Humidity in your home, when it is high, costs you money. It is MUCH cheaper to remove humidity with the right commercial grade dehumidifier than use your airconditioner to do it. Take a listen to this episode to learn how to make a more comfortable home that will be healthier to live in and save you money. It is all about that Dew Point!

Nikki Krueger is the Building Science & Business Development Manager for Santa Fe Indoor Air Quality Products, She educates and trains HVAC contractors, architects, engineers, crawl space contractors, and other professionals in the industry on the building science of ventilation and moisture control in buildings. Involved in the indoor air quality industry for over 15 years and she is a RESNET certified home energy rater, sits on the RESNET SDC 200 committee, a board member of the Maryland Building Performance Association, and a member of the newly-formed ACCA Manual Low Load Homes (LLH) Advisory Committee. An active member of the Spray Polyurethane Foam Association, currently participating on the building envelope committee, as well as on the certification and safety committees.

For more information about Santa Fe Dehumidifiers: https://www.santa-fe-products.com/

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Baldwin Hardware

Baldwin Hardware

[00:00:12] Caroline Blazovsky: Hello everybody.

[00:00:15] Eric Goranson: at seasoner. It is it's that season and we've got a really good friend in the house today. Our friend, Nicki Krueger, Santa Fe dehumidifiers.

[00:00:27] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: house. Thank you very much. It is the season that nasally allergy high moisture.

[00:00:50] Eric Goranson: So it is that time of year where everybody figures out what humidity really means and maybe not understand what it's doing to their house.

[00:01:12] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: We have people closing up their homes. Because of allergies yet bringing in outdoor air in order to make sure they are diluting all the contaminants that are inside. So it's a really tricky time of the year to control your indoor environment.

[00:01:32] Eric Goranson: You know, as we know, the air conditioning does a decent job of doing it when it's running. But right now, many places, it's not, unless you're down in the south someplace. And you know, I know in the Northeast, you guys had a little bit of heat here recently, but that was just a day or two. And then all of a sudden that humid air comes right back in again.

[00:01:53] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: them.

[00:02:08] Caroline Blazovsky: So what's going to happen when you've got this cold block and the sudden influx of this warm air coming in. All of a sudden, if you look at your humidistat or your temperature, you'll see all of a sudden you've got high relative humidity just from that condensation

[00:02:21] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: happening. And it might not even be that you're looking at something.

[00:02:46] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Inside your entire

[00:03:10] Eric Goranson: Yeah.

[00:03:36] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: And so what we're seeing is, typically in the Northwest crawl spaces, aren't encapsulated they're just venting. Yeah. And in part of the reason is, you know, do points have traditionally been low in the Northwest until you get to the real Marine, uh, areas. And then, the same with attics and that the condition addicts is unconditioned addicts across [00:04:00] the country is common.

[00:04:21] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Now I need to condition it, which means, closing it up or encapsulated. Uh, but then, what's the next step. You've got to be able to add some sort of moisture control now in that space, because you want to protect that HPAC equipment down there. So it doesn't condense and all that. And then also you're going to be getting moisture buildup now that there is not air flow going through, like when, when events were open, like.

[00:05:03] Eric Goranson: No, it's interesting. So my house is built 1977 and it is probably our most common situation on the west coast.

[00:05:33] Eric Goranson: That's how most of these homes are here that are built in. Prior to 1990, uh, the only time you get into basements or new custom homes or homes that were built, kind of pre world war two, where they put in that the basement down there, and then there were just low sellers. Really. There's not too many that had real tall ceilings.

[00:06:24] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: So we really want to move that building envelope from. Underneath that floor to including that crawl space and controlling the airflow, the moistures, the allergens, all the bad stuff that could build up in our crawlspace from coming into the rest of the home. And you know, you really do want that.

[00:07:10] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Used for foundations. You don't want those chemicals that are offgassing coming up into the home. So even as, as pretty, as encapsulated crawl spaces, look, and and you can use them for storage and all that. You still don't want a lot of communication with, with that, with the rest of the house.

[00:07:34] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: or

[00:07:37] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Exactly.

[00:07:55] Eric Goranson: And I can't believe as a kid, how many times we were playing on playground equipment and [00:08:00] everything else, it was made out of that same material, but very, very deadly materials put into that. What well,

[00:08:17] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: So you wanna, you want to make sure that there's not a lot of communication at all. We actually But why, but it's been like six years ago and now we developed a two day building science, uh, encapsulation, uh, course. And we teamed up with Dr. Joe Steenberg, Alison bales uh, building science experts for the pest industry to put together this, this course that really focuses on the how to do it.

