I learned about the damper from the thread. Didn't know I had one and don't shut it off. Have to do that next summer.
I don't measure humidity but Aprilaire seems to work OK but things do dry out in the winter. I put in a new pad every year as old has a lot of salts precipitated around it although I think it could work for a couple of years without change.
Leaving the damper open with central AC makes it much more likely to freeze the evaporator coil.
I'm wondering if the OP need to replace that pad, might be the water is on the outside of the pad, not soaking into the fibers.
- . Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus
Yes, how large is the house? How well sealed is it? You may need two. When I had Aprilaires I had two of them.
You can also improve it a little bit by having the fan run continuously.
Don.
Thanks Stormin for the thinking, I actually bought a new pad on Friday and put it in already, I had the side with the black mark facing up. Although i t seemed to me that the side facing into the return duct also matters, I ha d the pad oriented so that the little holes in it go upwards, not sure if i t's correct though.
You are in the right place. But your posting with no carriage returns makes it very hard to read your posts. One has to scroll back and forth.
Don.
That is my test. Touch a metal light switch plate. If no static shocks there, or any other place, the humidly is high enough.
Don.
ain! Unfortunately I'm Chinese but I always wished I could understand Kore an :D
air flow from supply to the humidifier(the one that I could control with th e horizontal/vertical switch), then yes I did double check and make sure it was fully on. I've also tried different water flow from the hot water sup ply, from minimum to maximum, humidity output did not change. The humidity monitor I was using was AcuRite 00613A1 Indoor Humidity Monitor. Bought f rom Amazon, not sure if it's okay to post links here so I'll just skip that for now. Anyways for the two years since I had it its performance had bee n satisfactory for me, it was able to sense humidity changes and never fluc tuated when in a stable environment.
have was 16%, therefore the hot air I was measuring probably was even lower than 16%, this is the main thing I was concerned about, and also why I thi nk I might be >experiencing something different from other people who has t he same unit.
ing much higher than 16% sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure if this hot/co ld air difference will be able to account for the difference between the 45 % and 16%. The humidifier should not sense the outside temperature because when I had it installed I specifically asked for them to not put in the au tomatic one, but the manual one instead.
ifferent numbers, no digital display.
of register is reasonable or not, if it is, I probably shouldn't even both er getting the service guy back in again. But if it's not, I'm thinking wh ether there are other hardware configuration problems involved that they co uld make improvements on.
I didn't want the automatic one because I wanted to be able to adjust it to a higher humidity level when my family really needs it. But again I reall y don't think that is the issue here.
The humidifier is constantly on when the furnace is running, when I set it to 45%, but if I set it to ~30%, it stops.
The humidity guage I was using could possibly be inacurate, but I did have
2 years of experience with it and it had been functioning well, again I'm g etting another one in to make sure, but if you think the whole model is jus t not accurate I probably won't be able to invest more money to get somethi ng better and more accurate.I tried checking the water panel when it was running, but I could really te ll the difference between wet all over and partly wet, am I supposed to see stream on every single wire or just a very tiny thin layer of water that's hardly observable? Or just drops of water here and there? The draining w ater seemed to all stick to the side of the tubing and not forming a stream .
e wrong place. I recently (3 months ago) installed a new Trane 2 stage ECM furnace and along with it an Aprilaire 600 whole house Humidifier. It's u pstate New York here, I've been setting the the thermostat to 73 degree, so furnace officially started working since late September.
I will have to learn how to post with carriage return then. Sorry about th e inconvenience. :D
I'll give that a shot, thanks!
let me know if I'm posting things at the wrong place. I recently (3 months ago) installed a new Trane 2 stage ECM furnace and along with it an Aprilaire
600 whole house Humidifier. It's upstate New York here, I've been setting the the thermostat to 73 degree, so furnace officially started working since late September.carriage return then. Sorry about the inconvenience. :D
Don, the modern generation has no idea what is a carriage, and less idea what is a carriage return. That may take some explaining to computer users.
I some times have to reply, and then insert the carriage returns as I've done with the quoted text.
- . Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus
In the OP's header I find: User-Agent: G2/1.0 Which I find here:
I would think it has a setting someplace. But it appears to be a simple app and not a regular application for a desktop computer. So maybe no settings.
Don.
But doesn't that depend on what kind of carpet he has, if any, and what kind of soles there are on the shoes they wear? They both have to be right to get static.
In 30 years, I've never gotten a static shock in this house**, and for at least 10 of these years, I've had no humidifier and I'm sure the humidity was low. In fact an ivory came loose on my piano for the first time in over 67 years. .
**Because the carpet is synthetic (I'm sure). I'm also not sure if the rubber-like stuff on the bottom of my slippers and sneakers are the same kind of rubber that would create a static charge if I had wool carpets. or whatever pair works.AIUI, there are no good humidity gauges that the average person can afford. That would include the gauge the OP is checking the humidity with, and the gauge inside the humidifier that attempts to humidify the household air to a desired humidity.
