Why use a humidifier in your home in the winter?

Lots of people use humidifiers in their homes, especially in winter. But why? Marshall discusses some advantages of using humidifiers (and disadvantages of not using them) and different types of home humidifiers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Brain Stop front house, stuff works dot Com
where smart happens. Hi Marshall Brain with today's question, why
use a humidifier in your home in the winter or
what are the advantages of using a humidifier in the winter.

(00:24):
We have a home humidifier sitting in the living room
here at the Brain Household. It's what's called a whole
house humidifier or a console humidifier, and it's about the
size of a small suitcase. It's big enough to put
about five gallons of water into the air every day,
and it's loud enough because of the fan that it's

(00:45):
easy to notice. A friend stopped by this week and
asked why we use a humidifier like this. Here's why.
This morning is a typical morning in North Carolina. It's bright, clear,
twenty three degrees fahrenheit outside, and very dry. If we
were not using the humidifier, it would be bone dry

(01:05):
inside the house less than twenty humidity. That kind of
low humidity would have at least three noticeable effects on us. First,
there would be a lot of static electricity, a lot
of static electricity that uncomfortable static pop would be happening
all the time whenever you touch a door, knob or
anything metal. Second, the feeling known as cotton mouth would

(01:29):
be common at night and in the morning. The lack
of humidity dries out your mouth, your throat, and your
nasal passages. It also causes dry skin and chapped lips. Third,
wood in the house would shrink as it dried out.
Things like wood molding, wood floors, and wood furniture would
be affected. By using a humidifier, all three of these

(01:50):
problems disappear. You can either go with a whole house
console kind of unit like we're using, or smaller units
in separate rooms. It's possible to get smaller humidifiers that
are completely silent. Another possibility is adding a humidifier to
your furnace, although that tends to get more expensive. The

(02:11):
advantage is that you don't have to refill the water
every day and it completely covers the whole house. And
obvious question is why does the air get so dry
inside the house in the winter. The air outside right
now has sixty humidity according to our little weather station
here at the brain household, forty is the recommended level

(02:33):
indoors therefore sounds great. So what's the problem when cold
air comes inside and gets heated, the humidity in the
air changes dramatically. For example, say you have a cubic
meter of air outside, it might only be able to
hold a couple of grams of moisture at twenty three
degrees fahrenheit. When you heat it and bring it inside, however,

(02:55):
it's capacity for holding moisture rises a lot. It might
be able to hold four or five times more moisture
once it's heated up to room temperature, so that cold
air comes inside with very little moisture inside of it.
It gets heated, it's capacity for holding without moisture rises
dramatically and the relative humidity goes down into the basement

(03:18):
fifteen or that's why it's so dry in your house
in the winter. For more on this and thousands of
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