Is Your Home Too Dry?

For more sensitive people, the effects of low humidity are immediately obvious. Your skin becomes dry and itchy. Your hair might become frizzy and get damaged easily. In very dry climates or during the winter, your lips split in the mornings. You wake up every morning feeling dehydrated and congested. Even your eyes can feel more irritated when it’s too dry inside your home. These are often the most clear signs, but there are other ways that humidity can affect you, too. It could be that you seem to get sick more often than other people or that you seem to have a cough that just never goes away.

 

(image from http://www.crawlspacehuidifiers.com)

If you’re here, you might think your home is too dry. Like many, you might live in a dry part of the world, and it’s hard to get any humidity any time of the year. But for others, dry air comes back to haunt you every winter. You might even notice that during the winter, you get shocked more often by static electricity. You can hear the crackle of static as you pull off your fleece sweater. If that’s the case, it’s a sure sign that your home is too dry.

Why You Should Humidify Your Room

Having the right humidity makes you comfortable and offers you long-term health benefits. The best part is that you don’t even need to buy a humidifier to start increasing the moisture in your home. There are a lot of natural ways to humidify your home by making small changes to your daily routine. You’ll immediately start noticing improvements in things like your skin, hair, and breathing when the humidity is more comfortable.

In addition to the short-term effects of dry air, you can develop chronic health issues from not having the right humidity. This article won’t go into these issues in detail, but here’s a quick summary of the possible problems from dry air you might not have considered:

• Worse indoor allergy symptoms or asthma problems
• Increased spread of infectious bacteria or viruses
• Higher concentrations of ozone trapped indoros
• Increased risk to your health during respiratory illnesses
• Dry, scaly, and itchy skin, which can lead to inflammation and sores

Natural Ways to Increase Humidity

If you don’t want to buy a humidifier or don’t think you need one, there are a lot of things you can do to naturally increase the humidity in your home. These things can range from affordable and easy to a little more involved or pricey. Generally, you can humidify a room easily with simple methods or small changes in your everyday routines. Some methods work better and quicker than others, while humidifying an entire home is definitely going to take more work than just a single room. Here are some ideas to get you started on increasing the humidity all around your home.

Turn Down the Heat

This first point isn’t so much about increasing the humidity as it is about preserving the moisture you have in your home already. If you’re blasting the furnace during the winter to get comfortable, you’re severely reducing the relative humidity in your home. Your furnace forces moisture out by sending in dry, heated air. In addition, the same amount of moisture at a higher temperature can cause the overall relative humidity to go down. Even a few degrees could make the humidity levels in your home a lot more comfortable.

Set Out Pots or Pans

Using pots or pans filled with water is a classic method that uses natural evaporation to humidify your home. This is much the same way that evaporative humidifiers work. Old-fashioned humidifiers were essentially just water vessels kept near hot radiators during the winter. Heat from the radiator would help keep a room steamy by warming up the water in the vessel. Similarly, if you keep your water-filled pots or pans near a heating vent or by the window to get some sun, the warmth will help the moisture be released into the air. You can get creative by using decorative vases, too.

Evaporating water at room temperature this way tends to be a slow process. The best way to get the most out of your containers of water is to set them out all over the place or to keep them in a smaller room.

(image from https://www.pinterest.com/explore/house-plants/)

Keep Fish Tanks or Potted Plants

Staying on the theme of natural evaporation, keeping fish tanks or several potted plants can really keep a living area more humid. The larger the fish tank, the better. Taking care of a fish tank, especially a large one, can be very expensive. But if you’re interested in keeping fish as a hobby, this would be a fun, natural way for you to humidify your home. The advantage of keeping potted plants is that it’s cheaper to maintain many of them and they’re a great way to liven up your home. Plants can also help reduce the CO2 in your home while also reducing the level of certain volatile organic compounds (VOCs)

Air-Dry Your Laundry

Drying your wet laundry by hanging them inside on racks is an easy way to quickly raise the humidity in your home. An added bonus is that you conserve a ton of energy that you would use in an electric dryer. Air-drying your laundry could be inconvenient depending on how much laundry you have to dry. And if you don’t have drying racks, there will be an upfront cost, which you’ll eventually get back on your electric bill. If you must use an electric dryer, however, look to our next tip for still getting that moisture back into your home.

