Replies

1. 
   Norman | Mar 13, 2006 10:50pm | #1

   I have an Aprilaire hot water whole house model that I use in a hot water heated house. Kinda loud, but seems to work well.

   Not alot of choices if you don't have forced air heat. If you do, I saw the steam on TOH and thought it looked pretty cool.

   What kind of heat do u have?

1. 
   RickD | Mar 14, 2006 11:53pm | #20

   What was the steam deal on TOH?  I missed that one -

1. 
   Norman | Mar 17, 2006 09:19pm | #23

   Looked like a long probe, gets mounted in the hot air duct, sprayed steam into the passing hot air. Like all new, $$, star wars HVAC stuff on TOH, it looked cool and real expensive.

1. 
   RickD | Mar 17, 2006 10:23pm | #24

   ah, for forced hot air, I have seen those - i thought it might have been for a steam system

2. 
   pjmcgarvey | Mar 13, 2006 11:51pm | #2

   Aprilaire 700 here, installed myself, working great for the 3rd winter.  Change the panel about 2 times a winter and we have pretty hard water.

   PJ

3. 
   junkhound | Mar 14, 2006 02:09am | #3

   see the thread on venting your dryer indoors.

1. 
   JHOLE | Mar 14, 2006 02:14am | #4

   Where's it at?

   On topic, I have not found a adequate model yet, - have an Aprilair. - doesn't keep up.Remodeling Contractor just on the other side of the Glass City

2. 
   jrnbj | Mar 14, 2006 03:29am | #6

   Yup....I've got one of those diverters that lets you flip the vent to indoors (cheesy little POS, and so are the new humidifiers I've been looking at, to, for that matter...)
   Every now & then I flip it to inside exhaust, but then get tired of the condensate dripping off the thing....
   Now that I think about it, there's probably some way I could use the condensate from my 90% furnace to humidify the house (when we moved in, the condensate ran to a hole the installer had drilled through the slab...too cheap to buy a pump, I guess)

4. 
   rjw | Mar 14, 2006 02:28am | #5

   Work on your weatherization - too drey a house menas too many air exchanges.

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   View Image

1. 
   jrnbj | Mar 14, 2006 03:30am | #7

   "Work on your weatherization - too drey a house menas too many air exchanges"Too airtight, your typing skills go all to heck....ya just can't win (G)

5. 
   BryanSayer | Mar 14, 2006 05:08am | #8

   One big difference in models is whether the humidifiers has its own powered fan or whether it just uses the force of the air flowing through the system. I went for the powered unit. You need an outlet to plug it in. The brand is AprilAire, but I'm not sure of the model number right now. One advantage of the powered unit is something to do with the media that holds the water. I think they don't have to be replaced as often or something.

   Ain't I just a fountain of information today? Must be the medications.

   Anyway, humidifiers are the ONE thing I like about forced air heat. So far (2 winters) I love mine. If you are really interested, e-mail me and I'll look up the details.

6. 
   djj | Mar 14, 2006 05:44am | #9

   I have an Aprilaire 700. Biggest problem I have is that with a slightly oversized furnace and the warm winter we are having the furnace only runs about 20 minutes per hour at 30 degrees. This doesn't let the humidifier run enough to get the humidity as high as I would like. The Aprilaire tech I talked to said for best humidification the system should run 45 minutes per hour.

    

1. 
   DanH | Mar 14, 2006 12:49pm | #11

   If you've got the 700, feed it hot water and rig a relay to turn on the fan when the unit is wanting to run.
   If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people

   happy?

1. 
   pjmcgarvey | Mar 14, 2006 04:33pm | #12

   Aprilaire sells a relay for this as well.

1. 
   DanH | Mar 14, 2006 04:59pm | #13

   Possibly. I used a plain old furnace fan relay.
   If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people

   happy?

2. 
   djj | Mar 14, 2006 05:19pm | #14

   Dan,

   I am running hot water to it. We thought about wiring it to run independent of the furnace but the built in fan doesn't really push enough air to do much without the furnace blower going.

   Regards,

   Dennis

1. 
   DanH | Mar 14, 2006 05:34pm | #15

   That's why you have the relay to turn on the furnace fan.
   If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people

   happy?

2. 
   Tim | Mar 14, 2006 06:25pm | #16

   "We thought about wiring it to run independent of the furnace .."

   Do not do this, it is a very bad idea. With hot or cold water, it doesn't really matter, these things will not evaporate much water into a non-moving stream of unheated air. Were you to operate the powered humifier without the furnace firing the best that will happen is nothing, except running water through your humidifier into the drain. What is very likely to happen is that you will blow water into the supply plenum that will fall onto the coil and heat exchanger, one of which is not compatible with liquid water.

   I would wire the controller for a powered humidifer off of the W terminal on the furnace control panel. This way it is only active during a call for heat. Use of the current sensor relay works OK if you do not operate the fan for continuous air movement.

1. 
   DanH | Mar 14, 2006 06:32pm | #17

   > these things will not evaporate much water into a non-moving stream
   > of unheated airBut with hot water they'll do fine with a MOVING stream of unheated air.

   If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people

   happy?

2. 
   djj | Mar 15, 2006 12:02am | #21

   Tim,

   "We thought about wiring it to run independent of the furnace..."

   When I said that, I meant we thought about it for maybe 5 seconds before coming up with a long list of reasons it was a bad idea.

   I would wire the controller for a powered humidifier off of the W terminal on the furnace control panel. This way it is only active during a call for heat.

   And this is exactly how we did it.

   Regards,

   Dennis

3. 
   Tim | Mar 15, 2006 12:17am | #22

   Great, hope it works out as well for you as mine has for me. I have the AprilAire 760 (I think, they keep changing model numbers for some idoitic reason) thatn is 8 years old. Took off of my last furnace and installed on the new one, which is a variable speed unit and runs on low fan constantly. Once I wired it to the 1st stage heating terminal, it worked great, never had a problem.

7. 
   DanH | Mar 14, 2006 12:47pm | #10

   One thing to look at is your duct configuration (assuming you have a forced air system). Get the specs for the various units and see if you can find space to mount them on your system.

   For above reason I went with an AprilAire powered model, fed hot water and connected to the return duct. Simply no way to mount anything else. A plus with the hot water (which only AprilAire units support) is that I was able to rig it to run independently of the heat, so spring/fall isn't a problem.

   If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people

   happy?

8. 
   xxPaulCPxx | Mar 14, 2006 07:30pm | #18

   Carefull if you have hard water.  We had really hard water at our last house.  The whole house humidifier lasted about a month before it completely siezed up with mineral deposits.

   Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA

   Also a CRX fanatic!

1. 
   DanH | Mar 14, 2006 07:52pm | #19

   Definitely helps to have a water softener, though most whole-house units are the flow through type and can tolerate moderately hard water OK.
   If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people

   happy?