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How Can a Whole-Home Dehumidifier Benefit You?

June 7, 2016

During warm weather, you may experience discomfort, musty odors, and other problems in your Des Moines home due to high humidity. Whole-home dehumidification can help you eliminate these problems. Let's look at how it can impact your home and how you should install a whole-home dehumidifier.

Advantages of Dehumidification

  • Greater Comfort - When the humidity in your home is high, the rate at which sweat evaporates from your body reduces. Your body's natural cooling mechanism stops working effectively, making you feel more uncomfortable than other days at the same temperature. Dehumidification maintains your home's humidity at much lower levels, allowing you to be more comfortable.
  • Improved Health - High humidity promotes the growth of mold, mildew, dust mites and bacteria. Whole-home dehumidification helps you protect your family's health by keeping indoor humidity at levels that don't support the growth of allergens. It also eases the severity of some asthma and allergy symptoms.
  • Energy Savings - The lower humidity levels achieved by a whole-home dehumidification system allows a higher thermostat setting without downgrading comfort. This saves energy. The dehumidifier also eases the strain on your air conditioner, helping it function more efficiently.

How to Install a Whole-Home Dehumidifier
Ideally, your home's relative humidity should be between 45 and 50 percent. If it's above this range, you should consider installing a dehumidifier. For a whole-house dehumidifier to work effectively, you should hire an HVAC technician who frequently installs such systems. The unit is typically placed in an attic, basement or mechanical closet. It is usually tied to the main return of a home's heating and cooling system. It removes moisture from the air and cycles the drier air back to the air handler. A whole-house dehumidifier must be sized to match your home. Unit size is measured in terms of the number of pints of moisture it's capable of removing within a 24-hour period. With a whole-home dehumidifier, your home not only becomes more comfortable but also healthier and more energy efficient.

For more information on whole-home dehumidifiers, contact us at Lozier Heating & Cooling. We've served the Des Moines area since 1906. Our goal is to help educate our customers in the greater Des Moines, Iowa area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). Credit/Copyright Attribution: "gpointstudio/Shutterstock"