Humidity advice..?

[sandman1600]

.

As others have mentioned, do what you can to fix any issues that could cause penetrating moisture (bad drains, etc); maintain ventilation in the home (be willing to have windows on the latch or vents open even if it means losing some heat); and as a precaution, use a dehumidifer in winter. I use a dehumidifier in winter for an hour a day - cheap efficient one and it helps take the edge of moisture levels in a colder house in a very damp climate.

Thanks for that. I was really just looking for pointers as to what could be the cause and whether we should be worried so the information pretty much everyone has given has been great.

Everything I’ve looked at online suggests the humidity we’re seeing is too high and it generally feels unpleasant hence looking for some guidance.

The humidity in winter when we’ve got heating on generally seems better when the rooms are warmer.

Again, thanks for the info. We definitely have food for thought now.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I find humidity/temperature meters really useful, they're not a breadmaker! Probably irrelevant to someone in a newbuild, but can be very useful to someone in an older house, especially as the damp-proofing wasn't as thorough in the old days so you have less protection against outside factors such as groundwater levels, cracked drains etc.

Our previous house was ridiculously damp, 70%+, sometimes upper 80s. I was alerted to this by a meter, although there was black mould in some places, e.g. in corners behind furniture. It turned out that it was flooding under the floor when it rained heavily, then taking weeks to dry out again. I found the source of the problem and fixed it. I may have noticed the mould without a meter later, but it was a useful second opinion that there was definitely an issue.

These days I bought a number and keep one in most rooms. They're decent ones, the first thing I did was stick them all in the same place for a day to stabilise and checked they read alike. They're useful. The absolute reading isn't the point - this does change with the weather. But what's useful is to see any differences between rooms. Our place is a lot better than the previous one but there's definitely an issue in two rooms.

Yes, RH is temperature dependent. If air with a given humidity cools down then it will become a higher relative humidity as a result of the cooling - without adding any more water. But you can allow for this by checking the temperature too, on the same screen. If both are wildly different then it may be just temperature. If temperature is similar but RH is different then it may be an issue.

I'm currently using a dehumidifier in the winter, but this is more of a patch than a solution. My aim is to eventually rule out things that may be causing the damp - e.g. reducing the ground level outside, improving ground drainage, replacing drains, replacing the underfloor water supply pipes. This isn't going to happen next week, so it's useful to get a feel of things now so that I can check if things improve.

 

[sandman1600]

I'm currently using a dehumidifier in the winter, but this is more of a patch than a solution. My aim is to eventually rule out things that may be causing the damp - e.g. reducing the ground level outside, improving ground drainage, replacing drains, replacing the underfloor water supply pipes. This isn't going to happen next week, so it's useful to get a feel of things now so that I can check if things improve.

These are definitely things we’ll be looking into but I think in the short term I think we need to get a dehumidifier just to make the atmosphere more pleasant.