Home Too Humid? Why Your AC May be to Blame
Nobody likes to come back to a muggy, humid home, but you can’t control the weather, right? Actually, if you have an appropriately sized and functioning AC system, your humidity levels can be regulated effectively.
Conversely, an AC unit that is not working or a bad fit for your home can cause heightened moisture in the air. Before you call an Atlanta cooling service, be sure it’s a humidity issue, determine the cause, and look for possible solutions.
Here are a few ways to resolve a humid home.
Detecting the Problem
Sometimes it is hard to determine whether your home is humid or if you are just feeling a little clammy. Luckily, there are a few tell-tale signs you can look for to confirm that you are experiencing high moisture levels.
Wood floors are a great way to detect the level of moisture in your home. Wood is like a sponge with its ability to soak up water. Upon absorption, even the best installed wood floors will expand. This oversaturation results in wood cupping, buckling, or distortion. The stagnant water in the wood produces an unpleasant mildew smell that’s hard to ignore.
Like the water trapped in wood floors, damp air can remain confined within your home. It’s especially susceptible to entrapment if you keep your windows closed or have little airflow. This trapped air will often cause a layer of fog on the interior of your windows signifying a humid residence.
Identifying the Cause
There can be a multitude of factors causing humidity in the home, but the most common one is an improperly sized air conditioning unit. An oversized unit will cool your home too quickly and a unit that’s too small will struggle to cool your home, leading to accelerated mold growth.
AC units use an evaporation coil to cool the air cycling through the system. If you have a massive AC in a small space, it cools the air down faster than necessary, prohibiting the unit from finishing its process.
An excess of air flow cools the air too quickly, resulting in high moisture. Alternatively, not enough airflow from a small unit reduces circulation. Moist air falls into corners and areas with low airflow. When then moisture becomes stagnant in one of these areas, mold growth begins.
Solving the Problem
There are a couple of reasonable solutions if you find yourself with a system that is causing excessive humidity in your home. The optimal solution depends on the condition of your current cooling unit.
For modern or well-maintained units, a whole-home humidifier might be the most inexpensive and functional solution. However, if your unit is malfunctioning, it may not be worth the investment of a humidifier. Consider replacing your old model with a newer, more efficient one.
Don’t find yourself with clammy skin and deteriorating floors due to an improperly sized AC system, solve your problem today by contacting Anytime Heating, Cooling and Plumbing of Marietta. Call 770-504-5881 to have a professional evaluate your current system.
