Wisconsin's weather gives us a little bit of everything... very dry, cold winters and very hot, humid summers.   As a result, keeping the environment comfortable inside one's home can be a challenge.  After only spending one summer in our new home, I could see that our basement was going to need some dehumidification, especially if I ever wanted to finish it.  The pressure tank and all the pipes around the water softener were sweating so bad that there was a small pool of water on the floor.  My wife mentioned that some of the items she had stuffed in boxes that are stored in the basement had mold on them.  Not good.

Even though keeping the basement dry in the summer is my main concern, high humidity in any part of the house is rather annoying.  As of last summer, we rarely had to turn the air conditioner on because our house managed to stay relatively cool, but by not turning on the air, we had to deal with high humidity.  Knowing this, I began researching whole-home dehumidifiers.   My reasoning is that since I know I need a dehumidifier to address some basement issues, I might as well get one with enough power to do to whole house if need be.  Heck, maybe I won't even need the air conditioner!

Assuming the information I read online is correct, having a whole home dehumidifier as opposed to a smaller room dehumidifier sold at most stores will actually save money in the long run because it won't have to work as hard or as long.   I guess my electrical bill will be the final verdict on whether or not that is true.  None-the-less, since I want to dehumidify my entire basement (not just a portion of it) and potentially the upstairs, whole-home is where I need to be.   Yike$.

In order to potentially dehumidify the entire house, a humidifier needs to be "ductable"... i.e., has to have the ability to be integrated into the HVAC ductwork in order to dry the air being circulated through the house.  That's all fine and good, but what if the upstairs is nice and dry but the basement is still wet?  How do you get the dehumidifier to focus on the zone that needs the most dehumidification?  Well, for a bunch more money, some brands offer the ability to open and close dampers in the ductwork in order to focus on the zone that needs the most dehumidification.   Aprilaire is one of the few manufacturers that has this ability.

Having recently installed an Aprilaire 500A humidifier and being reasonably pleased with it, I decided that I'd look into buying an Aprialaire dehumidifier as well, especially since it had the ability to add all sorts of bells and whistles (like the zone control) if I wanted it.  The price, however, was a major stumbling block since the Aprilaire 1750 retails for around $1,250.  Ouch.  That isn't a bad price for a whole home dehumidifier, but it is a bad price if you're me!

Lucky for me, one of my favorite places to shop is eBay.   Since it's winter and I don't actually need the dehumidifier now, now seems like a good time to start looking for the humidifier I want to show-up on eBay.  Sure enough, Aprilaire themselves have been selling their refurbished models on eBay for a fraction of the cost of a new model.  So, that's the route I went and for less than half of the cost of a new model, I got the Aprilaire 1750 shipped to my front door.

The unfortunate part of this blog post is that because it's winter and dehumidification is the last thing I need, I have no idea if my new dehumidifier works!  It looks new and weighs a ton, but I'll have to post an update in a few months to let the world know if it was a good purchase or not.

Over the past few months, I noticed that our tap water was starting to smell.  I can't even describe the smell other than being unpleasant.   Some homes have the problem of their water smelling like sulphur (I.e., "rotten eggs"), but ours wasn't quite that bad... yet.   I ran some water from the spigot right where the water enters the house and that water did have a little bit of a sulphur smell. 

Being a do-it-yourself kind of guy, I headed online to try and figure-out what the issue was and how to resolve it.  Knowing the water smelled at the spigot coming into the house eliminated the water heater as being the problem.  I had replaced a heating element in our electric water heater a few months ago, so I thought that I might have introduced some bacteria to the water tank, but that was apparently not the case.

The first course of action recommended to me by several people online was to have the water tested for bacteria.  I found-out the City of Jackson, just east of where I live, will perform this test if I stopped by their city hall and got a bottle for the test.   They suggested I take a sample from my basement spigot in the morning and get the bottle to them as soon as possible because the water test isn't valid if the water is 24 or more hours old.  In addition, to get the sample, it was recommended that I use bleach on the spigot to kill any germs, then use a torch to further disinfect the spigot, followed by running the water for a few minutes to make sure that the water sample test actually tested the well water and not some build-up of bacteria on the spigot.

If it turned-out to be a bacteria problem, most web site's recommended "shocking" the well.   I.e., dumping chlorine bleach into the well to kill the bacteria.   Aside form sounding like a lot of work, one issue I had with this is that it's been well below freezing for weeks and although I want the smell to go away, I also don't want to freeze-up my pipes or create an ice-slick in my yard.

So, I decided to call Hanson's Soft Water in Menomonee Falls to come-out and determine if I even needed to test my well for bacteria.  I'm glad I made the call, because I was definitely on the wrong track as to why my water smelled!

