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Humidity affects the health of your home

Date published: 8/4/2006

By JAMES and MORRIS CAREY

AP WEEKLY FEATURES

A common summer complaint is: It's not the heat, it's the humidity. Too much moisture in the hot summer air can turn your home into a steam bath. Beyond leaving you feeling hot, sticky and generally uncomfortable, high humidity can be bad for your home's health, as well.

It can cause warped wood floors, furniture and trim; chipped and peeling paint and wallpaper; wet stains on walls and ceilings; and musty, foul-smelling odors. It also can encourage the growth of dust mites, fungi, bacteria, mold and mildew.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the ideal relative humidity range for the home is between 35 percent and 50 percent. At this range you are comfortable, healthy and your home is protected.

The big question is how to effectively and efficiently accomplish this. Most people try to use their air conditioner to remove humidity. But according to air quality experts, homeowners should never lower the thermostat temperature in an attempt to control humidity in their homes.

Setting the thermostat temperature lower does two things that are counter to your goal of reducing the moisture content in your home. It increases the indoor relative humidity and it decreases the temperature of the materials in the walls, floors, and ceilings of your home, thereby significantly increasing the potential for condensation on these elements.

Secondly, with today's super energy-efficient homes, a typical air-conditioning unit will cycle on and off too quickly to eliminate excess moisture in the air.

As a result, homeowners resort to overcooling the living space while attempting to remove moisture, which leads to uncomfortable air temperatures, high energy bills and excess wear on the cooling system.

An alternative is a portable dehumidifier, which by definition will address only a small area of the home.

A portable dehumidifier is designed to run at a temperature of about 80 degrees , while basements have an average temperature of between 58 and 65 degrees.

Below 65 degrees, frost can form on the condensing coils, which negatively affects performance by causing the compressor to cycle on and off repeatedly without removing moisture from the air. While a portable dehumidifier can be valuable for a small, isolated space, common complaints are that they are noisy and require regular maintenance.

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Date published: 8/4/2006