Having grown up in southwest Louisiana, really high humidity was all I ever knew. They do sometimes need heat there, but not nearly as much as most places. When we moved to Kentucky, I was so happy because I thought I was getting away from high humidity (and frizzy hair) but, little did I know that we were moving smack dab into the Ohio Valley where humidity levels were as high as they had been in Louisiana most of the time.
In central Texas, it was always dry but we could add humidity with our heater . . not sure how that worked but it did.
Here, we do have high humidity a lot but with the heat running in the house, it gets so dry. This morning when I got up the humidity in the house was 19% – way too low.
I didn’t want to waste propane so I brought the hot plate in and put a pot of water on to boil. Vince said “There’s a brand new humidifier in the garage!” OK .. I didn’t know we had that. He said we bought while we were in Texas . . guess we really needed it because it had never been used.
For a while, we had both the pot and the humidifier going.
We got the humidity up to 39% in no time. That’s good. I can live with that level. I turned off the pot and just left the humidifier going. We’ll see if that, by itself, will keep the humidity around 35 to 40%.
Michele says
YESSS! When we bought our house there was a whole house humidifier on the furnace. Since the furnace had never been serviced we figured the humidifier hadn’t been either. And the grossness within it was enough to convince us to have it removed. But we do run humidifiers in the bedrooms all winter long to try to compensate. Makes a huge difference in my dry cracked hands & broken fingernails during the winter.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Ours in Texas was there when we got there and we had the unit replaced about midway through our time there. The company doing the work said the humidifier was the same age as the unit (about 8 years) and said he could leave it or replace it so he replaced it but neither of us remember how much extra it was. I’m thinking since all the connections were there, it wasn’t so much.
April Reeves says
Maybe I need to monitor the humidity and get a humidifier. I hate the heat running in the house cause it dries me out. I didn’t realize it could just be a drop in humidity.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Our little weather gizmo tells us the humidity in the house and I wake up with a headache when it gets too low. Lennox says 30% to 50% is comfortable. I feel comfortable around 40% but I generally don’t turn the humidifier on til it gets to about 35%. You can also try boiling a pot of water on the stove – just don’t let it run dry.