6 Ways to Keep Your Home’s Humidity in Check
Keeping humidity under control isn’t always easy when you live in Bethany Beach, Delaware, but moderating moisture is essential to helping your home and your family stay healthy. Have you been struggling to get humidity under control this summer? From sealing out moisture to adding a whole-home dehumidifier, discover six ways to keep your home’s humidity in check.
Seal Out Moisture
No matter how tightly you control the climate in your home, outdoor elements can easily throw off your efforts. Rather than allowing the humid outdoor air to seep into your home, take steps to seal it out.
At Custom Mechanical, we recommend starting with your home’s doors and windows where excess moisture is most likely to find its way inside. Use weather-stripping to decrease drafts around windows and doorframes, and use caulking to seal cracks and other areas that tend to invite humid air indoors. If you suspect that insufficient insulation is making your home’s problems worse, ask our team how you can easily address problem areas.
Vent Damp Air Outside
Not all excess moisture leaks in from outside. Instead, common home appliances and tasks can generate substantial humidity, which tends to linger inside if you don’t show it the door.
To prevent damp air from building up indoors, turn on the exhaust fans in your bathroom, kitchen, and laundry room every time you take a shower, cook a meal, or start a load of laundry. Since these fans are designed to transport damp air outside, turning them on before you start a task can keep humidity in check while preventing excess moisture from circulating to other parts of your home.
Use the Air Conditioner
If the weather forecast predicts a relatively mild day or if you want to save money on cooling costs, you might be tempted to turn off the air conditioner. While your cooling system might not always seem essential from a temperature perspective, it’s critical for moderating humidity.
After all, air conditioners have built-in dehumidification devices, and cooling systems are designed to lower the temperature and moderate the humidity level in order to keep you comfortable. For optimal comfort and humidity control, our team recommends starting the season with air conditioner maintenance and then keeping your cooling system running all summer long.
Adjust the Thermostat
Just because you keep the air conditioner running throughout the summer doesn’t mean your home has to feel freezing cold or bone dry throughout the season. Instead, you can set your programmable thermostat to keep your home at a comfortable temperature and a healthy humidity level.
Our team typically suggests programming your thermostat to 76 degrees when your family needs cooling power and setting the relative humidity level to 50 percent throughout the cooling season. If you have a smart thermostat, remember that you can log in and check the settings from virtually anywhere, ensuring that humidity levels are always right.
Add a Whole-Home Dehumidifier
When your air conditioner can’t tackle humidity issues alone, our team often suggests investing in a whole-home dehumidifier. While portable dehumidifiers can address moisture problems in isolated areas within your home, whole-house dehumidifiers offer even dehumidification throughout your home.
These devices link directly to your existing cooling system, removing excess moisture from the air before it circulates through your home. That means you can look forward to comfortable humidity levels throughout your home, which can lead to a decrease in dust mites, biological growth, and other common side effects of high humidity.
Improve Ventilation
Minor humidity problems can easily worsen if your home has a tight building envelope or if it simply doesn’t ventilate well. To address persistent issues with stale air and poor airflow, our team often recommends investing in a ventilation system that syncs with your HVAC system.
Advanced options like energy-recovery ventilators (ERVs) provide improved airflow and a constant supply of fresh air and also moderate humidity and increase HVAC efficiency. That means an ERV can help you enjoy cleaner, drier air as well as a more affordable energy bill.
Need expert assistance with your home’s humidity levels? Call your local indoor air quality experts at Custom Mechanical: 877-696-0808.
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