The Benefits of a Dehumidifier in Winter

With colder months approaching most of us will be switching the central heating on and turning the thermostat up.  This makes our homes cosy but it doesn’t necessarily change the moisture content of the air within our home which in some cases may not be ideal. The ideal relative humidity of a home is around 50-55%. If you dry wet clothes on clothes horses or radiators, or your bathroom or kitchen has no ventilation or you have a leak in the roof or chimney breast, the humidity of the air will increase. You’ll be able to see that you have a problem with humidity if you see water condensation on the inside of your windows or you begin to see mould growing on damp walls. Basements are particularly prone to dampness.

Benefits of dehumidifiers

• If you have a problem with dampness it can also manifest itself in health problems as dampness can exacerbate asthma and breathing problems due to the spores in the mould. All in all, excessive moisture in your home or place of work is not ideal for you or the property. One of the ways to extract moisture and bring humidity to a safe level is to use a dehumidifier.

• They are efficient to run. They cost about 10-12 pence per hour for 1 KW of electricity so an estimate of the cost of running one per hour continuously is about 3-4 pence an hour. This is not a lot of money to improve your health and stop asthma attacks which can be very nasty.

• Clothes can be dried using a dehumidifier thereby removing the need for a tumble drier. Hanging clothes in a room with a dehumidifier running with the door shut can dry clothes quickly. This means that your home doesn’t look like a washroom with clothes hanging on every radiator.

• Dehumidifiers increase the temperature of a room by as much as 5-10 degrees so in winter this is appealing. Perhaps not as appealing in summer.

• They are portable and can be moved to different rooms depending on requirements.

• Larger dehumidifiers are ideal for commercial premises which are prone to dampness and wood rot such as furniture showrooms, hair salons, cellars, caravans and boats.

• They are very useful when there has been a flood or other water catastrophe as they can efficiently pull water from the air and enable the property to dry out quickly. Perhaps you don’t need a dehumidifier until a disaster occurs; in that case, hiring a dehumidifier makes sense.

• The reduction in humidity makes the room less hospitable to dust mites which mean that there is less dust and also fewer irritants in the air to cause skin irritations.

Dehumidifiers have a lot of benefits and they are useful to have around so buying a small portable  one can make a lot of sense as they are easy to store. For those big disasters such as floods and burst pipes, hiring an industrial dehumidifier can reduce the length of time that the premises in out of action.

CAS Hire has a huge range of small and industrial dehumidifiers available for hire and for sale. Offices throughout the UK.