How do i know if my humidifier filter needs changing

Humidifiers add needed moisture to the air and boast many benefits for the home. They can help your home's living areas feel warmer, reduce heating bills, relieve allergies, and they even make houseplants stronger. Extending a humidifier's filter life or attaining the estimated lifecycle of a humidifier often depends on environmental and product factors such as wick-type and whether or not you have any animal dander in your home.

Estimated Humidifier Filter Life

Manufacturers generally recommend wick-type portable humidifier filters be changed after one to three months, or even earlier. There are very good reasons to clean or change humidifier filters: for example, as a humidifier operates, it pulls in air and returns it to that room as either a cool or warm mist, depending on the type of humidifier you are using. During this process, dust and other particles become permanently trapped in the filter and are not recycled to the room.

Over time, however, these contaminants clog the filter and hamper proper operation. This will cause the unit to work much harder and a whole lot less efficiently, and this taxed unit is likely to burn out more quickly and use more energy.

Filter Life Hindrances

The presence of smoke, animal dander, or dust can dramatically shorten your humidifier's filter life and quickly create a clog. Good dust maintenance and regular vacuuming of the room, especially the area closest to the humidifier, may extend filter life.

Improvements will also be made when cleaning the intake area of the humidifier. A home's water quality can also hamper humidifier operation as hard water mineral deposits can quickly clog a filter. Unless one installs a water filtration and softening system, this problem is not easily rectified. Plus, using bottled water to run a humidifier is neither economical nor practical. The only remedy for this problem is cleaning or changing the humidifier filter much more often.

Routine Maintenance for Humidifier Filters

With good dust control, the average humidifier filter will only require a changing about every three months. Some wick filters can be cleaned simply by submerging them in water. Check the product manual to be sure, but this process may take a while to ensure all dirt is removed. Overall, humidifier filters are an economical purchase and a time-saver. Purchasing several filters along with a humidifier is also recommended, so you always have extras on hand.

Cleaning a humidifier or changing a wick-type humidifier filter is easy and only takes a few steps. Plus, changing and cleaning a humidifier filter regularly will keep the unit operating at maximum efficiency. When storing away the humidifier, it is important to complete a humidifier cleaning and filter change so the unit will be ready to go for the next season.

Need to change your home’s furnace humidifier filter? How do you do that? How often? In this episode, we discuss how to use and maintain your humidifier and what’s the optimum humidity for your home. We also break down how to clean and change your home’s humidifier filter. This is part one of our two-part series on Humidity Management in your home.

Watch the entire episode:

Transcription:

Hi everyone, I’m Karl, welcome to another Homebuyer’s School video, specifically, our Home Owner How-Tos, and remember, if this is your first time on this channel and you want to get the latest strategies from home buying experts, hit the subscription button below, hit the little notification bell so you don’t miss anything. So today, we’re in the basement of [00:00:30] a home in the first of our two part series on humidity management.

I’m joined by Ilana Staniscia with Brookfield Residential, and we’re going to show you today

How to use and maintain your humidifier

Humidity Management

So before we begin, Ilana, can you tell us a little bit more about humidity.

Ilana Staniscia:

Absolutely. Humidity is a double edged sword.

It can be very good for your home and it can also be very, very bad.

Now most of the materials in your home come from natural sources, which makes them very susceptible to humidity and moisture [00:01:00].

With that being said,

If you have too much humidity in your home, you run the risk of warping and bending these materials, and if you don’t have enough they can split and they can crack.

Now, since we’re not going to stop using our homes anytime soon, we have to find a way to manage humidity, but it can be tricky because anything as simple as cleaning, bathing, even breathing creates excess humidity, so this is where your humidifier comes into play.

Karl Yeh: Perfect. Let’s get started.

Ilana Staniscia:

You’ll be able to find your humidifier as it’s mounted on your furnace. Above it you’ll see the humidistat.

Controlling you home’s humidity level

This [00:01:30] is how you can control the level of humidity in your home based off of the temperature that’s outside.

A good rule of thumb is the colder it is outside, the less humidity you want inside your home. Down below is the humidifier itself.

What this does is it filters water through the air that circulates through your home. Inside it is a filter that you’re going to want to change every three months or so.

You can also clean them and we’ll show you how to do that today.

Cleaning and changing furnace humidifier filter

To get started, what you’ll want to do is pop off the cover by locating the top and bottom tabs on the humidifier. Push down [00:02:00] firmly and pull out.

Inside you’ll see you have a dial. This dial shuts off the airflow to the furnace. During the winter months we recommend you keep it on the winter setting.

However, if you have air conditioning in the summer, you can put it on the summer setting. If not, leave it on winter all year. Put that upright in order to remove the filter. Pull from the top and then lift up. [00:02:30] Here’s a good example of a filter that needs to be cleaned.

To remove this, slide off the plastic insert and the filter should come out with ease. To clean this, you can soak it in CLR until all the calcium has come off.

After that you’re going to want to give it a good rinse, pop it back into the slide and then you’re ready to reinstall.

Now that we’ve got the clean filter [00:03:00] you can go ahead and reinstall it back into your humidifier. There’s a couple things you’ll want to note before reinstalling it.

The first is you’ll want to line up the drain of the filter with the drain of the humidifier.

The second is a lot of humidifiers do have a water hose.

Most of them will be located on top. You’ll want to remove that before you even take this out and then place it back in once you’re done installing your filter.

To put it back in, I like to start at the bottom, line up the drains, and push the top until you hear the click. [00:03:30] The click is very important.

If you don’t hear that, your humidifier will leak. Once that’s done, turn your air valve back to the winter setting, put your cover back on.

And that’s it. You’re done.

Karl Yeh: So Ilana,

How much humidity should I set my home to?

Ilana Staniscia:

You know, it’s a personal preference, with a maximum to about 30%, we would recommend. [00:04:00]

However, if you’re starting to see condensation building on your windows, that’s a dead give away that your humidity is too high and you need to lower it on your humidistat.

Karl Yeh: Perfect. Do you have anything else to add?

Ilana Staniscia:

Nope, that’s it.

Karl Yeh:

Great, and don’t forget to watch part two of our humidity management series on HRVs, in the video above and in the description below.

Thank you very much for joining us, and remember, if you enjoyed this video and found it helpful, make sure to hit the like button and remember to subscribe.

Karl Yeh: Thank you, and we’ll catch you next time.

Your turn:

Let us know if you have additional homeowner or home buying questions that we can answer by submitting them in the comments section below.

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About Ilana Staniscia:Ilana is a Sales Associate entering her third year at Brookfield. She is originally from Ontario. When she’s not in the show home you can likely find her doing something creative and making art!

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