On 11/22/2014 4:14 PM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
On 11/22/2014 4:12 PM, Frank wrote:
On 11/21/2014 8:13 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
Thanks Stormin for the effort! Really appreciate it!


I learned about the damper from the thread. Didn't know I had one and
don't shut it off. Have to do that next summer.

I don't measure humidity but Aprilaire seems to work OK but things do
dry out in the winter. I put in a new pad every year as old has a lot
of salts precipitated around it although I think it could work for a
couple of years without change.

Leaving the damper open with central AC makes
it much more likely to freeze the evaporator
coil.

I'm wondering if the OP need to replace that pad,
might be the water is on the outside of the pad,
not soaking into the fibers.

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

Pad appears to be a paper coated aluminum honeycomb. They mention paper
on the box but you can see aluminum showing through. It is not like the
sponge like pad I had on an old Sears unit which every now and then I'd
take off and soak in dilute vinegar to remove salts. When I replace the
pad each year I note a lot of dried salts which I vacuum out but pad is
not full of them. Pads are maybe $5-7 which is not a big expense.

In the summer, we shut off water to the pad and not sure what difference
it will make but will close mine next summer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat.
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

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.

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat.
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

Hi Tony,

My humidifier is probabaly configured differently than yours, because when I
turn the fan to on instead off auto, the water supply to the humidifier doesn't turn on. It only runs when the heat is on.

On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 14:58:19 -0800 (PST), Hongyi Kang
wrote:

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 5:42:43 PM UTC-5, micky wrote:
On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 16:42:15 -0500, Don Wiss
wrote:

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014, Hongyi Kang wrote:

I'm extremely new here so please let me know if I'm posting things at the wrong place. I recently (3 months ago) installed a new Trane 2 stage ECM furnace and along with it an Aprilaire 600 whole house Humidifier. It's upstate New York here, I've been setting the the thermostat to 73 degree, so furnace officially started working since late September.

You are in the right place. But your posting with no carriage returns makes
it very hard to read your posts. One has to scroll back and forth.

Don. www.donwiss.com (e-mail link at home page bottom).


Don, you're using Agent 1.93, the same as I am. I was about to tell
you to just turn on word wrap, with O.

But I looked at his op and found that it looked the same with wordwrap
on or not. And its lines are only about 70 characters, though they
all end with = except the last line in a paragraph.

So obviously one of Agent's other many parameters is set different for
you and me. I don't want to go over ever singlee one of them, but if
you have a couple suggestions, I'll check what my settings are.

You're right, when I reply to the OP and quote it, each paragraph is one
line with one in front of it. But it still only spans the width of
my not new, not wide monitor. There is a scroll bar at the bottom,
though nothing to the right to scroll to. Of course I'm in full-screen
mode (for Agent and anything else that will go full screen.)



On Saturday, November 22, 2014 5:42:43 PM UTC-5, micky wrote:
On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 16:42:15 -0500, Don Wiss
wrote:

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014, Hongyi Kang wrote:

I'm extremely new here so please let me know if I'm posting things at the wrong place. I recently (3 months ago) installed a new Trane 2 stage ECM furnace and along with it an Aprilaire 600 whole house Humidifier. It's upstate New York here, I've been setting the the thermostat to 73 degree, so furnace officially started working since late September.

You are in the right place. But your posting with no carriage returns makes
it very hard to read your posts. One has to scroll back and forth.

Don. www.donwiss.com (e-mail link at home page bottom).


Don, you're using Agent 1.93, the same as I am. I was about to tell
you to just turn on word wrap, with O.

But I looked at his op and found that it looked the same with wordwrap
on or not. And its lines are only about 70 characters, though they
all end with = except the last line in a paragraph.

So obviously one of Agent's other many parameters is set different for
you and me. I don't want to go over ever singlee one of them, but if
you have a couple suggestions, I'll check what my settings are.

You're right, when I reply to the OP and quote it, each paragraph is one
line with one in front of it. But it still only spans the width of
my not new, not wide monitor. There is a scroll bar at the bottom,
though nothing to the right to scroll to. Of course I'm in full-screen
mode (for Agent and anything else that will go full screen.)

I kind of get what carriage return means here now, I guess the paragraphs I
typed all just went into one single line? I'm pressing enter at the end of
every line I'm typing now, hope that will help!

Yes, Enter is a carriage return (CR) It does help a lot, but you
shouldn't have to do that. Still, Don knows more than I do about
electronics, so he probably knows more than I here too.


