Living with mold or dampness can be harmful to everyone at home and can trigger allergies. They also reduce the shelf life of medications, making them ineffective quickly. The excess moisture can also cause severe damage to the structure of your home, including the ceiling, walls, and floors. They fog up windows and damage the furniture. They generally reduce the lifetime of materials used in the construction.
Similarly, living in a dry air environment comes with its own set of health difficulties. It can cause itchy dry skin, throat, and eyes and allergies. Therefore, you need to have the right humidity level indoors, which is anywhere between 30 and 50% of relative humidity. Anything higher than 50% would mean there is an excess of moisture, and anything lower than 30% would mean that there is not enough moisture.
Performance of Your HVAC Unit
The air indoors can be uncomfortable even if your house comes with a central air conditioner or HVAC. The HVAC may not re-circulate the cool and dry (A.C. treated) air to the basement during hot and humid summer months. Your basement must have a return vent to re-circulate air.
Even when the HVAC doesn’t run during the fall and spring seasons, damp air can build up inside your basement. Unless your basement is well insulated, it’s natural for moisture to seep into basement air through the foundation. Other reasons that cause an increase in the humidity level include incorrect installation of plastic glazed windows, the dew point’s location of room levels, not enough heat insulation of exterior walls, insufficient ventilation, etc.
Whole-house Dehumidifiers
While compact and portable dehumidifiers may be easy to move from room to room, they are not as energy-efficient as whole-house dehumidifiers. The whole-house unit can automatically control humidity throughout your home, as it can be installed with your HVAC unit. They remain out of sight and are quiet when in operation.
Whole-house Humidifier
The whole house humidifier, also known as a furnace humidifier, can be connected to your home’s duct system. It can add a controlled degree of moisture to the air drawn in and pushed out by a fan in the duct system and distributed throughout the house.
HVAC units need to get installed by professionals with or without add-on units to maintain the humidity balance. Naturally, you need to have a contract with reliable companies that have built a solid reputation in your area. Finding a company that helps with the installation and offers scheduled maintenance services would be ideal.