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| Humidity & Condensation in the house |
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HUMIDITY & CONDENSATION
Humidity and Condensation go hand in hand. Wherever there is humid air and a cold surface moisture will condense out of the air forming a mist or beads of water. High levels of condensation are generally a sign of a significant humidity problem. High levels of condensation mean that you are inviting mould and mildew growth into your home and the poor health that often follows from living in these conditions.
Humidity is the bane of many home owners. It causes discomfort and by encouraging the growth of moulds and mildew it can cause ill health. Living with fungal smells is unpleasant and costly in terms of replacing soft furnishings. Condensation is often the first sign of excessive humidity in your home. However mould and mildew will not be far behind if the conditions are right.
HUMIDITY & the 'COMFORT ZONE'
What is an acceptable level of humidity in a house or dwelling? It is certainly advisable to keep humidity in the range 30% to 70% if at all possible. But living and normal activity often make this difficult.
Breathing produces 1/4 cup of water in an hour.
Cooking by gas for 3 hours produces 3 pints of moisture.
Showering for 5 minutes releases about 1/2 pint of water into the air.
Having a hot bath releases up to 2 pints of airborne moisture.
Drying clothes produces up to 10 pints of airborne moisture (6lbs of spun washing in an unvented tumble dryer).
Adding between four - six pints of water to the air raises relative humidity for an initially dry house with an area of 1,000 square foot from 15 to 60 percent, assuming a constant temperature. It is not surprising that just a few days normal living shoots humidity levels to the point where windows can start acting as a dehumidifier with rivulets of condensation running down them. Possessing all round double glazing means that the moisture will just seek out other cold surfaces to condense on or remain airborne.
Sources www.braintree.gov.uk
CLOTHES DRYING
Clothes drying in winter can add as much airborne damp as all the other sources of humidity put together and in a modern sealed house that is a guaranteed recipe for unhealthy living, the presence of flecks of mould and a life plagued by coughs and colds particularly among children.
Why do many modern homes suffer from excessive humidity?
The answer lies in the way that modern building materials turn our homes into sealed boxes. Modern doors and windows are often surprisingly air tight. Home owners often seal over, or fill in, air brick style ventilation. The result can be your house being turned into a trap for stale and increasingly humid air.
GETTING RID of CONDENSATION
This is not easy if you are continually releasing large volumes of moisture into the house. The best way is to regularly and completely replace the air in the house with fresh air but only to do this on a dry day. However most people are reluctant to let out the heat energy that they have paid so much for particularly in winter. SolarVenti only operates when conditions are right and it can do good for your house. It automatically switches on when the sun shines and goes off when it is cloudy. It also warms the air by between 15 and 40 degrees Centigrade (dependent on the size of SolarVenti unit) which dramatically increases the drying capacity of the air.
Ineffective Conventional Dehumidifiers?
The average small Domestic electrically powered dehumidifiers are often surprisingly ineffective but if you think about how they work it is not that surprising. Many dehumidifiers are small machines that blow the stale air in your house past the equivalent of an ice cube or 2 or more ice cubes (as they get larger). Some of the moisture that comes into contact with the surface of the cooling device then condenses out into the water bucket.
By way of contrast SolarVenti dehumidifiers draw in fresh dry external air only on days when the air is dry (as regulated by the sun) and then warms this by varying degrees so that it has the power to dry out a house. This warmed fresh dry air is of sufficient volume to displace the moist air in your house through cracks, keyholes, chimneys, door jambs and trickle vents in modern windows.
One way to think of SolarVenti is as a "21st Century air brick". SolarVenti only pushes fresh air into your house on days when it is dry. I.e. when the sun is shining. It first warms the air so that it is not a source of cold draughts. Instead it is a source of pre-warmed healthy fresh air that is doing you and your energy bills a power of good. Dry air is much cheaper and quicker to heat than moist air. Other SolarVenti users have reported being able to reduce the settings on their heating systems after installing a SolarVenti
Bob Hickmott of Stone, Staffordshire was the first park home user to install a SolarVenti. He had a persistent high humidity problem in his park home. He acquired a humidity meter and it measured over 80% in his bedroom. This is a high and quite unhealthy level. He often had to throw clothing and sometimes bedding away as it became fungal and mildewed after such conditions.
Bob Hickmott had previously bought a conventional electrical dehumidifier but this was unable to get the humidity below 70%. He then purchased a Solarventi SV3, one of our smallest models, and astonishingly this reduced the humidity in his park home to 38% after only a few days. As Bob says his home is now properly dried out for the first time in years. It also costs him nothing to keep it dry run as the sun provides the power of the SolarVenti for free.
Narrowboat owners have had similar experiences and they too are astonished by the results of having just the smallest SolarVenti unit. See the letters on our customer references page.
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| Contact us |
Telephone:
01782 791572 or on
08458 736359 (Local rate from anywhere within the UK)
Fax:
Please call and request number
eMail:
info@solarventi.co.uk
Our new address is:
Unit 14A
Moorfields Industrial Estate
Cotes Heath
Stafford
ST21 6QY |
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| Products
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There are six products in the SolarVenti range. Under ideal sunny conditions the smallest unit, the SV2 has a minimum airflow of 20m³/Hour whilst the largest, the SV30 unit has a minimum airflow of 120m³/Hour.
The newest product, the SV30H Plus, is a hybrid version of the SV30 which additionally provides Solar Water Heating. |
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