mm wrote:
wrote:
mm wrote:

Generally indoor humdity is insufficient in the winter, especially or
at least iirc if one has forced air heat. Unless your situation is
different, iIt would be better to have a humidifier connected to the
furnace, because that could give adequate humidity all of the time.
The higher humitidy is good for wood furniture (that is, very low
humitidy is bad for it, leads to cracking), good for some people who
have certain respiratory problems iirc, and it also makes one feel
more comfortable, so that the thermostat can be set lower for the same
feeling of comfort.

But evaporating the water takes about 10X more heat energy
than you save with a lower thermostat setting.

A) This is not a situation where the person is evaporating water just
so she can heat the house. The water has already been evaporated,
and she wants to gain the side benefit of having that warm air and
humidity inside the house.

Untrue, with the furnace humidifier.

B) I think your last two lines above are inaccurate.

I'm afraid you are incorrect, unless you live in an empty oil tank
with no insulation in Barrow, Alaska :-)

I think it takes 10 or so times as much heat to raise the temperature of water
one degreee when the water is also changing from liquid to gas, than
it does to raise the temperature of the water one degree without a
change of state.

Evaporating a pound of water takes 1000 Btu. Raising its temp 1 F takes 1 Btu.

But the thermostat setting that is possible with higher humidity is lower
by more than one degree. I would say it's possible to achieve the same
degree of comfort with the thermostat set 5 degrees lower.

I suggest you try actual numbers, including a house air leakage estimate.

Nick