Great discussion here. I'm buying the cheapest recommended dew point meter.
I have electronic humidity meter with daily min-max in the kitchen and look at it frequently nowadays.
The Carrier Infinity system does a pretty good job of keeping humidity below set point (56%) even on days that are cool or merely warm, and even with continuous low fan. (With my previous system, I had to turn off the continuous fan during this kind of weather to keep indoor humidity from going through the roof.) Though I wish it had more user-accessible fine tuning. I can turn on/off the supercool feature which cools up to 3 degrees below set temperature to keep humidity down. In practice, it very rarely does more than one degree of supercooling. I'd like to be able to set 1,2,3 degrees of supercooling. Sometimes I have to turn off the supercooling (because it's chilling too much) even though I still need some humidity control, just not as much. The infinity will even attempt to control humidity by other means if you turn off supercooling, but it won't be very effective unless cooling is needed. This makes me wonder about whether a dedicated dehumidifier wouldn't be a good idea sometimes.
I have a 1 gallon humidifier I run on dry nights which does an acceptable job of keeping humidity above 30% on very cold nights. My feeling is that you don't need to seek optimal humidity, but when it's going below 35% it helps to start humidifying a bit. Not too much. Too much, or trying to track some optimal value like 45% could lead to mold accumulation in poorly built areas of the building envelope. On the very coldest nights I run the humidifier on high and it needs to be refilled every 6 hours or so. Even if it runs out while I'm asleep, however, it's done a wonderful job of keeping the air from becoming horribly dry.
I have electronic humidity meter with daily min-max in the kitchen and look at it frequently nowadays.
The Carrier Infinity system does a pretty good job of keeping humidity below set point (56%) even on days that are cool or merely warm, and even with continuous low fan. (With my previous system, I had to turn off the continuous fan during this kind of weather to keep indoor humidity from going through the roof.) Though I wish it had more user-accessible fine tuning. I can turn on/off the supercool feature which cools up to 3 degrees below set temperature to keep humidity down. In practice, it very rarely does more than one degree of supercooling. I'd like to be able to set 1,2,3 degrees of supercooling. Sometimes I have to turn off the supercooling (because it's chilling too much) even though I still need some humidity control, just not as much. The infinity will even attempt to control humidity by other means if you turn off supercooling, but it won't be very effective unless cooling is needed. This makes me wonder about whether a dedicated dehumidifier wouldn't be a good idea sometimes.
I have a 1 gallon humidifier I run on dry nights which does an acceptable job of keeping humidity above 30% on very cold nights. My feeling is that you don't need to seek optimal humidity, but when it's going below 35% it helps to start humidifying a bit. Not too much. Too much, or trying to track some optimal value like 45% could lead to mold accumulation in poorly built areas of the building envelope. On the very coldest nights I run the humidifier on high and it needs to be refilled every 6 hours or so. Even if it runs out while I'm asleep, however, it's done a wonderful job of keeping the air from becoming horribly dry.
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