Living in Garden City, ID means you can expect to experience dry, cold winters and equally dry summers that average around 92 degrees in July. Our area’s unique climate can create uncomfortable indoor air conditions that contribute to a range of problems, from dry skin and poor respiratory health to warped furniture and damaged musical instruments.
A whole-house humidifier can help you remedy these issues while enhancing indoor air comfort and maintaining optimal humidity levels. There are numerous compelling reasons to consider a home humidifier, and our team Perfect, Plumbing Heating & Air has compiled nine of them in the list below.
1. Combats Dry Winter Air
As you know, winter can bring extreme dryness and make your living environment less comfortable. Installing a whole-home humidifier can help you sustain ideal humidity levels and make your indoor air more pleasant. We suggest setting your humidifier to around 40% to ensure the best results.
This setting gives you well-balanced humidity that won’t produce overly dry or moist air. Setting your humidifier too high can encourage mold and mildew growth that can damage your home and belongings. Keeping humidity within the 35-to-45% range provides a comfortable indoor environment that helps alleviate winter cold and flu symptoms.
2. Prevents Dry Skin and Eyes
Climates like ours that err on the drier side are known for causing skin and eye irritation. If you struggle with persistent itching or flaky skin and dry eyes, a home humidifier can certainly help. The solution introduces moisture to the air, preventing your skin and eyes from becoming overly dry and irritated.
For those with consistently dehydrated skin, running a humidifier will moisturize it. It can help improve the appearance of your skin and hair. A whole-house humidifier might also reduce eczema flare-ups while strengthening your skin’s defenses against harmful microorganisms.
3. Preserves Your Home’s Wooden Elements
Humidifiers can extend the lifespan of your wood floors, trim, and furniture. Overly dry air can damage these items over time. The lack of moisture may cause your wood to crack and warp. Maintaining optimal humidity levels helps you preserve these features. A home humidifier will introduce additional moisture to the air and prevent your permanent wood features from drying out. Our technicians can help you determine optimal settings, as an overly damp environment can also damage these features.
4. Relieves Respiratory Issues
Introducing a humidifier protects your respiratory health and makes breathing easier, especially for those who struggle with preexisting conditions. Regardless of the season, dryness can readily aggravate respiratory issues. Aside from exacerbating your existing health concerns, poor breathing health can be a significant source of discomfort.
By introducing additional air moisture, humidifiers help alleviate respiratory symptoms such as coughing, wheezing, or other medical issues that cause difficulty breathing. Likewise, whole-home humidifiers can help reduce sinus congestion. They accomplish this by hydrating your nasal passages and sinus cavities, preventing them from becoming overly dry and irritated.
5. Safeguards Your Musical Instruments
Like your wood floors and trim, musical instruments are acutely sensitive to shifting humidity levels. Drier conditions can impact the sound performance of your instruments while causing them to crack and warp.
Home humidifiers let you optimize the moisture content of your indoor air environment to preserve the functional utility of your musical instruments. Optimizing your home’s indoor humidity can also prevent damaged strings. At the same time, this preserves the instrument’s body. Adding a humidifier to your home will help keep your musical items in top condition while extending their useful shelf life.
6. Improves Indoor Plant Health
Many common indoor house plants thrive in moist, humid environments. As such, the frequently dry air in our region is not always conducive to healthy indoor plant life. While not all house plants require humidification, roughly half are happier in more humid environments. Modern whole-home humidifiers ensure hydrated, well-balanced air that helps your less hardy plants flourish year-round.
The higher humidity levels similarly protect house plants against spider mites that thrive in dry, hot conditions. If your plants display wilting, browning, or cupping leaves, this could indicate that your indoor humidity is too low. You can check these levels with a hygrometer. If the reading doesn’t align with the plant’s recommended humidity levels, introducing a home humidifier can help you adjust your air environment accordingly.
7. Maintains Paint and Wallpaper
Dry indoor air conditions can be taxing on your paint and wallpaper. Well-balanced humidity helps avoid paint-cracking and wallpaper-peeling that causes unsightly cosmetic damage. Moreover, such defects can be expensive to repair. The best approach for preventing your walls from drying out is to humidify your interior air.
Home humidifiers can keep your paint smooth or your wallpaper firmly in place. This bonus keeps your interior looking great while extending the life of these finishes. They also prevent wallpaper issues from developing problems linked to winter heating. Introducing a whole-house humidifier will sustain slightly higher moisture levels that protect your paint and stop your wallpaper from becoming unglued and peeling away.
8. Eases Allergy Symptoms
If you suffer from seasonal allergies, a home humidifier can help relieve the symptoms that make your daily life uncomfortable. They offer an effective means of reducing indoor dust circulation and other allergens that thrive in dry air. Adding more humidity causes air particles to settle quicker while reducing the presence of allergens in your home.
Symptoms like sneezing, throat irritation, and itchy eyes might all be alleviated after implementing an air humidifier. Just remember that improperly maintained systems could potentially worsen your symptoms. For questions on home humidifier upkeep, we encourage you to reach out to one of our indoor air quality experts at Perfect, Plumbing Heating & Air.
9. Boosts Energy Efficiency
Our winter heating costs can be high in Garden City, ID, and our characteristically dry conditions during this time of year don’t help. Home humidifiers can enhance energy efficiency by optimizing your indoor air’s moisture content. When you add additional humidity, the air retains more warmth than it does when dry.
Your air’s capacity to hold more warmth means your home will feel comfortable at lower temperatures. This effect reduces your reliance on your home’s winter heating solutions and can lower energy bills considerably. Likewise, the additional control over your indoor humidity reduces the strain on your HVAC system. This is because the unit won’t have to work as hard to sustain your preferred indoor temperatures. Investing in a home humidifier is always a reliable approach to lowering your winter heating bills.
Choosing the Right Home Humidifier
Home humidifiers offer several benefits beyond this list above. They improve indoor air comfort, enable a healthier indoor air environment, and prolong the lifespan of your interior finishing and wood items. At Perfect, Plumbing Heating & Air, we offer premium indoor air quality services, including custom home humidifier solutions. We also supply comprehensive HVAC solutions to Garden City, ID homeowners.
For more on selecting the right home humidifier to optimize indoor air quality, contact us at Perfect, Plumbing Heating & Air now!