November 10, 2008
Bill has a whole house humidifier: I have an AprilAire brand . Could I have some tips about going from summer to winter and back again?
Remove the cover and check the honeycombed screen. Chances are it will be coated with dried minerals form the evaporating water. Soak it in white vinegar, scrub it a little and then rinse. That's OK for this year, but every other year you should install a new one. Screens for the brand you have are relatively easy to find at the hardware store.
Is your humidifier fed form the hot or cold side of the plumbing system? Hot is preferred because the water evaporates more readily. It's easy to switch if you need to. Buy a new saddle valve and screw it on to the correct pipes; piece of cake.
Set the humidistat to about 40% when the temperature outside is moderate. It will have to be lowered as the winter sets in, because cold air holds less moisture than warm. Otherwise you'll get sweating around the windows and sills. For a reference, there should be a chart next to the little dial indicating humidity settings vs. outside temperature.
If you have central air conditioning, there may be a "summer/winter" damper lever inside that fat tube leaving the humidifier enclosure. Open it now to let air circulate through there and pick up water vapor. In the spring, simply turn the humidistat dial to OFF and close that same damper so the air conditioning works properly (if you forget to shut it, the coils may freeze up).
Finally, remember that the humidifier only runs when the furnace fan is spinning, so to maximize the moisture level, run the fan 24/7 if you need to.
Greg wants to save money this winter: Would it pay to put a blower under the gas fireplace? It's in the family room where we spend a lot of time.
A blower makes those direct vent gas fireplaces somewhat more efficient, since the heat stays inside instead of leaking out the chimney. Once it's in place, your scheme will pay off big time in significantly lower energy bills. Here's why: Your furnace is probably rated around 100,000 BTU's, while a direct vent gas fireplace is around 30,000 or so. That means that all evening long, while you're in that one room, you can save about 2/3 on your energy usage by turning down the main thermostat and flipping on the gas fire. In other words, as long as you're in there for several hours each evening, why heat , say, 2500 square feet if you only need to keep 800 or so toasty. This analysis also applies to those free standing electric heaters-the kind that are heavily advertised and look like an end table. Admittedly, electric heat is pretty expensive, but our ratio of 800/2500 still applies.
David has smoke alarm troubles: Suddenly it's going off from the steam from the bathroom. I've exchanged the batteries to no avail. What can I do?
Have you tried swapping it with a different smoke detector from some other part of the house? That may help. Also, it's a good idea to use some canned air-like you blow out a computer keyboard with-to gently propel the dust and cobwebs out of the detector itself.
Otherwise, it sounds like you need to vent the bathroom a little more. Be sure to use your bath fan while showering. That will not only keep alarming water vapor away from the smoke alarm, but it will discourage mold and mildew in the shower/tub stall itself.
Another approach: Chances are your smoke detector is hooked into the home's electric system. If so, it would be relatively easy for an electrician to pull a wire from its box to a spot farther down the hallway and away from the bathroom.
Rolland needs more consistent heat: I have a pellet stove, electric base boards, wood burning fireplace and a propane stove all in a 4700 SF home. I can't ever seem to get the house above 64 degrees in the winter. I have a crawl space. Would it be worth putting in a whole new system?
At this point I think it would. You have a number of isolated point sources of heat whose thermostat controllers are probably competing with each other. It's very difficult to integrate these separate systems into a dependable source of evenly distributed heat. Besides, the electric baseboard gobbles up energy dollars at a much greater rate than either pellets or propane.
I would choose a 90% efficient propane furnace connected to a duct system hung in the crawl space. It will pay for itself in maybe 10 years or less, but more significantly, you'll be more comfy during all those long cold winters, and it's hard to put a price tag on that!
