How Can a Dehumidifier Help Your Home?

With summer just around the corner, the time has come to get your air conditioner into fighting shape. Temperature control is vital when the hotter months hit, and without reliable air conditioning, your home can turn into an oven very quickly. But the heat isn’t the only thing you need to worry about. There’s also the humidity, which can become stiflingly high in our neck of the woods, and creates a number of significant problems in the process. Air conditioners can crudely treat the issue, but there’s a much better solution out there: a whole-house dehumidifier installed into your HVAC system.

WHY IS HIGH HUMIDITY SO UNCOMFORTABLE?

Our bodies sweat as a means of cooling off. As the moisture evaporates off of our skin, it lowers our body temperature. But in instances of high humidity—when the relative humidity in the air is higher than 50% or so—then there’s too much ambient moisture in the air for evaporation to occur. The sweat stays on your skin, leaving you feeling clammy and gross. More importantly, your body won’t cool down, leaving you feeling hotter than you should and forcing your air conditioner to work all the harder to make up the difference. Beyond your own health and comfort, high humidity can foster the growth of mold and bacteria in your home. In the worst cases, it can even damage furnishings like wallpaper.

AIR CONDITIONERS AREN’T SET UP TO HANDLE THE PROBLEM

Air conditioners can deal with high humidity to a certain extent, since cooling the air naturally removes the moisture from it. As the temperature falls, the moisture vapor in the air shifts to liquid form, coalescing into droplets and removing itself from the air. This is why you get dew on the ground in the cool early hours of the morning.

The problem is that the air conditioner isn’t set up to deal with high humidity levels, so the control is imprecise at best. Furthermore, while air conditioners contain a drain system designed to collect and remove the condensate that naturally forms while it cools the air, that system can become overwhelmed by excessive humidity levels and even result in a shutdown. Indeed, the fact that it has to work harder to account for high humidity means that your monthly bills will go up and your system faces a greater chance of suffering a breakdown.

WHOLE-HOUSE DEHUMIDIFIERS TO THE RESCUE

Dehumidifiers cool the air the same way that air conditioners do, but they don’t require vent ventilation and they do so with the specific aim of removing excess moisture. That means they can be adjusted to deliver the humidity level that is most comfortable to you and can handle higher loads of humidity without a problem. In addition to making your home feel much more comfortable, they can ease the strain on your air conditioning system, lowering monthly bills and reducing the wear and tear on it.

For dehumidifier services in Manor, TX, call the pros at Intelligent Air Services today!