Environmental Issue & Sick Building Syndrome Blog

Both high and low levels of humidity can cause problems with health and your home.
Ideally, the humidity in your home should be between 30 and 50 percent to avoid problems.

Here are just a few of the issues associated with high humidity in the home:

• Stuffy and uncomfortable air.
• Clammy skin.
• Unpleasant musty odors.
• Problem with mildew in your bathroom and on windows.
• Mold growing  in  damp areas, like basements, crawl spaces bathrooms.
• health problems, particularly respiratory and infection problems.
• Discoloration, damage or fuzzy growth on carpet, furnishings, cardboard,clothing.

And here are just a few of the issues associated with low humidity in the home:

• Dry or cracking skin, especially on areas like your hands and feet.
• Chapped lips, itchy eyes
• Wooden furniture, doors and items like musical instruments crack, separate

A Hygrometer is the tool to test your humidity in your home.

 A hygrometer is simply a device that measures the relative humidity in the air. A portable hygrometer can be used in any room in your home. Some have multiple sensors so you can monitor the humidity in several areas of your home with only one hygrometer.

Many of the better temperature/weather stations are inexpensive ways to track and monitor humidity in order to know when to add or remove moisture. These usually cost about $50.00 and are available on line and in most retail stores

There are many very good quality hygrometers available in the price range between $100.00 and $600.  For a good selection of professional grade instruments to monitor humidity:    http://inspectorshop.net/product-category/moisture-meters


From Wikipedia  

A hygrometer /ha?'gr?m?t?r/ is an instrument used for measuring the water vapor in the atmosphere. Humidity measurement instruments usually rely on measurements of some other quantity such as temperature, pressure, mass or a mechanical or electrical change in a substance as moisture is absorbed. By calibration and calculation, these measured quantities can lead to a measurement of humidity. Modern electronic devices use temperature of condensation (the dew point), or changes in electrical capacitance or resistance to measure humidity differences. The first crude hygrometer was invented by the Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci in 1480 and a more modern version was created by Swiss polymath Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1755.

The maximum amount of water vapor that can be held in a given volume of air (saturation) varies greatly by temperature; cold air can hold less mass of water per unit volume than hot air. Most instruments respond to (or are calibrated to read) relative humidity (RH), which is the amount of water relative to the maximum at a particular temperature expressed as per cent

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