How do you increase humidity levels in your house?

[GeeWizMan]

Last night at around 1 am, my 9 year old son woke me up with a bloody nose. This happens every winter. We dab a little petroleum jelly in his nose to stop the membranes from drying out which will work for awhile. We also keep a pot of water on the stove to add water vapor to our air, but the air still feels dry. Are there other ways to add moisture to the air?

gwm

 

[hardwood715]

I use the half kettle on the stove, but in your sons case, you can get a cold water steamer( i call it that even though its cold water, cold mist)
from a drug store like rite-aid etc. it just steams the water by a motor in it, again its not hot steam, but for lack of better words, thats what I call it. Like a vaporizor.

 

[DavidV]

my 10 year old used to have bloody noses. we put a cold humidifier in his room when he was younger. doesn't make much noise and increased humidity levels. As I type this there is a rack of clothes that my wife hung last night sitting about 5 feet from the stove. it's dry now. We keep a steamer on the stove and we dry clothes in front of the stove every night. Often I will also leave an open pan of water in the kitchen as well just because I reason that as the water dries it must be going into the air.

 

[GeeWizMan]

but in your sons case, you can get a cold water steamer( i call it that even though its cold water, cold mist)
from a drug store like rite-aid etc.

I have gone through 4 different cool water misting humidifiers in the past. We have well water and get a large build up of deposits that are difficult to clean after a month or so.

gwm

 

[PAJerry]

We have some orchids and other plants in the windows of our living room where the insert is. A couple times a day, we mist them all with an ordinary spray bottle and have had no problems with static electricity or dry air at all. Houseplants also are supposed to clean the air, and the orchids LOVE the heat from the stove - they have never grown better!!

Maybe the fact that we set the Vista up to draw combustion air from the basement helps too.

 

[Sandor]

my 10 year old used to have bloody noses. we put a cold humidifier in his room when he was younger. doesn't make much noise and increased humidity levels. As I type this there is a rack of clothes that my wife hung last night sitting about 5 feet from the stove. it's dry now. We keep a steamer on the stove and we dry clothes in front of the stove every night. Often I will also leave an open pan of water in the kitchen as well just because I reason that as the water dries it must be going into the air.

I second this.

Also, do not run the bathroom fan when showering, and leave the door open so the steam escapes, rather than condensing on the walls and windows.

 

[kd460]

I think the humidifier is called an "ultrasonic humidifier" or a "cool mist humidifier". They work great, use very little energy, and your child will probably sleep better once he gets used to the "white noise".

In addition to preventing the bloody noses (by increasing humidity), your chances of catching a cold increase when the mucosa in your respiratory tract dry out.

So keeping moisture in the house is important. I no longer use the vent fans when taking a shower and leave the door open to get a little added moisture to the rest of the house, I go thru about 1 1/2 to 2 gallons of water in a 24 hour period from the pot on top the insert, and I will turn the blower on in the furnace from time to time to let the plenum mounted humidifier do it's thing. (it still adds moisture even when the burners are not running-just not as much).

I think I'll run a clothesline in the basement and see if hang drying helps.

Pick up a cheap "hygrometer" (humidity gauge) and place it near your sleeping area to see what your numbers read. It really helps to determine wether your humidity efforts are working or not. KD

 

[Swamp Fox]

I used to have the same problem with nose bleeds. We bought a whole house humidifier (floor stand model) from Sears. It holds about 4 gallons of water and you can adjust the speed of the fan and the amount of humidity it puts out. I fill it up about every 24 to 36 hours. It is in a central location in the main hallway. Has really helped a lot. (I'm not sure, but I think it cost us around $100 about 4 years ago).

 

[Sandor]

About using a clothes dryer:

Not only will you add humidity to your home by air drying your clothes inside the house, you will aslo decrease the NEED for humidity. Consider:

If you have a 2000 square foot home, that equals 16,000 cubic feet of airspace inside the home with 8 foot ceilings.

A typical clothes dryer uses about 125cfm when running. So the math tells me that you will completely remove the entire mass of air, inside your home, in 128 minutes dryer time..... lets say 2 hours.

So, if its cold outside, the air cannot hold much moisture. When running the dryer, you are taking warm, humid air from inside the home and sending it outside. That cold replacement air (coming from outside) must be heated and humidified.

Pay attention to how many hours your clothes dryer runs and figure it out.

