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After over a decade of struggling to have a decent, reliable, easy.... RH solution for my home and my instruments I finally think that I've got it nailed.... In the past and as recently as last winter here in Michigan I would run 3 - 4 humidifiers and it seemed as if I was constantly schlepping water....

Five hernias.... later (two have been repaired so far... ) the stand alone humidifiers are history meaning no more expensive, stinky wicks, chemicals or schlepping water when I wake up and when I get home in the evening.... Who needs it!

Before getting into some rather lousy iPhone pics that I just took my two primary hygrometers have been calibrated and are calibrated hopefully... a couple of times a year. I use wet bulb methods and some simple charts to see what the drift may have been. It's super important to know what the actual RH is in respect to what your hygrometers may be telling you.

Hygrometers tend to be like politicians.... they lie....

This year I moved into a condo because I'm not getting any younger and plowing a big driveway, being the neighborhood lawn nazi, and having a penchant for trees (I planted nearly 30 in my last home) has taken it's toll on old Hesh here. Simple and easy is the new goal.

I also have lots of guitars in nearly every room and as such these things are important to me and I want to keep them in tip top shape at all times. My friends never need to bring a thing to jam at Hesh's house.

After a lot of investigation and using April Air products in our city shop I decided on a furnace humidifier and a higher powered one too. This one is made by a company that puts their name on it but it's April Air all the way.

It was pricey but so two are lots of wicks, chemicals and constantly buying different outboard humidifiers because they all suck and never do nearly as much work as the manufacture says that they will.

I paid $800 for this rig installed, with an extra panel for next year and with a full cleaning, servicing of my furnace and central air unit. Most of all though.... no more schlepping water for me......

Next I'll post some pics since we OLFers have ALWAYS... loved pics.... Note the little $8 hygrometer, once you calibrate these in terms of writing what the reading should be on the dial they are an excellent "at a glance" solution and mine have not drifted at all in a couple of years.

The verdict now that we have been close to 0F this winter is that my place is always 45% plus or minus 1 - 2%. I'm actually amazed at how stable this thing keeps the RH.

And a few more pics:

Thanks for looking AND Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

Nice setup Hesh.
I cannot understand why anyone would purchase individual units when there are solutions like the one you have installed.
Does your humidity change from each level in your house?

Gregor

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Wake up and smell the rosewood!

We had one installed on our furnace and it never worked. The install guys were back 3 or 4 times and changed a few parts. While water ran through it, it appeared to work but the humidity levels never changed and we still get sparks on our blankets in the winter. We ended up not using it as it was costing a lot in water.

Hi Gregor!!

No the Abbeon hygrometer pic was taken within minutes of the BestAir pic and the Abbeon is in the lower level aka basement....

You know the reason why I never went this route prior was that in my neck of the woods furnace humidifiers have a bad reputation. They rarely work well or have enough output to do the job that we need and that is a rather strictly maintained 42ish to 48ish RH.

It's not all that fair that they have this bad reputation because there are often factors that degrade performance considerably. One such factor is very hard water that leaves too many mineral deposits on the panel/wick and shortens it's life dramatically. The other major factor in poor performance is folks don't seem to understand that the panels need to be changed out as need be. Others in my community who use this system have far more square feet to do and report that changing the panel ($15) annually is all they have to do. It's a tool less drop in replacement too.

Not shown is a rather high-end two stage water softener that I put in for we humans, screw the guitars... and that feeds the hot water heater that feeds the humidifier. The over flow from the flow to the panel goes to the sump pump and from the sounds of things it's likely that this thing can put out well over ten gallons a day and actually put it all in the air too.

I wondered about the sensor being on the cold air return but it's working like a charm so what do I know....

I should add too that it's very comfortable in here. Warm feels warm because it's not dry and that's a good thing.

Happy Holidays to you too my friend!

Yeah that's that bad reputation that these things have here too.

My HVAC contractor I went to high school with and he knows that I know when he is lying.... He's also a guitar player and we had a good discussion on goals before this unit was selected.

I'll add that my condo is out of the wind and that can make a difference too and it's well insulated and that helps as well.

In the past I have had ones that had a rotating belt but the belt would only last two weeks before it was toast....

Happy Holidays to you Paul!

My shop is aparently under water.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Oh my, that's one negative mark for the BestAirs....

Sorry - double post

Ed

I have posted this before, but a house that is leaky is a dry house. When you cook spaghetti, take a shower, or even breathe you add moisture to the air. But then cold air comes in through leaks as warm air escapes out through other leaks carrying some of your moisture with it. It is a one to one ratio - a cubic foot of air leaked out equals a cubic foot of air leaked in. The cold air then gets heated and as it gets warmer its RH drops - that's just physics. This both raises your bill and dries out the house.

Most houses built before about 1995 or so are quite leaky, and this is measurable. If a house is reasonably airtight, then its RH does not drop as much, and is therefore easier to deal with. I have an 8 year old house that is exceptionally airtight and we have had 17-19° for 3 nights in a row and the RH went down from about 44-47% to about 37% with no added moisture. It goes to about 51-53% in the summer with the A/C on. My bills are crazy low.

The air leaks that mean something are not what you think. Unless your windows are among the leakiest few percent, this is not the problem area. The leaks are due to the way the house is put together and any air leaks in an attic are the most meaningful. Properly sealing an attic usually results in a 15-25% reduction in the amount of overall air leakage and marked improvement in comfort.

Most states have a weatherization program where they help pay for an instrumented energy audit using a large air leakage measuring fan called a blower door, and hopefully infrared equipment to check hidden insulation levels and to find air leaks. Most of those state also subsidize having work done to seal air leaks and to insulate more. These programs are usually titled "Home Performance with Energy Star". Call your utility or your state Energy Office.

