Humidity healthy for home, checkbook
Chicago Sun-Times

What do dry skin, cracked woodwork, static electricity and an out- of-tune piano have in common? Humidity, or lack thereof.

Cold outside air entering the house in winter is dry, so we need to add moisture to keep woodwork from drying out and cracking, to moisten our skin and to reduce static electricity.

Maintaining a proper level of humidity also will reduce heating bills.

When the air is dry, your body loses moisture to the surrounding air (dry skin). The evaporation of the body's moisture has a cooling effect. For example, if the room temperature is 69 degrees and the humidity level is 35 percent, the comfort level is the same as if the room temperature were 72 degrees with a humidity level of 19 percent.

In reality, most homes maintain humidity levels between 10 percent and 19 percent in the winter months. Compared with the Sahara, which has a humidity level of 25 percent, most homes are desert-dry. The preferred level of indoor humidity is 35 percent to 40 percent. To maintain these levels, you have to add moisture to the indoor air.

There are several devices that use tap water, which is evaporated, then mixed with the room air to raise humidity levels. Maybe you remember your parents setting pans of water on the heat register to raise the humidity levels. I've also seen coffee cans filled with water that were then hung by wires to the sides of steam radiators in older homes.