Treating High Humidity in basement

Thank you all for your responses. Not having time during the week due to work and a long commute, I have been checking here and other places to see what should be the best way to tackle this issue. First off, I bought a Value Home dehumdifier, 20L/15 hours is the rating. Well after plugging it in for only 70 minutes last night, the room went from 67% to 60%....and the machine is actually quiet. I also turned off the floor heat entirely, and opened the windows this morning to air it out. So I guess I have a process so to speak to exchange air manually, by opening the windows to allow the stale air out and using the dehumidifier once in a while when the levels start getting high. The device draws 450 watts in use. About the same as both of my tube amps in an idle state. I think this will be my solution for a while. Thanks all.

Thanks,
Audioquest4life

there is a company in new york which makes a product called humidex, look for it online. It's power consumption is less than a night light and you could install it yourself.
Good Luck

If you own your home it's worth cerfing the net for more info. I just redid the entire exterior drainage for my 45 yr old home, not that we ever had the slightest problem, but I've witnessed how moisture problems can lead to horrifying destruction in our damp, coastal environment.

Hi Audioquest4life, I just thought of a question; since you have floor heat, is there any provision for return air. In houses with forced air heat, there are return air vents. When the forced air pressurizes the room, air flows out through the return air vents resulting in a circulation that I would assume lowers the ambient humidity. However, I am not familiar with how exactly the floor heat works, and what provisions are made for air circulation and humidity control. When you say you moved into a "new" house, is that a newly constructed house, or one that is new to you? If newly constructed, I would expect a modern system with some provision for humidity control, so you could contact the builder to discuss the issue. If it is an established house, but new to you, you should consider calling a residential HVAC contractor with a good reputation and see what they say. Let us know how it is going.

Hello Mitch2,

The house we moved into is our own and we had it built to our specs, including the floor heat, outside walls and the whole house plan. The company that built the house, Luxhaus.de had "Options" when we were planning the house, I decided to get their double wall construction option which is waterproof from the outside and uses pure concrete in three layers, the outer layer is about 1 feet deep, the middle layer about 8 inches and then the inside layer another 1 foot deep. I wanted to have basement walls impervious to outside weather such as rain and also to ensure a soundproof environment for the listening room, fitness room, bar and guest room suite.

The windows are all doublepaned insulated windows with lifetime guarantee...whatever that means. The door to the listening room is a soundproof level 3 door here in Germany and I think that means a 55-60 db protection from outside noise, or the other way around. The floor heat consists of an outside controller with the boiler and elctronics from Viessmann. Each room has its own thermostat. I had the heat guy hear a few days ago to check the boiler for me and he told me to keep the floor heat at least 14celsius and never off, so much for saving money when a room is not used, this is to keep the water circulating in the pvc tubing. The basement slab is also thick, about 16 inches with a moisture barrier added and then another few inches for the floor heat cement. All of this adds up to a pretty sealed up house in the basement.

The only air exchange that is going on is via the ceiling in the main floor as the roof is not entirely sealed, it has several layers of insulation in the roof of the living room on top of drywall over 2x4's. The ceiling is drywall that is sanded and painted. In the attic, the north wind blows by. The attic is called a living breathing attic here as the air is always circulating. The top floor stays at a constant 43-50% humidity, while the basement full of concrete walls stays higher. There are no drafts anywhere in the house. In fact, I open the bedroom window a little bit for fresh air at night to help me sleep because of my sinuses. I know when I open the windows in the basement the levels drop. The heating system is all closed and does not have a means to exchange air, we do not have central air like you do in the states. I heard of this hight heat system that you can rent to blow torched air via a gas blower in the room to heat the air to lower humidity. It would be something like a space heater where a gate guard would use outside to stay warm in the cold. I am not sure if this is something I want to explore. I will have to send some pics of the new house basement and the fogged up glass.

Ciao,
Audioquest4life