After about 10 seconds of looking at the iron filter in my basement, the service man showed me what the problem was.   Under the cover of the iron filter control unit is a wheel with little pegs in it that determine when the iron filter will cycle.   The problem was that all the pegs were pushed "in" which meant the iron filter had never run since we moved into the house!

Apparently the sulphur smell that many experience with their water is the result of iron in their water and the iron filter should eliminate that smell.   It's my guess that because we have a water softener, our tap water didn't smell like sulphur because it was being treated by the softener. 

Although I'm now $100 poorer for the house call, I'm glad I called Hanson's Soft Water because I might've otherwise spent all sorts of money and time on water tests and shocking my well, only to not resolve the problem.   Now that I know what the issue was, it makes sense as to why I noticed the inside of my dishwasher was starting to turn yellow and my white close never seemed to be very white.

During the last cold snap, my wife and I were waking-up with sore throats nearly every morning, along with dry skin, static 'shocks', and a constant feeling of being cold even when the heat was set relatively high.   Most of these are symptoms of overly dry air, so I started research humidifiers for our home.   The previous owner had a relatively large, portable unit sitting in the kitchen.   However, I didn't want to go that route for several reason:

• You have to constantly fill the tanks unless you pipe a water feed into the unit.
• You have to constantly adjust the humidity level manually which can be a science in itself (based on outdoor and indoor air temperatures).
• A portable unit won't humidify the air in the whole house.
• The larger portables can be quite a drain on the electric bill.
• Having a big, brown, plastic box sitting in the house is not very attractive!

I decided that a whole-house humidifier was the answer for me.  Of course, that opened-up a whole world of things I didn't know.  For instance, there are several types of whole house humidifiers: by-pass, steam, and forced air (and maybe more.)   Of the 3, the by-pass system is the most common, relatively easy to install, and uses very little power.   By "by-pass", it means that air travels from the return ducts, through the humidifier, and then through the supply ducts.   Basically, the furnace does all the work as the water in the humidifier is evaporated into the air.

Once I decided on a whole home humidifier, the next issue was choosing a brand.   Most big-box retailers seem to carry a Honeywell system and you can purchase an installation kit for an additional $75.   However, the Honeywell system, like most other systems online, require you to manually adjust the humidistat as the weather and relative humidity changes in your house.   That sounds like a pain-in-the-butt to me, so I opted for the Aprilaire 500A unit from FiltersUSA.com. 

Pretty much the only difference between the Aprilaire unit and most other by-pass models is the control unit.   It can read the outdoor temperature and use that to make decisions on how to control the humidity in your home.

Thanks to the forum moderator "Jay" on the DoItYourself.com forums and a rather details blog post, "How to install a whole house humidifier in 10 steps", I pretty much new what to expect with this project and what parts to by.

For the most part, the installation was pretty trouble-free, with one exception.  When I cut the whole for the 6" pipe in the return duct, the center pin on the circle cutting tool I bought started moving and resulted in a whole shaped more like a "9" than a circle.  As a result, I had to put a square patch over the whole and try again.

Rather than use a tin snips for cutting the whole for the humidifier in the supply duct, I used a steel cutting disc with my Dremel tool and that worked great.  The edges weren't sharp and the whole was the perfect size when I got done.

Finding wiring to complete the project was kind of a pain and I just opted for a 50' section of 18 gage / 2 wire thermostat wire.   I used it for everything, including the outside temperature sensor (which I mounted inside the intake PVC piping for my furnace near where it comes into the house.)   Seems that this was the smallest gage wire I could get w/o going into 24 gage data cable.  

One challenge I had was wiring the humidistat.   My Armstrong Air furnace has a control board on it and not being an electrician, I had no idea how to make sure the humidistat stayed on at all times but knew when to humidify the air, and I didn't want to screw-up any of the voltages and blow something up.  After asking a lot of questions, I found that I should wire the 120/24v step-down transformer that came with the humidifier to the connection marked "HUM" on my furnace.   This is apparently a 120v switch that only has power when the furnace is kicking in, which is exactly what the humidistat needs (but at 24 volts).  

To get the 24 volts of constant power for the humidistat, I noticed that there was already a step-down transformer powering the thermostat.   I opted to just piggyback on the "R" and "C" connections for the thermostat, hoping that neither the thermostat nor the humidistat drew too much power to be an issue.  After firing everything up, it all seems to work just fine.   The transformer I installed in in the lower left-hand corner, and the 120 volt wires from it are coming-out from behind the panel at the upper-left (black and white wires... white to the "Common" pin, black to the "HUM" pin).

If I find myself with some more time, I'll post some more detail installation photos.  But for now, he's the final product: