Hi all, I've been tossing around the idea for a year or more now to do a central humidifier in our six year old home. The home is very tight, new construction, but it does have fairly tall 7.5 foot ceilings so there's a decent amount of volume. I am only looking to get the humidity up into the 35-45% range in the winter time when the furnace is running. Currently I have an army of paddle wheel evaporative air-cleaner slash humidifier units (Venta) that are getting this done but filling these daily is getting old (these units are evaporating around 6-8 gallons a day and run 24/7). I called my primary HVAC company (the one who put the 92% furnace in when the home was being built) a year ago and they told me that a central humidifier would need to be a large floor standing 220V model and would cost about $4000 to install. I called a different company this year after looking at the Honeywell steam units. This company told me that the Honeywell units are garbage and that they've replaced every one they've installed. They recommended Aprilaire and insisted that my home would need a large "220V central unit" installed, at a cost of $1700 plus electrical work due to the "large square footage". I visited the Aprilaire site and from what I'm seeing the 700 should handle homes up to 4000 square feet, is there any reason it won't work? It can be had for $299 shipped! I'm reasonably handy, but I understand that Aprilaire strongly discourages homeowner installation. I am having a water softener installed and could possibly get the installer to pre-plumb me a connection for the humidifier so I don't have to put a saddle valve on the water heater. Any specific recommendations? Thanks!

I am an electrician with quite a bit of HVAC experience and a friend who is an HVAC contractor. But we've never done a humidifier before. We have an existing fan-forced evaporative humidifier that is very loud. We wish to replace it with a bypass-ducted unit since the air handler is in a louvered closet right next to the living space. This picture hopefully shows you what we are dealing with. There is about 6 inches (maybe 8, I forgot to measure when I was over there.) of space between the air handler and the wall on the other side of that white plastic water line to the existing humidifier. That pink swirl is some loose insulation. I've been researching humidifiers to some extent but am at the point where I need some professional guidance to steer me more clearly. I really need the ability to humidify all year long, and it seems I only read about the units that are designed to work with furnaces. Does it really make a difference? I apologize that the picture is not what I thought it would be. I swear it looked much more informative when I snapped it. Do I just need a few feet of bypass duct from below the fan to the humidifier? I've been looking at the Aprilaire 600 so far.