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. So the humidistat on the return duct is just a round knob pointing to different numbers, no digital display.
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.
yes it definitely would. Hot air can absorb much more water than cool air. That is why in the winter the inside of your house is so dry to begin with - it may be 80% RH outside at 20 degrees but (let me google for a real number) that same mass of air heated to 65 degrees will be around 15% RH without having any change in water content.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_humidity
http://home.fuse.net/clymer/water/rh.html
So, the most accurate RH measurements should not be made at the register but in fact as far away from them as possible, as the air coming out of the supply duct will be warmer than the ambient temperature of the house.
Now that said, 16% does seem a little low, but it will definitely be lower than your target of 40-45% due to the temperature difference.
This is also why your humidistat is mounted on the return duct.
nate