Why Whole-House Humidification Can Keep You and Your Family Healthy

Proper humidification is an important element in household comfort and natural health. The Environmental Protection Agency recommends maintaining indoor relative humidity in the range of 35 to 50 percent. During winter, however, your family probably doesn’t receive the optimum indoor environment because cold air doesn’t contain much water vapor. In addition, forced-air heating systems have a dehumidifying effect and further reduce water vapor in interior air. The consequences can be a familiar annual routine of symptoms: dry skin, scratchy throats, increased allergies. Even cold and flu viruses are now proven to thrive and survive longer in dry, winter air.

Here’s how whole-house humidification offers a solution for dry winter air throughout the entire home.

• A whole-house humidifier installs in the air path inside your heating and cooling ducts. Since all the air in your house circulates through the ductwork multiple times daily, the entire household air volume is treated every day.

• A humidistat installed in the living spaces of the home continuously monitors interior relative humidity. When humidity drops below the humidistat setting, a signal opens a water inlet valve at the humidifier, saturating an evaporation pad with water or initiating a flow of water across a thin, perforated panel. This water evaporates into the airflow through the ducts and is dispersed to all areas of the home. As the interior humidity meets the humidistat setting, the water inlet valve closes.

• A whole-house humidifier is permanently plumbed to a household water supply line and drains excess water down a home drain. Therefore, no daily maintenance such as filling and draining is required. In most cases, routine maintenance of a whole-house system is limited to a single, annual maintenance procedure.

Sobieski Services offers homeowners the best of winter comfort and healthy indoor air quality for your home, including humidification.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC & plumbing systems).

Image Credit: Joe Shlabotnik