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@lae
My house is cold and damp. It's autumn here in New Zealand and down here in the south it's about 10-15 degrees in the day and 2-7 at night. My house is a pretty standard 1950s Kiwi jobbie i.e. a furnished shed by UK standards - semi-detached bungalow, an inch of crumbly rockwool between the ceiling, single glazing, fireplace, and a heat pump (an air conditioner in reverse). It's also rented - I'll be living here for a couple of years but I don't want to put any real money into it.
I only heat the living room, and only in the evenings, but that's okay. I'm more bothered about the humidity... we have water droplets on the bedroom ceiling in the morning! I am concerned that my clothes (especially the very expensive down sleeping bags and alpine jackets) are going to get mouldy...
My thoughts are:
Heating. Seal up the living areas - the bedroom is off the living room, so I can put some weatherstrip around the door. I'm also thinking about making DIY double glazing, since the living room and bedroom have fucking massive windows. I have also discovered that open fireplaces are really rubbish at heating the house, so I will get an inflatable chimney damper since there is no point actually burning anything in it.
Dehumidifying. This is more complex.
The obvious solution is to buy a dehumidifier, however a) they are somewhat expensive to run but more importantly, b) they only work well if the air temperature is 20 degrees or so - my house, like most old Kiwi houses, is much colder than that.
Another solution is to open the doors and windows for 10-15 minutes. But it's pretty rainy and damp here in the autumn so I wonder if it'll actually introduce more moisture.
I also wonder how to dry clothes. It's often too damp to dry them outside and we don't have a tumble drier. Currently I dry them with a fan heater in the hallway, with a window open, but it's bloody expensive.
What are everyone's thoughts on this?