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

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

Hi Yioryos,

Thanks for your reply..the company here Luxhaus, www.luxhaus.de is one of bigger companies that offer custom or manufactured homes to people here in Europe. They are always doing some new age technology stuff to increase house efficiencies, hence the double wall construction walls, they advertise the walls with a floating room sitting in a pool of water, and totally dry inside with no moisture seapage at all.

They said that with the house I will never have to worry about water to moisture coming in, ok, but know I need to let some of the indoor humidity escape from the basement. The dehumidifier works great though as does opening the windows for a few hours daily.

I asked the company about the possibility to send us the materials to the United States if we decide to build there someday, they have expanded to the UK and other countries in Asia, but that is not possible, only like how you did it in Canada, order all of the stuff and ship it there and have someone reassemble it there. I am not sure if they are in Canada yet.

I know about the silicon experience, I was doing some of the silicon trim in the basement and the main subcontractor had to leave early because he was sick, I started to do the rest myslef, only about 10 meters of wall, anyway, ran out of the silcion, well, it is some special grey color that only one company makes and it has to be ordered, jeez, I thought gray was gray. Still waiting on the order to come in.

I will have to send some pics as I said earlier of the house and basement shots,
Ciao,
Audioquest4life