condensation on double glazed windows

moneylover

My daughter is suffering hugely with double glazing on bedroom windows and there are beginning to be damp patches on her newly decorated walls
We had 11 of us in the house overnight last night having a Christmas celebration and today the bedroom ceiling in our room had drips on it! So, understandably daughter is a bit upset and wants to tackle the problem as soon as possible.
Have read a thread on here about de-humidifiers but would be expensive solution for each room
My son has said there are crystals you can buy and hang in wardrobe, anyone know anything about these? Also he has suggested you can leave each window open a tiny tiny fraction yet still lock it so will try this.
Thanks in advance for any input

wallbash

You have answered your own question, 11 people in the house with the windows closed ( well it is December ). Forget costly de-humidifiersof silly little crystals .........just open the windows.
If you had just opened the windows for a short while last night after the folks had gone, the ambient humidity would have gone . And no drips this morning.
Prevention is MUCH better than cure.

moneylover

well yes, obviously we should have had windows open last night. However, it happens throughout the upstairs of the house all the time even when just daughter and husband are there

wallbash

Then the next question , life style.
How do they dry their washing ?
What is the ventilation like in the Kitchen / bath room

Where is the water coming from ? answer that and the solution will be easy.

I would expect a little wetness on most double glazing windows at this time of the year. Warm air will readily condense on a cooler surface and we all breathe out masses of warm wet air all the time.

moneylover

washing not a problem its all dried in tumble dryer in garage
think its a case of treating the problem we will try opening windows a fraction but have never had the problem in any house I have lived in that has had double glazing
so any further thoughts appreciated

moneylover

meant to say will check re ventilation in kitchen but problem there regardless if there has been cooking that evening or not. Showers generally taken in morning not evening and will check, but as far as I know will window open.

Running_On_Empty

Open the windows more than a fraction, the damp is in the air from people's breath and needs to be let out. We always sleep with our bedroom windows open , winter and summer, and never have condensation.

DRP

Keep the house warm overnight (heating on) - does this help?

Buy a cheap hygrometer from amazon for a fiver to check relative humidity levels.

If RH are consistently high, look for reasons:
lifestyle (as mentioned)
leaking pipe/dampness under the floor (suspended wooden?)
penetrating damp, high outside ground levels etc

bretts

I suffer from this too, I have crystal balls and dehumidifier running overtime and then gave up and bought the hygrometer and was shocked to see my house is always at above 80% even with the dehumidifier, opening windows helps it get to about 70% but in an hour its back up to 80 to 90 percent. We have hood on when we are cooking and the door open too which is from kitchen to the garden so not a lot of condensation from cooking and all our clothes are dried in a laundrette, we are three people staying in the house but the room we are in is at 85 and the room that is always empty is about 82 83 % so I have tried everything really and given up, just had to treat my wall for mould on the weekend with a fungicide and will see when I will have to repeat this, I normally need to do this twice in winters.

DRP

Bretts, have you checked under your floors? Just as a comparison to your situation:

Our house is a Victorian terrace with bare soil under the floorboards - quite clay soil and damp to the touch.

The kitchen-diner i am in now (and the rest of the house) is at a constant 60-65%. When we cook it may go up to 80%+ but drops back pretty quickly.

WE have a problem area in the house (hallway) with little under floor ventilation and no windows - this is consistently about 10-15% higher than the rest of the house (ie. usually around 80%). But no mould.

bretts

Hi DRP

Well the problem I have is more on the first floor but regardless the humidity is about 80% everywhere.

I just bought the house recently about a year ago and when I got it renovated I had no idea of anything as never did any DIY and the builders I used were really crap so they did not suggest me to do anything so I do not even have an underfloor insulation on the ground floor which makes my ground floor freezing in winters, I only used to come on site rarely when the work was done but from what I remember and if i am not wrong, I think our floorboards are right above soil but I am not at all sure, the wooden flooring we have is solid wood floor but it expands a little in the winters and sort of settles in the summers. I am thinking that I will get the wooden flooring and floorboards out and treat and insulate the whole ground floor with the way it should be done.

Mould is only either in the bedroom or a bit in bathroom but I think the reason for that mould could be that I have chest in front of the wall and it has no legs and therefore no circulation so I am planning to buy some legs and fit it under the chest to see if that makes any difference.