We all want our homes to be comfortable, but there’s one thing that can make your home feel even more cozy: indoor humidity. The right amount of humidity in your home can help keep you comfortable on hot days, reduce irritation from dry air, and even help keep mold away. However, many homeowners don’t know how much humidity is safe or unhealthy for their families. This article will answer some common questions about dehumidifiers and how much they should run in different climates so that you can decide what works best for you!
Healthy, comfortable air in your home is typically between 35% and 45% humidity.
- High humidity can cause breathing problems, including asthma.
- Mold and mildew can grow in humid conditions.
- Condensation is the build-up of moisture on walls, windowsills and other areas where there’s a large temperature difference between indoors and outdoors. This can lead to water damage if it’s not cleaned up quickly enough or if you don’t have a dehumidifier installed in your home.
Your home may have more humidity than you think.
dehumidifiers are not just for the winter, they can be used year-round to maintain the right level of moisture in your environment and improve indoor air quality. In fact, in some climates, dehumidifiers can reduce energy bills by up to 40%. When measuring humidity levels in your home, it’s important that you use an accurate thermometer (like this one from Nest) so as not to overstate or understate the situation.
A humidifier can help ease dryness and irritation of the mucous membranes, the nose, throat and lungs.
- Dry air can cause dry skin, chapped lips and nosebleeds.
- Dry skin can lead to eczema and other skin conditions.
- Dry air can also cause dry eyes (especially if you have sensitive eyes) and itchy eyes that feel like sandpaper rubbing against your eyelids when you blink. This can make it difficult for people who wear contact lenses because the irritation makes them uncomfortable during the day or night when they are sleeping at night; this discomfort is even worse when wearing contacts while driving!
- A good humidifier will help keep your sinuses clear so that you don’t feel like something is stuck in there but rather just a little bit of moisture without having any extra residue building up inside those structures themselves.”
If you live in a humid area, your dehumidifier may be running all day.
If you live in a humid area, your dehumidifier may be running all day. Humidity is an essential part of your body’s natural moisture balance. The human body can regulate its own internal moisture level through several mechanisms, including:
- Sweating – It’s hard to sweat when you don’t want to! People with skin conditions like psoriasis or eczema often experience dryness because their bodies aren’t able to produce enough perspiration. Your doctor may prescribe medications that make this happen more easily than it would otherwise do by itself—but they won’t be as effective as using a dehumidifier during cooler months when humidity levels are lower.
- Saliva production – When we eat something salty or sour (like pickles), our mouths begin producing saliva so that we can rinse away the excess salt after eating them without getting hyper-irritated by those flavors’ presence in our mouths long after swallowing them down into our stomachs where they would normally stay there forever if left untreated until later on down the road when another meal was consumed again at some point later down future months’ future years’ future decades’ future centuries’ future millennia!’
You can also reduce humidity by using your vent fan when showering and cooking.
You can also reduce humidity by using your vent fan when showering and cooking. Vent fans are small devices that blow air out of the top of the house, where it’s warmer than inside, into rooms on either side or even outside. When you’re using a vent fan in an unheated room during winter, this helps to dry out the air and keep it from getting wetter as well as reducing humidity levels in your home overall.
Some vent fans come with heating or cooling coils; others are designed only for airflow purposes without heat output capabilities (though some newer models do have these). Either way, if you have a high-efficiency furnace/AC unit then chances are good that there will be enough power available via dedicated wiring within each room so they won’t need anything extra added into their circuitry – just hook up one end of any type (electric) cord directly into an outlet near where you want its output directed towards target area(s).
If your basement is extremely damp, use an exhaust fan with a duct to the outside; this will reduce moisture coming from the ground beneath your house.
If your basement is extremely damp, use an exhaust fan with a duct to the outside; this will reduce moisture coming from the ground beneath your house.
An exhaust fan should be vented through a wall or roof. The air from each floor should flow into one central point where it can be exhausted outside of your home.
Keeping your home at healthy indoor humidity is not only better for the comfort of your family, but it can protect your home as well.
As you know, mold and mildew are attracted to high humidity. Mold and mildew can cause health problems, damage your home and be expensive to remove.
The ideal indoor relative humidity for most people is between 40% and 60%. The higher the relative humidity, the easier it is for molds to grow in your home’s environment (also known as “moisture condensation”). A dehumidifier will keep this level of moisture consistent throughout each day—and even after hours when no one is using their HVAC system!
Conclusion
That’s all for now! We hope you enjoyed learning about how to keep your home at healthy indoor humidity. If you have any questions, just let us know in the comments below and we’ll do our best to answer them.
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