Are you looking for a way to improve your home’s indoor air quality this winter, and ensure the comfort and health of you and your loved ones as you’re spending more time inside during the long, cold months? A whole-house humidifier could be your answer.
A whole-house humidifier maintains your indoor air’s moisture level at an optimal 40 to 55 percent, ensuring your indoor air doesn’t dry out and cause health issues, or damage your home’s contents. As a reference point, a heated home during the winter, without the benefit of a humidifier, may have a relative humidity as low as 5 percent.
A humidifier counteracts dry air in your home, which increases your comfort. When the air becomes too dry, moisture on your skin evaporates, which causes you to feel cooler, which in turn has you cranking up your thermostat. You can balance that energy loss by introducing a healthy amount of moisture into your home’s air, which helps stave off dry and irritated skin, scalps, throats and sinuses. It’ll cut down on static electricity, which is annoying to humans and destructive to electronic devices. Lastly, a healthy level of humidity also makes it harder for viruses and bacteria to proliferate and thrive, and helps prevent mold growth.
You may think that installing a whole-house humidifier is too costly and involved, and instead are thinking of using portable humidifiers. They indeed are handy when you want to add moisture to only one or two rooms, and definitely don’t cost as much initially. However, they require weekly cleaning and disinfecting, and you’ve got to move them from room to room, or own several that you then have to place throughout your home.
Conversely, a whole-house humidifier works by introducing water vapor to the heated air that your HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system produces, and then that moisturized, heated air is delivered through your ductwork. Furthermore, a whole-house system typically requires minimal maintenance — once a year — which your HVAC contractor can oversee when he visits to provide your yearly HVAC system’s preventive maintenance.
To get expert advice about whole-house humidifiers, contact Paschal Heat, Air, Geothermal and Generators. We have been serving northwest Arkansas for more than 40 years.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Northwest Arkansas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about whole-house humidifiers and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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