Humidifiers and Ventilation
What Humidifier and Ventilation Options Are Available?
Available humidifier and ventilation options include whole-home bypass humidifiers, independent steam humidifiers, and Heat Recovery Ventilators engineered to balance interior moisture.
Indoor relative humidity below 30% during freezing Wisconsin weather causes dry skin, painful static electricity shocks, and cracked woodwork. We install whole-home bypass humidifiers that integrate directly into the HVAC system to maintain an optimal 35% to 45% relative humidity. Steam humidifiers operate entirely independently from the furnace blower, providing precise moisture control regardless of heating cycles. Heat Recovery Ventilators and Energy Recovery Ventilators recover up to 85% of the thermal energy from stale exhaust air before safely venting it outside.
Explore ways to control home moisture levels with our dedicated humidifiers and ventilation systems.
Whole-Home Humidifiers
A portable humidifier treats one room and asks to be refilled. A whole-home unit is plumbed into the water supply and installed at the air handler, so it humidifies everywhere the ducts reach and nobody has to remember it.
The two common types differ in how they add moisture. A bypass humidifier passes furnace air across a wet pad, using the heating system's own airflow, and it only humidifies while the furnace runs. A steam unit boils water and introduces vapor independently, which means it can humidify without waiting for a call for heat and holds a set point more precisely.
Both need a humidistat that responds to outdoor temperature rather than a fixed setting. The colder it is outside, the less moisture the house can hold before it condenses on the windows, so a humidifier left at one setting all winter is either underperforming in mild weather or fogging the glass while it's cold out.
ERV/HRV Systems
Older houses ventilated themselves through their own leakiness, which was wasteful but did mean a continuous supply of outside air. A house air-sealed to modern standards does not, and everything generated indoors (moisture, cooking odors, VOCs from finishes and furnishings, carbon dioxide from the people in it) accumulates rather than dispersing.
A heat or energy recovery ventilator solves that without throwing away the heat. Stale air on its way out passes a core alongside incoming fresh air and transfers most of its heat across without the two streams mixing. The house gets fresh air; the heat mostly stays.
The difference between the two is moisture. An HRV transfers heat only. An ERV transfers a proportion of the humidity as well, which in winter means less of the moisture you have paid to add goes out with the exhaust, and in summer means less outdoor humidity comes in with the fresh air.
Installation
A humidifier needs three connections at the air handler: air, a water supply, and a drain. The drain is the one that causes most later trouble, because a blocked or poorly routed condensate line reveals itself as water on a basement floor rather than as a humidifier fault, and it is often traced back to something that was awkward to route at installation.
Recovery ventilators are more involved, because they need their own ducting to and from outside as well as connections to the house. Where the intake sits matters: drawing fresh air from beside a dryer vent, a driveway or a gas appliance flue defeats the purpose entirely, and those locations are easy to overlook when the mechanical room dictates the route.
A ventilator moving different volumes in and out pressurizes or depressurizes the house, and a depressurized house with fuel-burning appliances can pull combustion gases back down a flue. That is the reason the airflows get measured and adjusted rather than assumed.
FAQ
Why do my windows fog up when the humidifier runs?
Because the humidity is above what the coldest surfaces in the house can tolerate. The colder it is outside, the less moisture the air can hold before condensing on glass. A humidistat that adjusts to outdoor temperature is the fix; a fixed setting left alone all winter will fog the windows when it gets cold.
Does a tightly sealed house need mechanical ventilation?
Usually, yes. Older houses ventilated themselves through their own leaks — wastefully, but continuously. A house sealed to modern standards accumulates moisture, odors and VOCs instead of dispersing them, so the fresh air has to be provided deliberately.
Can I just open a window instead?
It works, and it throws away the heat you paid for along with the stale air. That is the entire problem a recovery ventilator exists to solve: it keeps most of the heat while still exchanging the air, and it does it continuously rather than when someone remembers.
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WIL-Surge Home Services