Can you buy a whole house humidifier?

Yes! With a whole house humidifier, you have to look at both the effectiveness and the maintenance. Our unit, one of the standard humidification systems, uses either a foam filtration or some other material, like a wet humidifier. It picks up the moisture and exposes it to the air. If you picture a sponge that continuously has water being passed through it, the water supply has contaminants that will translate to the sponge. The sponge is going to become quite a mess over a short period of time. We can deal with this through a rotating drum within the base. It will pick up the water. We also have a unit that attaches to our humidifier called an auto flush unit. With an auto flush unit, it flushes out the basin two times a day and removes all contaminants. It's virtually maintenance free. There are no filters needed.

So, what we find to be really important, when speaking with customers about humidity, is having an understanding of their water supply. If somebody is on a well, then we strongly suggest that they use an inline filter. It is the same thing you would put on the back of your fridge for your icemaker. There are variables that are associated with each and every installation.

The price of a whole house humidifier will vary. It can be anywhere from $250 and $500, depending on the quality of the unit and the type of filtration system that it has. When you look at the cost of the humidifier, you also have to look at what the replacement cost for the various filtering mediums will be. The foam filters are quite expensive and laborious to install. So it's not just the cost of the unit - which really is not all that much when you think about the benefits it provides - it's the cost of maintaining it.