S01E15 - Dry and Healthy: Why Ditching Humidification Can Improve Your Home

Transcript

Welcome to Moose Tales. I'm Jon with Two Moose Home Inspections, and I have some short home inspection topics that I've been holding on to for a while. So, let's dive right in.

We have a long format video on YouTube about mold and the issues that it presents or maybe the issues that it doesn't present. But that's not what we're going to be talking about.

We're going to be talking about is condensation and relative humidity inside of the house and how, yes, that can lead to mold. And mold, of course, is bad and rot is bad, and decay and all kinds of corrosion is bad. But a lot of this all stems from relative humidity, the dew point and the temperature of things inside of your home.

And so, if we can control that, then your house is going to be a lot healthier for you to be living in as well as for the components to last a very long time inside of your house. Now, yes, mold is a bad thing. Mold only grows in the Goldilocks zone. If it's too wet, the mold doesn't grow.

If it's too dry, the mold doesn't grow. If it's just right, then the mold grows.

But there are other things that can happen, such as staining of products and materials or corrosion of metals that aren't necessarily considered mold, but they are damaging to the house. And how does this occur?

In the most basic terms, relative humidity is the amount of water the air can hold at a given temperature, and it's represented as a percentage. Now, it's not very easy to follow relative humidity and what that actually means and how that makes me feel.

But what we can derive from the relative humidity is the dew point, and that's a little bit easier to understand. The dew point is the point at which water vapor that is in the air will then condense and you'll be able to see water droplets on surfaces. And so, if a surface is colder than the dew point, then you're going to see that water condensing on that surface and that is going to lead to damage, rot, mold, whatever it may be.

And that's something that we want to avoid. So how do we go about avoiding that?

We live in a high alpine environment, and some would say that it is an arid climate and so it's very dry where we are. So why would we have to worry about humidity in our houses? Well, just by existing in breathing, we're introducing water vapor into the air. Whenever we take a hot shower, whenever we boil pasta, those are all ways in which water vapor is getting into the air.

But another way is people will use humidifiers, either a standalone small humidifier next to them, you know, whenever they're laying down in bed, or maybe they're going to have a whole house humidifier to try to make the house a little bit more comfortable and less dry.

Now, the problem with this is that you may have proper relative humidity inside of the house where you say, okay, this is the relative humidity. It's going to be comfortable at this percentage and everything is great. And that's great that everything's great except for the fact that we live in a high alpine environment. And so, what does that mean?

That means that we get really, really cold nights and we get really, really cold winters. And so, what surfaces in our house are going to be cold. The surfaces are going to be the windows that are around the house, the door jams, maybe the rim joist, possibly even the cold-water pipes because of how cold our water is coming from our utility.

And so, all of those cold surfaces could potentially be below the dew point based on the humidity inside of your house. And if that is the case, then we're going to have water condensing on those surfaces.

So, what does that look like?

If you see a floor joist or cold wall that looks like it's sweating, the water is not coming from those surfaces. The water is actually landing on those surfaces from the hot, humid air condensing onto that cold surface. You might even see it around your windows. That picturesque,

frozen outside of the window.

All that is just condensation caused by the dew point.

So, whenever a surface is too cold, then you're going to have condensation on that surface, which is going to result in damage and will eventually result in the decay of that particular material or the growth of mold, which in fact is decaying.

That particular material.

So, what can you do? Well, don't use a humidifier in your house. That's a good step, number one. A good step number two would be to actually monitor and track the temperature of surfaces and have a determination of how cold does my coldest window get? How cold does my coldest wall get? Because the reality is, is that water vapor also pushes through the drywall to the exterior and inside of your walls.

I can almost guarantee that you have some amount of mold growth because that's just the way things are. And should you be concerned? Not really. Again, watch that long format video about mold. But what I'm getting at is that if you can humidify the space, then you're going to be great. Now you can play the game of Do I have the perfect amount of relative humidity?

Am I keeping my dew point at a specific temperature so that way my cold surfaces?

aren't going to condense water vapor on them? Sure. Maybe if you want to play that game or you can just understand, hey, I live in an arid climate and I'm going to keep it that way because the amount of energy and effort and risk associated with having whole house humidification is definitely just not worth it for most people because you probably aren't going to stay on top of it enough and you could very, very much easily damage your entire

house, not even talk about microbial growth that is going to grow on a humidifier for a whole house humidifier and all the issues that can happen inside the ductwork. But that's a that's a story for a whole other time.

all I'm trying to say is that if you have a whole house humidifier and you're not keeping track of relative humidity, dew point and the coldest surfaces inside of your house, then you probably have a higher mold count and probably more deterioration to building products than the average homeowner.

In addition, dust mites thrive in higher relative humidity. So, you probably have some indoor air quality issues that you may not be aware of. So just don't humidify your house. That's a Pod.