Humidifier Options

[ToltingColtAcres]

This is sort of off-topic here, but, not sure where to really ask, so if a mod wants to relocate the topic elsewhere I won't be offended.

I have a Jotul F55 which I use as supplemental heat in my 3500 sq ft c 1738 farmhouse. The house has hydro-air heating about 2000 sq ft in the post-and-beam/old construction area, and two baseboard hydronic zones heating ~1500 sq ft in newer construction areas.

My fiance is a pianist. Part of her "dowry" includes her Baby Grand Steinway, which she had moved in over the summer.

We opted to install the unit in one of the newer construction rooms w/ hydronic heat since it is smoother than dealing with forced hot air. However, humidity control is an issue. Over the summer, we used a dehumidifier to keep the room as close as possible to 50%.

Now, with burning season approaching, I'm concerned about the air getting too dry in the room, and would like to add a humidifier to that area. Preferably one that I can plumb directly into a water line, so I won't have to be hauling buckets of water every few days to refill a reservoir. With everything else in life, its one more thing I prefer us to not have to worry about.

This is an area I am woefully ignorant of when it comes to products. I've googled around a bit, and it seems the "hard-wired" units are more designed for installation in the HVAC system itself, opposed to a sort of stand-alone unit I can install on the wall and feed with a piece of 1/2" copper.

Any suggestions from those who are "in the know" in this area of expertise?

 

[madison]

http://www.essickair.com/humidifiers/large-home-2000-sq-ft.html

This have 2 plastic tanks that are not difficult to fill, hold about 5 gallons, and an adjustable humidistat. Probably could be retrofitted to auto fill with a float shut off by a handy plumber.

 

[ToltingColtAcres]

Yeah, I was looking at those. That's my "fallback option", although I read somewhere in the documentation the unit has about a 48 hour run-time on a fill, which implies I'm going to be filling a 2 gallon tank every day.

 

[DickRussell]

OK, I can't resist the call, and others who have seen my posts on stuff like this will be thinking "Here we go again." Your problems with high humidity in summer and very low humidity in winter both come from one problem. The house leaks too much outside air, through all those myriad leaks under the sill, around windows, past electrical boxes, and then out through all those leaks up high on the house, like into the attic. Leaks introduce humid summer air, and in the winter they flush out humidity produced by normal human occupancy with very dry outside air. The ultimate cure for humidity problems (and high heating bills) is first to do a blower door-based air sealing effort. It's no big secrret that in a very tight house the problem, even in winter, is keeping the interior air humidity down. For an older house, this is hardly likely to be a problem; that's more a problem in new construction, if done right, and then it's a matter of installing a heat recovery ventilator. For you, air sealing is the first thing you ought to have done. Then the humidity issues will be more manageable. You want to be wary of over-humidifying a house; that added moisture has to go somewhere, and you don't want it inside your walls accumulating beyond what the natural drying capacity of the structure will accommodate.

 

[ToltingColtAcres]

You are correct. However, living near the ocean (Southcoast Massachusetts near Cape Cod), humidity is simply a fact of life in the house, regardless of how air-tight I make it, unless I want to go through extraordinary measures in order to condition the air in the entire house. Shortly after purchasing the house, I went through a process of stripping, insulating, and re-shingling the entire house, replaced all the windows with new double-insulated wood windows, sealing up electrical outlets as best as possible, etc. Even so, I'm sure I have a lot of ingress (and egress of heat). The best I can hope for is to attempt to keep the room where the piano is located at a decent humidity level, which is 40-50% with an ambient temperature of 68 degrees.

If I have to, I'll go for one of the manual fill types, but then it becomes another chore either of us have to remember to do on a daily basis to fill the water reservior, which is why I was hopeful to find a wall-mount unit I could plumb water lines and power to, and have it self-regulate. Unfortunately everything I've found thusfar seems to be designed to install in a forced-hot-air hvac system, and this section of the house has forced hot water heating.

 

[madison]

The refill rate will depend on the size of the unit, size of the house, humidistat setting as well as the good points that Dick pointed out. I have the large unit, in a larger leaky house, and in the shoulder season can go a week or more on refills, Dead of winter it can go a couple days.