Save yourself many dollars and hours of frustration. I have tried 2 other whole-house humidifiers and 3 portable Humidifiers and this one is the best;
After frustrations with those previous models, this Aprilaire Model 800 was recommended to me by a friend in the HVAC business.
If you have hard water (test it), you want this unit. You just replace the canister and done. Cleaning sucks and can damage a humidifiers coils, the crud that builds up inside a humidifier is amazing in such a short time with hard water. With this unit the canister, which contains the coils, is replaced. Yes its not cheap, but its easy. Ask yourself, how much is it worth to you to not have your hardwood floors dry out and buckle or separate, not have your skin dry out and itch, or have your guitar dry out and crack? All of the above happened to me before this unit.
You'll likely want an HVAC professional to install this, but handymen with a little knowledge of plumbing can attempt; needs water line & drain nearby.
Outside Sensor: unless you have an easy way to install an outside sensor, then forget it. Instead, all you do is watch the windows, if they show condensation, turn the humidity down. I have my 800 cranked up and never had a problem.
I had the Honeywell Truesteam (and previously an older Aprilaire model), the Honeywell was time consuming to clean, and my unit broke the first winter. After replacing 3/4 of the parts in it and it still didn't work, I threw it out and got this.
It produces more steam than the other units I tried, approx. 12% more humidity (40% is ideal) than Honeywell, in my experience. I have a little humidistat I use to gauge its effectiveness.
If you have hard water, I suggest getting a filter otherwise expect to replace this up to 2 times a winter. Its your water, not the unit.
When it is time to replace the canister you can clean it with some CLR (soak overnight) and it will likely last a few more weeks. I put a wine cork in one end of the canister to hold the CLR and water overnight. Then shake and empty it over toilet, a lot of crud will come out.
Replacing canister: is easy, this is the beauty of this unit; turn off, unscrew cover, loosen hose clamp, remove black tube, disconnect 3 cables (easy), reverse process to install new one, turn on and Done! 5 minutes tops.
It a good idea to keep a spare canister handy, you won't have to go without humidity.
Thermostat: I tied my into into my existing HVAC thermostat and didn't need the digital control, its displays the humidity right next to temperature, plus my existing thermostat was in an appropriate place in the house. I needed my HVAC professional for this.
This unit is metal, not plastic, its feels very solid. I've had no problems. It has an error light to tell you if there a problem or when to change canister.
Portable Whole-house Humidifiers. My experience has been they service a much much smaller area than they suggest and are rated as if your house is of the most well insulated home out there. For Example I bought the biggest unit I could find (Essicks Air Whole House 300), its the best of the portables, but it is only good to keep one room fully humidified. It did raise the humidity but not nearly enough. Granted, my home is not well insulated. Also you have to constantly fill it with water, every other day, in my case and this thing holds like 5 gallons.
Best of Luck!!!!
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Works perfectly like a champ. Installed in Oct 2011 on a hybrid gas furnace/heat pump system. Worked perfectly last winter. Replaced canister in Oct 2012 (replacing it is a snap) and continues to work fine. I run mine on 240V and it runs wide open at about 23 gpd most of the time when the OAT is below 40 or so. The improvement over a bypass humidifier is like night and day; it achieves 40-45% RH nearly all the time. Of course, it cost $$$ to operate because boiling water takes energy. Figure about $300 per season. But I didn't buy it to be cheap. I bought it to create comfort rather than just the illusion of comfort that a bypass humidifier provides, and it succeeds in every aspect.
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I had the Aprilaire model 800 installed 1 year ago (November 2011) and it has worked great no problems -going to change out the canister this month and hope for another year of no problems. I saw the earlier write-up of this system having issues but for me the system works great and i compared to the honeywell humidifier and based on my research this system is superior.
Honest reviews on Aprilaire Model 800 Automatic Whole-house Steam Humidifier
We had ours installed a while ago (early fall 2012) too. Absolutely loving it! Steam goes right into the heat vents and goes all the way up onto the 2nd floor of the house. Waterbill went down unlike with the old version water went down the drain rather than being blown into the heat vents!!! (besides owning antique furniture (18th c) we do not have any more broken ripped cracked furnitures. We had the previous model installed to stop the insanity of breaking furnitures due to the extreme dry heat in the house. The result was a poor 25-30% now we are up to 45%! Sound furniture and sound health! No more stuffy noses or sore throats in the mornings!!!) (and yes we had 4 "AC"Plumbers come and look at the device, who only then turned around and ran its too new. 'Got to find the right honest & KNOWLEDGEABLE installer! + do your homework and find out (via Web) how it functions, so the "professionals" cant tell you a story!)
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I went through two Honeywell Truesteam units before switching to the Aprilaire 800. The design of the Aprilaire is superior to the design of the Honeywell. It's really night and day. The Honeywell ran incredibly hot, and the circuitry is immediately above where the water boils (i.e., in a very hot place), and the parts are not near the quality of the Apriliare. Please trust me on this--the Honeywell is a toy compared to the Aprilaire.
To be fair, the Honeywell only hooked up to 110 volt power, whereas the Aprilaire can hook up to 110 or 220 volts (another sign of a good design, BTW) as well as 11.5 or 16.5 amps. I have the Aprilaire hooked up to 220 at 11.5 amps and man does it work quick. It's amazingly fast.
I've had it hooked up for three weeks now and it has easily kept the relative humidity at a near constant 45%. I ended up hooking it up to the Honeywell TrueIAQ humidistat that I already had installed, and everything is working beautifully. The Honeywell continually had issues, and I had to deal with them every single day until I just couldn't get it working anymore. The Aprilaire has had zero issues and I simply let it run. I don't take it for granted because I was trained by the Honeywell to check on it multiple times a day. Now whenever I check on the Aprilaire I do it with a smile on my face because it's always working exactly as it should.
I'm so much more confident with this device because of the design. The other thing the Aprilaire handles well is that it works with either hard or soft water--each have their own pros and cons, whereas the Honeywell has to have soft water if you want to get any longevity out of it. I happen to have a water softener so this wasn't an issue with me, but I point it out because the Aprilaire is well designed even in this respect. If you have hard water you will replace the inner cannister more, but your unit will work well because the water will boil more efficiently.
I should also note that my unit is a remote installation. It is installed in my linen closet about 6 feet away from my furnace. Even the hose that takes the steam from the unit to the furnace is superior when compared to the Honeywell. I haven't had any issue with the remote installation. When I first installed it and tested it, my humidistat was reading 45%, so I set humidity at 50% and it took only 40 minutes to get my entire 2000 square foot home up to 50%. I know it's not a big home, but it would've taken the Honeywell a lot, lot longer to make a 5% move.
I'm telling you, it's night and day with this device compared to the Honeywell. Do not buy the Honeywell. Please. Look on the Internet by comparing the two and you'll see a lot of bad words for the Honeywell, including at least one of the reviews here at Amazon. Don't make the same mistake I made.