(image from http://www.getyouorganised.com.au/laundry-training/)

Vent Your Dryer Inside

If you own a home and have an electric clothes dryer, consider venting your dryer inside to send the moisture from your clothes back into your home. This may or may not be a convenient option for you. Be sure to research what works for you. Venting your dryer indoors could also be a great option during the winter to maintain the heat in your home.

Boil Water or Cook More Often

Boiling water or open cooking in a pot or pan can quickly bring up the humidity in your home, especially in a smaller one. If you love to cook soups, learning to make your own broths is a great way to get a lot of moisture into the air. Low simmer of your stock components over hours or days can keep your home nice and comfortable.

(image from https://www.us.kohler.com/)

Steam from Showers and Baths

If you have a hot water tank, you’re spending a lot of energy to keep that water hot. Whenever you take a shower or a bath, use that hot water to humidify your home. You don’t even have to shower or take a bath with the door open. That can happen after you’re done. It’s amazing how much humidity can come pouring out of your bathroom. And at the end of the bath, consider waiting until the bath water cools before draining it. This way, you’ll make the most out of the heat and moisture that you’ve spent all that time drawing into your bath.

Direct Humidifying Methods

Using any of the natural humidification methods above may or may not work for you. It depends on your interests and willingness to make changes to your daily or weekly routines. Some of these are easier than others, but the challenge you still face with some of the natural methods is that they’re inconsistent sources of moisture. You can’t take a shower all day, and you can only cook so much in a day. If you need more consistent or immediate humidity with less effort, consider these options.

Spray Bottle

This is a cheap, effective way to humidify an area very quickly. It’s just not very consistent because it takes regular sprays on your part. Choose a spray that gives you the finest mist possible, and you’ll feel that the humidity increases almost immediately.

Tabletop Humidifier

Tabletop or stand-alone humidifiers are the most popular option to humidify a home. Although they require some maintenance, it’s fairly hands-off and requires no effort throughout the day once your tank is filled. They come in a whole variety of types to suit your needs. They also come in different sizes so you can change the water less often or humidify a smaller room if you need to.

(image from http://www.holmesproducts.com/)

Whole-House Humidity Systems

If you live in a very dry climate and you could use more moisture all throughout your home, consider using a whole-house humidity systems. They come in two main varieties, a humidifier that’s part of your central air conditioning system, or a console humidifier, which is similar to a very large humidifier you’d keep in a central part of your home.

 

Read More About the Importance of Humidity

• How Humidifiers Help Babies
• Humidity and Health Issues

Humidity can have a large impact on those who suffer from different kinds of allergies.

Most allergies cause your nasal passages to swell and produce excess mucus as your allergen is breathed in. They may also cause irritation in the throat, watery eyes, dry or itchy skin as well as many other unpleasant symptoms.

Your actual allergies will not be badly affected by the level of the humidity in the air. However, the way your body prepares for allergy attacks and how it responds to them as they come can be adversely influenced by the concentration of humidity. Your nasal passage, sinuses, throat, skin and eyes will react poorly to allergens when they are already dry and irritable. If you can keep these parts of your body well moisturized and hydrated, you stand a better chance of being far less miserable during periods of allergy reaction.

HOW CAN A HUMIDIFIER HELP YOUR ALLERGIES?

Humidifiers, by their very nature, add moisture to the air to increase the relative humidity levels. This can be accomplished in several different ways, all of which have roughly the same end result. No matter what type of humidifier you get for your home, it can help you to be more comfortable and suffer less from your allergic reactions than you normally would have.

