Hello my fellow users,
I am in complete distress here.
For the last few weeks, my house (about 2000sqft) has had extremely low humidity.
To the point that my wooden floors are shrinking (I think, or so it looks).
The humidity level on the ecobee is showing 21% - 23%.
The furnace humidifier got cleaned out and got a new filter.
It is still not working.
It's been set to (High) and 60%.
Still nothing.
Water flow is consistent.
Home temperature is in between 22-23 celsius.
It hasn't been that cold outside in the last few months, as winter in Toronto (Mississauga to be exact) was not that bad at all.
I am in total panic right now, as I am nervous about these cracks in wooden flooring.
What the heck is going on here? How is my humidity not going past 30% at least.
What would my next step be?
I never decided to put a pail of water into ever room to create more moisture.
Do you know what model of humidifier you have?
I will now post photos
Here they are
It says on the side that it's "general 1042-L"
The specs for that model say it will do 1500 sq ft for a house with average leakage. It may be undersized. Or the furnace may not run a long enough heat cycles.
You could switch the humidifier water line to the hot water pipe if it's on the cold now and that may increase the humidity. This isn't an option if you have a tankless hot water heater.
Do you have one spare wire at the thermostat you could use to control the humidifier? You could fool the Ecobee and change the humidifier settings from evaporative to steam and supply the humidifier with hot water. Then run the furnace fan 24/7 and the Ecobee will turn on the humidifier even when the furnace isn't heating.
You could modify some wiring at the furnace and accomplish the same thing using the existing humidistat as well.
Aneta, there's an old saying: "Never fix anything unless you know why it broke in the first place :)."
Those are excellent suggestions regarding your humidifier. When I hear about very low indoor humidity levels this time of year, I think "air leakage." How old is your home? Does it have a properly installed air/vapor barrier? Are the windows up to date? Are there obvious signs of air leakage like poor door seals? Are the joist pockets in the basement insulated and sealed? Is the attic access hole properly sealed? Try looking for obvious signs of air leakage that you can easily fix from the inside. Do you have an HRV that is still running?
Obviously, there's few things you can take on this time of year, especially at the present sub-zero temperatures! One thing you can do is to leave the bathroom door(s) open during showers and not run the exhaust fan. If you're just boiling water for food, don't use your kitchen fan. Do you use a clothes dryer? Try temporarily disconnecting it to the outdoors and monitor your humidity levels. You'd be surprised at how fast they can rise with just a few changes. After this terrible, cold weather gives way to spring, perhaps you can explore some more permanent solutions mentioned earlier.
- Lee
Are you using a fireplace at all by chance?
Good point, Walker! That's another huge source of air loss.
@LeeBatchelor and @Walker and @Admin
Thank you for replying.
I have two fireplaces, gas (used a few times so far this winter) and a wood fireplace (which I haven't used before, its in the basement shut).
We have been doing renovations for the past few months and our baseboards have been removed. However, I did close off all cracks where air would potentially leak.
Our windows are very new, just installed four years ago. The house was built in 1979.
I am quite nervous here because of my floors. The dry air is not bothering me. I am more concerned about these huge gaps in flooring which I never had in the last few years.
I will be resealing the front entrance door tomorrow noon.
I have already placed buckets in each room with water, and as for bathroom doors, they had been removed due to renovations, so I haven't had any doors in place for a few weeks now.
Wish me luck with all these recommendations that all three of you made.
I will be looking into implementing everything this week and checking if anything else needs to be fixed, especially before I switch to the hot pipe line (as per admins recommendation).
I'm puzzled because reviewing the last 60 days of humidity inside the house, it was only just after Christmas that it hit low 20%'s. And the outdoor temperature here in toronto changed drastically after new years.
Thank you all again so much! I will be keeping you updated!
Also
Some pics of my floors
This is only happening on the main floor
Every other floor seems to be fine
I am only praying here that this will go back to normal.
Someone told me that during winter floors could shrink and with the spring/summer humidity, floors will go back to its normal. I hope this is true 😰
Another factor that hasn't been mentioned is the quality of your wood flooring. I'm sure it's a good product, however, there is a huge variation in how much wood moves under various humidity conditions. The type of finish is a variable, as is, the level of humidity in the wood that was present just before the factory applied that finish. Your house is definitely low in humidity, but those floors will return to normal. Our two houses are virtually the same age, therefore our construction products and techniques are similar. I built my house in 1982 and used the R2000 specs of the day. My house is very tight and yet, is down to 38 percent humidity. That's very unusual for us. We normally hover around 45 to 50 percent. Like you said, our post Christmas weather has been unusual. I live just east of T.O. by 100 km, so we're in the same weather zone.
Good luck with your reno work, Aneta. You're doing all the right things. Glad to hear you're windows are new. Come spring and summer, you can perform even more work to tighten up your house. If you achieve your goals, you may actually need an HRV some day ;)!