enough that very little liquid got into the processor internal circuitry. The steam had condensed in the duct work until the fan came on. There were a couple of anxious hours waiting for a major failure of the 7 ton central processor. There were several circuit card failures in the weeks following the elevated temperature in the room.

Bob
WB8NQW

Do the math on HEALTHY whole house air exchanges.

Figure the gallons per HOUR that it takes (out door RH depending)

I've resolved that Healthy breathing air and winter humidity are at odds.

N.B. Ive tried a lot of things over 30 years of NE winters with wood heat. I use a nebulizer filled with distilled water when sleeping.

It is important to understand that is it cold air leaking into your house that causes the humidity to be too low. Cold air has poor moisture holding capacity and when it comes into the house and is warmed, it drives down the RH in the house.

Taking action to limit infiltration of outside air should be the first step in managing humidity in house.

Winter humidity in a house is a complex topic and highly dependent on climate and house construction. In VA, you have less to worry about then those in MN. I've seen widow frames rotting from the inside out from poor management of indoor moisture relative to outside temperatures. You want to generally keep the indoor dew point above the inside surface temperature of the windows. Otherwise you get condensation on the windows.

The worse case scenario is an old, leaky house with retro fit insulation that didn't address the leakiness problem. The house is dry because it leaks. When you drive up the indoor moisture, condensation forms on the exterior sheathing boards that are now cold because of the insulation. Prior to the insulation, this wasn't a problem because that surface was kept warm in the process of letting tons of heat out of the house.

This is a good article to review before increasing into humidity.
Bad Advice About Indoor Humidity in Cold Weather - Energy Vanguard

Well as usual I have either learned a lot from you guys or at least I have determined that this is not as simple as it seems. I do have a leaky house which I now understand can contribute to the humidity issues. My house is almost a hundred years old and built out of cypress logs (it used to be a hunting lodge) and so there is no place to add insulation. I have three forms of heat. The heat pump which is good to about 35 degrees, my emergency heat is an oil fired furnace with radiators and my backup, backup heat is a wood stove with a heat exchanger that is tied in to the radiators. After further deliberation I don't think a humidifier on the heat pump is going to work at all. When it gets below 35 the heat pump cuts off so there is nothing going through the duct work. Back to the drawing board I guess. Thanks so much for all the information.

had a lot of trouble with minerals in a previous setup which atomized water. Made lots of dust/particles. It was an expensive setup, so we needed to add lab grade water demineralilzers to the water feed to create distilled type water.

Need indoor humidity: marry someone who likes lots of indoor plants, or have a teenager who does god only knows what in a hot shower for way too long…..

One of the above works for me.

L7

crossthread said:

Rickyb...is that the steam type or evaporation type?

Click to expand...

It’s an evaporative type. Had it for 18 years and replaced the evaporator mesh once.

This design has a solenoid water valve and orfice to provide water over the mesh and a fan to pull heated plenum air across it and return it back to the plenum. All non evaporated water runs out the bottom to a drain. When the humidistat is off, everything is off. The mesh dries quickly preventing mold growth. Also there is no external ducting. All is contained in the box of the unit.

jasme9 said:

I really didn't want to spend over 30$ so I chose this 20$ so I went on a hunt for a humidifier hvaclifehack. I am very happy with 2L Cool Mist Humidifier! It was honestly easy to use and set up, not confusing at all. It works great! The noise honestly is very quiet like everyone else, however, if you need to sleep in complete & total silence then I would still rec this but also it has the tiniest noise, but still- very quiet. It fits nicely on my nightstand, not huge or clunky at all! Very easy to lift and carry, I just plug it in my Bluetooth charger under my bed and turn it on during day or most of the night. And I can say after just a few days/nights I saw results in my breathing. My room air felt different after just a couple of hours, I really like I was breathing much clearer air, and It helped a lot sleeping too so please buy this! Best 20$ and I love the led light too at night!

Click to expand...

This looks suspiciously like spam to me, but I looked at your post history and saw that your other 2 posts weren't spammy. This is your one warning. If you want to participate in discussion, do that, but try to avoid posts that look like ad spamming or you will be banned.