It’s important to note that if you don’t maintain your humidifier well or if you allow your home to get too moist in the wrong places you may increase the risk of bacterial growth or mold, both of which can add to your allergy problems and make them worse. Read the considerations at the end of this article for some tips on how to avoid these issues.

BENEFITS OF HUMIDIFIERS FOR ALLERGY SUFFERERS 

While you may only see a few true benefits of using a humidifier, they are excellent advantages that quite simply shouldn’t be ignored if you suffer from allergies!

Here are a few of the things you can expect if you choose to start using a humidifier in your own home during allergy seasons:

1. Better breathing

Dry air makes it harder to breath well, especially as you sleep. You are more prone to coughing or sneezing if the air is dry since the lack of moisture can dry out your body. A humidifier will help to solve this issue and will make breathing easier and more comfortable for you, particularly during the night as you sleep.

2. Less itching

Allergies can sometimes cause a feeling of itchiness all over your body and dry skin only makes this problem worse. By keeping your skin moisturized and healthy you will help to avoid discomfort caused by itchiness.

3. Increased nasal and throat comfort

Sore, dry throats and a dry nose are common problems with low humidity levels. This will make you even more miserable if you also suffer from allergies. Humidifiers will increase the humidity and give you greater relief.

IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

• Self-regulation

Some humidifiers are able to manage the humidity levels in your home more easily than others without adjustment. For instance, evaporative humidifiers will produce more humidity when the air is drier and less when it is more humid helping to maintain proper levels of humidity. Better regulation leads to fewer worries about mold or mildew as time goes on.

• Humidifier type

Each different type of humidifier works in a slightly different way. Choose the type which will best work for your requirements and the needs of your household to make you all comfortable against allergies.

• Anti-bacterial systems

Improper maintenance or poor humidifier choices can lead to bacterial growth in the water making things even worse if you breathe in that bacteria when you are breathing your humidified air. Many systems can combat this bacterial growth with ultra-violet lights or heat depending on the type.

So, humidity levels and allergies are linked but take the sensible precautions above and think about the many benefits from purchasing a humidifier.

Protect Your Baby from the Effects of Poor Humidity

Having the right humidity in your home isn’t just a nice-to-have benefit, it can protect you from a lot of harmful health problems. For your baby or toddler, these problems can be even more severe because they have more sensitive bodies and immune systems. As an adult, we experience direct effects of dry air like cracked skin and respiratory issues, which can affect your child even worse. In most homes, we face dry air rather than too humid ones because modern heating and air conditioning will dry out your home.This is where extra humidity from a humidification system will work wonders for you and your baby’s health. You’ll bless your baby with better skin, more comfortable breathing, protection from asthma or allergies, and reduced risk to infection from bacteria or viruses. On top of all of this, the sound of a humidifier can help your baby sleep by providing white noise in the background.

(image from https://babycenter.com)

Humidification Benefits for Your Baby

Here’s some more information on each of the benefits you can give your baby by placing a humidifier in their room.

Skin

Babies are sensitive to dry air and susceptible to problems related to dry skin. Excessively dry air can start off by causing dry and scaly skin. If bad enough, dry skin can become itchy and cracked, which exposes your baby to skin infections and can cause a lot of pain. Lotions help keep skin moisturized, but a humidifier can address the problem at the source. A well-humidified room can also help prevent things like nosebleeds. Lotions or nasal sprays, on the other hand, aren’t so easy to use on young children or infants.

Breathing

Dry air is often a culprit in chronic breathing problems. Sore throats in the morning, chronic coughing, or asthma symptoms. Your sensitive mucous linings can dry out when the humidity is too low, and you can bet that your baby’s at risk, too. Dryness can also cause nasal congestion as your body tries to fight against the dry air by producing more mucous. Better breathing for comfort and better sleep is one of the number one reasons parents choose to place a humidifier in their baby’s room.

