Oue house is damp.

[Dave Liquorice]

You can't take it with you.

And unless you are planning now the government may well help themselves to a substantial amount of it should you try and leave it to anyone else.

[Doki]

Every condensing drier I've ever seen in use creates a lot of humidity in the room its being used in. I'd look into a vented type that shoots the wet air outside.

[Fredxx]

I see, mine is different, such that the internal space is generally sealed with minimal leaks past doors etc.

[Andy Champ]

[e-mail] wrote: We've had a dehumidifier on he landing for years, in fact thinking of

"latent heat from the condensate" is a nice technical term that may not be well understood. So let me try to explain...

One point first. Steam that you see is little drops of water. You can make water into a gas, and if you look right next to the spout of a boiling kettle you see a little clear bit before the white stuff. That's water as a gas. You can call it steam, or water vapour; it doesn't have to be hot if mixed with air.

You know if you leave a saucepan of water on the hob, and it's boiling, the water isn't getting any hotter even though the gas/electricity is going flat out? That's because the energy is being used to make steam from water.

Or if you leave a damp towel hanging up it gets cold? Same reason - it needs heat to make the water into water vapour.

That's latent heat, and you can get it back.

A dehumidifier turns water vapour back into water. It takes some energy to run the thing, but the energy from making the vapour back into water ends up as heat, and it heats the room. You get MORE heat out of a dehumidifier than the electricity that went into it.

Put a dehumidifier on a timer so it runs on the Economy 7 that your heating is on and you'll get a dry house, AND you'll cut your power bill. Only slightly, but every little helps.

Andy

[Dave Liquorice]

primary,

Same when we had a washer/dryer. The air was circulated round through the drum, heater and condenser. That was cooled by a slow trickle of cold water. This water and the condensate was pumped out down the normal waste water pipe. There was only minimal, if any, warm moist air leakage into the room. The room did get hot but I suspect that more to do with the losses from the uninsulated hot drum etc that hot air being vented into the room.

[Peter Parry]

Minimal is the key word. Which? did a test of about 20 a year ago, all leaked significant amounts of moist air into the room they were in.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. Not to mention the lawyers..

If money is no object, use a heat pump, possibly with UFH, correct any wall insulation and guttering issues, and fit insulation under the floor, and heat recovery ventilation.

But we are talking more than 10k for that little lot.

[Fredxx]

OK - mine's a fairly new Bosch which just seems to warm the room. One thing of note is that I don't get any smell from the clothes until I open the door.

[safety]

Dear whiskeyomega Having gone through all the possibles it looks like its condensation. =A0But our lifestyle hasn't changed any so I don't know why its suddenly happening.

We have double glazing, central heating and loft insulation etc. We have done everything to make the house energy efficient and stop global warming and my OH turned down the heating a couple of years ago

- and it was then we started to get damp and it isn't stopping. You answered your own question

Now you have probably got interstitial condensation and need to get the fabric dry with a dehumidifier. I would consider trickle vents and there is no point in sleeping with the window shut Open it a bit and turn of the rads at night shut them in the morning after the heat comes on Read up and carry on doing all you have done to date on the anti condensation works mentioned by others

Consider oil based paint on the walls as a vapour check to stop any interstitial Chris

[gazz]

"Dave Starling" wrote

----------

nope, absolutely no help with energy bills at all,

i pay 55 quids a month on direct debit for the gas and lecky, and so far that's covered it, and i'm on a normal tarrif not one of the social ones, i do change suppliers every couple of months now mind, was on a fixed rate jobbie for the first 18 months we lived here, was paying 9p a kwh lecky, and something similarly low for gas, now it's about 12.5p a kwh,

we do live in a house that's correctly sized for us, we have one bedroom, a living room, kitchen, barfroom, and there's the upstairs that would be un-used bedrooms (dormer bungalow) but they are used as store rooms and one i've only just started using as a hobby room.

the upstairs rads are turned practicaly off, living room rads are full on, so is the bedroom one, hallway one is on half and barfroom one is on quarter, that seems to heat the place nicely. boiler is controlled via a wirless thermostat, which gets taken with us from living room to bedroom.

according to my energy monitor, we use an average of 2.7kw a day of lecky,

1kw of that is for the fridge freezer alone, as when we were away with everything but that turned off, the monitor showed just under 1k a day usage.

we dont drink tea or coffee, so there's no 3kw kettle being used, cook mostly on the gas cooker, occasional blasts in the nuker... which pulls about 1300 watts, 900 watts cooking power, every single light is a CFL or fluoro tube type, even the gardens flood light has a 30 watt cfl in it, standard 500 watt halogen fitting type, illuminated the garden perfectly for us, especialy as i took the time to ensure it's angled so no light goes over the fences and into neigbours gardens.

[js.b1]

#1 Replace your guttering. =A3450-750. Insurers may cover it. 1950s often had porous mortar & bricks, water bridging to inner leaf. The usual sign is a significant increase in woodlice, enormous spiders at the first sharp frost.

