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Humidity in the home: causes and fixes

05.07.2021

Too much humidity in your home can be caused by several factors. Here are the main causes and how to get the right level of humidity in your house.

Optimal humidity levels at home: a summary of the causes and fixes

Creating and maintaining the right level of humidity in your home is very important for various reasons, and it is often an issue that is underestimated. Above all, checking the humidity of the air in your home is essential to protect the health of those living there.

In fact, as well as causing heat regulation problems and system maintenance issues, excessive humidity percentages can also lead to the formation of mould and fungus, and aid the proliferation of bacteria, mites and viruses, which can cause various types of allergies and respiratory problems.

It is therefore essential to know the ideal humidity percentages for domestic spaces and find out how to measure the humidity in your home. Doing so, you can get the right humidity in your home, protecting the health of those who live there.

What should the humidity of your home be and how can you combat too much humidity to make your home a healthier place to live? 

 

What is the ideal humidity of a house?

To achieve the optimal indoor climate, the humidity rates inside the house should rest between 40–45% or 55–60%, depending on the season.

Humidity of more than 60% aids the formation of mould and the spread of spores that can jeopardise people’s wellbeing and health. But even humidity percentages that are too low, i.e. below 40%, make the air too dry, which often causes the mucus in the respiratory tract to get drier, once again putting your health at risk.
To measure the humidity percentages in a house, all you need is a hygrometer, a tool specifically designed to detect humidity levels in the air and convert the values into a percentage.
 

The causes of excessive humidity

There are many possible causes of high levels of humidity in domestic contexts: ordinary human activity releases moisture – for example breathing and sweating – but humidity also comes from leaks and rising damp, which mostly involves the ground floor or basement levels that have large surfaces exposed to direct contact with the ground.

In any case, the biggest negative effect of high humidity rates is that buildings have a reduced ability to breathe.
 

How to maintain an optimal level of humidity in your home

The first step towards having constantly high-quality air in your house is to measure the humidity rates and, if they are too high or too low, identify the cause of the humidity imbalance so that you can take the appropriate action to solve the problem.
It is also an excellent idea to equip your domestic heating and air conditioning systems with solutions specifically designed to improve the indoor air quality, to enhance the place where you spend most time.

The most popular solution at the moment is to equip your house with radiant systems combined with air treatment systems to achieve optimal indoor air quality (IAQ) and control humidity with controlled mechanical ventilation (CMV) with heat recovery. A smart and effective way to:

Ventilate rooms adequately
Regulate humidity levels
Save energy consumption

Plus, air treatment dehumidifiers can be integrated into residential spaces thanks to convenient wall-recessed solutions or in false ceilings. They can also be combined with a wide range of accessories, designed and tailor-made to offer functional support to maintain an optimal and healthy indoor climate.