Construction Moisture Control
Tight home + winter requires dehumidification
There’s a lot of moisture in a new house: concrete curing and wood drying, not to mention the wet trades — drywall, painting, tiling. Since the FHB House is so tight (0.4 ACH50) and it’s winter, we have to dehumidify the air so the wood flooring, doors, and other woodwork will be stable once they are installed.
I’ve been running two dehumidifiers constantly for three weeks. At first, the units were pulling 10 gal. of moisture a day out of the house. Now we’re down to about five gal. per day — about equal to the moisture we’re putting in between drywall, painting, and tile work.
I monitor the relative humidity with a digital psychrometer. The house is pretty steady at 48%. I’d like to see that down around 40%, so we’ll keep the dehumidifiers going.
We empty the buckets a couple times a day and use the water for cleaning grout and mixing joint compound.