#2 Fireplaces need rain cap & bottom vent. An open chimney sees 6-FEET of water saturating brickwork, underfloor areas, building. Rain cap on the chimney prevents rain ingress, bottom vent allows it to dry out. Otherwise you will get serious dry-rot problems and often dead bird buildup. This is particularly true with unused boarded up by builder upstairs chimney's. Lift an edge of the masterboard covering and it will be thick black mould.

#3 Check all tank & toilet overflow pipes. If the water level gets too high, wind down the overflow causes water to weep back out the overflow, if it does not have a T-piece on the end or angle down it will run back and soak the outer OR inner leaf.

#4 Kitchen extractor. Window fan or cooker hood removing kitchen steam.

#5 Bathroom extractor. Window fan or shower fan as necessary.

#6 Dehumidifier. These are expensive to run EXCEPT you have E7 E10 which will help tremendously - run overnight etc. About 1p/hr overnight on E7, over double that during the day.

#7 Open window vents or hit-mass vents. Open trickle vents in DG, open wall vents and add hit-miss-vents to limit (but not eliminate) ventilation.

You have sources of moisture: Cooking, baths, showers, sinks, kettles; Humans breathing; Drying washing.

You must get this moisture out: Remove it by controlled ventilation. Dehumidification can help, but impractical to leave all doors open (impractical), expensive to run.

Otherwise moisture will condense: Condensation occurs on any surface whose temperature is below the dew point (cold walls).

That you have damp bedding indicates extremely high humidity. This will not help re colds, flu & so on (viruses in moisture on dust particles).

Pneumonnia can be bacterial or viral, but immune system strength plays a part.

1950s houses are a pain in that they were meant to be "roasting hot burning coal" with huge kW output, huge ventilation, damp banished. They need careful ventilation otherwise they get quite nasty environments. Many 1950s houses had very porous bricks & mortar, leaking guttering will really soak that outerleaf which can cause cavity condensation on the inner leaf (below dew point) and general damp. Typical sign is woodlice and multiple massive spiders at the first cold snap. 1950s can also mean rough sawn, so once woodlice get in they will literally swiss-cheese the place and all that stops you going through is the tongue-&-groove as joists progressively disintegrate, ceilings crack, walls build on floorboards shift around doorframes and so on.

CWI will stop moisture condensing on the walls, so more is kept in suspension in the air. Wonderful, you still NEED to get that moisture out. CWI reduces heat loss through the walls so you can AFFORD to increase ventilation. See how it works?

Again, that you have damp bedding means you NEED more ventilation AND reduce moisture creation.

1950s when damp can be nasty environments, perpetual tonsilitis, colds, bugs - particularly if your chimneys are unventilated and lack rain caps (absolutely critical, the record was 37 dead birds in a stinking upstairs chimney AFAIK).

[Dave Liquorice]

Eh? Woodlice don't have the mouth parts to deal with anything other than already rotten timber or very soft fresh plant material.

They are a crustacean though and need damp to survive so their presence is an indicator of damp and rotting plant material.

[Andy Champ]

The spiders come in at the first cold snap because frost kills them, they have to find somewhere to hide. The typical brown hairy Tegeneria is originally a cave species and loves houses. That's not the damp.

Andy

[Harry Bloomfield]

whiskeyomega explained :

I would suggest that alone might well be much or all of the cause of your problem. You have already stated that the problem is worse, when the weather is wet. If any water is running down the walls, it will make its way inside.

At least get the gutters and fall pipes removed and replaced with modern plastic ones - it needant cost that much.

You make mention of everything being damp, that is a really serious to health problem. I'm sure I could turn our heating system off completely and it might feel cool, but it certainly would not be in the slightest bit damp. The damp internal air you are suffering, will need even more warmth to make it feel comfortable.

[Harry Bloomfield]

I'm not saying you are wrong, but our doesn't. It is in a small not usually heated utility room and it never feels humid or suffers steamed up windows. The washer is almost completely sealed when drying, so there is nowhere for the moisture to escape, apart from condensing and going down the drain.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Peter Parry was thinking very hard :

Air vented from where exactly?

It is a closed loop. The air flows from the drum, through the condensor, through a duct which reheats the air then back to the drum - no venting, no wasted heat.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Peter Parry laid this down on his screen :

Mmm, 20 years ago! Did they have condensing drier then?

[Peter Parry]

Actually I think they did, however where the 20 came from I have no idea. I blame the cat and will withhold it's rations.

[Peter Parry]

Except it isn't very closed, which is why there is leakage. Some machines are much worse than others.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Peter Parry brought next idea :

We are on our second washer/ condensing drier, which was preceded by a vented drier. Neither of the w/driers leak(ed)s any substantial amount of moisure into the air whether washing or drying, because their would be noplace they could leak apart from when you open the doors.

The vented drier did discharge quite a bit of moisture into the room, despite it's venting.