In conclusion, running the clothes dryer works against you in two ways. You are not capturing the moisture from the wet clothes, and you are sucking all of the heat and humidity from your home and sending it outside.

In the summer, the problem is the same but reversed. The dryer is not an inexpensive appliance to use, and anyone wishing to save money and energy will try to eliminate or minimize its use.

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

install a 200 gallon aquarium, i get 5 gallons of evaporation a day

 

[CrazyAboutOrchids]

We have sinus issues in our house so come winter, the dry air really makes us suffer, add on to that the insert and there is a recipe for bloody, stuffy noses.

When we had our furnace replaced recently, we had a new water saving AprilAire humidifier installed. I forget the model number, but it is a water saving model. Problem is that the furnace has only really been running in the morning. I am back to using my Bemis SpaceSaver Humidifier. This is the one I own, third year of use. http://www.amazon.com/Bemis-821-000..._21/102-2633293-9735340?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden

It is fairly basic, has a huge filter which I replace each season before use and rinse monthly as I clean the humidifier. It's a cold air one, so it is more energy efficient than the warm air ones. I do use humidifier bacteria treatment in the water. I have hard as rock water but also a water softener. It builds up stuff on the filter; I just rinse it off. Half way through the season, I flip the filter so the top portion of it which sees the least use goes to the bottom of the tank. The model I have has a high/low/off button and a button to change the humidity level desired. It also has a hygrometer; I take the readings with a grain of salt - they aren't perfect. But in the room with the insert, it is awesome. Low noise, holds a lot of water so I am not filling it once a day, fairly simple, cheap build, not a whole lot of components in it to break. There are other fancier models, but all the gadgets are just going to break faster. This does the job - we're happy.

 

[laynes69]

Last year we had a floor model whole house humidifier. It seemed to help, we had it plugged in at the base of our stairs. We have a wood furnace in our basement that uses our main furnace blower only. I have debated on installing one because of the humidity going from the LP Furnace plenum through the wood furnace would rust the jacket out on the wood furnace, or dissapate upon contact with the firebox of the furnace. I wonder if they can be installed downstream from the woodfurnaces plenum and wired to the LP Furnace? Our blower on our system runs almost constant, maybe a humidifier would put too much moisture in the house.

 

[CrazyAboutOrchids]

I have my blower on almost constantly as well. The new systems are meant to run that way, particularly the variable speed like we had installed. It uses less electricity than a low wattage light bulb to constantly circulate and filtrate the air. BUT, the humidifier is wired to only run when the furnace calls for heat. So it doesn't help unless the furnace kicks in. That's why I filled up and started running the Bemis again. It was getting dried out in here with the insert running pretty much all the past 2 weeks and the furnace only kicks in early in the morning.

I think if it was installed to run off the furnace fan, it would run too much. But, it still has controls on it to set the amount of humidity you want in the house though, so it may work fine run that way. Only problem I can see is during the summer. If you have central air, it couldn't be wired to run when the fan was running.

 

[coldinnj]

Hmmm, air conditioners will get the conditioned space to between 45 - 55% humidity. So ---
Turn your air conditioner on whenever your heat is on.
Besides helping your dryness problem, it's good for the economy of our nation.

 

[colsmith]

Hi, I am a little bit tipsy, so I am not positive you are trying to be funny. Turn on the air conditioner?!? Air conditioners suck the humidity out of anyplace I've ever been, really bothers my hubby's sinuses, so I guess you must be kidding. We keep a pot or pan of water on top of our woodstove all ther time, it keeps the air very nice and moist. We have hung up all the clothes in our homes for the past 15 years, that really puts a lot of moisture into the air. Also, we have a lot of plants (that I water all the time,) that must put a lot of moisture in the air. Either abandon your clothes dryer or get a lot of houseplants, either one should do it for you. Good luck!

 

[GeeWizMan]

Thank you very much for all the great advice.

I had never thought about hang drying clothes inside the house or adding house plants to add moisture. I am going to try both of those ideas to increase our humidity levels.

I wonder if anyone knows which type house plants have higher transpiration rates?

gwm

 

[suematteva]

All clothes are hung in the house. One steamer and one big tea kettle on stove. we use the shower closest to stove room, no fan. The dog is part polar bear and she is always schlepping in ice and snow. We are in snow belt and am sure the run off just from boots going in out contributes, we keep on one of those rubber trays in entry.

 

[Eric Johnson]

Stack wood in the basement.