I'm just using google
chrome on a desktop computer to read and post right now.

I think it takes more than that. Are you at a particular website,
like groups.google.com?


Not sure if there
is any app i'm using.

Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat.
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

Hi Tony,

My humidifier is probabaly configured differently than yours, because when I
turn the fan to on instead off auto, the water supply to the humidifier doesn't turn on. It only runs when the heat is on.

Hi,
Usually furnace control board has terminals marked "HUM" meaning
humidifier hook up there. Simply humidifier solenoid needs 24V AC
in series with humidistat. When humidity is called for contacts in the
humidistat makes supplying the 24V AC power to the solenoid. Aprilaire
package comes with a small 24V AC transformer for this purpose. In case
there is no "HUM" terminals. Then power source has to be tied into
blower power utilising that transformer. Turning fan on does not start
humidifier? you better call the service tech and ask him to make it work
like it should. Being a retired EE I always tell HVAC service techs
leave electrical part to me, don't bother with it. Once I teased a guy
who installed my high efficiency furnace and a/c for an upgrade, I asked
him to install wireless thermostat I got, he did not want to saying he
never installed one. I wish I were your neighbor, I could straighten
things out for you like nothing. Is your name 姜? My BIL
who is HVAC commercial estimator, mechanical engineer's name is 姜大薰.
Come to think of it, maybe they made the humidifier to come on when heat
comes on which is not ideal.

On 11/22/2014 6:17 PM, micky wrote:

At least for the sake of testing, you can raisse the humidity further by
putting a big pot of water on the stove and boiling it until it's almost
dry. (You can boil it dry for that matter without hurting most pots that
much.) And/or you can stopper the bathtub, turn on the shower all
hot, and just make sure you don't overflow the tub. (You could leave
the tub unstopped, but that's a waste of hot water, and not as
effective, because the water steams off of the surface as much as the
spray.)

It's certainly worth doing this once, to see if it helps your wife. If
it doesn't, then you can just stick with the humidifier as you have it.

The boiling water is better than the shower, I think. You can just keep
adding more hot water to the boiling water, but you can only let the
bathtub fill up so high, and I won't drain the tub until the water is
room temperature.

Both of these, btw, are good ways of making the house feel warm, by
raising the humidity, when the furnace is broken.


When I was a teen, I used to put hot water in a
spray bottle and spray hot water mist into the
air near the ceiling. It would evaporate on the
way down. Quick and easy. Parents did not have a
humidifier, so I pumped water into the air.

The pot on the stove is an old favorite of people
who burn wood.

I agree, it's good for testing. See if she and you
both feel better.

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

On 11/22/2014 6:33 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
My wife have had this coughing and sore throat
problem for about 3 years, and it's mainly during winter that it's the
worst. Before I moved into this house I used a portable humidifier to keep
the humidity in bedroom high so that she feels better during the winter.
That was a little problematic because I had to shut off the dry hot air register in that room and keep the door half shut to keep the humidity to be
around 50%. But the room got kinda cold which aggravated her throat as
well.

Sounds like more humidity does good. The portable
humidifier sounds like it worked for awhile.

But, it would be nice to get the real humidifier
working properly.

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

On 11/22/2014 9:32 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
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.


You know, it would be a bad surprise if the tube
from the heat to the humidifier had a damper in
it, and that additional damper were shut.

From here, it sounds like every thing "should" be
fine. I am puzzled.

May I please write you by email, not on the home
repair list?

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

On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 16:03:22 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 6:17:26 PM UTC-5, micky wrote:


However I am seeing frost on the window, is that a sign of too much humidity then?

It's only too much if it bothers you for some reason.


It would bother
some of the people here, I think, or at least water on the windows
would, but they don't have a wife with a sore throat. The only
problem with the water is that it might damage the paint on the windows
sills, but you might not have paint or even sills, and you have to
repaiint painted ones once in a while anyhow.

If you get significant condensation on the windows, what do you think is
happening everywhere else that there is a similar cold spot, eg inside
walls,

Why would there be cold spots in the interior walls? Or the exterior
wall inside the insulation.

near electric outlets, etc?

AFA wwater near electric outlets, what's that going to do. Trip a
breaker at most.

I have an extension cord I use with my electric lawn mower. I've left
it outside for 10 years, day and night, 365 days a year lying in the
rain and under the snow. It's never tripped the breaker, and it's a
ground fault breaker that knows how to trip.


Having humidity too high when it's
cold isn't just a bother. It promotes mold, mildew, rot, etc.




