There’s no doubt that Pensacola can be a beautiful place to live with all of its gorgeous beaches and outdoor activities. However, the humidity can feel unbearable at times and can have a negative effect on your ability to be comfortable while at home. Fortunately, we’re going to reveal our top tips for homeowners on how to handle Pensacola’s humid environment so that you can remain safe and comfortable inside your home.
How Humidity Affects Your Home
Having a high indoor humidity level can take a toll on the structural components of your home as well as your belongings. Such a high level of moisture creates the perfect environment for unwanted mold and mildew growth. This growth can cause premature deterioration of building materials by encouraging rotting. If you have wood furniture or wood floors, they’re going to be susceptible to rotting at high humidity levels.
Furthermore, excessive humidity can cause paint on your walls to start bubbling and flaking off. Your wallpaper will even start to peel down. The wooden studs that sit in your walls will swell up when moisture levels are high and lead to an outward motion of your drywall. This can cause too much pressure that will result in the cracking of your drywall or other material.
How Humidity Affects Your Comfort
High humidity affects more than just your home. It can also affect your overall health and well-being. When humidity levels are high, the growth of mold and mildew can lead to spores in the air that can aggravate your sinuses and lead to respiratory issues. Those who already suffer from a respiratory condition, asthma, or severe allergies will notice that their flare-ups seem to be much worse while they’re inside.
This high moisture content adversely affects the body’s ability to adequately cool itself during the hot summer season. Normally, the body will sweat to help cool itself down. Unfortunately, when humidity levels are too high, not as much of your sweat will be able to get absorbed into the air. This can leave you feeling excessively hot, stuffy, and uncomfortable because your body is still too warm.
How to Fix Indoor Humidity
One of the absolute best ways to fix indoor humidity issues is with a whole-home dehumidification system. This gets installed inside of your HVAC return ducting and works to treat all the air as it travels throughout your ductwork. Just like a portable dehumidifier, a whole-home dehumidification system will pull excess moisture out of the air and simply divert it down your drain. These systems are great for working alongside your regular cooling system to help better manage the humidity level in your home.
What Is a Good Indoor Humidity Level?
Most experts agree that the ideal range for indoor humidity should be between 30% and 50%. Anything higher, and you risk all the issues associated with high humidity like aggravated respiratory conditions and mold growth in your home. Anything lower, and you run into issues like sinus irritation and excessively dry skin.
When you have a whole-home dehumidification system, you can simply set your ideal humidity level on your thermostat and your system will work to attain it. It will automatically turn on your whole-home dehumidifier whenever the humidity level starts to rise to help combat that problem.
Seal Off Air Leaks
It’s very important that you ensure the inside of your home is properly sealed off from the outdoors. If there are gaps and leaks on your exterior walls, then you could be allowing humid outdoor air to seep into your home. Opt for checking around the door and window frames on your exterior walls to see if there’s any air leaking. If so, be sure to seal up those leaks with something like caulking or weather stripping.
Use Exhaust Fans Regularly
You should have exhaust fans in all of your bathrooms as well as in your kitchen. These are necessary to help divert humid air directly to the outdoors instead of allowing it to build up inside your home. It’s vitally important that you turn on these exhaust fans whenever you’re in these rooms so that you can prevent adding any excess humidity to your indoor air.
Reliable Indoor Air Quality Service
Bluewater Heating & Air offers reliable indoor air quality service for the Pensacola, FL area. We can also help with all your air purification and dehumidification needs. Call us today to schedule your next AC maintenance service appointment.
