Last year, thanks to a thread I read here, we bought a cold humidifier for the house. We live in Las Vegas and the air is dry year round (other than that snow we had last week and a few spotty bits of rain of late).
Our cold water humidifier has been the best purchase we have made in ages.
We both breathe easier, seem to have less colds and sneezing and sleep better because of that fact.
When I have the humidifier going, I don’t get constant shocks every time I touch anything metal in the house.
A recent report on the news claims that a (cold water) humidifier actually keeps your heating bills down, as the extra humidity in the air is warmed and helps retain the heat.
At any rate, do you have/use a humidifier in your house?
My area is temparate. We have a cool-air humidifier but if you don’t change the wick on time it gets really nasty with mold. I don’t bother with it. In the winter I like to use a hot one, especially if I have a cold. It’s a real simple unit, without even a heating element as such, but rather two electrodes that dip into the water.
Yep, we have a couple of them. We use them mostly in the winter, as generally it doesn’t get that dry here in the summer (we lived in LV for more than eight years, so I know what you’re talking about when you mention the aridity). At any rate, we’re all much more comfortable if the household humidity is reasonable. We’re able to keep the thermostat setting at a lower temperature.
We have one in my daughter’s room, because she has very delicate lungs (preemie) and a touch of what we’re not yet calling asthma, but rather two concurrent bouts of bronchiolitis. She does much better with her humidifier on - even two nights without it sets her up for wheezing the next day.
She’s had a cold one in there, but the pump and/or fan just died, and yesterday I replaced it with a hot model (mostly due to price, but also because it has no filters to replace, unlike the cold type). It’s well out of her reach, so I’m not worried about burns or anything, and it’s amazing how quiet it is! It doesn’t seem to have a fan, as such, so it just makes little happy burbley noises. We’ll see if it’s as effective for her as the cold one was. It certainly got rid of as much water last night, so I assume it mostly went into the air. I really need to buy one of those humidity monitors to check.
The rest of the apartment has pans of water on the radiators, which the cats much appreciate.
We do have one, and this is why. I seem to be more electrically charged than most people – my brother is the same way – and without a humidifier, my life is miserable in the winter. I have been shocked on plants, for the love of Mike. And not little teeny shocks. They’re HARD, and they hurt. Long live humidifiers!
I find that the cold one makes the room cold, which makes sense, evaporative cooling. Once the air is reheated it may hold the heat better, I don’t know, but without zone heating for the room with the cold humidifier it’s really a moot point, the room is colder. It is also noisy due to the fan and requires maintainance.
The hot one works great, doesn’t cool down the room, and while not silent, is far less noisy then the cold one, and the noise is ‘nicer’. Also nothing grows on it, well if it does it’s not noticeable like the cold humidifier filter.
I was using a humidifier, then learned I was allergic to dust mites. Humidity helps them thrive, so I stopped. In combination with a lot of other anti-dust-mite measures, it was helpful. A lot of the reason I think I wanted more humid air was irritation from allergies, so once I treated them I don’t think I felt the need for the humidifier as much, either.
We have an Aprilaire humidifier attached to the furnace and I love it. It keeps the humidity level at about 40%. No shocks from dry carpet, and I swear it feels warmer. I haven’t caught a cold since we got it, about three years ago.
Join the club - prior to using the humidifier, I too would be zapped even if my skin brushed against an indoor house plant! And godforbid I actually touched metal - you can actually see a blue flame. I think if I hooked myself up to electrodes in the winter I could provide enough electricity to keep the MGM Grand electric bill down to zero.
Oh, and that supposed wonderful trick of using a key to touch metal? Ha ha ha…the blue flame zap of death simply accelerates into my body.
I bought one years ago when the boys were small and suffered intermittently from croup. The mould problems on the walls and ceiling went on for years. Living in Sydney, what I really need is a dehumidifier.
I love steam heat, if you’re talking about radiators. I’ve only had it once, in a very old house, but it was amazingly comfortable, and I never had to dust. Is steam heat being used much in new construction?
That’s a shame. The only drawback is the space needed by the radiators. In our house, the radiators were placed under windows, which is often wasted space anyway. I didn’t need a humidifier in that house. I suppose forced air from a furnace dries the air more than radiated air. (?)
My stepson rented a house that had a version of steam heat. There were pipes under the floor on the second story, which was the ceiling of the first story. He liked the feel of the heat, but when the pipes leaked, the ceiling had to be replaced.
We have radiators here, but I’m at a loss as to your “never had to dust” comment. I need to dust after I dust. It’s incredible the amount of dust here, far, far worse than the forced air my mother’s house has. But I think that may have more to do with living in a major urban area, rather than a suburban home. It even looks like different dust; our dust is grimy black, hers is light grey or white.
I don’t like the radiators. The dry the air out worse than any other heating system I know of, they’re hot to touch so they’re toddler hazards, people tend to put things on them that melt or stick, they take up room I’d rather use for something useful, they get really loud in the middle of the night and they’re simply impossible to keep clean or stop the paint from chipping on them. The ONLY good thing about them is that you can save money on humidifiers by putting large metal pans of water (which the cats try to drink out of, step into and tip over) on top of the radiators, and the heat will help the water evaporate more quickly. But it’s still dry as toast in here.
Two types of heat use radiators, steam and forced hot water. Steam radiators have one pipe going to them and a releif valve that occasionaly lets out steam. Forced hot water radiators have two pipes going to them.
I’m not sure about the dusting thing. I never though about it. In this house I don’t have to dust much as much as others I’ve lived in.
If your radiators are making alot of noise for steam heat it usualy means you have too much water in your boiler. On forced hot water heaters it can be caused by air in the top of the radiator. There should be a bleader vavle to release it.
Radiators shouldn’t make much noise. The only noise you normaly get is a clicking sound like you hear when a car engine is cooling down.
For painting them use the right paint and it won’t chip.
For cleaing them I dust them or vacuum them. They aren’t very clean after thet but anything else would take forever.
Now that I’ve read that last post, I realize that the system in that house was hot water, not steam. The radiators never made any noise, and the rooms were huge, so it was easy to avoid touching the radiators.
I almost never opened the windows there, and we didn’t have pets at the time, which might account for the lack of dust.