3 Tips to Help Dry Skin in Winter

Minnesota = dry skin in winter. FACT. As your furnace blazes, it sucks the moisture out of the air. Skin gets dry, itchy, and cracked. But it doesn’t have to.

Check out these tips for dry skin in winter. You’ll be more comfortable this season, and even help protect your home.

Tip #1 – Balance Indoor Humidity w/ Outside Temperature

Your first step should be to find the right indoor humidity for your home.

Low humidity can cause several problems:

• Dry skin
• Damage to woodwork and musical instruments
• Static electricity

Don’t crank up the humidifier just yet. Too much humidity has downsides too:

• Ice and condensation on windows
• Rotten studs and woodwork
• Mold

The right indoor humidity varies based on how cold it is outside. The Minnesota Department of Public Service has provided this list based on an interior temperature of 70F.

Tip #2 – Filter Out Skin Irritants

Ever wash your hands with bleach to fix dry skin? Probably not.

Cities add chlorine to kill bacteria in water supplies. It’s great for disinfection, but it drives moisture out of your skin.

Combine chlorine and dry air, and you have a good recipe to irritate skin.

Many of our customer have added a Whole House Chlorine Filter to help their skin. A whole house filter should be installed to treat both hot and cold water.

Whole House Chlorine Filter Benefits

• Helps dry skin and hair
• Better tasting and smelling water
• Protects water softener and appliances

Hard water can also dry out skin. It binds up with soap and forms a scum. This leaves a film of dissolved rocks and soap on your skin.

Hard water can be fixed with a Salt-Based Water Softener, or a Whole House Reverse Osmosis. Both of these will physically remove the hard minerals (rocks) that cause you grief.

Soft Water Benefits

• Less residue on skin and hair
• Less soap required for washing/cleaning
• Protects plumbing and appliances

Tip #3 – Use Cleaner Water in Your Humidifier

Does your humidifier load up with crusty scale? Hard water will quickly leave rock-like deposits. That can be fixed with a water softener.

“But I have a water softener, and still get white residue. What’s that?”

Tap water contains dissolved salts and metals (arsenic, sodium, sulfates, etc). These “Total Dissolved Solids aka TDS” get left behind when water evaporates.

Ultrasonic humidifiers are notorious for leaving a white residue when used with tap water.

But there’s an easy fix.

You need to use water with a lower TDS level. Most city water in the Twin Cities has 400-500ppm TDS. Other parts of the country are blessed with naturally lower TDS (think 40-50ppm).

A Residential Reverse Osmosis System will reduce 400-500ppm TDS levels down to 20-30ppm.

Cleaner water will leave almost ZERO residue when it evaporates. Problem solved!

Want to do a quick experiment? Buy a gallon of distilled water at your local Target store. Add that to your humidifier. Now marvel at how clean your humidifier stays!