Anytime you strive for home comfort, you need to talk about both cooling and dehumidification, especially in the Midwest where high humidity turns our hot summers into steam baths. If you don't have a plan to reduce humidity, your home may cool off, but it will still feel clammy and damp. Fortunately, homeowners have tools at their disposal to effectively reduce humidity.
Tips for Home Dehumidification
- Make sure your home has effective ventilation, particularly in rooms that get more humid than others. This typically include bathrooms, kitchens and finished basements. Run exhaust fans during moisture-producing activities such as showers and stovetop cooking, and check to make sure exhaust fans are expelling moist air outside.
- Use ceiling fans to supplement home cooling. The moving air not only cools you but also removes moisture from your skin.
- When the weather is nice, open up windows to flush stale, muggy air out of the house.
- Ensure attic ventilation meets minimum standards, and make sure the attic floor is well sealed and insulated. Muggy, hot air that collects in the attic can negatively impact comfort throughout the house.
- Don't stay in the shower longer than necessary. A long, hot shower will steam up the bathroom so much that the air in that area will stay muggy for hours afterward. Use low-flow shower heads, since less water results in less steam.
- Vent the clothes dryer out of the house.
- If you have problem with high humidity throughout your home, consider a whole-house solution. A dehumidifier that ties into your home's HVAC system and expels moisture via the home's plumbing lines is a great option.
- When outdoor humidity levels are high, run the A/C as much as possible. If your system's well maintained and properly sized for your home, it will cool and dehumidify.
- Avoid turning down the air conditioning temperature more than you really need it to be. Latent moisture in cold indoor air is more noticeable than at moderately cool temperatures.
For more tips on how to reduce humidity in your Fort Wayne home, please contact us at Hartman Heating & Air Conditioning.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in New Haven, Indiana and surrounding Fort Wayne area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about humidity and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
Credit/Copyright Attribution: “iQoncept/Shutterstock”