Humidity in Home Too High
 

We like to keep the humidity in our (new) home in TV under 60%, preferably closer to 50%. We have a heat pump, and an ecobee 3 lite thermostat.

We found that in the summer, the humidity was fairly easy to control, most likely because the A/C had to run a lot to keep the house cool (and of course the A/C also serves a dehumidifying function).

However, now that winter is coming and the temperatures are dropping, the A/C does not run as often, sometimes not running all night (and I see next week low temps will be near 50, so I would expect the A/C may not run all day).

When the A/C does not run, the humidity sneaks back up, like to the low or mid-60% range.

My questions are:
-- Does anyone else out there have this problem?, and
-- What do you (can I) do about it?

Thanks!

I’m not sure what the problem is , but I’ve been in Florida a long time , I open up the doors and widows in the cooler weather and I don’t sleep with AC on even in summer months, I don’t expect everyone does that but if you are worried about mold or something like that I have never had any, I also have a cleaning person every week to take care of any dust from windows open lol

Unless you want to install a dehumidifier, the only thing I can suggest is to run the air conditioner periodically. The humidity in my house occasionally goes above 60 percent when the outside temperature is in the mid 70's.

I had same issue with weather station indoor humidity monitor 65% But my humidistat (analog) was around 50 when dialed bought a small digital unit at Lowes says 52%. The weather station is now gone.

It depends on what method the weather station vs the Lowes unit is measuring relative humidity. All those devices are notoriously inaccurate. How could you determine which one is correct other than liking the Lowe's results better? Relative humidity is very difficult to measure.

Try this method: https://musicsorbonline.com/faqs/hyg...accuracy-test/

We found a dehumidifier on Amazon that does the trick....if you are into the white noise effect, run in the bedroom...otherwise, somewhere else for sure.

My humidity was running too high when I had the fan set to 'on' all the time-its counterintuitive until I googled it and was reminded that the fan blowing on the condensate in the bottom of the air intake was rehumidifying my house. So now my ecobee is set to run the A/C if the humidity is above 61%-it sometimes gets kinda cool in here but I don't want too much humidity, for sure. Biggest electric bill this summer was $120 and I find that great. Now people will comment their electric bill runs $0.50/month.....

I'd sell asap and buy in Arizona. The problem won't exist there.

I have a new house with a heat pump and an ecobee 3 when we moved in. The ecobee 3 thermostat had an issue with high readings of humidity and during our walkthru, I think it was Munn’s that checked the humidity and determined the thermostat was faulty or it might have been ecobee corporate that determined this thru the web, but anyway, they came back out to replace our ecobee 3 lite with an ecobee 5 free of charge under warranty. The tech that came out to replace the ecobee then verified that the ecobee was displaying the same humidity reading of his own device and it was.

A few years back, we had a new thermostat installed - a little pricey, but worth it for us. It turns the a/c on based on temp or humidity level.

The Ecobee is a good thermostat. I have one. Dependent on the model heat pump you have, you can "tell" the thermostat to dehumidify. This is a setting in the thermostat. The problem is most folks do not take the time to learn the fancy settings your thermostat does. It is way smarter than you think.

I suggest that you read your Ecobee manual. If you do not have it, it is also online. There are also good Ecobee forums, you tube videos showing how it works, etc. Munns can also come over to show you these features.

We are to a point now that almost everything in our homes are smarter than we are. It is difficult to keep up with them.

Frank D.

We installed a whole home dehumidifier. Runs when needed, have ours set on 40% relative humidity. Don’t want the AC to run just to dehumidify.

You should have a humidistat on your ac. I was told to keep it set at 60% humidity. If the humidity rises above that it will trigger the ac no matter how cold it is outside and what the heat is set to. If yours doesn’t do that perhaps you need your HVAC checked. Hope this helps.

On most thermostats, there is a humidity setting that you can turn on or off and set a humidity percentage. If you turn it on, the AC will come on when the humidity is higher than the setting. The problem with this feature is that the AC will overcool your house to about 3 degrees below the thermostat setting. If your thermostat is set at 75, the AC will cool the house down to 72 to reduce the humidity. So, you are compromising by making your house colder than you want to reduce the humidity. Personally, I don't like the humidity option and never use it.

Carrier makes a heat pump that uses a two staged compressor that does a great job of controlling humidity, independent of temperature control. I have no problem keeping the humidity in my house at 50%, summer or winter