The Clean Air Act Blog: Posts Tagged ‘Dehumidifiers’

How Do Your Air Conditioner And Dehumidifier Work Together Against Humidity in Fall?

Friday, September 5th, 2014

The way your air conditioner cools your home is by removing both heat and humidity. Humidity holds heat, so simply cooling the air doesn’t achieve the cool, dry feeling you need to be comfortable. While fall is on the way, we still have our hot, humid days here, and one of the best ways to defeat the humidity is with a whole-home dehumidifier. A whole-home dehumidifier installed into your home can offer a number of benefits. As with any repair, installation or upgrade to your AC, it’s important to always hire professionals, like the ones at Clean Air Act.

 Seamless Integration

Room dehumidifiers can provide a small amount of relief from indoor humidity, but to truly remove it throughout your home, it’s best to install a whole-home dehumidifier. A dehumidifier can be seamlessly added to your existing air conditioning system, and operates with the regular cycling of your AC.

 How Does a Dehumidifier Help?

A whole-home dehumidifier removes excess humidity from your air before it enters your system. Excess humidity is moisture, so this moisture is removed and sent outside your home before it can become part of your air flow. This reduces any extra work your AC would have to do to remove the excess humidity.

 What Are the Benefits of a Whole-Home Dehumidifier?

There are several important benefits to adding a dehumidifier to your air conditioning system:

  • Better comfort levels – humidity makes everything feel sticky, and when humid air is cooled without proper dehumidification, it can feel cold and clammy. By removing the excess moisture, the air will feel as it should: cool and dry.
  • Increased energy efficiency – having a dehumidifier reduces the amount of work your AC has to do. When your AC works less, it uses less energy, which can reduce your energy usage.
  • Better health – moist environments are perfect for mold and mildew, dust mites and other contaminants to thrive. By reducing the moisture level with a dehumidifier, you can reduce problematic allergens and increase your indoor air quality.

Excess humidity can cause health problems, damage household goods and strain your air conditioning. One of the best solutions is to install a dehumidifier in your home. Call Clean Air Act today and schedule your dehumidifier installation in Portland, OR with one of our experts.

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Why Choose a Whole Home Dehumidifier?

Monday, January 7th, 2013

If you want to be truly comfortable in your Portland home you must do more than just maintain comfortable temperature levels. You must also do all that you can to improve and maintain the quality of the air that you breathe. A big mistake that many homeowners make when it comes to the indoor air quality in their homes is to convince themselves that a certain problem with their air quality is too minor or unimportant to do anything about. Other times they simply choose the wrong tool for the job. At The Clean Air Act we want to help you make your home a more comfortable, safer place to live.

Excessively moist air is one great example of a serious problem that many homeowners do not handle in the most effective way possible. A lot of homeowners will purchase a standalone, single room dehumidifier in order to resolve the humidity problem in their homes. A whole home dehumidifier, though, is a much better solution for your humidity problems.

Excess moisture in the air that you breathe is a more serious issue than many people realize. Yes, it does lead to stuffy, uncomfortable air. Overly humid air can also cause wood rot, though, as well as promote the growth of biological pollutants such as mold.

There is simply no way for a single room dehumidifier to remove enough moisture from your home to eliminate these risks if you have too much humidity in the air. It may make the room that it is in more comfortable, but chances are that if one room’s air is too damp there are other points in your home that suffer from the same issue.

A whole home dehumidifier is installed directly into your home heating and cooling system. That means that you do not need to have multiple dehumidifiers littering your home. Not only are whole home dehumidifiers much more convenient than single room devices, they are much more effective.

If you are concerned about humidity levels in your Portland home, contact the indoor air quality experts at The Clean Air act. Our whole home dehumidification systems and services can help you breathe better, higher quality air. Contact The Clean Air Act to schedule service today.

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How to Get Adequate Air Filtration with a Ductless Mini Split

Monday, December 10th, 2012

Are you concerned about indoor air quality in your Portland area home? Many homeowners question the air filtration capabilities of a ductless mini split as opposed to a forced air system. While you get cleaner air without the use of air ducts, a forced air system does draw in and recycle the air so that there is some filtration; however, dirty ductwork can compromise this benefit.

Call The Clean Air Act to learn more about how to get adequate air filtration with a ductless mini split. First, here are some factors to keep in mind.

