Posted: 8/9/2009 1:28:45 PM EDT
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Alright, one week and the cement floor in the shop is turning dark with the humidity.
HOW do I control it? The little Kenmore dehumidifier is NOT cutting it... Help - ideas? Thanks V OUT |
| this is my 2 cents worth. I went to a conference a few yrs ago, where they discussed a water pipe that broke at the UW stevens point. They discussed how fast mold can occur and how they didn't realize this until after the event. Basically any thing over 55% you are at a much higher risk for mold formation and it forms very fast. They then discussed how they used this information when another event occured at another campus. Instead of waiting, they got fans, dehumidifiers and a company to come in and get rid of the moisture and get it under control ASAP. So what does this have to do with your home, well for me it meant keeping the humidity below 55% is important to prevent formation of mold. If your small house dehumidifier isn't working then the advice of a whole house dehumidifier is excellent in my opinion. Another option is to insulate your basement and find cause of moisture very thoroughly if this is possible because it sounds like your source of this problem is beyond what a humidifier is going to help with. |
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Quoted:
this is my 2 cents worth. I went to a conference a few yrs ago, where they discussed a water pipe that broke at the UW stevens point. They discussed how fast mold can occur and how they didn't realize this until after the event. Basically any thing over 55% you are at a much higher risk for mold formation and it forms very fast. They then discussed how they used this information when another event occured at another campus. Instead of waiting, they got fans, dehumidifiers and a company to come in and get rid of the moisture and get it under control ASAP. So what does this have to do with your home, well for me it meant keeping the humidity below 55% is important to prevent formation of mold. If your small house dehumidifier isn't working then the advice of a whole house dehumidifier is excellent in my opinion. Another option is to insulate your basement and find cause of moisture very thoroughly if this is possible because it sounds like your source of this problem is beyond what a humidifier is going to help with. please tell me more about this whole house dehumidifier... does the AC not do enough to dehumidify the home in the summer? my basement has the small unit running balls to the wall, well its on half the time if i had to guess... and that works fairly well for all intents and purposes. i do NOT want mold though, as my grandparents have mold and it is like a cockroach.... cant kill it short of nuking the site from orbit! |
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The ones you want to look at are stand-alone units, they are appx 2/3's the size of your furnace and have a filter on the top of them.
Yes air conditioners do well at dehumidifiing the house, but only where you have cold air returns. Rarely are there enough return ducts in a basement to sufficiently curculate the air, plus since the basement is much more humid, the AC would need to run much more than needed simply to dehumidify the basement, you would freeze the upstairs. The whole house unit is controled by a humidistat and will keep the humidity where you set it. Bob |
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The OP mentioned 'shop' in his original post. That said, I took the area of concern to be an out-building, or possibly an attached garage.
It has been my experience that a good deal of out-buildings and attached garages have slabs that were not properly prepared. ALL of my buildings with a concrete floor have a double vapor barrier under the concrete. This in itself does wonders on cutting down the humidity. My neighbor omitted the vapor barrier when he poured his shop (out-building) floor. In recent days his floor has been wringing wet with moisture, while my floors are bone dry and the humidity is in the 50-55% range. |
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Here's what I bought:
Dehumidifier Price is down a little bit. They actually had a local distributor, so I went to pick it up. Didn't pay shipping OR sales tax. Since I don't have a drain hole in my basement, I opted to buy the pump for it, so it'll pump the moisture it extracts into the laundry sink. |