Special thanks to Honeywell for the product provided. All opinions are my own.
We live in the St Louis area, which means during the summer months we live with an average relative humidity of 95%. Fast forward to the Winter, though, and the average relative humidity can drop significantly, even as low as 40%! Talk about dry skin and chapped lips! Did you know that the impact of low humidity affects more than just your skin? The low humidity affects things in your home, too! The relative humidity levels in your home affect everything from wood flooring and furniture to artwork and wall coverings. Even books! Humidifiers, like the new Honeywell Top Fill Console Humidifier is one option for protecting items around the home as it releases soothing, invisible moisture into the room.
We have hardwood flooring throughout our home, with the exception of the bathrooms and laundry room which are vinyl flooring. When the humidity outdoors starts dropping, we can see it in our floors.
In the comparison photo above, the one on the left is in our kitchen and the one on the right is in our hallway. In the kitchen, the floor boards are contracting because of the lower humidity which means the gaps between them are getting bigger. What a cleaning nightmare. The floor boards in the hallway, where the humidifier sits by our bedrooms, are not contracting.
Dr. Ted Myatt, ScD., a senior scientist with Environmental Health & Engineering and the University of Rhode Island states “The solution is to maintain relative humidity levels in the optimal range of 40 to 60 percent by running a humidifier in colder, drier winter months, to mitigate these effects.”
Research shows the following list of 10 household items are most impacted by low relative humidity:
- Wood Furniture
- Musical Instruments
- Books
- Woodwork and Wood Floors
- Wine
- Artwork
- Stamp Collections
- Photograph Collections
- Walls
- Electronic Equipment
Mister and I can’t deal with what the dryness does to our skin, so a humidifier is a must in our home. With as well as this one is doing with keeping our bedrooms humidified, I’m tempted to buy another one for the other end of the house (i.e. where the kitchen is). For more information on the Honeywell Humidity Monitor and all Honeywell Humidifiers, please visit www.HoneywellPluggedIn.com/humidifiers.
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