Ed

Nice to see that hesh. I put one on my furnace 15 years ago and while i am not so sure the humidistat works all that well, certainly the humidity rose enough to end the constant trips to the pediatrician because of ear infections. Seriously, one or the other of the kids we always on antibiotics until i put one of those in. Within a week the earaches stopped.

Good to know i may be all set for guitar building too. Now just need to get a few hygrometers to prove it.

That's a nice setup Hesh, looks like you got your painting finished too.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Nice system. If I ever set my thermostat to 73° my mom would come back to haunt me.

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George :-)

Almost done, I left my room for last and now I am sorry that I did since it's too cold to ventilate and the fumes gave me a sinus infection a couple of weeks ago.

Remember how in the TV show the Odd Couple Felix would make that annoying noise when trying to clear his sinuses? That's what I sounded like until I got some antibiotics.....

One half a room to go making that 10 1/2 rooms painted including one with a 20' wall..... Some of the ceilings are 16' so I will have to rent a scaffolding in the spring for that....

It's currently 0 degrees and 45% RH in here, very cool!

Yeah I worry about that too but on the responsible side when I moved in I bit the bullet and replaced every light bulb here with LED stuff and also added insulation and caulking to tighten it up. Like Ed said and since this place is 8 years old it's pretty tight already and my heating and cooling bills have been the lowest I have ever had already.

Last month my natural gas and electric bill combined was under $90 and it's winter here now.

I take it all the windows in your house double layered? Whenever I've tried to humidify rooms in the past, the air stayed the same and any single layer windows got soaked.

Yup my house was built in 1920 and still has the original single pane glass. I would not change it for the world but they do collect water like the devil.

I have one of those Best Air devices too based on a post I believe someone, Hesh maybe?, that posted here on the forum a while back. I check it with my Psychro-dyne every once in a while and so far it's been very reliable.

Yep double payne (pane ) Andersons and get this. This condo association is mostly seniors and as such they believe that it's on the association to replace any windows that go south or leak. So the association every spring asks all 90 units if any of us have any windows that lost their seal between the two pieces of glass and then they pay to replace them. Imagine that... In Ann Arbor condo associations would make everything on you, always....

That was a nice surprise.

Yeah they were a great find. I have been giving them away to aspiring guitar builders so I'm down to one and need to get more.

JF our shop is 1903ish.... single glass and it gets soaked to the point where there is no way that you can look out the window and see anything. It forms ice on the inside too when it's this cold. -4F this morning here in Michigan....

Yikes that's cold. We get one, maybe two, deep freeze cold snaps here that might go to abut -5F per year. The same thing happens. It's like living in an ice cave. But if you do the math the ROI for windows is about 25 years and not really worth it. Especially when to replace the very large windows we have with identical vintage replicas would cost a fortune. Plus if I did that Rosemary would be very upset. =^,^=

-4 degrees, single pane windows, and a humidification system? I would think you occasionally get snow flurries falling from the shop ceiling. I know all -4's aren't created equal either. Great Lake -4's feel like the reaper has a hand on you shoulder and is starting to pull. Good on you for toughing it out up there Hesh! I think I'd have a clean sheet of paper out, re-analyzing the pro's and con's of my latitude by now.
I'm gonna post a few of these for you folks in the cold snap to warm your hands on.










And +1 on Ruby 50's post. I hope people pay attention to it. Money spent on air sealing a space pays triple. Lower bills, more comfort, and less water schlepping.
A bonus for believers in science is combating climate change.
Warm Holidays to everyone!

I went through 3 furnace humidifiers decades ago. Each failed in less than a couple of years and none was able to put a significant amount of moisture into the air. My neighbor had a house fire when the leakage from the humidifier corroded the jets in his gas furnace. That's why I lug water. But, I will look into the April Air. Maybe the state of the art has improved.

I'd love to have a reliable method to keep my shop humidifier filled when I am out of town. I have floor heat so a furnace humidifier wouldn't work. Any ideas from you creative folks?

My house has a furnace humidifier that works well but I have to keep an eye on the drain pan, sometimes deposits can block the outflow.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I'm bumping this thread to the top to remind everyone who has a whole house humidifier that they really do need regular cleaning. I own a Skuttle steam whole house humidifier (Model 60-1), and it works great, but my city water (just like everybody else's water, I guess) has minerals in it that build up like you would not believe. I just got done taking my humidifier apart to see why it was not working, and it turns out the heating element had split open (a bad thing, but not crazy expensive to replace DIY), and there was a huge amount of mineral sludge in the pan. New element on order, and sludge all cleaned out and scraped off, but this is pretty much my own fault for not doing it more often.

Just like some of us don't take RH seriously when we first start building guitars, but then we learn the hard way, I have learned the hard way that I absolutely have to keep my humidifier clean if I want it to work. Please learn from my mistakes!

Stay moist, my friends.

All of my 57 years growing up and living in the Houston area, i used to always complain about the weather, humidity from the Gulf, etc., etc. But now I love it, especially since the house we are in now allows me to have 2 full-size bedrooms to operate in in complete shop style (just need to get it outfitted/tooled up a bit better). I figure if I am comfortable inside where I eat and sleep, the wood is probably pretty happy too. I can empathize with you guys that have 4 seasons to contend with. Here, we really just have one. But it's great hearing and reading you guys' posts as it is a wonderful thing to be around people who are so interested, dedicated, and really into the art/science of building instruments. I need to adjust the AC now.

curtis

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"I need to hurry up, the years are going by far too fast"