Use a Humidifier!

Have you ever been to AZ or NM in July? "Yeah, but it's a DRY heat." Uh huh. They're right, and it's still HOT.

But in the desert, as hot as the days are, the nights are cold. Fires built for warmth hardly feel as if they're burning. Why? Because there is no moisture in the air.

Living in a humid environment has taught us the water in the air holds heat. So why do so many of us refuse humidifiers in the winter? When I lived in TX, humidifiers were non-existent. People thought the moisture would make them sick and their houses feel clammy. I finally convinced my manager to disconnect his dryer vent and put a filter on it for his humidifier. His daughter was healthy for the first winter of her short 3-year life. His conversion to belief in humidifiers brough other co-workers around and life was much improved at work.

My room mate in TX, however, was a harder sell. We finally rerouted the dryer vent into the house - not for our benefit of course, but for the hard wood paneling. Being much more comfortable at a lower thermostat setting was only grudgingly admitted.

Oddly, back up here in upstate NY, it can be a similar battle. I truly don't understand why, for our heating season is so long that anything which can improve it should be seized upon instantly. And so, I once again hop on my soap box, extolling the virtues of a humidifier.

Air Exchanges

No matter how tightly sealed a house is, there is still a full air exchange at least once an hour. The average is 3 and can be as many as 6 (like my house). Since most houses are made of wood, this number of air exchanges increases or decreases with the moisture content of the wood. If the wood dries, it shrinks, creating gaps where air leaks both in and out. These leaks allow more cold - dry - air in and heated air out. You are wasting heat. And drying the air out even more since that cold air is dry air being heated, only becoming dryer (relatively speaking). The dries the wood out more, creating more and larger leaks.

As I write this, there's a snow storm brewing outside, so the relative humidity is high out there, 86% - for the temperature of 19 degrees F. But, calculating the indoor humidity without any humidifier running, it's only 12%. Since you want your indoor humidity 40%-50%, 12 is a bit low. Check yours here and go to the bottom of the page for your zip code.

Why Wood Needs A Humidifier

And so while you are needlessly heating all of those air exchanges, you are also creating a slow motion cycle similar to the freeze-thaw of the roads. We all know far too well what happens when roads go through these for just 1 season - buckling and pot holes. Well, over several seasons of desert dry air in the winter, followed by rain forest humidity in the summer, the wood in your home starts to bend and warp and buckle, causing joists to heave, nails to pop through plaster, plaster cracking, doors not closing, loose joints in chairs, peeling veneers and ruined antiques.

Why Your Body Needs A Humidifier

If all of this is happening to your house, what is happening to your body? You lose up to a gallon of water a day with normal breathing and sweating. Your skin is a permeable cover - meaning it leaks water - which is why your body creates oils to try to seal the leaks and keep the water in.. It's also why your skin is so dry in the winter. Everything dries out faster in dry air - including your skin and the rest of your body.

Just as importantly, your eyes, mouth, nose, throat and lungs have a more difficult time retaining their moisture, cuasing your body to dehydrate that much faster. The air is supposed to be 100% humid by the time it reaches the lungs, which causes your sinuses, nose and throat to all dry out very rapidly, and make you lose that much more moisture through your breathing.

Because your nose, sinuses and throat are all just trying to stay moist for breathing, there isn't enough moisture to flush contaminants like bacteria or allergens out. This allows infections to take hold, for allergies to flare up, and for your sinuses to become a virtual swamp, rather than its normal clear-running stream.

Why Your Heat Bill Needs A Humidifier

It's a simple issue of comfort. Or is it? Humid air feels warm and IS warmer - holding heat longer - like so many microscopic radiant heaters. Why sit in chilling misery with yet another cold or sinus infection; feeling that NW wind blow across you each time it hits the house?

If you think you can't afford a humidifier, let's talk numbers. Since 2004, electric has gone up about 6%, or 1 penny. Natural gas has gone up 40%-50%. Buy humidifying your home to 30% (still on the dry side), you'll increase your electric use by about 3%, but you can reduce your natural gas by 4%-12%. Statistics show that each 10% jump in humidity feels like a full degree in warmth. I kind of think it's more like a 5% increase - with how our house feels going from 30% to 40% RH at 70 degrees. But, going with the 10% number, you can feel more comfortable with your heat turned down 2 or 3 more degrees just by getting the humidity up to 30%.

This type of savings doesn't include you having to contend with loss of work due to illness, decreased home value from the years of the wood heaving or the quality of life that has improved dramatically - which can be the most precious of all, particularly for those with allergies and asthma.

How To Humidify

Do yourself a favor, get and use a humidifier.

Forced air systems can have a whole-house version installed directly in the system. It's initial price is high, but over the life of the system, costs much less and you don't have the daily ritual of filling the humidifier.

Hot water baseboard needs a portable type system, which comes in a variety of styles:

Hot mist

Cold mist

Ultrasonic

Fan Forced

Passive

Active

It can be confusing. We go for the quietest. Which means we have several. (pictures are in the order listed below)

1 on the wood stove that acts as a passive unit. The stove heats the water and it just evaporates.

1 in the dining room is a fan forced with 5 different fan speeds.

1 on the second floor which is a hot mist.

And finally, our electric dryer with a filter attached to the end of the house. This isn't the permanent fixture, but will become permanent in the summer with an attachment designed specifically for this purpose.

None of these pose a significant addition to the work load of the house, the noise factor or humidity. But the combination keeps the house at about 30%-35% RH with virtually no sound - a true blessing!