Heating a home

echelon101

I recently bought a Victorian semi that has been double glazed a whilst ago, the windows have a night position rather than a trickle vent. I have also got trvs and a thermostat installed, there wasn't one when we bought and a bathroom extractor fan installed as well.

We also found that in the bedroom that when we kept the windows closed there was a build up in condensation resulting in a little bit of mould growth which has been cleaned up with bleach spray. This happend before the above was installed.

My question broadly is given that we have installed the above mitigations what is the best way to stop the condensation? Is it too keep the night position in the bedroom open all night which would conflict with the boiler? (Three bed upstairs with only one room slept in, plus bathroom, have got a dehumidifier)

Robwiz

You need to keep relative humidity below 70%. That's been difficult to achieve using ventilation only this autumn, as it has been very humid for weeks at a time.

It's best to eliminate the effect of all sources of moisture inside the house, so run extractor fans when cooking, washing and bathing. Never dry washing indoors or run a tumble drier without venting to outside. It's probably best to leave the bathroom windows on the night opening after use in the morning. It doesn't have a drastic effect on internal temperature.

I log temperature and relative humidity in four rooms of our house and the change in RH caused by a family member eating a hot meal in the lounge is significant.

If the mould was in one room only, then running your dehumidifier in that room with the door closed should be an effective preventive measure.

stator

Get a few humidity meters to monitor the levels in each room and buy a dehumidifier for use when it gets too high. The ones £100+ all work well, don't bother with the mini ones.

echelon101

Thank you for the replies, do you have any recommendations? Amazon is awash with them.

The extractor fan and the thermostat seem to be doing a good job at keep condensation of the windows. (Could just because it's warmer...)

Unfortunately our delonghi dehumidifier just has min/mid/max/drying, which is not really that informative. I normally leave it on min in the bedroom during the day.

We dry our clothes downstairs with radiator + dehumidifier at night, works well.

stator

These meters work okay:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/desktop-weather-station-n78gb
But the seethrough display is a bit annoying

Smiley_Dan

I've had the HTC-1 humidity meters recommended to me although haven't tried them myself. They are all over the place on a well known auction site and are about £3-4 each.