Humidifier Help

[newbie4life]

Re: Humidifier Help

Running the fan all the time will not dry the air out unless the heat is on with it.

How does this work??????? Why do drywallers run fans all the time, when the humidity is high???? To get the air to move, and dry out the drywall.

When my car and truck pull into the garage, and the snow melts on the garage floor, if I don't run a fan, the floor will still be wet in the morning. If I do, wha-lah.... dry floor.

 

[jsfinn]

Re: Humidifier Help

Well, I just installed a damper in the fresh air duct and closed it about 1/4 way to see if that makes a difference... We'll see.

I did try putting the fan on auto and running some ceiling fans on low - no humidity change. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I'm thinking about leaving the fan on auto though - reason being - when the fan is running, it's not only sucking in the house air, but also cold air from outside. That would make the furnace run more (and cost more) to heat the cold outside air.

The downside to running the fan on auto is less fresh air inside the house and hot/cold spots (which hasn't bothered me so far). I'll play with it for a few days to figure out what works best.

 

[jsfinn]

Re: Humidifier Help

Ok, so it's just about a year later and I still have my low humidity troubles (about 30-33% humidity).

A few weekends ago, I helped a neighbor install a Honeywell HE360A whole house powered humidifier (the humidifier has a fan built in to it) on his furnace except his is on the hot air supply side where my bypass humidifier is on the cold air return side. Within 2 hours his humidity level was up from the same as mine to 50% and had to adjust his down.... I'm jealous!

I'm thinking of replacing my Honeywell HE220 bypass humidifier with the same HE360 powered unit that he has but I want to keep mine on the cold air return side because I could reuse the hole that's already cut in the duct and I really don't have room on the hot air side to mount it because there is a baffle in the way.

My questions now are:

Is switching from a bypass humidifier to a powered humidifier going to really make a difference?

The old HE220 Humidifier is powered off of the furnace control board - it's wired in to the "HUM" terminal -> 120V to 24V transformer -> humidistat -> humidifier -> back to the transformer. I can't find any good information on the HE360 but I think it has a transformer built in and I can probably just wire it directly to the HUM terminal without any extra transformers. Is that correct? (My neighbor who installed the same one installed an outlet powered off of the EAC terminal that the humidifier plugs in to and tied the yellow wires on the humidifier together which I don't particularly like but the humidifier does only run when the furnace fan runs...)

Thanks for your help!