Maintaining a balanced level of humidity in your house is important for protecting both your home and your family. Seasonal changes severely affect the humidity levels in your home. Colder seasons like autumn and winter cause humidity levels to drastically decrease, which makes the air in your home incredibly dry.
Humidity levels in most homes should be around 40% to 50%, but dry weather has been known to plummet humidity levels in homes down to 25% or lower. Humidification systems in your HVAC unit allow you to maintain healthy humidity levels throughout your entire home no matter what season it is. Here are all of the benefits you’ll enjoy by installing a whole-house humidification system in your HVAC unit.
Lower the Risk of Viruses and Other Airborne Illnesses
Viruses and bacteria thrive in environments with low humidity. In a home where it’s warm and dry, your family has a higher chance of catching terrible illnesses. What makes a dry home environment even worse for bacteria and viruses is that the air is fairly stagnant. In autumn and winter, most people don’t open their windows because it’s too chilly outside. The heating system only circulates the air instead of introducing fresh air into the home. A humidification system keeps moisture levels in the home at a moderate level to keep viruses and bacteria down and keep everyone in the house healthier.
Improve Respiratory Health
Dry air is a nightmare for people with respiratory problems like asthma, allergies, COPD and lung disease. When the moisture levels in the air are low, it dries out the mouth, nasal passages and throat, which causes them to become irritated and makes it more difficult to breathe comfortably. Even temporary respiratory issues such as colds and respiratory infections become much more difficult to recover from when breathing in dry air.
A whole-house humidification system continuously introduces moisture to the air to soothe your breathing passages and reduce the severity of symptoms caused by most respiratory conditions.
Avoid Waking Up with Sore Throats and Nosebleeds
When you’re sleeping in a room with dry air, your throat and the mucus membranes in your nasal cavity dry out, causing you to wake up with sore throats and nosebleeds. No one wants to wake up in such a miserable state, and humidifiers are the perfect tool for preventing these conditions. Ensuring that there is a healthy level of moisture in the air as you sleep keeps both your throat and nasal passages moist enough to avoid developing sore throats and nosebleeds.
Reduce Snoring
Speaking of being miserable when you wake up in the morning, dry air also causes and exacerbates snoring. Increased moisture in the air helps lubricate the air passages in your nose, reduces inflammation in the throat and helps you breathe easier, which lessens the frequency and volume of snoring. In some cases, it eliminates snoring entirely, allowing you and your partner to get a good night’s sleep.
Prevent Dry and Cracked Skin
Your skin needs hydration to stay smooth, healthy and flexible. When skin dries out, it becomes rough and hard, and cracks and rashes start to form as a result. Dry air even makes areas such as the eyes and lips irritated after a short amount of time. Humidification systems keep your skin hydrated and healthy to eliminate painful cracking, uncomfortable roughness and itchy rashes.
Make Pets More Comfortable and Happy
Even pets suffer from living in a home with dry air. They experience many of the same symptoms that humans do such as irritated allergies, coughing, itchy and cracked skin, respiratory issues and more. Maintaining a good humidity level in your home with a humidification system helps your best animal friends stay happy, healthy and comfortable at home.
Save Money on Your Heating Bills
You have likely noticed that the hotter months of summer always feel more insufferable when the humidity is high outside. This is because high humidity makes it more difficult for sweat to evaporate, making it feel warmer when the humidity is high than when moisture levels are low. The same principle applies in wintertime. When there is an adequate amount of humidity in the air, it feels warmer. The warmer you feel, the less likely you are to turn up the heat and use it as frequently, which saves you money on your energy bills.
Protect Your Home
Dry air can do just as much damage to your home, furniture and other possessions as it can to you and your family. When there is little moisture in the air, wooden furniture splits, planks in wood floors warp, and leather items flake and crack. Musical instruments can split apart at glued joints, warp and start to develop severe sound quality issues. Additionally, books warp and flake, wallpaper starts to peel, and photos curl and become discolored. The high levels of static electricity that come with dry air may also permanently damage electronic devices. Keeping a good amount of moisture in the air helps protect everything in your home from becoming severely damaged.
Save Your Plants
Not even your houseplants are safe from the damaging effects of dry air. Without a healthy amount of humidity in the air, plants dry out more quickly and have a much higher chance of dying. Instead of scrambling to constantly water the plants to make up for the lack of moisture, you can rely on a whole-house humidification system to keep plants hydrated at a normal rate and ensure they stay healthy for much longer.
No Need to Refill
While it’s certainly been established that humidifiers are beneficial for any home experiencing low moisture levels, there are many more benefits to choosing whole-house HVAC humidification systems instead of portable humidifiers. For instance, you never have to refill water reservoirs in whole-house humidification systems as you do with portable units. Humidification systems installed in the HVAC unit take water directly from the water lines within the home.
Little to No Sound
Unlike portable humidifiers that can get incredibly loud and affect sleep quality, whole-house humidification systems create little to no noise. You can sleep soundly, concentrate on work or school better and simply be more comfortable enjoying your home at any time of day.
Easy to Use
Once you install a whole-house humidification system, you can almost put it entirely out of your mind most of the time and not worry about a thing. Since the unit is integrated into your HVAC system and has a lot of automation, whole-house humidification systems keep your house at a healthy humidity level without needing much assistance from you besides the normal maintenance your overall HVAC system receives every year.
If you’re suffering from dry air in your home, our skilled technicians at Beltway Air Conditioning & Heating will install, maintain and repair a humidification unit for your HVAC system quickly, professionally and with as little inconvenience as possible. We also provide installation, maintenance and repair services for heat pumps, furnaces, air conditioners, air purifiers, air ducts and much more. To learn more about these and other services we provide to the Hanover and Arbutus, Maryland areas, contact us at Beltway Air Conditioning & Heating today.
