Whole-Home Humidifier Installation and Repair in Ypsilanti and Southeast Michigan

A Michigan house in January is drier than most deserts. Outdoor air at 10 degrees holds almost no moisture, and once the furnace warms it to 70 the relative humidity inside drops into the teens. That is the static shock every time you touch the refrigerator, the hardwood floors gapping, the piano going out of tune, the dry throat at 3 a.m., and the house that feels cold at 70 degrees because dry air pulls heat off skin faster. It is also harder on the furnace, because people turn the thermostat up to compensate. A whole-home humidifier mounted on the furnace ductwork puts moisture into every room through the existing supply registers, and Temprasure installs, repairs and replaces them across Washtenaw and western Wayne County.

There are two kinds that make sense on a gas furnace. A bypass humidifier mounts on the supply or return plenum and uses the furnace blower's own pressure difference to push air through a wet evaporator pad, through a six-inch bypass duct, and back into the air stream. It has no motor, costs less, and on a furnace that runs long cycles it keeps up with most houses up to about 3,000 square feet. A fan-powered humidifier has its own small blower that pulls air across the pad, so it adds more moisture per hour, does not need the bypass duct, and keeps up in larger or leakier houses and on furnaces that run short cycles. Most of what we install is one of those two, typically Aprilaire or Honeywell units, chosen for the house rather than the price sheet. Steam humidifiers exist for very large or very tight houses and we discuss them when the load calls for it, which in this area is not often.

Where the humidifier goes and how it is controlled matters as much as which one it is. The unit needs a water supply, usually a saddle valve or a proper tee off a cold line in the basement, a drain to a floor drain, condensate pump or sump, and a 24-volt or 120-volt connection depending on the model. The humidistat should be automatic, with an outdoor temperature sensor, so the target drops as it gets colder outside and the windows do not sweat. We set the winter range at roughly 30 to 45 percent and let the control ride down toward the low end on the coldest nights, which is what keeps moisture off the window glass in a 1960s ranch with aluminum frames while still ending the static in the living room.

Humidifier repair is most of the humidifier work we do. Units that were installed a decade ago and never had the pad changed are plugged solid with the scale that our hard water leaves behind; solenoid valves stick open and flood the furnace or stick closed and do nothing; bypass dampers are left in the summer position all winter; humidistats drift or were wired so the unit runs whenever the blower does, including with the air conditioner. We clean, repad, replace solenoids, rewire the control to run only on a heating call, and replace units that have corroded past saving. A humidifier that is leaking onto a furnace's control board is a furnace repair waiting to happen, and we see that one every winter.

A new humidifier is a modest job, usually finished in a couple of hours, quoted flat-rate before we start. We also fold humidifier checks into our fall furnace tune-up, because a pad changed in October and a damper set for winter is the difference between a system that works and one that was installed and forgotten.