They also worry about mold. I've had black mold for other reasons and
it doesn't bother me, but I'm sure it does bother some people. I killed
it either by removing the source of the wetness (a lot of water just
outside) or with bleach, or with paint with mold suppressor added.
(I thought killing it with bleach would make it turn white again, but
that was silly.)



There you go.

I am indeed on groups.google.com

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 11:28:42 PM UTC-5, micky wrote:
On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 16:03:22 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 6:17:26 PM UTC-5, micky wrote:


However I am seeing frost on the window, is that a sign of too much humidity then?

It's only too much if it bothers you for some reason.


It would bother
some of the people here, I think, or at least water on the windows
would, but they don't have a wife with a sore throat. The only
problem with the water is that it might damage the paint on the windows
sills, but you might not have paint or even sills, and you have to
repaiint painted ones once in a while anyhow.

If you get significant condensation on the windows, what do you think is
happening everywhere else that there is a similar cold spot, eg inside
walls,

Why would there be cold spots in the interior walls? Or the exterior
wall inside the insulation.


Because insulation isn't put in perfectly, even in new houses. And
then you have areas where there is no insulation, or minimal insulation,
eg where there is an electrical outlet box, recessed lights, a pipe going
through a wall, etc. In old homes, who knows what you have. There are bound to be cold spots, and if excess humidity is condensing on the windows, it's bound to be condensing elsewhere, where you can't see it. Like maybe in the
attic, because vapor barriers aren't perfect either and an old home may not
even have one. Every credible
building authority that I've seen talk about humidity, warns that
excess humidity can cause damage and that you should not go above about 45%,
lower as it gets colder outside. If you want water stains, peeling
paint, rotting wood, that's up to you, crank it up to 75%+



near electric outlets, etc?

AFA wwater near electric outlets, what's that going to do. Trip a
breaker at most.


Fine, have water dripping out of your outlets if you want.




I have an extension cord I use with my electric lawn mower. I've left
it outside for 10 years, day and night, 365 days a year lying in the
rain and under the snow. It's never tripped the breaker, and it's a
ground fault breaker that knows how to trip.



Another sound practice. Who could argue with that?

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

What does your weather station say the humidity is in Hongyi's house?

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat.
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

Hi Tony,

My humidifier is probabaly configured differently than yours, because when I
turn the fan to on instead off auto, the water supply to the humidifier doesn't turn on. It only runs when the heat is on.

Hi,
Usually furnace control board has terminals marked "HUM" meaning
humidifier hook up there. Simply humidifier solenoid needs 24V AC
in series with humidistat. When humidity is called for contacts in the
humidistat makes supplying the 24V AC power to the solenoid. Aprilaire
package comes with a small 24V AC transformer for this purpose. In case
there is no "HUM" terminals. Then power source has to be tied into
blower power utilising that transformer. Turning fan on does not start
humidifier? you better call the service tech and ask him to make it work
like it should.

There are a lot of humidifiers wired so that they are only on when the
burner is on, including mine. Nothing wrong with it, no problems here.
I do agree that if he gets his changed, then he could run it as much as
he wants, but I haven't found the need. It will have less output without
the benefit of the hot air though.

On 11/22/2014 11:36 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
I am indeed on groups.google.com

Worth noting, google groups is a portal
to Usenet, which is a much older message
system.

You are actually not talking (writing)
with google people for the most part.

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

To op
If you want more humidity, did you try just turning the control upfull for a few days?
I try to keep the house at 40% in the winter and it takes a lot of water to do that.
And yes i get condensation on the cold glass, but that is normal, if you have
humidity and cold glass, you will have condensation.

You might try a warm mist vaporizer in the bed rom.
Make sure it is a warm mist type that actually heats the water, not the
spinning disc type that slings the water and not an ultrasonic type.

Unfortunatly the warm mist type need a lot of maintenance but that is just
The nature of evaporating water that contains minerals.

Get a digital humidity meter off ebay for a few bucks.

Also re google, with all the smart people they claim to have, you
would think they would get the Cr thing roght.
Maybe they are not as smart as they think.
The zoom feature also does not work right
When viweing google groups on an ipad.

Mark

trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat.
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

Hi Tony,

My humidifier is probabaly configured differently than yours, because when I
turn the fan to on instead off auto, the water supply to the humidifier doesn't turn on. It only runs when the heat is on.

