You need your furnace in Louisville to keep you comfortable during the winter season. Being able to control the humidity levels in your home makes a big difference in how warm you feel while that furnace is operating. Let’s take a closer look at how humidity affects your indoor air and how to improve your furnace’s humidity levels for a more comfortable winter.
Humidity and Your Furnace’s Effectiveness
Your home’s humidity level won’t affect how well your furnace operates. Regardless of whether your home is dry or humid, your furnace provides the same level of heat and raises your indoor temperature at the same rate. However, your home’s humidity level affects how comfortable you feel. This is due to the way dry air robs your body of moisture, resulting in dry and itchy skin and eyes, as well as a dry throat and nose.
How a Furnace Affects Humidity Levels
It’s common knowledge that your furnace dries out the air in your home, but this isn’t the full story. The only way you’ll remove moisture from the air is by cooling it until it reaches its dew point. At this point, the water vapor turns into condensation. Heat won’t affect moisture levels, but it will make it feel drier. To fully understand this, you need to understand the difference between relative humidity and absolute humidity.
Absolute humidity refers to the percentage of water vapor molecules versus the number of air molecules. Regardless of the temperature in your home, relative humidity will remain the same unless you lose water vapor to condensation.
Relative humidity is a way to measure how much moisture is in the air when you compare it to the total amount of moisture the air is capable of holding. If your relative humidity level is 100%, your air won’t be able to hold any more moisture. Relative humidity increases when the air is cold and decreases when the air is warm. This is due to the air molecules spreading out as the air warms, allowing more room for water vapor molecules.
Winter’s cold temperatures cause your furnace to run consistently to warm your indoor air. Heating the air in your home makes it feel drier and causes the relative humidity level to drop. This is because as the water vapor molecules are spreading out, fewer of them come in contact with your body.
Options for Controlling Your Furnace’s Humidity
Fortunately, you have a few options available when it comes to controlling the humidity level in your home while using your furnace. Which one you choose depends on your budget and your home’s specific needs.
Whole-Home Humidifiers
A whole-home humidifier is the most effective way to prevent your home from feeling dry this winter. Whole-home humidifiers attach to your duct system or the furnace itself, and they feature a water source. Air flows through the humidifier and collects moisture before returning to your home. With a whole-home furnace humidifier, you can control humidity levels throughout the house.
Since the air will feel warmer, you can operate your furnace at a lower temperature, which results in lower energy bills. You can’t get the same results with a portable, single-room humidifier. There are three types of furnace whole-home humidifiers to pick from.
- Steam humidifiers
- Bypass humidifiers
- Fan humidifiers
A steam humidifier heats water to make steam. The humidifier releases that steam into your home’s ductwork. Steam humidifiers can cost more and use more energy, but they work wonderfully in larger houses. They’re more effective at delivering moisture to bigger spaces than other options. They also work independently of the furnace, so they will still provide humidity to your home if the furnace’s blower isn’t running.
A bypass humidifier uses the airflow from your furnace to collect moisture from a pad inside of the humidifier. It then distributes the humid air throughout your home. Since a bypass humidifier doesn’t have a fan of its own, it uses less energy than a steam humidifier. It needs the furnace’s blower to run. Without a fan, these humidifiers are quiet, which is a bonus if you’re looking for an option with minimal noise.
A fan humidifier uses a fan to draw air into it. The air absorbs moisture before the humidifier returns it to the ductwork. This is your middle-of-the-road option. It’s more efficient and more powerful than a bypass humidifier, but it’s less expensive and easier to maintain than a steam humidifier.
High-Efficiency Furnaces
A high-efficiency furnace won’t make your home feel as dry as a conventional furnace will. All furnaces require a consistent flow of air coming in so that the burner flames have enough oxygen. Otherwise, the gas can’t fully combust. As a result, the flames won’t create as much heat.
The problem with a conventional furnace is that it draws the air it needs from the area surrounding it. This creates negative air pressure in your house, which causes the cold, dry air outside to come into your home through any gaps it can find. That cold air finding its way inside is dry, which lowers the moisture content in the house.
Installing a high-efficiency condensing furnace eliminates this problem. These furnaces pull dry air from outside directly into their combustion chamber. That dry air then goes back outside by exiting through an exhaust flue. This keeps the outside air from coming in and affecting your home’s humidity level.
A Two-Stage Gas Furnace
A two-stage gas furnace runs at two different levels. It has a lower stage for mild days and a higher stage for colder days. Being able to run at a low stage for a longer period allows the two-stage gas furnace to control humidity levels better, providing you with more consistent temperatures and humidity.
The Benefits of Controlling Humidity Levels
Most experts recommend that you keep your home’s humidity level between 30% and 50%. Improving your furnace’s humidity levels to within this range provides you with many benefits. You’ll eliminate dry skin, sore throats, and itchy eyes. You’ll also have fewer respiratory issues. Best of all, proper humidity levels allow you to lower your thermostat without sacrificing your warmth. This can save money on your heating costs.
Absolute Services in Louisville offers outstanding assistance when it comes to heating, cooling, electrical, garage doors, and plumbing services. Since 2008 we have been helping out area residents with a friendly smile and a professional approach. Count on us for expert heating and cooling installation, furnace repairs, and maintenance. When it comes to your electric system, our team can do everything from installing lighting solutions to whole-house surge protection. Our plumbers can handle kitchen plumbing, repiping, water heater needs, and sump pump issues. We’ll even do drain cleaning and camera inspections. To ensure your home’s safe, efficient, and comfortable, we provide generator installation and repairs. Contact Absolute Services now to learn more about our services.
