Get Your Humidity in Balance with Your HVAC

As this winter comes to a close, ask yourself a question. Have you noticed any new squeaks in your hard wood floors? If the answer is yes, you probably have a humidity imbalance in your home. You may say that you don’t even notice the squeaks in your floors, but allow this problem to continue and selling your home may become very difficult. Taking actions now to prevent further damage is easy and affordable. Not taking action will leave you with a costly repair on your hands once the problem gets out of hand.

Keeping Humidity in Balance isn’t Easy

Keeping humidity and temperature in balance is not as easy as you may think. The furnace dries out the air in the home during the winter, and sometimes the air conditioner cannot keep up with high humidity that occurs during the summer. Your HVAC system needs a little help. When the air is allowed to dry out, the wood in your floors also dry out and shrink. The excess moisture in the summer will cause the wood to swell and over the years the wood will become brittle and warped. Keeping the humidity between 35 and 55 % and the temperature in the home between 60 and 80 degrees will prevent this from happening.

Boost Air Circulation this Winter

Do you want to keep your home more evenly heated? Well, it’s easy! Simply run the furnace fan around the clock. In the summer we turn on a ceiling fan to circulate air in a room. When you turn your furnace fan on it does the same thing but for the entire home, and in a more subtle way. You won’t feel a breeze or a draft because the fan is circulating air. Instead, this fan helps even out the temperature from room to room and floor to floor. The heat will still turn on and off as needed but the fan will run continuously. When you do this in your home, you’ll find the house is much more evenly heated during even the coldest of winter days. As you circulate the air on a day like Thanksgiving all the heat and humidity created from cooking is circulated evenly through the house. This helps to eliminate cold spots and increase comfort.

Handling Humidity

Another benefit of running your furnace fan is increased humidity in the home. The winter months can suck all of the moisture out of the air in your home. Your skin and respiratory system will become parched and as a result, many homeowners invest in humidification systems. However, these units only circulate moisture when the furnace fan is running. Therefore, if the furnace fan is running around the clock, more moisture will be infused into the air of the home.

Trim the Fat from Your Energy Bills

Do high natural gas prices have you worried this winter. Well you are not alone! It seems like everyone is scrapping by these days, and those energy bills are only going to make things more difficult during this upcoming winter season. However, you can take a bite out of that high energy bill with a few simple ideas that will increase the efficiency of your home.

Small Investments to Help Save Energy:

• Programmable Thermostat: We recommend using a digital set back thermostat. This will let you automatically lower the temperature at night while you sleep yet wake up to a warm home. You can save as 12% on your gas bill if you use a 10 degree temperature roll back while you sleep. You can save even more if you use the setback mode during the day while you’re at work.