[00:09:12] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: And so, and it's been a very, very, uh, popular. Chorus, because again, it's focusing on the building science, it's not talking about, you know, just dehumidifiers, dehumidifiers. No, it's how all this has to work together. And there are several ways to meet code for quote unquote conditioning across space. But there's only one way that truly.

[00:10:08] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: We, so we encapsulated in both one, we used supply. Uh, air from the HPAC system, cause that meets code to condition. And it's very inexpensive upfront that for builders to use that it's very inexpensive. They got the system there. All you're going to do is, is, is put in a supply register. And and then in the other one we put in a dehumidifier and we monitored on both and we started monitoring them in April.

[00:11:05] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Control the relative humidity. And, and then you're putting cool air into a cool space already. So to me, it just doesn't make a lot of sense, but all spring summer fall that crawlspace was consistently above 70% RH. And the one with the dehumidifier in it never went above. We set it to 60% and it, it never went above.

[00:11:47] Caroline Blazovsky: If not five to 10 degrees cooler. Exactly. That HVAC is never going to kick on, or it's going to kick on too much and make that space even colder, causing even more condensation. So that's why you almost want to not [00:12:00] disconnect that thermostat from that basement completely and that register and that supply get rid of it and then control it with your own either temperature gauge and then using your DQ.

[00:12:16] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Well, it seems when you do that supply only system down there, all you're doing is mixing that humidity within the rest of the house, but you still haven't addressed the humidity issue.

[00:12:33] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Yeah. Cause you have now, like you're saying, I mean, you've now provided the pathway for air communication between the two space. Got a freeway going now. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

[00:13:08] Eric Goranson: And the problem is, is all that humidity. There's no way to remove that humidity out of the air inside the house when you do it that way.

[00:13:25] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Cause the tighter we build these homes in. Uh, heating, dominated climates where we haven't thought we've always thought about, oh, we need to add moisture. Cause we're, we're heating. We need to add it. But we're building homes so tight now, which is great because then we can control airflow. But we've got to address that buildup of the moisture that we're trapping inside also, which typically would be bringing in outdoor dryer.

[00:14:22] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: What's going to do a really good job of focusing on that moisture. But the reality is, is the closer that those systems get to your set point on the thermostat. There, their water removal basically is, is, is diminished completely. They're not removing any moisture so that it'll come on and it'll have a slow error.

[00:15:10] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: For, for basements and crawl spaces, 50, really for health, right? 50 is where the ideal health. If we look at the charts out there of what can happen when you're below and above, but 50 is ideal. But then as we start scooting, scooting up, now, if you keep that 61% for. Extended period of time, everything in your houses absorb.

[00:15:55] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: It's just using energy at that point. You don't want to get too dry, but you do really want to [00:16:00] control. So, you know, like I said, in the spring time, if you're consistently above that 55, 60%, we got to remember that this is where we start our moisture loading. We call it. So spring comes and everything in your house starts absorbing that moisture, that dry wall, the couch, the mattress, the flooring, the dust.

[00:16:48] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: That's when people start taking things out of their closet and they, and they're seeing, you know, mold growth on their clothes, anything leather, that's where it's always that, you know, pulling out the leather, track it. [00:17:00] And so it's because we haven't dried at all. We're just continually moisture loading to the point where those things, you can't see condensation, but it, they can't absorb any more, more.

[00:17:19] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Seasonally. That's where it happens for us as right now for us, because we've had that extended winter of high humidity. Our summers are super dry after, you know, 4th of July weekend. We won't see rain, significant rainfall and humidity until September.

[00:17:55] Eric Goranson: And so it's the exact opposite, but it's the same battle. I mean, I was down in Florida for the [00:18:00] kitchen of Bastow earlier this year and I can't stand staying in a freaking Orlando hotel cause I'm going to go grab it's a musty mess.

[00:18:13] Caroline Blazovsky: Nikki. Can you tell, can you tell everybody, so one of the reasons we want to use these freestanding dehumidifiers is also two-fold and when I'm looking at a home and trying to create a healthy environment, I want to increase my filtration as much as possible.

[00:18:44] Caroline Blazovsky: So explain your product in particular offers filtration like no other. So we're killing what I call two birds with one stone, making sure that we're getting multiple uses out of a, a technology or an accessory. So explain how you do that with.

[00:19:12] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: And the reason that ultimately we went with the Merv 13 is because our we're starting to see building code require Merv 13 filtration for ventilator. So if a builder's trying to meet a ventilation call code by bringing in outdoor air, which is in California, it's standard that you have to use Merv 13 filtration.