OP, have you tried just turning that " round knob pointing to different numbers" to a higher number? Even if those numbers are supposed to be the percent humidity that the unit will deliver, that doesn't mean they are. The furnace control in the 50-apartment building I used to live in didn't attempt to give a temperature, only heat output, for which one could set it to A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. I think only by trial and error did the first landlord** find what was the right setting. The analogy is not perfect, but I think that's how you'll find it too.
Maybe you can borrow another better than average hygrometer from someone.
Or just set the humidity to maximum, and when water starts dripping off your windows, etc. keep setting it down a little at a time until nothing bad is happening, no dripping anywhere that matters, and that will be the highest humidity your home can have, anyhow. Regardless of your hardware. Then mark that spot on your knob dial. And you can also probably find out what the %age is, and interpolate what all the other numbers on the dial mean.
It bothers me that he charged you for part of a service call because HE could not find anything wrong. Were you very clear that something WAS wrong. But in a way there's no point in crying over spilt milk, and just calibrate the humidifier yourself.
Thanks for the warm reply! I have no carpet in the house and am wearing ba mboo slippers all the time, not sure how that's gonna affect static shock t hough. The 45% is actually the highest setting on this humidifier. I wish I could crank it up any higher lol. However I am seeing frost on the wind ow, is that a sign of too much humidity then? So I should probably never r ely on humidity measurement coming out of the register but instead just jud ge by the water on window. This whole measuring humidity thing actually sta rted because my wife woke up on a morning about two weeks ago telling me he r throat had been burning the whole night and she had to drink water every hour to feel a little better.
I put the humidistat on one of the return registers on the floor on first f loor this afternoon and it read 36%. This number actually is consistent wi th the humidistat by the humidifier, because when I turned the humidistat t o under 35%, it would stop the hot water feed to the humidifier. Maybe just like Stormin said, I might need two of these... Or maybe it's time to blea ch clean my portable one again XD.
Don, you're using Agent 1.93, the same as I am. I was about to tell you to just turn on word wrap, with O.
But I looked at his op and found that it looked the same with wordwrap on or not. And its lines are only about 70 characters, though they all end with = except the last line in a paragraph.
So obviously one of Agent's other many parameters is set different for you and me. I don't want to go over ever singlee one of them, but if you have a couple suggestions, I'll check what my settings are.
You're right, when I reply to the OP and quote it, each paragraph is one line with one > in front of it. But it still only spans the width of my not new, not wide monitor. There is a scroll bar at the bottom, though nothing to the right to scroll to. Of course I'm in full-screen mode (for Agent and anything else that will go full screen.)
he wrong place. I recently (3 months ago) installed a new Trane 2 stage EC M furnace and along with it an Aprilaire 600 whole house Humidifier. It's upstate New York here, I've been setting the the thermostat to 73 degree, s o furnace officially started working since late September.
he wrong place. I recently (3 months ago) installed a new Trane 2 stage EC M furnace and along with it an Aprilaire 600 whole house Humidifier. It's upstate New York here, I've been setting the the thermostat to 73 degree, s o furnace officially started working since late September.
I kind of get what carriage return means here now, I guess the paragraphs I typed all just went into one single line? I'm pressing enter at the end of every line I'm typing now, hope that will help! I'm just using google chrome on a desktop computer to read and post right now. Not sure if there is any app i'm using.
At least for the sake of testing, you can raisse the humidity further by putting a big pot of water on the stove and boiling it until it's almost dry. (You can boil it dry for that matter without hurting most pots that much.) And/or you can stopper the bathtub, turn on the shower all hot, and just make sure you don't overflow the tub. (You could leave the tub unstopped, but that's a waste of hot water, and not as effective, because the water steams off of the surface as much as the spray.)
It's certainly worth doing this once, to see if it helps your wife. If it doesn't, then you can just stick with the humidifier as you have it.
The boiling water is better than the shower, I think. You can just keep adding more hot water to the boiling water, but you can only let the bathtub fill up so high, and I won't drain the tub until the water is room temperature.
Both of these, btw, are good ways of making the house feel warm, by raising the humidity, when the furnace is broken.
It's only too much if it bothers you for some reason. It would bother some of the people here, I think, or at least water on the windows would, but they don't have a wife with a sore throat. The only problem with the water is that it might damage the paint on the windows sills, but you might not have paint or even sills, and you have to repaiint painted ones once in a while anyhow.
They also worry about mold. I've had black mold for other reasons and it doesn't bother me, but I'm sure it does bother some people. I killed it either by removing the source of the wetness (a lot of water just outside) or with bleach, or with paint with mold suppressor added. (I thought killing it with bleach would make it turn white again, but that was silly.)
This had not bothered her like this before?
Maybe she was also sick with something that she doesn't have anymore. Or does have and should be treated for it.
So it made her feel worse than it normally will.
I can't look here right now.
