Advantages

You can increase comfort and save money by controlling the moisture of the air in your home. People are most comfortable at a relative humidity of 50%, plus or minus 10%. Relative humidity is a term used to describe the amount of water vapor that exists in a gaseous mixture of air and water.

Separate strategies are required: one for summer and one for winter.

In winter, air inside the house is cycled repeatedly past heating elements in your heating system, where it gets dry. I dry rooms you can experience dry and itchy skin, dry eyes and mouth, chapped hands, static electricity along with other discomforts. Looking at it as an energy efficiency perspective, dry air increases the rate of evaporation of body moisture from the skin and this makes you feel chilly. I an attempt to keep warm you would obviously raise the temperature. Resulting in the burning of extra fuel to maintain a higher room temperature and the air will become progressively drier. In the winter, you need to add moisture to the air.

In summer, your objective is to reduce relative humidity of the room air. As humidity levels increase above about 50%, evaporation from your skin is reduced. Lower evaporation rids your body of its normal cooling mechanism and you begin to feel warm. A normal reaction is to turn down the thermostat in an effort to keep cool. Resulting in the burning f extra fuel and money to maintain a lower room temperature, compared to the amount of cooling that is needed if relative humidity is maintained.

Studies have shown when humidity is maintained around 50% in a living space, air conditioner thermostats can be set as much as 5 to 7 degrees (F) warmer while providing the same desired comfort level. Unfortunately most air conditioners are electric, and electricity is produced in power-plants, energy and pollution savings from reduced air conditioning are immense. Mainly because the electricity that arrives at our doorstep is produced and delivered at an overall fuel efficiency of about 30%. Raising the thermostat of your air conditioner has a dramatic effct on your electric bill. For this to materialize and maintain desired comfort, you must control relative humidity of the room air.

Savings

Savings achieved by moisture control relate to how much less you run your furnace in the winter and air conditioner in the summer. Costs to achieve desired comfort and moisture control will depend on the hardware (equipment) used. There are operational changes that cost you nearly nothing. Try venting a clothes dryer through a lint filter to the interior of a building rather than the exterior. This captures productively both the moisture in the clothing and the heat generated by the clothes dryer. In addition, a new generation of rechargeable desiccant technologies is emerging that provide low-cost means of reducing moisture in buildings during the summer months. Depending on the hardware (equipment) used, you may expect savings in the range of 10-30%.