does putting a pot of water on top help

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trailblaze

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Aug 20, 2008
318
South West PA
does putting a pot of water on top do anything important...

i was just reading another post... i never thought about putting water on top to make things more humid

do most of u guys do this??
 
Many people do. Wood stoves dry the air.
 
Yes, yes, yes!
 
I use a stone kettle and also use a weather station to monitor humidity in my home. We're down into the low 30% range already this year where I expect to stay until Spring. The kettles do not introduce much water to the air so they are not a solution if you have an actual low humidity problem. They are fun though and every bit helps so I use mine anyway. Maybe evaporate a quart a day. Anyone who owns a humidifier to actually change the room's humidity level will tell you that this amount of water is a srop in the bucket compared to what is required to actually gain say 20%.

I don't believe that woodstoves dry the air. I think that heating cold air lowers it's RH level and that cold winter air doesn't have much moisture dissolved into it.
 

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trailblaze said:
does putting a pot of water on top do anything important...

i was just reading another post... i never thought about putting water on top to make things more humid

do most of u guys do this??
Click to expand...

No*. Filling it up all the time drove me nuts and did bubkiss for humidity so i bought a 13gal/day humidifier that does the job.

*should clarify, my house is 100% wood and that may have bearing on using a kettle...but in my case it did squat. It maybe different in a drywall house.
 
cast iron kettle sits on top of the Jotul, gets filled regularly, at LEAST a quart a day, can see the steam a risin'

have no scientific proof but that moisture is going somewhere :)
 
My house gets just as dry whether heating with wood stove or oil forced hot water, in the Winter.
Both the furnace and wood stove cause a small air exchange from outside.

Have pot on stove, but it certainly doesn't keep up with the driest of days. It certainly helps to where keeping it full is a worthwhile chore.
 
don't forget, moisture holds heat.

I have water on my stove, just because thats is always how I have seen it done. The steam goes somewhere I guess.
 
I use an enameled coffee pot on a trivet. I agree that it doesn't put a lot of moisture into the air. I owned several humidifiers when I lived in a mult-level house back east and they definitely put more moisture out--you end up filling them fairly frequently. The ones I owned were also a pain to keep clean. I didn't bother to bring them with me because this house has a forced air propane furnace with a whole house humidifier. However, I don't really run the propane furnace much--wood is much less expensive in my area. I make of point of trying to keep my skin moisturized in the winter since the inside air is much drier.
 
The pot on top doesn't hurt in terms of adding moisture to the air, but it hardly adds enough to matter all that much. I have several hygrometers in my house to protect instruments, and in when I am burning a lot I need to go through nearly 2 gallons a day in my humidifier to have a shot at keeping the house at a safe humidity (40%). That was in a 1000 square foot home, and I expect to need two humidifiers now that the house is 2100 square feet. With cold winter air and a hot stove, I can barely keep the humidity at 20% with the little pot on the stove, and I suspect that is what it would be if I did nothing at all.
 
Air "feels" warmer if it has a higher relative humidity because air containing more humidity requires more heat to raise its temperature.

In other words, it takes more heat to warm a gallon of air at 100% relative humidity by 1°F than it takes to heat a gallon of air at 0% relative humidity by 1°F.

Also, the higher the relative humidity of the air around you, the less of a cooling effect there is from moisture evaporating from your skin.

Higher-humidity air also helps prevent your lips, your throat and your wood furniture from drying out and cracking in the winter.
 
derecskey said:
billb3 said:
Have pot on stove...
Click to expand...

How many kilos?
Click to expand...

I wish.
I've tried potpourri, but it smells nasty when it starts to fry.

About 3 litres.
 
hmm... perhaps i'll throw a pot of water on.... although i really don't need another thing to tend to....


haha... i have to say i've never heard anyone use the air measurement in terms of gallons
 
Think of it like grandma's chicken soup-it can't hurt.
 
man, if i dont put a lattice pot on top, within about 4 hours of burning my lips start to stick to my teeth and my kids complain it hurts to blink.
 
Ohh! I thought that was a poor mans fire extinguisher on top:lol:...... I have a pot on a trivet. You can put potpourri in the water, then it wont fry. ;-)
 
Say NO to potpourri, say yes to cinnamon!
 
itworks said:
Say NO to potpourri, say yes to cinnamon!
Click to expand...

Oooh, good idea.

How's this for a twist: The boiling point of the kettle water will slowly raise and you will get less evaporation as the concentration of impurities goes up. The concentration will go up if you keep topping off the kettle with mineral laden tap water. Keep a fresh bowl simmering to get maximum water transfer.
 
i havent but i thingk that were use to dry heat we had forced hot air people say thats dry but doesnt bother us.
 
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