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Reduce or prevent moisture in your home with these 6 easy steps
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- Stop all rain-water paths into your home. Make sure your roof is in good condition and caulk around all your windows and doors. You can also keep rainwater away from your basement by making sure that all water coming off your roof is directed away from your house. Sprinkler systems should also be well adjusted to insure that they are not spraying your house or soaking the ground directly next to your home.
- Proper Ventilation. Ventilate your home to remove the moisture that results from human activities within your home, such as breathing, bathing, cooking, etc. You especially need to vent your kitchen and bathrooms. Be sure that all vents go directly outside, and not to your attic, where the moisture can cause problems. Remember that a vent does not work unless you turn it on.
- Air circulation When you are venting to remove moisture, you should also think about where the replacement air will come from, and how it will get into your house. As we seal up our homes to save energy, we need to replace these uncontrolled air pathways with energy-efficient pathways. Air-to-air heat exchangers can keep the indoor air at a healthy moisture level without increasing your energy costs.
- Seal up drafts sites It is very important to seal up all air-leakage paths between your living spaces and other parts of your building structure. Measurements have shown that air leaking into walls and attics carries significant amounts of moisture.
- Plan a moisture escape path. Some moisture will always be present in your home. You can help this moisture escape with well-planned ventilation or by careful selection of your building materials. Using a dehumidifier to reduce moisture levels in your home can help you in removing unwanted moisture from the air.
- Vapor barriers reduce moisture diffusion through your walls, floors, and ceilings. This is relatively easy to do when building a new house, but there are a few things that you can do for existing houses as well. The kind of vapor retarder you should use, and where you put it, depends on whether moisture is more likely to be moving into or out of your house.
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