If your Metro East Illinois home was too dry and the air had little or no moisture this past winter, it may have caused more harm than simple discomfort. Low humidity can result in dry skin and increased allergic reactions, plus it can cause wood fixtures in your southwest Illinois home to split or crack over time. Use a whole house humidifier to get moisture levels back to normal.
Choosing a Whole House Humidifier
Use these five tips to select the right humidifier for your home.
- Use your home’s square footage to select a system that will humidify all of your indoor space adequately. Consider the quality of your home’s air sealing when making your choice. Poorly sealed homes require humidifiers with a higher output than houses with a tight air envelope.
- Determine whether the whole home humidifier you’re looking to purchase will need to be connected to your home’s HVAC system or if it’s a stand-alone unit. A whole house humidifier works in conjunction with your home’s furnace blower and water supply and requires less maintenance than stand-alone devices. Keep in mind that stand-alone humidifiers need to be refilled with water periodically to ensure proper operation. They generally aren’t designed for whole home humidification anyway.
- Check the evaporative capacity of any whole home humidifier you intend to purchase. Devices with higher outputs will moisturize your home’s air more rapidly and effectively than machines with lower evaporative capacities.
- Consider the control functions between manual and automatic units. Most whole home humidifiers possess automatic controls that allow homeowners to set a programmed humidity level, turning itself on and off as it detects moisture levels dropping below your chosen setting. Conversely, manual whole home humidifiers need to be monitored constantly to ensure moisture levels remain within desired boundaries.
- Determine how much cleaning and regular maintenance is required to keep your whole house humidifier in good condition. For example, some humidifiers have filters than need periodic replacement, while others have permanent filters that need to be cleaned approximately once a year, indicated by a panel light that signals cleaning is required.
If you need professional help cleaning, maintaining, repairing or installing a whole home humidifier in Metro East Illinois, please contact us at Ernst Heating and Cooling today. We provide superior services to Bethalto, Hamel and Troy, as well as other southwest Illinois communities.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Hamel, Alton, Glen Carbon, Highland, Greenville, and Troy, Illinois and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about whole house humdifier and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.