Proper Humidification Boosts Comfort, Health in Your Orlando area Home

The winter season brings dry indoor air, which is further exacerbated by your forced-air heating system, creating a drop in indoor relative humidity. If you are concerned about comfort and health issues in your Orlando area home as a result of low humidity levels, consider the many benefits whole-house humidification brings.

Why Humidify?

As dry cool outdoor air enters the home and is heated by the heating system, the relative humidity drops, which creates a variety of negative issues, and even higher heating bills.

• Home – When humidity falls, moisture is extracted from wooden furnishings, home structure and possessions. This can cause damage in a number of ways, such as warping, bowing and cracking of cabinetry, wooden flooring, musical instruments and more.
• Static electricity – When moisture levels are low inside the home, electrical charges accumulate on surfaces, which causes those annoying static-electricity shocks. In addition to being a nuisance, those shocks can damage sensitive low-voltage electronics.
• Comfort – Dry air causes discomforts with dry and chapped skin, dry nasal passages, sore throat, dehydration and fatigue.
• Health – Dry air helps the influenza virus proliferate and infect household occupants. For instance, when the virus is released into the air from sneezes, dry air evaporates the tiny sneeze droplets that blanket the virus, leaving the virus free to find the dry nose, throat and lungs of an unsuspecting host.
• Heating bills – Dry air feels cooler than properly humidified air. If you find it difficult to find a comfortable heating temperature, proper humidification can help and perhaps lower your heating bill.

Whole-House Humidification

The most effective way to humidify the entire home is with a whole-house humidification system. Whole-house humidifiers are add-on systems attached to the ductwork by your HVAC pro. Moisture is added to airflow as it circulates through the ducts to the entire home.

Operation is fully automatic. Water is received and drained through a home plumbing hookup, and humidity levels are adjusted with a humidistat, which monitors humidity levels like a thermostat monitors indoor temperatures.

For more details about whole-house humidification, please contact us at Rinaldi’s Energy Solutions.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Orlando, Florida and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about humidification and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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