Ready for that dry winter air? You know the telltale signs. Your hands start cracking, your elbows get ashy, and most parts of your body feel constantly like they could be on the verge of an itch. Even your musical instruments will go out of tune, and wooden furniture can begin to crack.
Indoor air is typically drier than outdoor air, but in the summer, your home doesn’t have much trouble regulating itself within the optimal 30 to 50 percent humidity level recommended by most organizations that concern themselves with living conditions. During the colder months, when the air dries out, however, it’s an entirely different story.
Why a humidifier helps
What you’ll notice when you’re in a building in that optimal humidity envelope, especially after coming in from the outdoors, is how much more comfortable it is. During the winter, your indoor humidity can drop to a parched 20 percent or so.
It can even make you sicker. Viruses thrive in dry air, so keeping your indoor humidity in that 30 to 50 percent range will make the viruses and germs floating around less effective at making you sick. It isn’t a panacea that’ll render all illness-causing viruses and bacteria powerless; it just helps reduce their potency.
You’ll even reduce how much you build up static and get shocked. I walk around in wool socks on a rug while wearing a deep-pile fleece during most of the winter. Without the right humidity in my apartment, I could build up enough static electricity to power Allentown, Pennsylvania, for a day.
The reduction or banishment of dry, cracked skin comes later, but I start to notice the improvement by the end of the first day. Dry, cracked, bleeding skin doesn’t just frighten children and the infirm; it itches and stings, too.
It wasn’t my skin or my furniture or my health that ultimately convinced me to get a humidifier years ago. Rather, it was because my guitars kept going out of tune. Petty, I know, but wood shrinks in dry humidity.
You could even see cracks form in your coffee tables or desk. I have a beautiful, solid wood desk that split lengthwise in two places my first winter without a humidifier. It was too late for my poor desk, but you’d better believe that before the winter was up, I had a humidifier whirring away at home.
The post Now’s the Time of Year to Start Running a Humidifier appeared first on VICE.
