I need some form of humidification we have dry throats, skin and joints in the floor opening.

I have been looking at the steam type like this one. Based on having portable ones I can't see how the evaporative type wouldn't get nasty pretty quick.

Anyone have experience with a whole house humidifier ?

I was thinking of installing this evaporative model: http://www.desertspringproducts.com/desertspring/humidifiers_rotary.asp

It would be to replace the current humidifier I have, which admittedly is quite good, however, it's only able to operate during heating cycles which doesn't work well enough in my home. We have an air exchange unit which refreshes the air in the home, causing the humidity to go down as the dry air is brought from outside. Since the exchange doesn't drop the temperature of the house enough to cause the heat to go on, the humidifier sits idle.

The new one I linked above can operate during any fan cycle. The Honeywell steam model you've linked sounds interesting as well and I'm going to do some research into it before I pull the trigger in the next couple of months.

The one I linked can control the fan as well. It's good info that just running it when the furnace comes on is not enough time to properly humidify. I have an air exchanger as well. It actually has a dehumidifier they suggest using if you get moisture build up in it. Yeah right I don't think I have to worry about that

Here is a site I have been looking at with info about the Honeywell units. I appears to be some kind of training site.

House plants work amazingly well, in sufficient quantity.

Only if you can keep them alive

I was checking out the desert spring model you linked and I don't think it can really control the blower. It can operate without the heat of the furnace but they tell you to manually operate the blower or just leave it on all the time. I wonder how much electricity that would take ? When it's -2 degrees Fahrenheit like today the furnace runs quite a bit so it wouldn't matter much but it's not on so much when it's 30 degrees out.

They also tell you to mount the humidistat to the furnace so it seems like you would be manually monitoring and controlling the humidity.

Could be an advantage though it would be much simpler than the Honeywell one I am looking at would just have to watch it.

I leave my blower running at all times to circulate air in the house and help keep the temperature relatively constant throughout. I also leave all the interior room doors open to help promote airflow and aid in the temp balance.

I knew that the humidifier would not control the blower. A fancier thermostat would allow programming scheduled blower cycles instead of leaving it on all the time as well.

The humidistat should work in the same way as the one with my current unit. It attaches to the cold air return duct and monitors the humidity there as an indicator of what the humidity is in the house as well as having a probe outside the house to monitor the exterior temperature. Depending on what it reads from both sensors and according to your dialed-in setting, the control module within the humidistat unit will turn on/off the water supply to the humidifier (my current model doesn't have a reservoir). So basically you set a humidity "level" from 1 to 7 to achieve a range of relative humidity in the home. You have to play around a bit to get it to balance out so that you're not left with condensation on your windows. Once you have this sweet spot you can pretty much leave it set at that setting. The actual relative humidity within the home will then go up or down automatically depending on the temperature outside.

The setting will be different for every home of course. It all depends on how humid you can keep your place without causing excessive condensation. The colder it is outside, the better insulated everything needs to be to prevent the inside moist air from condensing. Our windows are double pane low-E argon filled, but I still think they're pieces of shit.

When you say you leave the blower running all the time do you mean the furnace blower or the HRV ? I have an HRV which I discovered today runs all the time.

I started asking my customers if they have humidifiers today and so far found two at the same place that actually had the same aprilaire. One says it does help one says it does nothing. The one that says it helped says they leave the blower running all the time as well but she said the humidistat only gets to about 28% humidity.