How does a humidification system work?

There are two types of humidification systems. One type would be a whole house system that would generally be associated with your furnace. The other would be a small system that you would put in a room and it would work only for that room. There would be a little bit of humidity transferred outside the room. Those are the two classifications.

My particular humidifier, the Desert Spring Brand, is a whole house humidifier. It mounts on the cold air return of the furnace, and it is vented to the warm air side. So, it physically pulls the warm air over a rotating drum where the warm air picks up the moisture. Then, it drives that moisture into the furnace where it is vaporized, and it delivers it through the vent. The smaller one is just a small base. You would put it on a countertop or on a desk. You would fill it with water, and you would turn it on. It can be both either a cool mist unit or warm mist unit depending on how it is built.

One of the primary considerations with humidity is maintenance and cleanup. Obviously, as water humidifiers go or anything that vaporizes water, the water is going to remain in the basin. Depending on the water supply, this is really an important consideration that's going to dictate how much maintenance you have to do. You can use any type of water that you like. If you run a well and you are using water coming out of the tap, one of the things that you need to consider is using a filtration device. The reason for this is that some contaminants will go through the humidifier. They are going to end up being vaporized and they end up in your air.