Does anyone have any experience with "steam humidifiers" for Climatemaster tranquiity 27 (5 ton unit). I was looking at the Honeywell unit as my house humidity never goes higher than 30%
I have had the same problem this winter. I switched to Geo, Waterfurnace Envision, in Nov 2008 and my humidity has been lower than ever. I really don't know why, I did convert from NG forced air. I put in the Honeywell Truesteam, 9gal on Friday. I'm in the process of running the wire for the controls, to run the humidifier and ERV. I have only run the Humidifier for 24hrs just to test it out, but it did raise the RH from 30% up to 40% in that timeframe. It did however run nearly constantly to get to that level. I'm hoping that once it gets to 40% RH it will not run as much to maintain the 40%. The one I have draws 10amps when operating, which will have a big impact on my electric bill if its running all the time. I plan on having it up and running full time in a few days and will post the results.
I assume you have the unit tied to the cold water supply. Northern conventional humidity units, run better with a hot water supply with forced air furnaces. We found that temperatures below 20 degrees were too much for most any humidifier, but changing supply water allowed it to keep pace down to -10F. I'm not sure about your humidifier, but if it is possible to change incoming water supplies it might be helpful to raise the humidity level with less utility costs.
I used the hot water supply, hoping it would use much less electrcity to heat the water to a boil/steam
I have a WaterFurnace 5 ton unit with a humidifier. I had my installer provide a y valve connection to allow me to control if I use hot or cold water to feed the system. In addition my hot water line is fed from the pre-heat storage tank. This winter has been very cold and while I had to frequently adjust the control knob to control the humidify (which bugs me) I was able to keep the humidity level at 40+%. We did use a TON of water, but that is a different issue.
heat required The heat required to boil water into steam is approximately 20 times more than that needed to raise the temperature of liquid water by 50 degrees. Running a hot water line to the humidifier introduces another source of standby loss for hot water system and imposes an additional load upon it. I suggest using only cold water to feed a humidifier unless installation instructions from manufacturer recommend otherwise
