A wood-burning fireplace may cause to dry air within the house. If you are using a wood-burning fireplace in your home, a good air purifier can greatly reduce the danger. The air quality of your home will be better if you use both an air purifier and a humidifier.
Make sure that your home, and those living there, are completely protected from dry air as you tackle moisture levels. If the humidity levels in your home are measured at less than 30%, you might need to invest in a humidifier to address your dry air symptoms. A humidifier that is operating correctly in your home can help to add moisture to the dry air.
It is certainly possible that your house is ideal, and that you are simply not producing enough indoor humidity, but most cases of dry air are caused by having too much outside air coming in. When it is dry inside our homes, it is far more common for people living there to wake up feeling symptoms of cold dry air. Cold temperatures remove moisture from the air overall, everywhere — indoors and outdoors.
If your home’s air is too dry during winter, that usually means that you are getting too much dry, cold outside air indoors. Your heating choices are not going to make your air dry in the house nearly as much as warm, wet air is getting blown outside the home, while dry, cold air is coming inside.
While your heating choice can somewhat dry out your air and reduce humidity, the true culprit comes from outside the house. The bottom line is if you have a leaky house allowing cold air in, then the inside air is going to dry out no matter what kind of heating you use.
Dry air outside of your home comes in through the doors and windows you open, as well as from the leaks in your home that carry the cold air into the home. The air in your house, with its humidity, is pulled through a return duct, crosses over a heaters heat exchanger, then is pulled back inside your house. You turn the heating inside the house up, which increases heat, but does not increase the moisture content in the air.
The theory is that heating a heater draws water out of the water bowl and into the air, moistening the dry indoor air. Unlike a traditional heater, which draws water out of the air in a warming process, an infrared heater does not generate dry heat. Radiant heat also has a lower impact on the humidity of a room, as it flows through air instead of warming it.
Because the average furnace constantly uses air to burn, it also draws in cooler, dryer air from outside, which, in turn, reduces your home’s humidity. A sealed combustion stove draws in combustion air from outside, then returns exhaust gases outside, so it is just adding heat to your indoor air, and is not exchanging any with outside air.
If a sealed combustion furnace is running, the air is dryer, but that is only because of the outside air coming in, not from the heating process. When An atmospheric combustion furnace is running in your home, the drying outside air is drawn in, reducing the moisture.
In addition to combustion, cool air naturally moves inside your home in the cold. All of this hot air lost in your fireplace has to be replaced with cool air brought from the outside, then warmed up in the furnace. The air is drier in winter; once again, it seems the wood burner produces dry heat. Woodstoves, just like all forms of heating, seriously dry the air in your home.
If you have a wood stove, place a cast iron pan filled with water over the stovetop to help add moisture to the air while the water warms. One way to get moisture back into your air while burning your wood stove is to place a water jug on top of the stove so it can spout all day.
A wood-burning stove can create a dry house, which, in turn, feels warmer than the damp heat. Opening your gas fireplace makes your Windsor home warm, but it also dries the indoor air.
I am occasionally asked whether gas furnaces dry the air in the house and necessitate a humidifier. Before I begin, however, I acknowledge that air can dry in a house during winter. It is difficult to tell if the cold air outside (the reason you are using the fireplace in the first place) is condensing water from the air, or if the fireplace is burning is making your home air that dry; but it is, and it is hurting our eyes, noses, and mouths. If you are waking up in the morning with a dry throat and nose, or if dry air is making breathing difficult on occasion, chances are that your home is too dry.
Wood-burning stoves typically dry the air in your home, causing dry sinuses, bloody noses, cracked lips, and more, according to the Mayo Clinics’ website. A fire that is too hot or too big for the given space may draw too much water vapor out of the air. Burning carbon (wood) to carbon dioxide (fire) does indeed create molecules of water when it burns; therefore, indoor air must, if anything, be wetter (than cool, outdoor air).
Since there is no fireplace or exhaust, water vapor created from burning natural gas stays inside the room. This increases humidity in an area, making a room with a fireplace feel warmer. When warm air rises, most heat is lost through the ceiling and the roof. The more efficient the furnace is at drawing outside air, for instance, the better the system works, and it feels (wetter) during colder winter months.