Suffering from Dry Air? Here’s How to Humidify Your Home in a Pinch

How to Add Moisture to Dry Air

Winter weather is brutal in many ways. Not only do temperatures dip to sub-freezing levels, showering the area in snow and ice, but the air itself even seems to revolt and become difficult to live in. If you’ve ever noticed that winter air always seems to feel stiff, stale, and dry, you’re not alone: winter air contains a lower amount of humidity than any other season.

The reason for this is somewhat simple: colder air can’t contain as much humidity as warmer air. When the air gets extremely cold like it does in winter, the humidity condenses back into water, which needs to go somewhere. That’s why we get things like heavy rainfall, snow, ice, and frost. However, the lack of outdoor humidity also impacts the air inside your home. When your heating system warms this air, the lack of humidity makes the air extremely dry by comparison because the relative humidity is low. This is why your hands become cracked and dry, your hair can feel stiff and brittle, and many other things can happen with your health—your body is reacting to the sudden lack of needed moisture in the air you breathe and live in.

However, humidifying your home doesn’t have to be difficult, nor does it have to take a while. Here are some instructions you can follow which improve your indoor humidity in a pinch.

Boil a Pot of Water on the Stove

Boiling water makes it far easier for the air to absorb it. Rather than waiting for the air to slowly evaporate the water, boiling the water forces it into vapor form, where it can quickly and easily be absorbed by the air around you. Before long, even a decent-sized pot of water could add a substantial amount of moisture to the humidity in your air.

Collect Bowls of Water & Distribute them Throughout Your Home

Don’t want to risk boiling a pot of water for the hours it takes to completely go through it all? Why not just let evaporation take care of it for you? This method isn’t nearly as fast as boiling the water, and it works better if the bowls are initially filled with hot water, but simply collecting a small bowl of water and leaving them strategically in rooms around your home can help with indoor humidity problems.

Line Dry Clothing Indoors

This is essentially the same principle as positioning bowls of water around your home, but letting the water actually do something useful first. The water that you use to wash your clothes doesn’t just disappear when you line-dry them—it’s absorbed into the atmosphere. Why not let that water find its way into the atmosphere while staying in your home? To expedite this process, consider using a fan set on low to keep a steady current of air flowing past your line-drying clothes. However, be aware that this will make the air in your home cooler by a little bit as well.

Allow Steam from Baths & Showers to Escape Your Bathroom

Steam is a form of water vapor and can add a good amount of humidity to your home. Consider opening the door to your bathroom when you get out of the shower and allowing the warm, humid air from inside to percolate to the rest of your home. While this may not make a ton of difference when it comes to your humidity, having everyone in your home do this after they shower will help everyone feel better and breathe easier.

Invest in Long-Term Humidification

While these tips will help you increase your indoor humidity levels for now, over time this humidity will eventually escape and be lost to the air outside. Nobody has time to sit around and constantly run through these steps over and over again, so that means those who really suffer from humidity problems should consider a whole-home humidification system for long-term relief. A whole-home humidification system hooks directly to your existing heating and cooling equipment, and is even directly connected to your water supply for a maintenance-free and dependable indoor humidity controlling solution.

By making the investment in one of these systems, you’re putting a significant investment in both your health and your home. A whole-home humidifier helps to counteract a lot of issues that many people struggle with throughout the winter months such as nose bleeds, a dry cough, dry eyes, or the aforementioned dry skin and stiff or unhealthy-feeling hair. Your entire home will benefit from this because these systems humidify the air which your blower motor then sends throughout your home. That means even heating and even humidity.

Learn more about the benefits of a whole-home humidifier or let us install one of these systems in your home! Give Arco Home Services a call at (216) 202-3778 for service in the Cleveland area.