With winter weather on the way, the heating system in your home isn’t the only thing that needs attention. For maximum home comfort, make sure that your whole-house humidifier is ready for the heating season, too. This will help keep your indoor air from becoming too dry, causing health issues for you and possible damage to your home. You can get your whole-house humidifier ready with a simple annual maintenance routine.
First of all, though, it’s important to know something about this equipment. The most common type of whole-house humidifier in residential use today is the flow-through model. While it’s a bit more complicated than this, basically, the flow-through humidifier runs water diverted from your plumbing system over a water panel (also called an evaporator pad or panel, since some of the water evaporates during this process). As dry air from your furnace is blown through, it passes through the moist pad and gets humidified before circulating into the household.The excess water is then drained from the water panel.
In this simple equipment, the only moving part is a solenoid that controls the amount of water that runs through the humidifier. The main maintenance chore involves replacing the water panel, usually on an annual basis. When scale and mineral deposits start clogging openings in the water panel, they’ll restrict air flowing through the panel, and the equipment will lose its efficiency and eventually start leaking. The loss of efficiency is similar to what happens when a traditional furnace filter gets clogged with dust and debris.
So how long will a typical water panel last? It depends on how often it’s used and how hard your water is, as well as what sort of system you’re using.
To keep your whole-house humidifier running efficiently, remember to change your water panel. If you have any questions or would like more information on how you can prepare your home for winter weather, call a heating and cooling professional at Glasco Heating & Air Conditioning– proudly serving all of Connecticut.
Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about whole-house humidifiers and other HVAC topics, visit our website.
Glasco Heating & Air Conditioning services South Windsor, Connecticut and the surrounding areas.