Aprilaire 700M Whole-House Humidifier with Manual Control

Works fast for bringing up humidity in a 2100 square ft home. Used hot water at 110 F . Installed on return air plenum because no room on supply side. Was a lot of work to get it all done properly. Took my time. Use an Ecobee 5 to control it. Very happy with the final install.

OK, this is exact same as the automatic except it has the manual humidistat.I was a bit nervous about installing this because of how little room to install this. There is literally 1/2" between the wall and this now. But works amazing!Straight forward installation. Installed on the supply plenum. One thing, don't use the saddlevalve they give you. Go buy a sharkbite valve. Super easy to install with no soldering required.List of supplies used.1. Metal tape (duct tape for the plenum but made of metal)2. Tin snipe. (To cut the plenum)3. 3/4" sheet metal drill bit (titanium or better)4. Sharkbite valve (connect to water line. Just push pipe in both sides((1/2" osd))5. Sharkbite 1/2" to 1/4" on/off valve6. 1/4" osd foggy plastic hose (connects to the water inlet on humidifier)7. 1/2" clear tube (for the drainage tube on humidifier to drai )8. 18x2 thermostat wire, wire nuts, and plastic tube to hide wires.9. 1/2" copper tube. Maybe need only 3"-5" (extends the sharkbite valve)10. 20' outdoor extension drop cord (only if you don't have plug near supply plenum)11. Level12. Electric drill13. Yellow handle tin snips (yellow means cuts strait lines or curved)14. #8 self tapping sheet metal screws. 1", and only 4-6 is needed.15. Pipe cutter16. 13mm open socket wrenchShut off breaker to furnace. Do not install before you do this.So, the toughest part on the install was cutting the plenum. I didn't have enough room for the drill to drill hole, but was creative and got one made. The instructions are the template for the humidifier base. Used a level and made sure it was on level. I chose to use the supply plenum to install so I wouldn't need to use hot water. Save a few gallons of water daily. After the square hole was cut, I used a hammer and pliers to make sure the edges were even. Then mounted the base, and screwed it in. Next, used the metal duct tape (do not use regular tape, must be the metal kind) to tape around the base. Take your time and make it look good.Next, wiring. The bottom of the base has two brown wires. Using the 18x2 thermostat wires, connect one brown wire to the common circuit on the furnace circuit. Should be labeled C. Next, connect the other wire to the W (24v aux). Connect that wire to one terminal on the humidistat. First mount the humidistat where you want it. After the the power wire is connected to the humidistat, add another wire to the other post in the humidistat. Doesn't matter which one you use. Take that wire and connect it to the other brown wire on the base of the humidifier.Next is the water. If you have a water softener, you will be using the copper line going from there to the water heater. Shut off the main valve and grab a small bucket (water will drain from the line) and place under where you want to install the sharkbite adaptor. Use a black marker and mark the pipe. Then measure 1" both left and right. This is where you want to make your cut. Cut the pipe in both spots so you have a 2" space between ends. Slide the sharkbite adaptor in between and press the adaptor hard in each side. It will lock in to place. Cut a 3"-5" piece of spare copper pipe and push in the middle of the adaptor. Then attach the 1/2" to 1/4" sharkbite valve. Push it hard and it snaps in. Take off the 1/4" but and the copper coupling inside. Slide the foggy 1/4" tube through the but and then the coupling and in to the valve. Using a #13 wrench, tighten the but down as much as you can without breaking it. Connect the other side of the tube to the bottom of the humidifier base. Using the same method of through the but and coupling, then tighten down a lot. Otherwise this will leak. Next connect the 1/2" drain line. Run it from the bottom of the humidifier base to your drain near the water heater or softener. If there isn't one, you will need to buy a pump and attach it to there and pump it out of the house or to a drain.Last, use the extension cord, connect from outlet to plug on the humidifier. Use the black tube to conseal the wires if you want. Turn on the water to make sure no leaks. If there are some at the valve and base of humidifier, tighten those nuts down. It will stop leaking. May seem like you will break the sylanoid on the base, but it won't.Turn on the furnace breaker, set the heat to high to you can monitor the humidifier. It should be working fine.Alternative install. Use the transformer and connect to the HUM spot on the circuit board and the other to Neutral, the the humidistat to one of the back side and other goes direct to the brown wire on the base of humidifier.I am not a HVAC tech. So if you have questions I can't really help. But installing yourself will take 3-5 hours depending on trips to the hardware store. It will also save you between $350-$500. The total cost of the parts were right around $100. But because I didn't have the drill bit, the pipe cutter, yellow tin snips, metal tape, extension cord, or tubing. If you have those, the sharkbite adaptors will be around $25.So far we have felt an immediate impact on the air quality. Well worth the price.

Product arrived. Installed it in 4 hrs next day. It brought the humidity up in our 2200 sq ft home in approximately 4hrs. I would recommend this product.

Perfect unit for central Air Source Heat Pump. It is controlled by my Ecobee thermostat and connected on cold water line. My cold temperature heat pump has electric heating elements as backup but never had to use it even in minus 25C temperatures. Since heat pumps operate at longer frequencies, I do not need to waste hot water. The Ecobee can be set to Frost Control to prevent frosted windows. Very happy with the Aprilaire 700

If you are looking for a humidifier to work with Nest, look no further. No need for the digital automatic version, and no need to use the controller that comes with this one either- Nest handles it all for you.There are a few reviewers on here that have written up nice reviews with wiring diagrams that include the use of a third party relay... THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT NECESSARY with a Nest thermostat. I have my humidification system running perfectly using the 'Stand alone humidifier, 1 wire' schematic from the nest pro install manual. Look at page 15 and that's where you will find these diagrams. The Nest '*' terminal, to which you connect one of the brown wires from the humidifier, is powered by 24v and therefore is capable of triggering the humidifier on it's own - no need for a relay! So the wiring is simple: one brown wire from humidifier(doesn't matter which one) goes to nest * terminal, the other brown wire goes to the 'C' common ground terminal on your furnace control board.... That's literally it, aside from plugging the unit into an outlet. The only extra step you need to take from here is getting into the Nest pro-setup so that you can 1: identify/confirm the humidifier is being used on the * terminal, and 2: to configure the humidifier to either turn on with heat from furnace (cold/hot water hook up), or turn on separately with just furnace fan (hot water hook up only). I chose to hook my 700m up to hot water because I live in Colorado and water is expensive and the heated water aids in evaporation and overall efficiency of the humidifier. I'm very glad that I did too because there is a healthy stream of water running into the drain while it's in operation. I also recommend the hot water hook up so that you have the flexibility of choosing to run the humidifier separate from your heat by just using your furnace fan. This takes a few tweaks in the nest pro menu to switch to this configuration but it's worth it. I haven't had much time to evaluate how the unit actually raises humidity but I did run it on just the fan from furnace (no heat) and was able to raise humidity in house from 31% to 33% in about 20 mins. I have a good sized first floor, 3200sqft house all together however the humidifier is only operating on the first floor furnace, second floor has separate HVAC.One additional comment on design- I wish that Aprilaire would come up with a simple water reclamation catch system to gather the water that isn't evaporated on the first pass over the filter and recycle it over again so that we aren't dumping this much water down the drain. This seems like a very simple design element and well worth the decreased expense off operation for those of us in localities that pay top dollar for water.