An overly humid home would not bode well for the health and comfort of people living there. According to one Environmental Protection Agency recommendation shared by House Digest, most homes should ideally have humidity levels between 30-50%.
If your own home’s humidity levels rise above this range, there could be a few warning signs: some subtle, others blatant (if, of course, you know your stuff about excessive humidity). Here are a few scenarios that could warrant you investing in a dehumidifier.
Your food goes stale suspiciously quickly
Perhaps you have noticed bread going hard after just one or two days, or you have only recently opened a box of crackers and they don’t feel as crisp as you were expecting when you bite into them. Similarly, your cookies could be discernibly damp shortly after the package was opened.
These can all be indicators that your home has a problem with high humidity — though you should probably hold out for some other, clearer-cut signs.
Condensation keeps forming on your windows
Some windows in a home can inevitably develop condensation on rainy days. However, you would have a major cause for concern if you keep seeing those pesky water beads on all of your windows when it hasn’t been raining.
Condensation results from excess moisture that, when moving from warm air and settling on cooler surfaces like window panes, turns into water droplets. If you fail to do anything about condensation, it can potentially inflict severe damage on your residential building’s structure.
Your home is recovering from a flood
Unfortunately, unlike yourself after a session spent in a swimming pool, a home that has only recently been emptied of floodwater can’t be expected to simply dry itself quickly.
So, if this whole scenario describes your own residence, it would be wise for you to get a dehumidifier with which you could speed up the drying process.
Bob Vila recommends a portable room dehumidifier for this purpose — and OnBuy offers desiccant dehumidifiers in portable form.
A musty, stale odor hanging in the air
This can be a sign that mould has formed indoors. Leaving members of your household exposed to mould for a long time can give rise to serious health effects — especially in people capable of severe allergic reactions.
If you do find mould in your home, arrange for a professional to completely destroy the mould spores so that you can then use a dehumidifier to prevent the mould from growing again.
The room feels hotter than it should do
There might be times when the room has felt strangely hot despite the thermostat giving you a different impression. This situation could betray the presence of high humidity — which, especially during the summer months, can make indoor spaces feel hotter than you would expect.
Running a dehumidifier in your own room is good for balancing out humidity and, as result, sparing you that awful sticky feeling you can end up with when you are sweating but high humidity is preventing your sweat from evaporating effectively.