Hi,
Usually furnace control board has terminals marked "HUM" meaning
humidifier hook up there. Simply humidifier solenoid needs 24V AC
in series with humidistat. When humidity is called for contacts in the
humidistat makes supplying the 24V AC power to the solenoid. Aprilaire
package comes with a small 24V AC transformer for this purpose. In case
there is no "HUM" terminals. Then power source has to be tied into
blower power utilising that transformer. Turning fan on does not start
humidifier? you better call the service tech and ask him to make it work
like it should.

There are a lot of humidifiers wired so that they are only on when the
burner is on, including mine. Nothing wrong with it, no problems here.
I do agree that if he gets his changed, then he could run it as much as
he wants, but I haven't found the need. It will have less output without
the benefit of the hot air though.

Hi,
If you study furnace control board, humidifier and electronic air clear
are to run when blower comes on. Where I am in winter time R.H. can be
below zero(that dry), if it runs only when heat comes on, humidity in
the house will never reach to proper level. For various reasons blower
is on all the time at low speed. Some humidifier packages come with sail
switch to be mounted in the duct to sense the air flow and trigger the
humidification.

trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

What does your weather station say the humidity is in Hongyi's house?

Hi,
It is free standing on a pole outside in my front yard. It measures all
the weather related parameters and relay that to my console via Wireless.
It has WWV synch'd clock, runs on solar/rechargeable battery combo. thru
USB port it is connected to NOAA net. They collect lot of local weather
conditions to micro manage forecasting. Check out the Davis products.
It is expensive but worth the money.

On 11/23/2014 10:16 AM, Tony Hwang wrote:
trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

I
I
I [christmas presents]

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 8:16:23 AM UTC-5, Stormin Mormon wrote:
On 11/22/2014 11:36 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
I am indeed on groups.google.com

Worth noting, google groups is a portal
to Usenet, which is a much older message
system.

You are actually not talking (writing)
with google people for the most part.

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

Oh that's really good to know! Thanks!

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 10:07:48 AM UTC-5, wrote:
To op
If you want more humidity, did you try just turning the control upfull for a few days?
I try to keep the house at 40% in the winter and it takes a lot of water to do that.
And yes i get condensation on the cold glass, but that is normal, if you have
humidity and cold glass, you will have condensation.

You might try a warm mist vaporizer in the bed rom.
Make sure it is a warm mist type that actually heats the water, not the
spinning disc type that slings the water and not an ultrasonic type.

Unfortunatly the warm mist type need a lot of maintenance but that is just
The nature of evaporating water that contains minerals.

Get a digital humidity meter off ebay for a few bucks.

Also re google, with all the smart people they claim to have, you
would think they would get the Cr thing roght.
Maybe they are not as smart as they think.
The zoom feature also does not work right
When viweing google groups on an ipad.

Mark

Thanks Mark! I think my thing right now is, I don't think the humidifier is
putting more humidity into the rooms when the furnace is on. I actually
think it's drier when the hot air is coming out of the registers. This
really bothers the hell out of me because I don't know whether I should
trust my feelings, but the humidistat kinda agrees with me.

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat.
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

Hi Tony,

My humidifier is probabaly configured differently than yours, because when I
turn the fan to on instead off auto, the water supply to the humidifier doesn't turn on. It only runs when the heat is on.

Hi,
Usually furnace control board has terminals marked "HUM" meaning
humidifier hook up there. Simply humidifier solenoid needs 24V AC
in series with humidistat. When humidity is called for contacts in the
humidistat makes supplying the 24V AC power to the solenoid. Aprilaire
package comes with a small 24V AC transformer for this purpose. In case
there is no "HUM" terminals. Then power source has to be tied into
blower power utilising that transformer. Turning fan on does not start
humidifier? you better call the service tech and ask him to make it work
like it should. Being a retired EE I always tell HVAC service techs
leave electrical part to me, don't bother with it. Once I teased a guy
who installed my high efficiency furnace and a/c for an upgrade, I asked
him to install wireless thermostat I got, he did not want to saying he
never installed one. I wish I were your neighbor, I could straighten
things out for you like nothing. Is your name 姜? My BIL
who is HVAC commercial estimator, mechanical engineer's name is 姜大薰.
Come to think of it, maybe they made the humidifier to come on when heat
comes on which is not ideal.

Hi Tony, sorry I didn't reply earlier, passed out with my crying son last night XD. I will definitely ask the service tech about hooking the unit up with blower power. Haha if you were my neighbor it would be a lot of fun, cuz I've always been interested in EE, but I'm a bio major. My last name is actually 康, not sure if the character displays fine on your screen though...

