Interesting Discovery...

I discovered something interesting this weekend...

Don't know how many of you need to use a humidifier in your house, but we do. We have a six gallon one that we fill every other day. Needless to say, our house is DRY like the Sahara Desert! The other day, the humidifier was empty so I just shut it off and planned to fill it later. I actually forgot about it until the end of the day. In the meantime, I noticed that I was having a hard time keeping my house temps at their normal 72-73 degrees. I was lucky to keep it at 70. Now I realize I'm probably splitting hairs here, but we are pretty spoiled now with the nice warm temps. Anyway, it dawned on me at the end of the day that the humidity in the house was obviously super low since I hadn't refilled the humidifier. Would it be reasonable to say that this has some kind of effect on how warm your house will be/feel? My wife said that it would make sense since in the summer, when the humidity is higher, you really feel the heat, but when it's lower, it can be warm and you still don't feel as hot. Same thing in the winter inside the house??

Just some thoughts, and wonder if anyone else has ever had this happen to them.....

As soon as I filled the humidifier, I saw the temps creep back up to "normal" within a half hour to 45 minutes - and I did nothing to the thermostat on my stove.

The higher humidity will not change the actual temperature, but it will make it feel warmer, due to the body's ability to perspirate, or lack of in higher humidity, and will keep the wood furnature from falling apart, and helps reduce nose bleeds in some people over winter.

Very interesting. The humidifier in evaporating the water uses heat to do it.

Another possibility is the humidifier fan has helped to overcome possible stratification of heat in the room making temperature more uniform. The thermometer may only be feeling heat that is now more even.

In standard hot air heating systems adding humidity makes a lower temp feel more comfortable allowing gas and oil furnaces to maintain one or two degrees lower but still feel as comfortable. This effect would explain the different feel of the house, but not the actual temp difference.

musikfan6 wrote: Don't know how many of you need to use a humidifier in your house, but we do. We have a six gallon one that we fill every other day. Needless to say, our house is DRY like the Sahara Desert! .

I have masonry house, sugar in the sugar bowl turns into a block in about a 3 days.

I defiantly feel the difference between having the humidifier on the stove and not having it. Do you use one on the stove as well?

I'm going way out there but depending on where the thermometer you are using is placed, maybe the more humid air is just heavier enough that it keeps a bit of the heat lower, closer to your thermometer. If you have a second floor with a thermometer, it may be interesting to see if your upper floors are warmer when the air is dryer.

Last winter I noticed when I was running the stove hard the house would dry out so much that the bindings on books began to fall apart. So, this year we went out and bought a whole house humidifier that is rated for 2900 square feet. We ran it Saturday into Sunday and then noticed that by Sunday night the house was only 70* when it had normally been 75*+ without it. It was determined that at this point in the season we don't need the humidifier because we haven't run the stove hard enough yet. I'm not entirely sure if it has anything to actually do with the humidifier or the coal we're using right now but as soon as the humidifier was turned off within a few hours my house was its normal 75*. We'll try the humidifier again as the winter wanes on but right now we feel its putting too much moisture in the air on the lowest fan setting to be needed right now.

I keep a 2 gal. stainless pot on the stove all winter. On the average, I have to put 3x4 to whole gal of water in it a day to keep it full. When I start running the stove harder, I have to place a thin trivet under it to keep it from actually boiling. But it does keep the humidity in the normal zone on the the meter. Last year I ran out of coal sooner than wanted and had to switch back to the OIL fired boiler. Within a week, my wife and I were getting sore noses and dry throats at night.

Water is more efficient at transferring heat than air. The higher humidity will make the house feel warmer.

And visa-versa. If you can't get your house out of the sixties, it will feel colder with a higher humidity.

Smokeyja wrote:I defiantly feel the difference between having the humidifier on the stove and not having it. Do you use one on the stove as well?

No, we just have one in the room where the stove is, about 10 feet away from it.

saragnac wrote:I'm going way out there but depending on where the thermometer you are using is placed, maybe the more humid air is just heavier enough that it keeps a bit of the heat lower, closer to your thermometer. If you have a second floor with a thermometer, it may be interesting to see if your upper floors are warmer when the air is dryer.

I don't know, but my upstairs is absolutely oppressive. I go up there in the evening and it's really warm. My kids will often have their covers kicked off because it's so warm. They've resorted to closing their doors now.

Incidentally, Here's a rabbit trail topic for everyone.....

SInce we've started heating with coal, I now have mold forming in my attic on the rafters. We live in an old house that's probably close to 100 years old, with a walk-up basement. We rent this place, so I just called my landlord the other day to have him come over. After doing some research, I found out that most attic mold comes from bad ventilation. We do not have any ridge vents or soffit venting, so I suspect that this is the problem. So I've got two windows open for now. There is insulation blown into the floors, and we keep the door to the attic closed all the time. Still, when your upstairs is close to 75-76 degrees in the middle of winter, I suspect that some of that heat is naturally going to work it's way up through the attic floor. Interesting addition to this is that we have two large trees at the front of our house that definitely shade the front part of the roof. This is the side of the attic roof that has all the mold. The other side of the roof has only a little bit. Go figure.......

Is your coal stove in the basement? Read about another member's experience: Interesting Problem Having Stove in Basement...

Rob R. wrote:Is your coal stove in the basement? Read about another member's experience: Interesting Problem Having Stove in Basement...

No, my stove is in my living room.