(image from https://jonwayneheatingandair.com)

Germs

Not having enough humidity also encourages the spread of germs like bacteria and viruses. Combined with dry air, which puts your child at risk for respiratory infections, you’ll want to maintain the best humidity possible to prevent the spread of infectious germs. Keeping up the air quality in your home has also been shown to reduce not only asthma symptoms in children but to prevent asthma from developing.

Sleep

Who doesn’t want their babies to sleep better? Or longer? By improving the air quality and making it easier for your baby to breathe, they’re sure to be more comfortable as they sleep. And while humidifiers are often bought for their humidity generating powers, they also generate white noise to help babies sleep under their relaxing drone or hum.

Factors to Consider for Choosing a Humidifier

Humidifiers come in several different types. The main ones you’ll see on the market are ultrasonic humidifiers, steam vaporizers, warm mist humidifiers, and cool mist humidifiers. Each comes with its own sets of pros and cons for things such as size, the safety of your baby, noise, and maintenance.

Size

Consider how big of a humidifier you need. How big is the room that your baby sleeps in? The larger the room, the bigger the humidifier you need. If your humidifier is too small or weak, it could run out of water before getting the room to a good humidity level. The size also affects maintenance needs. Larger humidifiers will generally require maintenance less regularly.

Safety

The different types of humidifiers create moisture in different ways. Steam vaporizers and warm mist humidifiers will kill off bad bacteria and mold spores, but they also have boiling hot heating elements that pose a safety risk for active children. On the other hand, cool mist humidifiers will spray anything in that’s in your water into the air. Ultrasonic humidifiers are popular because they’re very quiet, but they generate dangerous dust that can be breathed in.

(image from http://www.momjunction.com/)

Noise

Depending on what you and your baby needs, you might want a quiet humidifier or a louder one. A quiet humidifier keeps it from disturbing your baby when they’re sleeping. But a louder humidifier can also help babies sleep with white noise that’ll drown out other sounds that might wake them up.

Maintenance

People often overlook maintenance as a feature of humidifiers. How easy is it to clean? This isn’t just a matter of convenience. Since you’re buying a humidifier to protect your baby’s health, it’s equally as important to keep your humidifier clean to avoid growing and spewing bacteria and mold. If your humidifier is hard to clean, you’re more likely to clean it less, either putting your baby at risk by harmful germs or by using the humidifier less to address the problems of having dry air.

Different Types of Humidifiers

Each of the different popular types of tabletop humidifiers have their own advantages, but in the case of providing a humidifier your baby, some advantages are going to be clearly more important than others.

A Sharper Image ultrasonic humidifier (image from https://www.sharperimage.com)

Ultrasonic Humidifiers

Ultrasonic humidifiers are great for 2 main reasons: they’re very quiet and usually cheaper to run. There have no potentially dangerous heating elements that could be a risk for your baby. They are also effective at humidifying because they produce a very fine mist that evaporates more easily to increase the humidity in your room. Generally, ultrasonic humidifiers also don’t use any filters for the water, which makes it cheaper but leads us into the main drawback of using an ultrasonic humidifier. Since there’s no filter, anything in the water will also be released into the air. If you’re using tap water, the minerals in the water will be released as the mist evaporates into a fine white dust. Severe injuries have been reported from babies that have inhaled the white dust that comes from ultrasonic humidifiers. If you’re using an ultrasonic humidifier, use distilled water to avoid the harmful effects of dangerous particles in the air.

Cool Mist Humidifiers

These humidifiers are a popular alternative to ultrasonic humidifiers. They’re generally impeller humidifiers, but might see the term “cool mist” be used to refer to impeller, evaporative, or even ultrasonic humidifiers. Both evaporative and impeller usually have filters that’ll help filter out minerals to avoid generating the white dust you get from ultrasonic humidifiers. The main difference between the two is that impeller humidifiers use a rotating disc to spray a mist into the air. This mist will usually have whatever germs are in the water as well. Evaporative humidifiers, however, spread minimal germs compared to other cool humidifiers.