[00:19:39] Caroline Blazovsky: say

[00:19:43] Caroline Blazovsky: Oh, no. Merv is sexy. Bringing the Merv back.

[00:19:53] Caroline Blazovsky: we made Merv hot.

[00:20:21] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: With that Merv 13 filtration, before it even gets up to living space. W we're, we're knocking down a lot of that, those allergens and contaminants right there.

[00:20:39] Caroline Blazovsky: They ignore it and they think it just is okay. That they forget about it. How much did you say?

[00:21:14] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Nice. So whether that, I mean, maybe it, that is, you know, if we can, if we can focus on our basement and cross space, uh, with, with that filtration and controlling the relative humidity th that could change everything for, for a home right there. So when we think about relative humidity, we're not just talking about.

[00:22:03] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: People who have never had chemical sensitivities before might experience, you know, they don't know what's going on. Like I don't have allergies, but yet I'm not, I'm getting headaches, not feeling well in my home. And it could just be that. And then you get people who are very sensitive to chemicals and, and their environment.

[00:22:29] Caroline Blazovsky: too. And that's why you start to smell those odors and those nasties when your humidity starts to get high. So people say, well, I never smelt must before and my house. And now all of a sudden I smell mold. That's the reason your humidity sort of Springs loose all of these vaults organics.

[00:22:47] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Absolutely also grade

[00:22:56] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Absolutely. Welcome to the.

[00:23:05] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: and then they, and then, you know, the, what you hate worst is when they say colonized, you've now have, uh, you know, pets that have colonized.

[00:23:21] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: claim their

[00:23:25] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: And then we look at like the whole house ventilating, dehumidifier, and you get like, you know, three, what do we call kind of the holy grail of indoor air quality. And in one product we can do mechanical ventilation in order to bring out in that outdoor.

[00:24:06] Eric Goranson: You know, Nikki, I've seen stats down in Florida in the south where you get down into the Southern side of the U S and even further south outside of the continental United States. But I've seen where you can actually, or I've seen claims that you can actually double the lifespan of your, of your air conditioner by putting in a unit like that, to take that load off of that, to reduce the humidity inside the home.

[00:25:04] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Right? So when the air conditioner is running, it should be removing the most amount of moisture possible. When it's. But it's, you know, as, as the gentlemen who invented these, said that, you know, every king needs a queen. And when the king is sleeping, which is overnight times and shoulder seasons He needs this, he needs this quake.

[00:25:41] Caroline Blazovsky: king needs a

[00:25:47] Eric Goranson: What am I readjust the throat? There we go. Thank you, Nikki.

[00:25:59] Eric Goranson: I feel [00:26:00] like I'm getting ganged up on all of a sudden. Well, make you, the other thing is too is even in the desert, Southwest dehumidifiers can be something important.

[00:26:20] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: I was like, oh, oh, you mean humidifier? And he's like, no, Nope. He's like, obviously you don't understand monsoon season down here. Never thought of it. Never thought of it, but we. Uh, sell quite a few dehumidifiers into, uh, the, the, those dry climates that you would never think of. And then again, our, our building construction techniques are changing.

[00:27:13] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Eric loves the steam shower, showers more and more where we're at. You know, people are asking us, I want a dehumidifier just for my steam shower. You know, my bathroom was this bathroom shower, actually what in Michigan, I just had, it's a passive house and, uh, it's so tight and they wanted a dehumidifier just for that space.

[00:28:00] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: What I did

[00:28:24] Eric Goranson: All that humidity and drying the shower, which is pushing it right out in ops. I'm almost over pressurizing the room a little bit, but it's pushing it right out to the top. And that was how I battled it because I was worried about the same kind of thing. And

[00:28:46] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: But if you know, you, you gotta be it's, that would have to be really engineered for, uh, the Southeast. If, if someone were going to try to do that, I mean, uh, not sure, you know what, [00:29:00] I'm sure people have done it and it probably worked perfectly, but, uh, you'd have to be very careful in a, in a hot humid. Oh, yeah.

[00:29:10] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: That's not you Nikki

[00:29:30] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: That's, that's a really good point because what we see is a lot of organizations You know, the American lung association the, the ASHRAE, which is our HPAC kind of governing body, uh, that the American medical association that throw out these ranges, right? Like, so they're saying that you want to keep your humidity between 30 and 60% and 50 is ideal for.

[00:30:22] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: That's not how it works. 30 is actually in the, in the heating times of the year. So in the winter time, you might need to add some humidity into your home for it not to be too dry and uncomfortable. And when that happens, our nasal passages dry. And then viruses and bacteria make its way into our, our throats and our lungs and that sort of thing.

