High humidity makes your home feel hotter than it really is. During the summer, you should take steps towards reducing humidity in your home to maximize your comfort. Excessive humidity can also damage your home and your belongings. Fortunately, you don’t have to live with humidity in your home if you follow the advice below.
Benefits of Lowering Your Home’s Humidity
Lowering the humidity in your home can benefit you in a number of ways. First of all, it can improve your personal comfort, which is a huge benefit on its own. Secondly, it can help control the moisture in your home that eventually leads to paint, wood, and siding damage. Thirdly, it can help prevent the growth of mold and mildew, which is not only harmful to the air you breathe but it also gives off musty odors that get in your clothes and furnishings. Lowering your humidity levels can also help control pest infestations since many types of pests are attracted to humid, moist areas. Finally, lowering your humidity can also help improve the energy efficiency of your air conditioner since it won’t be working to cool off a humid place.
Ways of Reducing Humidity in Your Home
Now that you know the benefits of reducing humidity in your home, you just need to know how to go about doing it. Fortunately, there’s a couple of different ways you can try to do just that:
Use Your Air Conditioner Correctly
Believe it or not, the way you use your air conditioner could impact the amount of humidity in your home. Air conditioners can help reduce the amount of humidity in your home when they are used to filter the air the right way. When you set the fan on your air conditioner to automatic rather than on, your unit responds as needed to humidity. If it’s set to run all the time, your air conditioner ends up refiltering the humidity throughout your home. You might also want to consider investing in an air conditioner that has a variable-speed air handler so that you can better control the airflow.
Vents and Dehumidifiers
Make sure that you have vents installed in your kitchen and bathrooms. These are the primary areas of the home where moisture tends to gather and where it’s most likely to get humid, so having vents in those areas help draw humidity from the home. Having a dehumidifier installed in your home also combats humidity, so consider investing in a good humidifier as well.
Seal Cracks and Leaks
Seal any cracks and leaks around your home to prevent humidity from getting in. Consider covering the dirt floors in the crawl spaces of your home with a plastic vapor barrier and seal your ducts. Also, make sure to keep the drip pans and drain lines of your air conditioner cleaned and free from dirt, dust, and other debris.
Reducing humidity in the home takes work, however, it’s well worth it to significantly impact the amount of humidity in your home and improve your quality of life.
American Home Inspections provides home inspection services including radon testing and thermal imaging to Middle Tennessee. Contact us to schedule your inspection!