How You Can Be Affected by Indoor Humidity

Humidity is familiar to all residents of Orlando, but did you know that it can have effects on your health and your home’s integrity? Whether your indoor air is too damp or too dry, it might be affecting you more than you know. Here are some of the effects of mismanaged humidity, and how you can balance it out:

High Humidity

The summer months in Orlando can be oppressively hot and muggy. Humid air holds more heat than dry air, which is what causes the heat index of a given day to rise above the actual air temperature. And humidity also slows the evaporation of sweat from your body, which is your body’s major cooling mechanism. A bit of excess moisture in the air may not sound like a big deal, but it can lead to heat exhaustion and other complications.

Humid atmospheres also contribute to the growth of mildew, bacteria, fungus, and mold, which can eat away at home fixtures and release illness-causing and allergy-triggering spores. When these spores get into your HVAC system, they can coat A/C coils and diminish their efficiency, or clog air filters and prevent airflow through your home.

Low Humidity

When the air is dry, though, a host of different complications can arise. Dry air draws moisture from your skin, increasing the risk of dehydration. Static electricity also builds up more quickly in dry air, which increases the risk of static shock – which may be more uncomfortable than dangerous to you, but can damage sensitive electronics like hearing aids and computer memory chips.

Dry air can also lead to itchy skin and chapped lips, and some viruses — for example, the flu virus — even prefer dry environments to wet ones. That’s one of the reason flu seas takes place in the drier winter months.

Managing your humidity

A humidifier and dehumidifier can work together to keep your home humidity balanced throughout the year, no matter what the outdoor humidity is doing. To learn more about managing humidity in your Orlando home, call Rinaldi’s Energy Solutions today!

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Orlando, Florida and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).

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