On 11/23/2014 3:27 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hi,
Usually furnace control board has terminals marked "HUM" meaning
humidifier hook up there. Simply humidifier solenoid needs 24V AC
in series with humidistat. When humidity is called for contacts in the
humidistat makes supplying the 24V AC power to the solenoid. Aprilaire
package comes with a small 24V AC transformer for this purpose. In case
there is no "HUM" terminals. Then power source has to be tied into
blower power utilising that transformer. Turning fan on does not start
humidifier? you better call the service tech and ask him to make it work
like it should. Being a retired EE I always tell HVAC service techs
leave electrical part to me, don't bother with it. Once I teased a guy
who installed my high efficiency furnace and a/c for an upgrade, I asked
him to install wireless thermostat I got, he did not want to saying he
never installed one. I wish I were your neighbor, I could straighten
things out for you like nothing. Is your name 姜? My BIL
who is HVAC commercial estimator, mechanical engineer's name is 姜大薰.
Come to think of it, maybe they made the humidifier to come on when heat
comes on which is not ideal.

Hi Tony, sorry I didn't reply earlier, passed out with my crying son last night XD. I will definitely ask the service tech about hooking the unit up with blower power. Haha if you were my neighbor it would be a lot of fun, cuz I've always been interested in EE, but I'm a bio major. My last name is actually 康, not sure if the character displays fine on your screen though...


If the three of us were there in person,
we'd had it fixed by now.

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

On 11/23/2014 3:20 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:

Thanks Mark! I think my thing right now is, I don't think the humidifier is
putting more humidity into the rooms when the furnace is on. I actually
think it's drier when the hot air is coming out of the registers. This
really bothers the hell out of me because I don't know whether I should
trust my feelings, but the humidistat kinda agrees with me.


I'd rely more on the wife being comfortable. I don't
care as much what a gauge says, it's people comfort
that is important.

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

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 3:46:21 PM UTC-5, Stormin Mormon wrote:
On 11/23/2014 3:20 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:

Thanks Mark! I think my thing right now is, I don't think the humidifier is
putting more humidity into the rooms when the furnace is on. I actually
think it's drier when the hot air is coming out of the registers. This
really bothers the hell out of me because I don't know whether I should
trust my feelings, but the humidistat kinda agrees with me.


I'd rely more on the wife being comfortable. I don't
care as much what a gauge says, it's people comfort
that is important.

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

Agree, last night and today had been warm, and the humidity in the house
increased to ~47%. My wife said she felt better. I tried both the boiling and filling up bath tub methods last night , was a lot of fun lol.

Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat.
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

Hi Tony,

My humidifier is probabaly configured differently than yours, because when I
turn the fan to on instead off auto, the water supply to the humidifier doesn't turn on. It only runs when the heat is on.

Hi,
Usually furnace control board has terminals marked "HUM" meaning
humidifier hook up there. Simply humidifier solenoid needs 24V AC
in series with humidistat. When humidity is called for contacts in the
humidistat makes supplying the 24V AC power to the solenoid. Aprilaire
package comes with a small 24V AC transformer for this purpose. In case
there is no "HUM" terminals. Then power source has to be tied into
blower power utilising that transformer. Turning fan on does not start
humidifier? you better call the service tech and ask him to make it work
like it should. Being a retired EE I always tell HVAC service techs
leave electrical part to me, don't bother with it. Once I teased a guy
who installed my high efficiency furnace and a/c for an upgrade, I asked
him to install wireless thermostat I got, he did not want to saying he
never installed one. I wish I were your neighbor, I could straighten
things out for you like nothing. Is your name 姜? My BIL
who is HVAC commercial estimator, mechanical engineer's name is 姜大薰.
Come to think of it, maybe they made the humidifier to come on when heat
comes on which is not ideal.

Hi Tony, sorry I didn't reply earlier, passed out with my crying son last night XD. I will definitely ask the service tech about hooking the unit up with blower power. Haha if you were my neighbor it would be a lot of fun, cuz I've always been interested in EE, but I'm a bio major. My last name is actually 康, not sure if the character displays fine on your screen though...

Hi,
Please do it. My brother's name is 黃康秀, Koreans up to my generation
can read and write Chinese, they quit teaching in high school for a
while then they found out that was a mistake. They started teaching it
again, LOL! My daughter did microbiology in university and went on to
med. school, now she is a teaching doctor at local med. school.
(university of Calgary) Your furnace looks like a 2 stage one. Mine is
also 2 stage, 110.000 BTU at 96% efficiency. Kids grow up too fast, I
still remember carrying daughter on my back every where. Most memorable
is carrying her on my back I went down to the bottom of Grand Canyon and
back up.....