[00:31:23] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: And then, you know, as well as protecting our homes. So it's that range that we need to understand, and then we need to understand that, that, that for different times of the year, As well trying to get to 30 in new Orleans in July. It's not, it's never going. Yeah. You're, you're not going to be happy with your electric bill.

[00:32:11] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: And then a whole house dehumidifier. But it's probably going to be a combination

[00:32:42] Eric Goranson: And then when you add all that water to it, it gets expanded out. I like to see, you know, in a perfect role, the more balanced you can keep humidity in the house, the easier it is on the woodwork. Cause you're going to see less cracks. You're going to see less cracks and drywall or plaster. I think it just makes for a happier house

[00:33:00] Caroline Blazovsky: It keeps your paint from bubbling, cracking all of that good stuff that happens when you have these differentials and temperature. We see that a lot in these older houses, like Nikki was saying 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds. You'll go in and you'll see all the pain is cracked and peeling. And then you get the worry of lead dust because this stuff breaks apart.

[00:33:22] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: growing, you know, a lot. The warranty on your hardwood floors. Most people don't realize that they're in those warranties. They specify you need to keep it. The RH controlled in that house because of, you know, uh, the, the cupping and all of that.

[00:33:55] Eric Goranson: to say in cabinetry. Great example. So people go, I want to have solid wood doors, [00:34:00] right on a flat contemporary, solid wood door.

[00:34:22] Eric Goranson: You can't buy a cabinet in Hawaii, for instance, that has a solid wood door on it because it's going to warp and they get.

[00:34:38] Eric Goranson: do plywood. They won't do MDF unless it's painted, but in cabinetry it'll always be a plywood door with a veneer over the top of it, uh, for durability.

[00:35:03] Eric Goranson: You'll be getting the screwdriver a lot, you know? Okay. Springtime time to adjust, fall, time to adjust. That's how it'll work

[00:35:31] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: But at some point the warranty claims and the calls from unhappy customers start out, weighing the cost of adding a commercial grade dehumidifier with a six year warranty. Uh, the unhappy customers and sending people out and subs out and trying to, you know, especially right now, try to find a subcontractor to go out and fix any.

[00:35:58] Caroline Blazovsky: customers and an audience to know [00:36:00] too when you're going to, and I'm sorry to do this, but we call, I call them. And I don't know, we might not say this, but this is my lingo. We call it a home Depot, cheapo, dehumidifier. That is not going to work for you. If you're in these grassy climates.

[00:36:34] Caroline Blazovsky: And unfortunately I love to say, you know, my clients say, well, I'm just going to go get a dehumidifier at, you know, my local hardware store. It just doesn't work that way. You need a commercial grade. So when you hear Nikki saying commercial grade, that's what she's talking about, that these units are specifically designed for these climates.

[00:37:18] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Those components are used in our residential dehumidifiers. And so basically, you know, those, our dehumidifiers usually go in and they're placed in a certain spot and that's where they stay. They're not being beaten around. So our components really do. With, with, with stand a lot of what residential applications throw out it, no problem, and are going to last for a longer period of time.

[00:38:04] Caroline Blazovsky: the cheap ones,

[00:38:07] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: But, but, but it's your last one, you know? And so you would have to have that dehumidifier graveyard, basically in the corner of your basement, where, you know, every year you're buying a new one before they realize that it's just time to make the investment in. In a commercial grade unit.

[00:38:30] Eric Goranson: You might be able to actually go buy a commercial one. If you have enough of those stacked in the corner, you could get some money back on those. So you could add sunny money savings in the bank sitting there in your d'you graveyard, because that could get you reimbursed.

[00:38:48] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Sometimes something scary. You definitely want to, uh, go, uh, go on YouTube and put in a dehumidifier, a recall fire, and you'll see people running out of their houses was [00:39:00] smoking portable dehumidifiers that all of a sudden becoming engulfed in flames because of that. So it is very important. Okay. You know, on, on these, uh, segments to reiterate that you, if you have a portable and it's not brand new to make sure that you go on and check those recalls.

[00:39:17] Caroline Blazovsky: that's, I think part of the problem is too, the units will run and run and run. Like a lot of my customers think their units are working. Cause they'll see this unit and you hear it, it's running and running. And, but no water is actually coming out of your drainage hose and you need to look at that.

[00:39:49] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: off.

[00:39:54] Eric Goranson: thing I was going to say is we have a problem here on the coast. Uh, for us as we [00:40:00] have a lot of vacation homes along the ocean, and the problem is people spend their summertimes there on the weekends, and then they turn the heat down on the baseboard heat, uh, to keep the pipes from freezing and they walk away for five months.

