On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:31:33 AM UTC-5, trader_4 wrote:
On Friday, November 21, 2014 8:52:22 PM UTC-5, Stormin Mormon wrote:
On 11/21/2014 8:40 PM, Tony Hwang wrote:
panes. Panel can be reused after cleaning with CLR.

Ideally, with the flow of water through, the
panel "never needs cleaning". But nothing is
perfect.

--
.
Christopher A. Young
Learn about Jesus
www.lds.org
.

The panels in those last a year to maybe 3 years, depending on
how hard the water is. For the OP:

He said the water is running, so the unit is energized, but is that
all the time or does it shut off part of the time? I prseume he tried
putting the control to max to make sure it stays on more, but that had
no effect? If it's running all
the time, then it's not a control problem. That unit has an outside
temp sensor so it will lower the humidity as the outside temp drops,
which is what you want. But if it's running all the time, then that
isn't an issue.

How is it installed? Usually the unit is on the return side, with a
bypass duct going over to the hot side plenum. He says there is airflowing,
but how much? A lot? Usually they have a damper that you close for
the summer. Any chance it's mismarked, not fully open?

How large is the house? I've never been a fan of the bypass type
humidifier. I have the Aprilaire 700 which has it's own fan and
doesn't short circuit the blower air. I would think one possibility
is that the humidifier just doesn't have enough capacity. The fact
that the furnace is two stage, variable blower, might be a factor too.
I would think he might be getting less airflow, air not quite as hot
passing through it, etc.

If it's a capacity issue, changing the water feed to use hot water, which
probably isn't hard to do, instead of cold water will increase the output..

Finally, those little humidity meters are typically very inaccurate.
I've had 4 of them side by side, and they can read from 30 to 60.
If he googles he can find a calibrating procedure, where you use a
closed box with some moist salt in the bottom as reference. You can't
adjust the thing, but you can mark it +15 to know that you need to add
~15 to what it shows to get closer to the correct reading.

Thanks Trader for the response! As far as I can see, the water is flowing when the heat is on and is not flowing when heat is off. The house is only 1600 sq ft so I thought the humidifier should be plenty. The unit is located on the return duct and the air supply comes from the hot air supply duct. The unit is running on hot water line and I tried various water flow on it, there was always water draining down the draining tube and the humidity output did not change. I'm getting another one of these humidistat in a couple of days, I'll test and see if they give the same readings. I guess my question right now is whether the humidifier ever fails to output what it should be outputting, or it's already working fine but I'm asking too much from it? I'm really curious if there are other people with the same kinda humidifier and similar outdoor temperature, what humidity they are getting from the hot air registers. The way this thing works is almost purely physics so I really can't imagine where could've gone wrong.