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 10:16:38 AM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat..
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

Hi Tony,

My humidifier is probabaly configured differently than yours, because when I
turn the fan to on instead off auto, the water supply to the humidifier doesn't turn on. It only runs when the heat is on.

Hi,
Usually furnace control board has terminals marked "HUM" meaning
humidifier hook up there. Simply humidifier solenoid needs 24V AC
in series with humidistat. When humidity is called for contacts in the
humidistat makes supplying the 24V AC power to the solenoid. Aprilaire
package comes with a small 24V AC transformer for this purpose. In case
there is no "HUM" terminals. Then power source has to be tied into
blower power utilising that transformer. Turning fan on does not start
humidifier? you better call the service tech and ask him to make it work
like it should.

There are a lot of humidifiers wired so that they are only on when the
burner is on, including mine. Nothing wrong with it, no problems here.
I do agree that if he gets his changed, then he could run it as much as
he wants, but I haven't found the need. It will have less output without
the benefit of the hot air though.

Hi,
If you study furnace control board, humidifier and electronic air clear
are to run when blower comes on. Where I am in winter time R.H. can be
below zero(that dry), if it runs only when heat comes on, humidity in
the house will never reach to proper level. For various reasons blower
is on all the time at low speed. Some humidifier packages come with sail
switch to be mounted in the duct to sense the air flow and trigger the
humidification.

I just looked at a Rheem furnace install manual. They provide a line voltage
humidifier output. It clearly says that it's active when:

the burner is on and
the blower is running.

Different furnaces may operate differently. You can wire a humnidifier to
run either only when the burner is firing, or whenever the fan is on. All
the ones around here that I've seen, have been wired to run only when the
burner is on and they provide sufficient humidity. I wouldn't want the
furnace blower running in winter when it's not putting out warm air.
My main point is that HK should know that it's not unusual to see them
wired the way his is before he accuses the installer of doing it wrong.

On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 12:55:26 -0800 (PST), Hongyi Kang
wrote:

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 3:46:21 PM UTC-5, Stormin Mormon wrote:
On 11/23/2014 3:20 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:

Thanks Mark! I think my thing right now is, I don't think the humidifier is
putting more humidity into the rooms when the furnace is on. I actually
think it's drier when the hot air is coming out of the registers. This
really bothers the hell out of me because I don't know whether I should
trust my feelings, but the humidistat kinda agrees with me.


I'd rely more on the wife being comfortable. I don't
care as much what a gauge says, it's people comfort
that is important.

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

Agree, last night and today had been warm, and the humidity in the house
increased to ~47%. My wife said she felt better. I tried both the boiling and filling up bath tub methods last night , was a lot of fun lol.

On second thought, the bathtub is pretty risky. If you do it often
enough, eventually you'll forget and water will overflow who knows how
long, hours?

BTW, the overflow drain in tubs (and sinks too I think) doesn't drain
nearly fast enough to make up for a running faucet.

On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 12:15:26 -0800 (PST), Hongyi Kang
wrote:

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 8:16:23 AM UTC-5, Stormin Mormon wrote:
On 11/22/2014 11:36 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
I am indeed on groups.google.com

Worth noting, google groups is a portal
to Usenet, which is a much older message
system.

You are actually not talking (writing)
with google people for the most part.

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

Oh that's really good to know! Thanks!

If you want to fully appreciate Usenet, and its 10,000 newsgroups, you
can get a newsreader and news server.. You probably already have a news
reader, and others are free. And news servers run from $4/month, or
more, down to free.

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 6:07:51 PM UTC-5, trader_4 wrote:
On Sunday, November 23, 2014 10:16:38 AM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat.
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

Hi Tony,

My humidifier is probabaly configured differently than yours, because when I
turn the fan to on instead off auto, the water supply to the humidifier doesn't turn on. It only runs when the heat is on.

Hi,
Usually furnace control board has terminals marked "HUM" meaning
humidifier hook up there. Simply humidifier solenoid needs 24V AC
in series with humidistat. When humidity is called for contacts in the
humidistat makes supplying the 24V AC power to the solenoid. Aprilaire
package comes with a small 24V AC transformer for this purpose. In case
there is no "HUM" terminals. Then power source has to be tied into
blower power utilising that transformer. Turning fan on does not start
humidifier? you better call the service tech and ask him to make it work
like it should.