I've seen User-Agent: G2/1.0 many times, for years, and I thought it was a regular application program.
again! Unfortunately I'm Chinese but I always wished I could understand Ko rean :D
e air flow from supply to the humidifier(the one that I could control with the horizontal/vertical switch), then yes I did double check and make sure it was fully on. I've also tried different water flow from the hot water s upply, from minimum to maximum, humidity output did not change. The humidi ty monitor I was using was AcuRite 00613A1 Indoor Humidity Monitor. Bought from Amazon, not sure if it's okay to post links here so I'll just skip th at for now. Anyways for the two years since I had it its performance had b een satisfactory for me, it was able to sense humidity changes and never fl uctuated when in a stable environment.
n have was 16%, therefore the hot air I was measuring probably was even low er than 16%, this is the main thing I was concerned about, and also why I t hink I might be >experiencing something different from other people who has the same unit.
oming much higher than 16% sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure if this hot/ cold air difference will be able to account for the difference between the
45% and 16%. The humidifier should not sense the outside temperature becau se when I had it installed I specifically asked for them to not put in the automatic one, but the manual one instead.different numbers, no digital display.
ut of register is reasonable or not, if it is, I probably shouldn't even bo ther getting the service guy back in again. But if it's not, I'm thinking whether there are other hardware configuration problems involved that they could make improvements on.
to a higher humidity level when my family really needs it. But again I rea lly don't think that is the issue here.
You can adjust the ones that have compensation for outside temperature, just like you can adjust the one you have. If you want it high, just turn it up. I guess it would prevent you from setting it to 50% when it's 15F outside, but that would seem to be a good thing. What the the ones with o utdoor temp compensation will do is reduce the humidity when it gets cold outside. So, if you have it set to 45% when it's 40 outside, which is reasonable, if the outside temp drops to 20, it w ill reduce it to maybe 35%, which is more appropriate for that temperature, so you don't get condensation at windows, inside walls, etc. If you don't have it done automatically, then you're supposed to be doing that manually. Or else keep it set low enough all the time so that condensation problems never occur.
t to 45%, but if I set it to ~30%, it stops.
So it thinks the actual humidity is at ~35%. Another factor here could be the furnace sizing for the house. You said the house is 1600 sq ft. If the furnace is oversized, ie too large for the house, then it's not going to run very long and the humdifier won't have enough time to put out moistu re. Say a house should have a 70K BTU furnace and instead a 120K BTU furnace is installed. The 100K furnace is going to run a lot less number of minutes under the same conditions than the 70K furnace.
e 2 years of experience with it and it had been functioning well, again I'm getting another one in to make sure, but if you think the whole model is j ust not accurate I probably won't be able to invest more money to get somet hing better and more accurate.
As I said before, if you google you can find a simple procedure to calibrat e them. I've seen 3 of the same or very similar model, side by side, with read outs that are 20%+ different.
tell the difference between wet all over and partly wet, am I supposed to s ee stream on every single wire or just a very tiny thin layer of water that 's hardly observable? Or just drops of water here and there? The draining water seemed to all stick to the side of the tubing and not forming a stre am.
If you take it out and feel it, I would think it should feel wet all over and/or you should be able to see that it's wet all over. There should also be water over the whole top of the distribution tray. Have you placed a level on the unit?
bamboo slippers all the time, not sure how that's gonna affect static shoc k though. The 45% is actually the highest setting on this humidifier. I w ish I could crank it up any higher lol.
midity then?
e register but instead just judge by the water on window. This whole measur ing humidity thing actually started because my wife woke up on a morning ab out two weeks ago telling me her throat had been burning the whole night an d she had to drink water every hour to feel a little better.
t floor this afternoon and it read 36%. This number actually is consistent with the humidistat by the humidifier, because when I turned the humidista t to under 35%, it would stop the hot water feed to the humidifier. Maybe j ust like Stormin said, I might need two of these... Or maybe it's time to b leach clean my portable one again XD.
I will definitely try both the boiling water and the bathtub. And thanks for explaining the window water situation, I think we should be fine with water on the window then. My wife have had this coughing and sore throat problem for about 3 years, and it's mainly during winter that it's the worst. Before I moved into this house I used a portable humidifier to keep the humidity in bedroom high so that she feels better during the winter. That was a little problematic because I had to shut off the dry hot air reg ister in that room and keep the door half shut to keep the humidity to be around 50%. But the room got kinda cold which aggravated her throat as well. After we moved into this new house when I heard about this whole hous e humidifier you can imagine how happy I was. I thought I could keep the house warm and humid at the same time now :D. That's why I felt a little u pset when it started to not function as expected since the temperature drop .
It would bother
If you get significant condensation on the windows, what do you think is happening everywhere else that there is a similar cold spot, eg inside walls, near electric outlets, etc? Having humidity too high when it's cold isn't just a bother. It promotes mold, mildew, rot, etc.
There you go.
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