Steam Vaporizers

Steam vaporizers work as you might expect. Water is boiled to produce steam to humidify a room. The heat of the steam will kill any germs in the water, but you’ll have to ask yourself if you want the extra heat in your baby’s room. In the winter, you can avoid extra heating from your furnace drying out the air. But the danger here is that steam can burn your child, especially if they’re an active, curious type.

Warm Mist Humidifiers

Warm mist humidifiers produces vapor the same way a steam vaporizer does with one difference. It cools the steam as it leaves the humidifier, giving you a warm mist instead of a steaming hot one. Just like the steam vaporizer, the entire process will kill any germs that go through the heating element. And although the danger of hot steam is much less with warm mist, the presence of a heating element is still a small risk factor, especially with active children.

Read More About Humidifiers for Your Home

• Placing a Humidifier in Your Baby’s Room
• How to Humidify a Room

Is Something Wrong with Your Whole House Humidifier?

You’re probably here because you’re trying to find out what’s wrong with your whole house humidifier, or you could just be researching whole house humidifiers as a possible solution to humidify your home. Whole house humidifiers, also referred to as furnace-mounted or duct humidifiers, are great ways to increase the moisture in your home. They generally take less maintenance than console tabletop humidifiers, but they can still have occasional problems starting up or not humidifying your home as well as it did when it was new. Despite these potential problems though, maintaining proper humidity in your home is a great way to protect your health.

Image from https://www.familyhandyman.com

Parts of Your Humidifiers

Before going into the different problems that can come up, it’s good to go over a brief overview of how whole house humidifiers work. Despite the different types of humidifiers, they all work to do one thing: increase the moisture in your home. In order to do that, they need a water source, a method for turning that water into vapor, and a way to know when you need more moisture. All of these functions come to the following basic parts:

Water line – This is the main water source for your humidifier. Your humidifier gets water from a main water supply that leads to your humidifier, often through a saddle valve. This then leads to a solenoid valve that delivers water to your evaporation unit. The water supply system is a great place to start if you’re experiencing any leaks or problems with your humidifier running dry.

Image from https://www.thespruce.com

Solenoid valve – The solenoid valve controls the inflow of water to your humidifier. It’s controlled by electric current to shut the valve open or close. Attached to the water delivery system, whole house humidifiers will also have filters to help slow calcium and mineral buildup. And like the water supply, the solenoid valve can also be related to leaks or problems with your humidifier not delivering any water. Since the solenoid valve does run on electric current, a dead solenoid valve could mean something is wrong with your humidistat or power delivered to the solenoid.

Evaporator – Depending on the type of humidifier you have, the evaporator can work in any number of ways. Since liquid water needs to be evaporated into water vapor to increase the moisture in the air, your humidifier needs a way to easily change liquid water into water vapor. This is where the different types of humidifiers come into play, which we’ll get into in the next section. Each type can run into its own set of problems. During your research, watch out for different terms that refer to the same type of humidifier.

Humidistat – To make sure that you get the humidity you need, the humidistat works to detect the humidity in your rooms and let the humidifier know when it needs to turn on. This switches on the water and any fan or furnace that will help evaporate the water delivered to the humidifier. Problems with your humidistat can be a little trickier to diagnose, but with a multimeter and some familiarity with electrical diagrams, you can usually find out what’s exactly wrong with your humidistat.

Types of Humidifiers

Image from http://www.thespruce.com

Reservoir (Drum) humidifiers – These humidifiers’ have a rotating evaporator pad that works to increase the moisture in the air that passes through. The pad rotates into a reservoir of water to bring it up into the passing air to increase the humidity in the air that passes through. You’ll find that drum-style humidifiers also come in types that include its own self-powered fan or not. The advantage of having its own fan is that the humidifier doesn’t need to passively rely on the air coming from your air circulation system to drive the humidity up.

