“When my house was built we had a nin-fan Aprilaire 500 installed for upstairs. Finally decided to add one downstairs. I am happy with the results and was able to DIY install with some discoveries along the way that may help others.First off, I would say that install difficulty is above average. A handy homeowner can certainly do it but if you have no experiene with electrical, plumbing, cutting to fit, etc. You may want to hire someone.I bought the version with automatic humidistat. What I did not realize until after I had spent a lot of time wiring and was in troubleshooting mode, is that since I have an ecobee smart thermostat, I could have saved myself time and money.If you have an ecobee, or a Nest should work too, you do not even need to buy or wire up the humidistat. You do not need to hook up the transformer that comes with the kit. Just connect thrbroen wires to the "c" connection on your furnace and to the Aux+ connection at the thermostat. Config your thermostat to tell it you have a humidifier and you are fine wiring. The thermostat already knows your homes humidty and the outside temp so no need to hook up the humidistat on the return or the temp sender outside.None of this is mentioned in the install guide. However, there are some good videos if you search for Aprilaire ecobee install.Now that it is installed it is working great. My original is now 20+ years and going strong. I expect this one will serve me equally well.”
“I bought this in the spring of 2020 and installed it in the fall. I thought about giving this a 4 because the instructions weren't great. All that said, when it finally started kicking on this winter the difference was amazing! No more static shocks every time I touched metal and my skin isn't cracking and itching the way it usually does in the winter. No more super dry air and, because the control is automatic, no condensation on the windows.I'll give it a 5 because of the bang for the buck but they really should make their instructions better, especially WRT hooking up the transformer to the solenoid. The two posts on the transformer are not the same. You don't need to be an HVAC guy to hook this up but you do need to take your time and viewing some of the Youtube videos will help.”
“For a seasoned DIY individual it was about what was expected. The plenum cutout pattern does NOT indicate "TOP" or any orientation and thus I had to compare to actual unit else I could have cut hole to wrong size! Even cut properly I almost cut it larger but "looked closer" and needed to do a bit of trimming to slide slot in housing over plenum metal and it fit. Installed temperature monitor to outside next to my AC piping so not difficult to do. Connecting up the plumbing, to my CPVC pipes was the most effort. Mounting and wiring transformer and humidistat to plenum was easy. Upon calibration I got a "r3" code which after talking to Apirilairre (very helpful) they indicated that meant "revision 3" firmware and was not a fault. Works great and would buy again, but plan on the best part of a day to buy parts and do the install, if doing yourself.”
