Daily Home Renovation Tips

Today we write about a home maintenance tip. 

We wrote a couple of years ago about issues we had in our house during the winter with insufficient humidity.  We tried several different things but it has never been quite right.

So, imagine my shuddering when I heard the following question in my home a few days ago:

“Honey, is there anything you can do to increase the humidity in the house? It is awful dry already.”

Oh bother.

And, winter has just begun.

Well, I remembered from our home energy audit that air leakage not only lets cold are inside during the winter, but that of course the cold air from the outside is very dry during the winter months.

So, I have done as you know a lot of work on sealing the many air leaks in our home. The few remaining areas left to tackle over the year end holidays couldn’t be the major impact already on the dryness in the house.

However, homes heated with a central furnace, like ours, tend to be dryer that homes heated with say radiant heating because the natural gas or home heating oil, when burned inside the furnace consumes moisture within the home’s air.

As well, lower humidity levels makes it feel cooler in the house causing one to turn up the heat and up goes the home heating bills.

So, I went downstairs to take a look.

We have the above flow through humidifier unit attached to the cold air return at our natural gas furnace.

The pad inside through which the water flows from the top of unit and through which the cold air passes before being heated by the furnace should be changed every one to two years. I replaced it last year so it should be OK

However, when I looked at it inside, it looked bone dry.

Why? Well, I noticed that it was awful quite by the furnace, even with the furnace running. Something was missing? What was it? What was it?

Got it. It was too quiet because the water was not entering the humidifier unit. Why?

I looked to remind myself of the water shut off valve’s location and found it just above the water heater. You can see it in the picture below. It is the small valve on the upper left.

Unbelievable. It was turned off. I have no memory of ever dealing with that valve. But, I guess I must have, right?

Once I rotated the valve counter clockwise (i.e. to the left), the water started to flow into the flow through humidifier unit.

However, there is more.

Select to continue to how we attempt to address excessively low humidity issues.