Home Improvement → Re: [HVAC] Aprilaire 600 humidifier installed + Aprilaire 60 Humidistat

For the fourth time: This is the typical operation. It will work fine.

Is your humidifier connected to the cold or hot water line?

At risk of repeating myself and others, if you're not happy with the current Ecobee setup, connect to the hot water feed, and use the Model 60 control with Blower Activation. I know you're not happy with the discrepancy in the control's RH readings, but again, make sure all RH readings are taken while air is circulating through the system.As stated above, this is normal. With the Model 60, Aprilaire offers the blower activation capability, for situations where humidifying is needed while the burner is not operating ... for example, if you also have another heat source such as electric baseboard or a fireplace.

Here's another can of worms, a workaround you could experiment with: If you have a two-stage furnace (W2 terminal on board), you may be able to disconnect W2 from the thermostat and set a longer time on the furnace board until stage 2 is activated. This would cause both the furnace and the humidifier to run longer. You can also check the Ecobee documentation to see if they allow any flexibility in when stage 2 is activated.

If you want Champagne on a Champagne budget, get rid of the bypass unit and put in a steam humidifier.

Hi Bobcat00,

It is connected to hot water line.

Hi ArgMeMatey,

What I have noticed is if I run the blower for about an hour (just the blower alone), about an hour later humidifier kicks in, but not otherwise, meaning not through the normal furnace cycles, even though via the normal furnace cycles return air does circulate in the return-duct, I guess it is due to 10 degree difference in reading, why the model 60 did not work as expected, that is the only culprit I can think of.

I also noticed about 10 degree differences in reading between my old thermostat RTH9585WF and Aprilaire Model 60.

Luckily the offset function on Ecobee4 saved me, otherwise I had to throw another $60 to get Honeywell humidistat.

I doubt very much, even if I managed to bring the Aprilaire Model 60 humidistat to upstairs, the humidity reading won't change at all, which means model 60 is good for nothing, besides I must bury humidistat's sensor into the return duct on upstairs there is no return-duct is accessible.

I wonder model 60, whether it works without you burying its sensor into return duct, just like a thermostat works for reading humidity level?
What I like the in model 60 is the blower activation for humidity.

Thanks for your input.

Michael.

In humidifier settings in ecobee you can set it to work all the time by setting "Humidify only while heating" to "No". This will keep the fan running to satisfy humidity requirement.

Hi dslcreature,

I cannot see such an option. How do I find it on Ecobee4 ?

I'm sorry it may not exist in this model. The workaround is to set humidifier type to steam instead of evap.