We live in Zone 6a and installed this standalone [whole home humidifier](https://www.supplyhouse.com/Aprilaire-866-Modulating-Steam-Humidifier-w-Model-850-Fan-Pack) in our basement with a fan that forces the “cloud” into our living room, directly above.
It’s supposed to run off of a humidistat but my husband has it plugged into our Home Assistant which pulls from sensors across the home that include humidity. Only trouble we’ve experienced is that sometimes our walls in the living room start “crying” (too much humidity).
Our first winter in the home, we were suffering a painful 15% humidity and constantly were refilling humidifiers in our bedroom and living room. Since installing, has been much more comfortable but being we live in an old leaky house with a lot of wood, the humidity often dissipates quickly.
ETA: we live in a 3-story four square, rather large in square footage, with water radiator heat in all rooms and a high velocity air conditioning system that we run just the fans sporadically through the winter to circulate air.
We are planning to get an Aprilaire whole house steam humidifier. There’s an option to get a small fan box that gets installed inside the wall and it looks like a white air vent. The fan runs with the steam humidifier to distribute when you can’t have a humidifier in line with HVAC. We have a boiler so can’t add that to it and use about 5-10 gallons of reverse osmosis water a day with ultrasonic humidifiers. The steam system can humidify 35 gallons a day if connected to a 240V connection and the salt from our water softener doesn’t need removed by RO.
I have a century house in NEOhio, and the only fix has been an Aprilaire steam humidifier. It does work and maintains humidity level, BUT it will use some power!
The canister I change once a year for about $85 bucks.
I've got it and love it. I keep the humidity down low though and if I need a little extra for the bedrooms at night I can run something on the nightstand. Helps reduce those dry air bloody noses and teeth sensitivity. I forget which version of the Aprilaire automatic that we have, but I keep the dial set at four and I've never had an issue with mold. I just want to take the edge off the dryness, not turn the house into a sauna.
Here’s my story with whole home humidification:
My husband bought our home with an Aprilaire unit already installed. I moved in and thought it made a ton of sense to have/use given his and my hobby collections, and the system got a refresh when the furnace was replaced last January.
By March we started finding water drips from between wooden ceiling slats, around recessed lighting cans, and from where the wooden ceiling meets the walls in the house’s addition. Come to find out there’s too much humidity building up and not enough ventilation for it, so it condenses and freezes on the outside face of the ceiling, then melts on warmer days and leaves stains all over the place. I wince at the thought of the ick that we don’t see above the ceiling, knowing that we’re going to have to deal with it someday.
My advice is to check in with more than one HVAC installer to assess whether your home can reasonably accommodate such a system, or at least tell you what modifications would need to be done in order to mitigate the risk of moisture damage.
Longjumping_Water678
