Reduce Your Indoor Heating Bill with Humidity

Ever walk outside in the summer on a humid day and start sweating like crazy, then look at the thermometer and say, “It feels much hotter than that!” when it’s only 80 degrees out? (27 Celsius for our metric friends) A huge factor in how you perceive heat is humidity. That same day with low humidity might even feel cool in the shade.

Switch it around in the winter. As we turn on heating systems, we try to keep our houses and ourselves warm, but heating systems tend to remove moisture from the air. If you measured the warm air coming out of duct work, chances are it’s about 10% humidity, which is incredibly dry - about as dry as a desert. You perceive the air in your house as being cooler even if you’ve got the thermostat cranked up high because you’re losing body moisture to the air (which in turn makes you feel cooler - that’s how sweating works).

Here’s a surprising fact. At 20% humidity, a room at 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 Celsius) feels like it’s 64 F (17 C). The exact same room at 70% humidity feels like it’s 71 F. To make it feel like it’s 70 F in a 10% humidity environment, you’d have to crank the thermostat up to 78 F. (source: Infoplease)

Here’s another surprising fact. Depending on where you live and heating costs (which are around $3/gallon for heating oil), a one degree difference in your indoor thermostat could save you 3% on your heating bill. If you kept your thermostat at 70 and now you bump it down to 64 (because it felt that way before humidifying anyway), you’re talking major savings every month.

So how do you do that? Humidity. You don’t have to run out and buy some gargantuan humidifier. There are some very, very cheap ways to keep the humidity levels up in your apartment or dorm room.

- If you live in an apartment or house, keep the bathroom door open when you shower. (assuming there are no line of sight privacy issues, that is)
- Buy a clothes drying rack and instead of using the dryer for your laundry, hang your wet wash to dry in your home. It may take a little longer, but you’ll save money on the dryer AND humidify your home.
- Hang up wet towels after you’ve showered to air dry.
- Air dry your dishes.
- When you shower, stop up the drain. After your shower, keep the curtain open and let the tub remain full until cold; any residual heat and humidity will have evaporated into the air. As a bonus, use this water to water your indoor house plants.
- Have indoor house plants.
- Buy an inexpensive cool mist ultrasonic humidifier and turn it on when you’re home - remember these have a modest but real electricity cost.

One last reason to keep humidity levels up - Science Daily recently posted study results indicating that influenza spreads MUCH more rapidly in a low humidity environment. Keeping your home humidified will help - employers, if you want to reduce sick days in the winter, keep the office humidity high, too!