Image from http://www.iaqsource.com

Flow-through (Drip-style) humidifiers – Flow-through humidifiers work on the same basic idea as reservoir humidifier, but there’s no reservoir to keep the water. Instead, the water is passed directly into an evaporator pad that is positioned in the stream of air that passes through. Flow-through humidifiers will generally use more water because it produces a lot more extra water that drips off of the evaporator pad, which is why they’re also called drip-style humidifiers. The most common problem you might face with the humidifying mechanism on flow-through humidifiers is that the evaporator components start getting clogged from mineral buildup.

Steam humidifiers – A steam humidifier boils water to directly send water vapor into your circulation system. They’re often the most effective way to humidify your home because it doesn’t rely on evaporation to increase the moisture. The use of boiling and hot steam means you have to make sure you’re using your steam humidifier according to manufacturer instructions. Not following the guidelines for use can damage both your humidifier and home.

List of Possible Problems

• Water is Leaking – The first thing you need to do is figure out where the leak is coming from. Is the leak coming from before or after the humidification mechanism? Leaks in the drain mechanism are less common because the drain system is more simple, but it never hurts to be sure. Chances are, however, the leak is coming from somewhere between the main water supply to where the water is delivered through the solenoid valve. Every valve is a potential failure point for water to leak. Over time, parts can wear down from buildup or mechanical failure. You can try shutting the water off at various points along the water supply system to see if you can stop the leak at any point.
• Humidifier is Not Turning On – If the humidifier is not turning on, there are a few places you can look, but they all come back to your humidistat. The signal from your thermostat to your humidistat could not be working, the power supply to the humidistat could be faulty, or something could even be wrong inside your humidistat if it’s not detecting the humidity correctly. If you’re comfortable with electrical diagrams and testing circuits with a multimeter, you usually pinpoint the problem. Check for any loose wiring. One person also found out his humidifier stopped working when he upgraded his thermostat, which changed the wiring setup.
• No Signs of Water or Humidity – One of the most common problems with any humidifier is that the lines can be blocked from calcium and mineral buildup. Water passes through a lot of small lines, filters, valves, and evaporators that make it easy for them to become blocked. Check to see where the water could possibly be being blocked. Another check is to listen for the click of your solenoid turning on. Since a solenoid problem could be more than just the solenoid, I’ve given this problem it’s own point.
• Buzzing Noises – Buzzing noises are going to come from any moving or mechanical part in your humidifier. Any rotating drive mechanism or fan motor could wear out from overuse or poor lubrication.

Image from http://www.thespruce.com

• Solenoid is Not Switching On – Your solenoid is fail to click on for two main reasons. The solenoid valve itself is broken, or it’s not getting the right signal from your humidifier. Check to see what signal your solenoid valve needs to open and if it’s receiving the correct voltage. If it is receiving the correct signal but still fails to open, then your solenoid valve is the problem. If, however, you’re not getting the right signal to the solenoid to begin with, you’ll have to investigate the humidistat and power delivery. For more information, The Spruce has a detailed writeup on how to replace a solenoid.
• Funny Smells from the Humidifier – Funny smells are going to mainly be a problem with reservoir style humidifiers because of the standing water. Humidifier reservoirs need to be cleaned and disinfected regularly to prevent bacteria and mold growth. Follow manufacturer instructions for disassembling and cleaning your humidifier.

What You Can Do

Before you get started on any work for your humidifier, check to see if it’s still under warranty. Some manufacturers have policies saying your warranty will be invalid if you do any troubleshooting or work on the humidifier yourself. But if you don’t have to worry about voiding your warranty, feel free to diagnose the problem yourself.

Always be sure to follow safety recommendations from the manufacturer and follow general safety guidelines around water and power. If you are taking apart your humidifier for cleaning, maintenance, or repair, turn off the water supply and power to your humidifier.

Calling a professional is an easy way to get your humidifier fixed quickly, but you can save a lot of money and learn a lot by doing it yourself. Being able to repair your humidifier will depend a lot on how easily you can find the parts you need.