Air Filters

All ductless mini split systems come with a hypo-allergenic air filter. It is important to change these once a month during the heating or cooling season. If you only have a ductless mini split AC system but another type of heating system, then you will need to change the filters on your heating system as needed.

Air Cleaners

You can also install electronic and mechanical air cleaners to help filter the air inside your home. These will help filter the air along with the ductless system’s filter. HEPA filters are not designed for standard home heating and cooling systems.

Humidifiers and De-humidifiers

While proper moisture control is important for indoor air quality, it is a good idea to speak with a Portland indoor air quality specialist to go over the different types of humidifiers and dehumidifiers work best with a ductless system.

If you would like to know more, contact The Clean Air Act for all your Portland OR indoor air quality needs.

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Does Humid Air Affect How AC Runs?

Friday, August 19th, 2011

You’ve probably heard a dozen times that humidity is removed by air conditioning. Unfortunately, the common assumption is that there is no inherent cost in allowing humidity to persist in their Canby home. But, did you know it costs significantly more to remove humidity from the air with air conditioning than with a dehumidifier? Here’s why.

Water Vapor in Your Air Conditioner

Consider the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of water by one degree – one BTU. However, to change water from liquid to steam, another 10 BTUs are required. So, imagine how much energy it takes to condense water vapor from the air (in the form of humidity) into a liquid. This is what your air conditioner does whenever it processes humid air. It takes about 1,050 BTUs to condense one pound of moisture in the air into liquid.

The cost of running your air conditioner strictly for dehumidification can be huge, especially considering the fact that humidity is heaviest in the morning and evening when you probably don’t need your air conditioner every day (at least not early and late in the summer). Imagine, the cost difference if you used a dehumidifier to remove 150 or more pounds of moisture per week and an air conditioner when needed just to remove 15-20.

Negative Impact on How it Runs

Another thing to consider is that humidity can actually put an extra burden on your air conditioner. While the system is designed to remove that liquid from the air and get rid of it through the cooling coil and condensate drain, every extra minute the system is running is a bigger burden on it. Of course it will do its job for a few years, but the extra running time will add up, not only on your electricity bill but eventually on the machine itself.

The added pressure will result in eventual breakdown of the system and a need for early replacement. The easiest solution is to purchase a dehumidifier. These run at a fraction of the energy level of a full AC system and work extremely well to remove humidity from your home. In fact, most air conditioners will only remove humidity after 20-30 minutes of continuous operation. For short cooling cycles, you may not even dehumidify the house. So a dehumidifier ensures higher levels of comfort all at a lower cost.

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Air Conditioners and Humidity: How do they coincide?

Friday, August 5th, 2011

Ever wonder why all of those air conditioners hanging out of people’s windows in Wilsonville are constantly dripping water on hot summer days? All they’re actually doing is disposing of the moisture they’ve removed from the indoor air. That’s right – air conditioners are dehumidifiers too.

When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. After all, you know how much more uncomfortable 90° is when the humidity’s up around 90% than when it’s closer to 60%. Of course, some air conditioners are better at removing moisture from the air than others, so you should definitely consider how well an air conditioner dehumidifies when evaluating your air conditioning options.

Why Humidity Matters

High humidity, even at lower temperatures is uncomfortable. But there are more reasons than simple comfort to want an air conditioner that reduces indoor humidity levels. For instance, high levels of humidity promote the growth and spread of several allergens like dust mites and mold spores. High indoor humidity can also cause problems for the wood fixtures and furnishings in your home.

The Importance of Proper Sizing

Most air conditioners do a decent job of controlling humidity indoors. But depending on the severity of your problem and the typical levels of humidity in your area during the summer months, you may want to pay special attention to each unit’s capabilities when evaluating your options.

An air conditioner’s ability to maintain proper humidity levels indoors has a lot to do with how well it’s matched to the size of your room as well. An air conditioner that’s too small likely won’t get the humidity or the temperature down to a comfortable level. On the other hand, that doesn’t necessarily mean that bigger is better.

In fact, an air conditioner that’s too large for the space you’re using it to cool will have a hard time bringing down the humidity level. Sure, you’ll wind up with a cold room, but that room will remain damp, making it no more comfortable than it was before the air conditioner was turned on.

For all of these reasons, it’s important to carefully evaluate your options when buying an air conditioner and make sure that the unit you buy is the right kind and size for the area you’re cooling. A little extra time spent researching your options will make your home infinitely more comfortable this summer.

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