When you heat a house during the winter, humidity in the air is sent outside along with the cold air. The optimal amount of humidity in your home is 40 to 55 percent, however, running a heater can drop the humidity in your home down to 5 percent. This lack of humidity can have an effect on your health, furniture and even your utility bills. The lack of humidity can cause or aggravate respiratory ailments and make winter time colds even worse. The dry air also sucks the moisture out of furniture as well, which can even cause it to eventually fall apart. Evaporating moisture on the skin will also cause coolness so you will continually need to adjust the thermostat to remain warm.

When you make the decision to purchase a humidifier for comfort and health, you must consider the type of heating unit you have, the cubic footage of your home and the hardness of your water. Once you have the cubic yardage of your home you can compare the different types of humidifiers, choosing one which will provide relief to the entire floorplan.

Row-thru humidifiers work through evaporation and only put the amount of moisture into the air that it can handle which would vary depending on room temperature. By-pass humidifiers are the most common furnace humidifiers. The third type is a steam humidifier which works on the same principle as the vaporizers your mother used when you were a child with a cold. These are the most common type of humidifiers sold in retail stores.

Room size humidifiers can sit on a table top and work to return moisture to one room. For the entire house, you would need a free standing unit or a central humidifier that can be tied into the home's forced air heating system. It is a good idea to oversize the unit you choose which means the moisture level is higher than required for your cubic yardage. This will help make sure that your home stays at a proper level of humidity year round.