It is becoming increasingly common for homeowners to invest in humidifiers to be used during the dry winter months.
There are portable humidifiers, and those have always been popular, but there are also whole house humidifiers.
A whole house humidifier has the advantage of not being confined to one room. In the past, if you wanted a whole house humidifier, you had to purchase an HVAC unit that contained the humidifier with it. Nowadays, though, there are after-market whole house humidifiers available, and a lot of doctors are recommending them for their patients. If someone has breathing difficulties or a tendency to have dry sinuses or eyes, the humidifier can be particularly lovely. In addition, winter is flu season, and the medical community has now agreed that having a whole house humidifier probably reduces your risk of getting the flu or even a simple cold. The humidifiers work in conjunction with your heater and add moisture to the air before it circulates back out into the house through the air vents. There are bypass humidifiers that move warm air from the heating ducts and pass it over a water tray. There are fan powered humidifiers that work much like the bypass humidifiers, but they just have a fan to promote even more evaporation of the water in the tray. Then there are steam humidifiers. Those kinds of whole house humidifiers work by boiling water to create steam that can go through the air. That steam is pushed out through the ventilation system. Many professionals think the steam humidifiers are the best kind.