[00:40:31] Eric Goranson: Is that still a situation where they should be looking at a dehumidifier for those off season months that they're not using that beach cabin basis?

[00:40:55] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: So we're not worried about comfort. We, we see it a lot in the, you know, if [00:41:00] we, if we look at, you know, quote unquote, snowbird, Uh, down in Florida, but really it's anywhere. There's a second home. You're going to have to think about controlling the moisture. We did a case study down in, uh, the villages, uh, in, uh, Florida where, you know, people leave for the summer time.

[00:41:45] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: 60% relative humidity. Cause they're really just trying to protect. The contents of the home and they had over 40% energy savings by using the humidifier to focus on the relative [00:42:00] humidity versus trying to use an air conditioner. When nobody's there, we're not worried about the comfort. We're just worried about maintaining that moisture.

[00:42:32] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: And you're

[00:42:44] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: because what they've done in the past is, you know, you'll, you'll, they'll override the thermostat with a humidistat and then, you know, for every degree that we cool, the air, the R H automatically goes up 2%.

[00:43:26] Caroline Blazovsky: Nikki, just to explain to, and I O w every time we have a guest. The difference when people look at temperature, the difference between sensible heat and latent heat and how you feel temperature. Cause it's really important that people just don't get used to looking at their thermostat and looking at their degree and why that's

[00:43:44] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Sure. So the sensible is what your thermostat is focusing on, right? So when you go to adjust that temperature, that's called a sensible and the latent is the moisture in the air and you really don't know. [00:44:00] Thermostats do not have a latent, uh, control on it. They might tell you what the relative humidity is.

[00:44:33] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: It's the difference between 90 degrees in Arizona and 90 degrees in Florida, typically 90 degrees in Arizona, people are like, this is great. I've seen beautiful out in Florida. Yeah, it's a miserable. So, and that's, that's the difference and you know, every time that you increase that thermostat setting, there [00:45:00] can be, you know, a significant energy savings.

[00:45:33] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: How about sizing?

[00:45:53] Caroline Blazovsky: But there are also vastly different sizing as far as your pint removal. So when customers go [00:46:00] onto the site, how do they know what they need? How do they know what size they should acquire and is always, is bigger. Always better.

[00:46:23] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: So we are very, very conservative. And our recommendations based on square footages. And that's because it's hard to oversize a dehumidifier, but very easy to undersize a dehumidifier. So like, let's say we take our 70 pint, whether it's a whole house or a crawlspace or basement, we save up to 1800 square feet.

[00:47:10] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: You're going to want that extra capacity when it's the rainy season. You're going to want the extra capacity. And there really is not significant, uh, price differences when you start going up. So you always want more now we've, we've seen people out there or companies claim, well, this 70 pint dehumidifier will do 3000 square feet.

[00:47:56] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: So that walks you through, you know, basically getting [00:48:00] to, uh, the, the general of what you're going to need. Now, if you're doing a whole house system, uh, you probably are going to want to work with your HPAC contractor to make sure that you're taking everything into consideration. Maybe the amount of fresh air that you need to bring in.

[00:48:34] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: That you can just go in and ask a question and hopefully it can get, you answers much quicker than trying to navigate the entire website.

[00:48:50] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: Yeah, I, you know, I think we need to start looking at the mechanical systems in our house and how they need to change [00:49:00] in conjunction with our building, uh, practice.

[00:49:23] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: When we look at, you know, moisture's the number one, To a building and how it affects our health also that it can't be looked at as just, well, we're going to count on the air conditioner to do that. We've really got to think about our moisture control strategies and, you know, again, it might just be controlling underneath the home and, and that's all we need to do.

[00:49:55] Caroline Blazovsky: have gizmos all over my house and as a healthy home expert, I hope that my house [00:50:00] is somehow a, is a, is a demo model. But years and years ago, I went from checking that temperature gauge to automatically always checking humidity.

[00:50:27] Caroline Blazovsky: So I think that we are moving in a direction. Everyone needs a dehumidifier as far as I'm concerned. And if you don't have one, when you do have it, it's going to be such a luxury to you that you're going to appreciate just the health and wellness.

[00:50:45] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: We have respiratory issues. Uh, so controlling humidity, uh, is a big part of that.

[00:50:52] Nikki Krueger Santa Fe: the website. Www we even say that anymore. I don't know if they say that anymore. [00:51:00] It's Santa dash Fe. Dash products.com. Perfect.

[00:51:11] Eric Goranson: Thank

[00:51:16] Eric Goranson& Caroline Blazovsky: and you've been listening to around the house.