Optimizing conditions when you just can't keep humidity up? What have you done?

So given the dry winters and trying to maintain the 'right' humidity level, what have you all done to otherwise compensate or make adjustments to account for low humidity? I know there's the target based on temps for VPD, but was wondering what all angles you could take to try and otherwise optimize for your environment.

My room is small, 5x9 space basically; It has a 6" exhaust and 2x4" passive intakes. The air is basically circulating within the household - no 'outside' intake or exhaust going on. So with the air being actively moved through & out it's most likely a futile struggle to try and keep any form of 'higher' humidity in the dry seasons.

Here's the 'hey dumbass' part... I have a whole home humidifier in my furnace but haven't fixed it since the new furnace went it. Previously it kept blowing the boards and I got tired of replacing them, plus there's no inline filter and the filters would cake up pretty quick. Plus it's sort of wasteful how much just goes down the drain with those models. This new furnace I'm hopeful though if I fix it... previous the neighbor who hooked me up as an 'HVAC guy' (not calling him a tech intentionally) looks like he hard-wired into the blower circuit. Now, I'm no electrician or electrical engineer but ummm electronics sharing same line with large motor, yeah I think I recall that not being smart/right. This time I told the installers about his work and they grinned and hooked me up with an isolation relay. So if I do replace the board (or the whole deal) I'm thinking I'll have a better experience this time.

During my last harvest I bought a 2nd portable humidifier, a 6gal model. On high I thought the thing was gonna lift off and was way too loud. So a small 2g, a bigger 6g and even a tub of water with a fan blowing over it with towel draped into it - struggled to get the bedroom I was using to maintain a 55-65. The Inkbird controller was killer though - great investment there.

So as it warms up, not so much an issue - but I want to be ahead of the game next fall/winter. I'll probably get the furnace/duct whole home deal fixed - or replaced with newer/modern options. If you know of any of these I'd be interested to hear. I know they have 'steam' models now as well, but I'm also looking at how much water will it waste as well (sort of a dick move to intentionally be wasteful).

Build yourself an evaporative cooler, note the cooler part of this, I address that in a bit. I've seen guys run a fan In a 5 gal pail with a pvc tubing arrangement and pump in the bottom circulating the water and cascading out of holes drilled in pc pipe. The fan blows over top of cascading water and cools the air, so like an a.c. unit that increases humidity. To address the cooling part of this a small protected element heater in the water reservoir would bring water temps up and may even help with retaining heat in the air in the winter. Would be pretty efficient I would think, small computer fan, pump, maybe a 40 watt heater or rig it so a furnace vent heats it up. Not sure how your setup but that's my stab at it.

Also is your grow room more or less sealed?

Also, I'm aware as plants grow they'll raise it more & more. Also the medium choice. I have been running SIPs during this past few runs so they don't lose much or contribute much from evaporation. If I don't get covers on them soon, my next run with them using mainly coco may be some new nuances for me to deal with.

My last fan/towel wick/tub'o'water deal was indeed a bit sloppy & thrown together to try and get that last couple % to at least hit 55. I've seen those bucket and fan deals in videos so a variant like that would definitely work well. Using pipes/pumps/heater internally instead of something like cloth/wick which could get funky seems like an interesting thing to look at. I did have my tub of water on a seedling mat. Since I've purchased this big 6gal for drying last run I'm sure it can do similar and may prove to be good enough until I revisit the whole-home deal.

One of my goals is to always minimize the maintenance and monitoring. Which SIPs have been awesome for. So I've been without the need of any pumps, air or water, and I"m loving that. Also no noise/stealth factors are a big plus. The big boy humidifier on high was very loud & noticeable.

Since I have the Inkbird for use with it, the big 6gal humidifier will get used in my space this time around. And hopefully I won't need to top things off that frequently. The other option I could consider is hacking the rez on this new humidifier - it's easily big enough & easy enough you could put a float valve into it and use an external rez.

I bought some of their anti-funk additive for humidifiers but I didn't use it when harvesting/drying - no thanks for anything that could carry over into the end product. Not sure if it'd be safe for using it during veg and just quit using it during any flip/flowering times.

I upgraded to an atomizing humidifier. 26w and it doesn't get funked up since there is no filter pad thing.

I have always used swamp coolers. Float valve so automatically topped off. Put it on an inkbird RH% controller or environmental controller and forget about it.