Your air conditioner dehumidifies the air as a part of the cooling process. It does this because air with high humidity often feels warmer than it really is. By dehumidifying the air even just a little bit, your home can feel cooler without having to lower the thermostat temperature.
But sometimes your air conditioner doesn’t have quite enough power to balance humidity completely for your home. You may need to invest in a separate dehumidifier in Beavercreek, OR. Keep reading to learn more about the signs that your air conditioner needs some help dehumidifying the air in your home.
How ACs Dehumidify
When your air conditioner completes a cooling cycle, heat is absorbed by the refrigerant lines to channel outside. As part of this process, moisture from the air condenses down into droplets and moves away from your home via the condensate drain line.
Cooling cycles happen all day, every day, so moisture is consistently absorbed from the air and moved outside of your home. Eliminating this moisture from the air helps to balance humidity levels so your home feels cooler without having to lower the temperature even more. But, your home can be more humid than your air conditioner can handle.
Understanding Humidity
Experts suggest that healthy indoor humidity levels fall within the range of 30% to 50%. If your indoor humidity is consistently higher than 50%, you are facing a variety of risks, including sacrifices to overall comfort.
For example, high humidity levels can make it seem like your home is around 4° warmer than it really is. With managed humidity levels, your home can actually feel cooler than it really is, offering huge benefits when it comes to potential energy savings and indoor air quality.
Another risk of high humidity is mold growth, especially in dark places. Mold needs moisture to thrive, so when you lower the indoor humidity levels, you also help to improve your indoor air quality. There are always mold spores in the air, but you can prevent an infestation from developing by taking proactive steps.
Tips for Improving Humidity
The easiest recommendation for balancing humidity levels in your home is to invest in a whole-house dehumidifier. This system automates removing humidity so that you can customize how much humidity is actually and your home. You may find that you like slightly more or less humidity within that healthy range of 30 to 50%.
When you’re able to automate managing humidity, you take out a lot of the guesswork. Alternately, you might invest in a small, portable dehumidifier. If you do, keep in mind that you will have to move it around your home periodically and dump out the water it collects regularly. A whole-house solution takes less work on your part.
Keep in mind that if you think high humidity levels have already contributed to a mold problem, you need to address that separately. Lowering indoor humidity levels isn’t enough. We will need to help by treating the mold growth and eliminating the infestation alongside installing a dehumidifier.
Please call Sydni, our Office Extraordinaire, to schedule your next appointment! We will take care of you from there!