Overview: A review of their furnace humidifier product.

I purchased and installed their furnace humidifier product in the fall of 2001. My first complaint is that all the necessary hardware was not included. There were no bolts and machine screws for holding the pipe tap brackets together, luckily I had some on hand that worked. The instructions were okay, except for wiring it in with the blower. It does not describe how to do this and my furnace manual does not cover this. I understand that furnaces vary widely, but even an example would have been enough for me as I do my own house wiring. I ended up putting the transformer off of the switch next to the furnace. So unfortunately it runs whenever the humidistat says it's too dry, and not just when the blower is on. I haven't seen any negative effects from this though, and it is the alternative method according to their instructions.

They advertise it as being much cleaner and with less maintenance, although I haven't found this to be entirely true. I attached it to a non-softened water pipe as recommended by their staff via e-mail. I would definitely advise otherwise, as sediment buildup will definitely occur in the pan and on the disk regardless if you buy their autoflush system or not. I can't see why softened water wouldn't humidify a home as well as tap water. You need to clean and empty the system immediately after done using it for the winter. I did not do this the first year, and ended up having to do a lot of extra scrubbing and cleaning as well as replacing the motor ($20 for a $2 motor) which appeared to be seized.

Instead of an autoflush system I instead bought a open/close garden hose valve at Lowe's and used a partial section of hose my mom had laying around. Total cost about $3 instead of $69. Since I'm in my basement quite often I just let it drain for a minute every couple days or so. My cleanup this spring was very minimal, about 5-6 minutes with a screwdriver or other small scraping tool, and a few paper towels.

I occasionally oil the disk's mounting pin where it sits on the frame, otherwise it tends to squeak quite often. Initially I had some rust buildup on the metal pin as well but that seems to have subsided.

I believe it is quite cheaper than an Aprilaire humidifier, and as long as you take care of it you won't have to spend any money maintaining it like you would with other systems (foam filter pad and such).

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