The air inside your home is drier than you think.

Heating your home dries out the air. The resulting dry air absorbs moisture from you and everything inside your home. Even newer, tighter built homes will succumb to the negative effects of air that is too dry.

Irritation and Discomfort

When you heat your home, indoor humidity levels fall below the optimum range. This causes you to experience the discomforts of too dry itchy skin, annoying static shocks and being “too cold” at normal temperatures.

Unhealthy Air

Viruses thrive in low humidity conditions and can actually increase the likelihood of getting colds, flu and other upper respiratory ailments. The American Society of Otolaryngology advises the importance of preventing an overly dry environment because it significantly increases susceptibility to infection.

Home Damage

When heated air isn’t properly humidified, it causes walls and ceilings to crack and wood floors and trim to separate. Expensive musical instruments can go out of tune and electronic equipment can fall victim to static electric charges, requiring expensive repair or replacement.

Higher Energy Costs

Dry air robs the moisture from your skin, making you feel colder, which means you turn up the heat. Dry air also shrinks the framing around doors and windows, resulting in gaps that let in cold air from the outside, making your home less energy efficient.

Benefits of Whole-House Humidifiers

Humidification, the process of adding moisture to the air, is one of the most important aspects of total indoor comfort, yet it’s one of the least understood. One reason is that humidity is an intangible. It can’t be seen, touched, or smelled. It has no color, no sound. However, its presence when controlled properly, offers many proven benefits.

Whether you’re updating your home to be more healthy, energy-efficient and sustainable or you’re building a new green-certified home, Sanders Home Services offers a complete line of innovative products designed to improve the quality of indoor air.

Health

An Whole-House Humidifier can reduce the chance of upper respiratory problems. “Humidity reduces the incidence of respiratory infections and speeds recovery from the common cold.”—William J. Hitschler, MD, Archives of Otolaryngology.

Comfort

When the air in your home becomes too dry, your body is robbed of precious moisture, leaving you and your family with dry, itchy skin, and dry nose and throat symptoms. A Whole-House Humidifier can help alleviate all of these uncomfortable symptoms and more.

Protection

Dry air pulls moisture from walls and hardwood floors which leads to damaging, unsightly cracks. Valuable furniture, artwork and electronics are also subject to the adverse effects of dry air. A Whole-House Humidifier can help protect your home and its contents by supplying the correct amount of moisture to your home’s air.

Energy Savings

Most homeowners turn up the thermostat because they feel cold. A Whole-House Humidifier allows you to feel warmer at lower thermostat settings, saving up to 4% on your heating bill for every degree you lower your thermostat, according to the EPA.

Whole-House Humidification vs. Portable
Too much humidity can be as much of a problem as too little humidity. Unlike portable units the Whole-House Humidifier continually monitors relative humidity levels in your home, then works to deliver the right amount of moisture – never too much or too little— to your entire house. Humidifiers don’t require the daily cleaning and disinfecting that many portable units require and you never need to worry about the risk of microbial organism growth due to standing water.

What you should look for in a humidifier

1. Continuous Automatic Control – 24/7
   The optimum levels of relative humidity in your home fluctuate with the changes in outdoor temperature. An automatic humidifier continually monitors and responds to both outdoor temperatures and indoor relative humidity, delivering optimum levels of humidity throughout your home. You never have to monitor your settings or wait until you feel uncomfortable. The automatic set-it-and-forget-it control keeps your home’s humidity level exactly where you want it.
2. Whole-House Capacity
   An installed whole-house humidifier adds the right amount of soothing moisture to your entire home. To achieve the same effect with a portable unit, you would need to place one in every room of your house.
3. Minimal Maintenance, Total Convenience
   To maintain the performance of a portable unit, you must continually monitor the tank levels and clean and fill them regularly. A whole-house system is installed out of your living space as part of your heating system, providing quiet operation without the messy tank.
4. Reliability
   A good humidifier operates so that working parts are not affected by the build-up of mineral deposits. A good humidifier is designed so that the working parts are replaced every humidifier season, eliminating the requirement to clean and scrub vital components, increasing performance and reliability.