On Saturday, November 22, 2014 6:27:52 PM UTC-5, trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 4:51:59 PM UTC-5, Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 2:56:49 PM UTC-5, trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 2:37:55 PM UTC-5, Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 1:38:39 PM UTC-5, trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 12:54:35 PM UTC-5, Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 11:56:53 AM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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:

Hi,
If your water is not hard. Digital ATD type humidity sensor hardly ever
goes out of calibration.

Thanks Tony for all the responses and thanks Stormin for helping again! Unfortunately I'm Chinese but I always wished I could understand Korean
If the flap you were referring to was the damper that controls the air flow from supply to the humidifier(the one that I could control with the horizontal/vertical switch), then yes I did double check and make sure it was fully on. I've also tried different water flow from the hot water supply, from minimum to maximum, humidity output did not change. The humidity monitor I was using was AcuRite 00613A1 Indoor Humidity Monitor. Bought from Amazon, not sure if it's okay to post links here so I'll just skip that for now. Anyways for the two years since I had it its performance had been satisfactory for me, it was able to sense humidity changes and never fluctuated when in a stable environment.

I just found out that the lowest reading this humidity monitor can have was 16%, therefore the hot air I was measuring probably was even lower than 16%, this is the main thing I was concerned about, and also why I think I might be experiencing something different from other people who has the same unit.


You said you were measuring the 16% right at the heat register. Keep in mind
that the air there is much hotter than room temperature. When that air cools
down to room temp, the humidity will be much higher than 16%. You also said
that the humidity in the room was 33% and the outside temps were as low as
29F. If you set that unit to 45%, as the outside temp drops, the unit will
automatically lower the humidity below 45%, assuming it has the outside temp
sensor connected. When it's in the 20s you probably don't want it above 40%.

Also, a furnace hunidifier can't humidify when it's not on. If it's not
very cold out, then it may not run enough to be able to boost it as high as
you want. Depending on how it's wired up, if it runs when the blower is on,
you could run the blower constantly for a while to get more humidity out of it.
You'll get humidity out, just not quite as much as you would if the furnace
was firing. You apparently have hot water going into it, so that will help.

Thanks Trader, your statement about hot air cooling down and then becoming much higher than 16% sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure if this hot/cold air difference will be able to account for the difference between the 45% and 16%. The humidifier should not sense the outside temperature because when I had it installed I specifically asked for them to not put in the automatic one, but the manual one instead.

IDK why you would not want the automatic adjustment. I wouldn't buy a unit
without it. Otherwise, you have two choices. Keep it set at a humidity
appropriate for the coldest temp, which will be less than what you'd likely
want most times, or else keep adjusting it as the temperature changes..


So the humidistat on the return duct is just a round knob pointing to different numbers, no digital display.

The older models with outside temp compensation look just like that too.



So I guess my question boils down to whether the 16% humidity right out of register is reasonable or not, if it is, I probably shouldn't even bother getting the service guy back in again. But if it's not, I'm thinking whether there are other hardware configuration problems involved that they could make improvements on.

Thanks again.

Is the humidifier always on when the furnace is running, ie it's always
trying to raise the humidity?

What is the humidity in the house? Getting static shocks? Could be
the humidity gauge you're using isn't accurate.

If it's running, you stop it and quickly check the panel, is it wet all
over? I suppose if the unit is not level or similar, water could be
flowing only over part of the panel. There should be about a pencil
size stream of water flowing out the drain hose.

I didn't want the automatic one because I wanted to be able to adjust it to a higher humidity level when my family really needs it. But again I really don't think that is the issue here.


You can adjust the ones that have compensation for outside temperature,
just like you can adjust the one you have. If you want it high, just turn
it up. I guess it would prevent you from setting it to 50% when it's 15F
outside, but that would seem to be a good thing. What the the ones with outdoor temp compensation will do is reduce
the humidity when it gets cold outside. So, if you have it set to 45% when
it's 40 outside, which is reasonable, if the outside temp drops to 20, it will reduce it to maybe 35%, which is more appropriate for that temperature, so you don't get condensation at windows, inside walls, etc. If you
don't have it done automatically, then you're supposed to be doing that
manually. Or else keep it set low enough all the time so that condensation
problems never occur.


The humidifier is constantly on when the furnace is running, when I set it to 45%, but if I set it to ~30%, it stops.

So it thinks the actual humidity is at ~35%. Another factor here could be
the furnace sizing for the house. You said the house is 1600 sq ft. If
the furnace is oversized, ie too large for the house, then it's not going
to run very long and the humdifier won't have enough time to put out moisture.
Say a house should have a 70K BTU furnace and instead a 120K BTU furnace is
installed. The 100K furnace is going to run a lot less number of minutes
under the same conditions than the 70K furnace.



The humidity guage I was using could possibly be inacurate, but I did have 2 years of experience with it and it had been functioning well, again I'm getting another one in to make sure, but if you think the whole model is just not accurate I probably won't be able to invest more money to get something better and more accurate.


As I said before, if you google you can find a simple procedure to calibrate
them. I've seen 3 of the same or very similar model, side by side, with
read outs that are 20%+ different.



I tried checking the water panel when it was running, but I could really tell the difference between wet all over and partly wet, am I supposed to see stream on every single wire or just a very tiny thin layer of water that's hardly observable? Or just drops of water here and there? The draining water seemed to all stick to the side of the tubing and not forming a stream.

If you take it out and feel it, I would think it should feel wet all over
and/or you should be able to see that it's wet all over. There should also
be water over the whole top of the distribution tray. Have you placed a
level on the unit?

I can definitely adjust the humidity level when there is condensation, the
thing is, I'm wondering if my humidifier is functioning right. My furnace
I believe is a 49,500/76,000 BTU, which I really don't know if it's too
much. But if it is, I should probably expect the humidity in house to rise
when the weather gets colder? So far we felt the driest and the humidistat
gave the lowest reading when the weather was lowest. We can see when it gets
really cold how the humidity is, but I really feel that it will just go even
lower. And that's what I'm worried about right now.

I checked the water panel, it was wet everywhere, and the unit was level as well, the distribution tray had water evenly distributed in it, all the 4 little holes had water going through and downwards.