Do Humidifers Work During The Winter?

With the long, cold winter looming in Alpharetta, it’s time to start thinking about how you’ll stay comfortable when the temperature drops. While a new furnace from 4 Seasons Heating and Air is certainly an option, there are other ways to increase your home’s comfort. For example, using a humidifier can provide many benefits to your home, making it a great tool to have on hand when nothing else seems to work. By understanding how a humidifier works and what benefits you’ll receive by using one, you’ll be able to make a smart choice to help improve your comfort this winter.

Why the Dry Air?

If there’s one thing Georgia is known for, it’s the hot and humid weather that characterizes a Georgia summer. As the summer fades away, though, a glorious phenomenon begins to occur: the humidity in the air drops significantly. This is because cooler air is less dense, meaning that it can hold less water vapor. Therefore, the air becomes saturated with moisture much more quickly, resulting in air that feels dry on the skin.

While this is a welcome change in the fall, it becomes a little overbearing in the winter. As temperatures drop significantly, the humidity is forced lower and lower, resulting in air that’s drier than the surrounding surfaces. Suddenly, your skin has a higher moisture content than the air, meaning that the moisture moves from your highly saturated skin to the less-saturated air. This results in dry skin, cracked lips, and a season of trying to scratch that annoying itch on your back.

How Does a Humidifier Work?

In order to increase the relative humidity in your home, water has to become vaporized. While you vaporize water all the time through respiration, boiling water, and other everyday occurrences, a humidifier from [company_name] is a device that vaporizes water to raise the humidity levels in your home. There are a couple of ways a humidifier vaporizes water.

The most common type of humidifier is a warm mist humidifier. This type of humidifier vaporizes water by raising it to its boiling point so it turns into steam. Then, the steam rises away from the humidifier and is dispersed into the air in your home. An ultrasonic humidifier, on the other hand, vibrates the water in the tank at high speeds. This motion causes the water to separate into tiny droplets that are then released into the air. Ultimately, as long as you keep the water reservoir filled, any type of humidifier is effective at making your home more comfortable.

Humidifiers Help With Comfort

One great benefit of humidifiers is that they help improve your home’s comfort in multiple ways. One of these comfort-enhancing benefits is reducing instances of dry skin. Since the relative humidity in your home is higher, your skin will be absorbing moisture instead of shedding moisture. This will reduce your need for lotion, lip balm, and other personal care products. Plus, moist skin tends to show fewer wrinkles, helping you fight off signs of aging.

Another comfort benefit of humidifiers from [company_name] is that maintaining higher relative humidity in your home helps the air feel warmer on your skin. This means that you’ll be able to set your thermostat lower and still maintain the same level of comfort. Therefore, although you’ll be using some electricity for your humidifier, you’ll be able to use your furnace, which uses far more energy, far less.

Humidifiers Help Your Home

In its finished state, many people forget that the framing and woodwork in your home are made from natural materials. At their most basic, though, these structural elements are simply pieces of a tree that have been carefully engineered to serve a specific purpose. Since wood can change characteristics based on the amount of moisture in the air, adding a humidifier to your home can do a lot to protect and maintain your home’s beauty.

Just like your skin, if wood becomes too dry due to low humidity levels, it can begin to crack. The same is true of virtually all porous materials, such as drywall, grout, leather, and countless more. Therefore, even if you aren’t suffering from dry air, it’s still a good idea to have a humidifier in your home to ensure your home doesn’t suffer. If you’re using a humidifier solely for this purpose, your best bet is to have a whole-home humidifier installed by [company_name] so you can be sure to protect the surfaces in each room.

Humidifiers Help Your Health

Beyond simply keeping you comfortable, a humidifier from [company_name] can have potential health benefits in certain situations. The best time to use a humidifier is when you’re suffering from respiratory ailments. While a humidifier can’t cure any illnesses, it can promote conditions that make it easier for your body to cure itself.

Plus, a humidifier can go a long way toward relieving your symptoms so you don’t have to suffer through your illness. The driving force behind a humidifier’s health benefits is its ability to moisten your nasal passages. When your nasal passages are moist, they are better able to expel existing germs and reject new germs from entering. Thus, if you want to kick your body’s immune system into high gear, a humidifier is a great investment.

What to Watch For

For all of its benefits, a humidifier from [company_name] can have some drawbacks if it’s not used correctly. Fortunately, if you know what to watch out for, you can steer clear of these problems so you can enjoy the worry-free operation of your humidifier.

The big thing to look for is mold growth in the humidifier assembly. Since it’s dark, moist, and warm in a humidifier, it’s only a matter of time until mold begins to grow. That’s why cleaning your humidifier with bleach every week is an important part of humidifier ownership.

You’ll also want to be careful not to keep your humidifier too close to walls. As the water vapor rises from the humidifier, it could stick to the cooler wall if the wall is too close. Over time, this buildup of moisture can lead to mold growth on the wall.

Additionally, it’s important to keep your humidifier out of the reach of pets and children since the internal components can become quite hot in a warm mist humidifier. As long as you take care of those things, though, you’ll likely find that your humidifier provides nothing but benefits.

Working With You to Maximize Your Home’s Comfort

At [company_name], we want to help you discover new ways to maximize your Alpharetta home’s comfort. That’s why we offer services such as whole-home humidifier installation, heating, and air conditioning repair, maintenance, and installation, hot water heater repair and installation, ductless HVAC system installation, and indoor air quality assessments and trusted solutions. With over 45 years of service to the community, you can trust us to take care of you as we have taken care of our thousands of other customers through the years. For further evidence of our commitment to our customers, you can read the five-star reviews left by individuals just like you. To learn more about humidifiers, contact us at [company_name] today. We can answer any of your questions and offer personalized solutions. We look forward to serving all of your home climate comfort needs.