OT: whole house humidifier

NDG

bought house with old aprilaire unit (sticker below) whole house humidifier installed. Yesterday I discovered steady stream of water dripping down the  side of my furnace wall and mist shooting from a pin hole in the hose. Now that I am looking, this thing is crazy old and never maintenance ever by me in the last 5 years.  It is so skuzzy, not confident it ever really worked well enough for us to notice, but 2 young kids in the house and dry winter throats suck.

My choices:
1) buy replacement parts/hose/filter and try to get this old horse working again
2) buy new unit & have pro instal
3) forget I ever had it and try monitor house humidify levels (how would I do that btw) to see if really needed

 Anyway, hard to research whole house humidifiers with so much love or hate (saying not needed unless I’m dessert) reviews . . Think we have some HVAC guys here that have thoughts?  Any experiences you have with units?

NDG

Here’s sticker 

saluki2007

I can't comment as far as what to do with the unit, but my thermostat give me the humidity levels in the house.

ryantt

Just buy the replacement parts and get it up and running.  Replace the water panel once a year and the drain tube and you’ll be good to go. 

steel_egg

Yep. New water panel and hose. Clean the housing fthat holds the media as well. Should be good to go. 

NDG

Amazing feedback, usually this forum costs me money, but in this case you are saving me money!! 

Furnace Repair company suggest replace (shocker) for $650 - $750 installed bc they say model too old, but I see replacment parts available online now so I will buy - thanks everyone . . 

stlcharcoal

NDG said:

Amazing feedback, usually this forum costs me money, but in this case you are saving me money!! 

Furnace Repair company suggest replace (shocker) for $650 - $750 installed bc they say model too old, but I see replacment parts available online now so I will buy - thanks everyone . . 

You can buy a new one and put it in for a 1/4 of that if you need to.  It's just a cheap bypass humidifier.  I addition to replacing the pad, make sure you're closing the damper in the summer.  Otherwise you're allowing air to blow through there and reducing efficiency of your HVAC.  It you have hard water, you pay need to replace or clean that pad more often.  Letting it soak it in a pan for of vinegar may buy you a few extra months.

I have a Honeywell 9 GPH steam unit.  The nice thing is that it's coupled into the IAQ thermostat/humidistat and it has the ability to turn the fan on in the furnace to humidify the house independently of what it's doing with the temp.  I also have a dehumidifier/ventilator that can do the same.  That's the bad part of the bypass ones, you may never get up to the humidity level you want unless you're going to manually cycle the fan.  Steam ones have issues too (cleaning, sensor issues, etc) but for my setup, that's what I needed.