Owning your own home

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eskay in reply to @apc

If you theoretically replaced all the air in your house with outside air at 5 degrees at 80%RH and heated it to 20 degrees the RH would be 35% - I think.

I haven't checked the numbers but yes, that theory is correct. We have several large sealed environmental chambers at work and if you turn the humidity control off and raise the temperature you will see a drop in RH but that is a 1m3, sealed stainless steel chamber. As soon as you closed your windows, there would have been things increasing the amount of airborne water vapour.

Another calculator suggests that at 65%RH @ 20C makes the dew point 12 degrees. So if the external wall is 12 degrees there will be condensation (?)

Yes

Edit: Take all of your measurements with a very large pinch of salt.

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apc in reply to @eskay

I’d love to know what the things are increasing the airborne water vapour as I haven’t cooked today and I showered at the gym.

Said it a few pages back but maybe insulation could be part of the solution. External wall is always cold to touch (single brick) so under 12 degrees is going to be pretty common for that wall.

House being at 70%RH isn’t ever going to be ideal even with warmer walls.

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eskay in reply to @apc

I insulated external walls (internally) in my last couple of houses and it made a massive difference. The bathroom in my current house was awful but I now have a warm wall that never condensates. I lost about 100mm of floorplan but it was well worth it. Someone has done something similar in a bay window on the last couple of pages. It is something that can be done easily with basic DIY skills (plenty of guides on how to do it correctly online).

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