The Advantages Whole-House Humidifiers Have Over Portable Humidifiers
As the cold of winter closes in, the humidity levels in your home start to drop, causing several health issues like dry skin, itchy eyes, sore throats, and nose bleeds. It’s essential to maintain humidity levels between 40% and 60% in your home, especially if anyone in the house has allergies, asthma, or other respiratory issues.
A humidifier is a necessity in most households to help maintain healthy humidity levels during the dry months of autumn and winter. Many people debate over whether to use portable or whole-house humidifiers, but the choice is much simpler than it seems when you understand all of the benefits whole-house humidifiers offer over portable units.
Full Coverage
Every room in your home needs proper humidity levels to create a fully comfortable and healthy living space. However, portable humidifiers only cover one room and may not be enough to raise the humidity to healthy levels in large rooms like master bedrooms or living rooms.
Whole-house humidifiers provide each room with ideal levels of humidity. They can connect easily to the air ducts of your HVAC system, providing full coverage of your home without the need for additional piping installations.
Less Noise
The fans or blowers in most portable humidifiers are very noisy. Additionally, you may need to set the fan speed to the maximum setting to effectively maintain your desired humidity level in each room, which further increases the noise.
Whole-house humidifiers are much quieter than portable units. Since they connect directly to the HVAC system, they’re only as loud as the blower for your furnace or air conditioner.
More Energy Efficient
It takes a lot of energy to run several portable humidifiers to effectively manage the humidity levels throughout your home. However, with a whole-house humidifier, you can easily maintain optimal humidity levels throughout your home while using only a fraction of the energy required by several portable units.
More Convenient
Each portable humidifier that you need to cover your entire house requires individual maintenance. Portable humidifiers have reservoirs that need to be manually refilled in your sink or bathtub almost every day. In addition, every portable humidifier will need to have its filter changed and the reservoirs cleaned once every three months to prevent poor performance and bacteria buildup in the air.
When you install a whole-house humidifier, maintenance is contained to one unit, and the maintenance required is minimal compared to portable humidifiers. For instance, whole-house humidifiers connect to the water lines in your house to consistently feed moisture into the air instead of requiring manual refills of a tank. Additionally, filters for whole-house humidifiers only need to be changed once a year around autumn or winter.
Healthier
Portable humidifiers commonly develop mold problems, especially if they don’t have humidity sensors that shut off the unit once the target humidity level has been reached. If the unit is inactive for extended periods, the stagnant water in the tank will start growing mold. Portable humidifiers also require strong air circulation to prevent excess moisture buildup in the room.
Whole-house humidifiers are not nearly as susceptible to mold as portable humidifiers. All whole-house humidifiers have humidity sensors that shut the system off when the desired humidity level is reached, preventing humidity levels from getting too high. There is also never any stagnant water in the system since it uses running water from the house. Finally, whole-house humidifiers take advantage of the fact that they’re usually hooked up to the HVAC system to evenly distribute moisture throughout each room with strong air circulation.
Longer Lifespan
Portable humidifiers typically only last a few years before they need to be replaced. Since every portable unit in the house has roughly the same lifespan, you could end up having to spend a lot of money to replace all of them every three or five years.
Properly maintained whole-house humidifiers usually last over ten years. You can also extend the lifespan of your whole-house humidifier even more by replacing crucial parts when they start to fail instead of replacing the entire system.
If you want to enjoy all of the benefits of a whole-house humidifier, you can trust our experienced technicians at Mike Bryant Heating & Cooling to provide you with the best installation services. In addition to whole-house humidifier installation, repair, and maintenance, we also provide installation and repair services for heaters, air conditioners, dehumidifiers, air purifiers, and more. For additional information on any of the services we provide to the areas in and around Olathe, Kansas, contact us at Mike Bryant Heating & Cooling today.