There are a lot of humidifiers wired so that they are only on when the
burner is on, including mine. Nothing wrong with it, no problems here.
I do agree that if he gets his changed, then he could run it as much as
he wants, but I haven't found the need. It will have less output without
the benefit of the hot air though.

Hi,
If you study furnace control board, humidifier and electronic air clear
are to run when blower comes on. Where I am in winter time R.H. can be
below zero(that dry), if it runs only when heat comes on, humidity in
the house will never reach to proper level. For various reasons blower
is on all the time at low speed. Some humidifier packages come with sail
switch to be mounted in the duct to sense the air flow and trigger the
humidification.

I just looked at a Rheem furnace install manual. They provide a line voltage
humidifier output. It clearly says that it's active when:

the burner is on and
the blower is running.

Different furnaces may operate differently. You can wire a humnidifier to
run either only when the burner is firing, or whenever the fan is on. All
the ones around here that I've seen, have been wired to run only when the
burner is on and they provide sufficient humidity. I wouldn't want the
furnace blower running in winter when it's not putting out warm air.
My main point is that HK should know that it's not unusual to see them
wired the way his is before he accuses the installer of doing it wrong.

I got it, I will ask nicely then and see if they could do it . Thanks!

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 9:34:10 PM UTC-5, micky wrote:
On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 12:55:26 -0800 (PST), Hongyi Kang
wrote:

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 3:46:21 PM UTC-5, Stormin Mormon wrote:
On 11/23/2014 3:20 PM, Hongyi Kang wrote:

Thanks Mark! I think my thing right now is, I don't think the humidifier is
putting more humidity into the rooms when the furnace is on. I actually
think it's drier when the hot air is coming out of the registers. This
really bothers the hell out of me because I don't know whether I should
trust my feelings, but the humidistat kinda agrees with me.


I'd rely more on the wife being comfortable. I don't
care as much what a gauge says, it's people comfort
that is important.

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

Agree, last night and today had been warm, and the humidity in the house
increased to ~47%. My wife said she felt better. I tried both the boiling and filling up bath tub methods last night , was a lot of fun lol.

On second thought, the bathtub is pretty risky. If you do it often
enough, eventually you'll forget and water will overflow who knows how
long, hours?

BTW, the overflow drain in tubs (and sinks too I think) doesn't drain
nearly fast enough to make up for a running faucet.

lol yeah, I figured I probably shouldn't do it every night

On Sunday, November 23, 2014 4:04:55 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hi,
I monitor every thing on my Davis weather station console. Right now
Outdoor temp. is 2C, indoor 20.5C steady, Dew point -2C, Outdoor
humidity 75%, Indoor 42%. Davis is pro grade instrument. In winter
time I try to keep condensation off windows keeping humidity level
proper. My humidifier is tied to furnace blower, so whenever blower
runs it does too.

Thanks Tony for the info! As I remember you only set your humidifier to
30% to 35%? If you are getting 42% humidity from that same exact humidifier, in your much bigger house. I really don't see why mine can only get to 37% when set to 45%. Maybe it's just like what trader said, my furnace is not blowing enough. But really I felt the driest when the furnace was blowing.

Hi,
Today weather is mild so humidity can be high like that but when cold
like -30C I have to keep humidity down around 30% or little bit less
to prevent condensation. Summer time, a/c is running so humidifier is
shut off. Usually humidistat is mounted side by side with thermostat..
If you can turn on the fan on your thermostat, it'll circulate air
in the house for more even temp. and humidifier can run too. Usually
furnace cycles like 3 times an hour or so, but if you let the fan run
all the time, humidifier will run all the time too.

Hi Tony,

My humidifier is probabaly configured differently than yours, because when I
turn the fan to on instead off auto, the water supply to the humidifier doesn't turn on. It only runs when the heat is on.

Hi,
Usually furnace control board has terminals marked "HUM" meaning
humidifier hook up there. Simply humidifier solenoid needs 24V AC
in series with humidistat. When humidity is called for contacts in the
humidistat makes supplying the 24V AC power to the solenoid. Aprilaire
package comes with a small 24V AC transformer for this purpose. In case
there is no "HUM" terminals. Then power source has to be tied into
blower power utilising that transformer. Turning fan on does not start
humidifier? you better call the service tech and ask him to make it work
like it should. Being a retired EE I always tell HVAC service techs
leave electrical part to me, don't bother with it. Once I teased a guy
who installed my high efficiency furnace and a/c for an upgrade, I asked
him to install wireless thermostat I got, he did not want to saying he
never installed one. I wish I were your neighbor, I could straighten
things out for you like nothing. Is your name 姜? My BIL
who is HVAC commercial estimator, mechanical engineer's name is 姜大薰.
Come to think of it, maybe they made the humidifier to come on when heat
comes on which is not ideal.

