forced air furnace, whole house humidifier?

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wiredneck1

Member
Feb 7, 2021
19
waupaca, wi
hopefully im posting this in the right section.

I currently have a forced air wood furnace (daka) that is plumbed into my return duct on the propane furnace, when i run the wood furnace i also fun the propane furnace fan to help distribute the heat throughout the house. The wood furnace does have its own blower motor that kicks on when the wood furnace jacket hits 110 degrees. My propane furnace has a whole house humidifier (skuttle model 2000, similar to a aprilair unit) attached to the return duct, the issue i have is that it only works when the propane furnace calls for heat and not just when the fan is on. What i am thinking i could do but am not 100% if it will work and humidify correctly is, could i wire in the 24v transformer to get energized when the wood furnace blower is energized. Then the humidifier would work whenever the wood furnace is burning and has hot air going into the return duct? I understand that if i do this then the humidifier will not work with the propane furnace but being that i heat my home 80-90% with wood that part would not be a problem. Im just concerned that the air isnt as hot with the wood furnace blowing into the duct as it is when the propane is burning possibly not allowing the water to humidify the air the way it should.
 
I used to have a whole home humidifier in the plenum of my wood furnace. Keep in mine it takes BTU's to vaporize water and for me there was a noticeable difference in how the house heated while having the humidifier running vs not running. I removed it from my plenum this past summer.
 
I ran a humidifier for years until I airsealed and tightened up the home. Doing research, a leaky house stays dry due to the humidity being sucked out from air leakage. Once the home was tightened it became less of a problem.
 
a leaky house stays dry due to the humidity being sucked out from air leakage.

yep!! That is our issue. We will have single digit humidity levels in the house in the middle of winter.