Hi Tony, sorry I didn't reply earlier, passed out with my crying son last night XD. I will definitely ask the service tech about hooking the unit up with blower power. Haha if you were my neighbor it would be a lot of fun, cuz I've always been interested in EE, but I'm a bio major. My last name is actually 康, not sure if the character displays fine on your screen though...

Hi,
Please do it. My brother's name is 黃康秀, Koreans up to my generation
can read and write Chinese, they quit teaching in high school for a
while then they found out that was a mistake. They started teaching it
again, LOL! My daughter did microbiology in university and went on to
med. school, now she is a teaching doctor at local med. school.
(university of Calgary) Your furnace looks like a 2 stage one. Mine is
also 2 stage, 110.000 BTU at 96% efficiency. Kids grow up too fast, I
still remember carrying daughter on my back every where. Most memorable
is carrying her on my back I went down to the bottom of Grand Canyon and
back up.....

I can totally see the happiness! I wish I could carry my son to the Grand
Canyon one day, that would be fun, I haven't even been there myself yet, sigh.

On 11/24/2014 12:04 AM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Sunday, November 23, 2014 6:07:51 PM UTC-5, trader_4 wrote:
On Sunday, Nove Hwang wrote:
trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, Novwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, Novembe Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, Novem5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, Nov trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, No5, Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, NTC-5, trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, M UTC-5, Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday,UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
trader_4 wrote:
On Friday,PM UTC-5, Stormin Mormon wrote:
On 11/21/ Tony Hwang wrote:
panes. P after cleaning with CLR.

I I
I I
I I [christmas presents]

On 11/24/2014 12:04 AM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Sunday, November 23, 2014 6:07:51 PM UTC-5, trader_4 wrote:
On Sunday, November 23, 2014 10:16:38 AM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 9:27:38 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 8:22:50 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
I just looked at a Rheem furnace install manual. They provide a line voltage
humidifier output. It clearly says that it's active when:

the burner is on and
the blower is running.

Different furnaces may operate differently. You can wire a humnidifier to
run either only when the burner is firing, or whenever the fan is on. All
the ones around here that I've seen, have been wired to run only when the
burner is on and they provide sufficient humidity. I wouldn't want the
furnace blower running in winter when it's not putting out warm air.
My main point is that HK should know that it's not unusual to see them
wired the way his is before he accuses the installer of doing it wrong.

I got it, I will ask nicely then and see if they could do it . Thanks!


In the old days of usenet, it was bad manners to
leave excess old text, and keep sending it back
through the system. I think it still is bad
manners.

We can look at the last few people who wrote on
this message, to see who are the offenders.

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

On 11/24/2014 12:05 AM, Hongyi Kang wrote:
On Sunday, November 23, 2014 9:34:10 PM UTC-5, micky wrote:
Agree, last night and today had been warm, and the humidity in the house
increased to ~47%. My wife said she felt better. I tried both the boiling and filling up bath tub methods last night , was a lot of fun lol.

On second thought, the bathtub is pretty risky. If you do it often
enough, eventually you'll forget and water will overflow who knows how
long, hours?

BTW, the overflow drain in tubs (and sinks too I think) doesn't drain
nearly fast enough to make up for a running faucet.

lol yeah, I figured I probably shouldn't do it every night


It is nice to have comfort. Sadly, sounds like
your humidifier is not doing the job. I wonder
if the furnace is over sized, and not allowing
for enough run time?

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

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.

yes on several things. Get some cheap humidor hygrometers and calibrate them using the salt method (google it) to verify RH in the house.

Then if everything checks out OK but the humidifier just can't keep up (a sign would be that it is constantly running every single time that the furnace is calling for heat) consider changing the water feed from cold to hot to increase the efficiency of the humidifier.

nate

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

On Monday, November 24, 2014 11:35:53 AM UTC-5, N8N wrote:
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.

yes on several things. Get some cheap humidor hygrometers and calibrate them using the salt method (google it) to verify RH in the house.

Then if everything checks out OK but the humidifier just can't keep up (a sign would be that it is constantly running every single time that the furnace is calling for heat) consider changing the water feed from cold to hot to increase the efficiency of the humidifier.

nate

I believe he said it's already using hot water.