I do have d/glazing all round. I guess the previous owners got a grant, because all indications are that penny-pinching and cheapskateism ruled when this house was built.
I’ve been thinking that, too.
Normandy in general and this location in particular - a steep, wooded valley with a lively river running thru’ it - is damp. Similar to Bath, in its bowl of hills with the Avon running thru’. A g/f’s flat was so damp that the condensation ran in streams down the walls.
I learned from my year as a tenant near here that a t/dryer is an essential addition to taking advantage of any weather suitable for drying laundry outdoors.
I’ve never had one before - never needed it. In Valencia, a heavy bath sheet, straight out of the w/machine and hung on the line on the terraza, would be bone dry in 20 mins. Meanwhile, one’s brains were being boiled …
The downpour of the past 20 mins has stopped. But, as the conductors on London buses used to say, “There’ll be another one along in a minute”
It’s a problem we’ve run into in spades since the beginning of 2020.
In the end, on my last visit, I decided to leave a dehumidifier running while the house is unoccupied, having finally figured out how to get it onto free drainage rather than filling its somewhat limited reservoir.
Not cheap but I offset that by switching off the VMC which I reckon is just being counterproductive by sucking wet air into the house - anyway it’s rated at 200W so potentially 5kWh a day if it runs continuously - and there’s definitely a danger of that as it’s woefully underpowered for the whole house, but on the whole the experiment seems to have been successful - though the heating was also on which will have helped, we’ll see how the dehumidifier manages on its own next visit.
In my attic there is an extractor machine with tubes running to ceiling vents in the kitchen and two in the tiny shower room. [2.5m x 2.2m]. I removed the wall with the arrow on it, so the two vents are in the same space.
I didn’t see why this thing should be sucking the warmest air from these rooms, esp 24/7, so I’ve turned it off. I do plan, one day, to put a timer on it and run it for 1hr a couple of times/day. It vents outside.
I could do with dehumidifiers in all rooms. The clothes and bedding in my chests of drawers feel so damp that I reckon mustard and cress would grown on them, as per those wet flannels we did that, at school.
I must head off to AMZ to check 'em out. What are the main points to clock, of these things. Litres/p.d. of course … One big one and the doors open all round or individual ones per room?
A basic VMC is removing the very damp air from those places but you are correct it takes the heat away as well. The double flux as the French refer to them has a heat exchanger built inside so the warm moist air going out, warms the heat exchanger and draws the cold air in from outside but uses the heat stored in the heat exchanger to warm the incoming air. Should recover about 70% of the heat.
As far as I can tell, the one in my attic only sucks air from the rooms and vents it. I put a sheet of kitchen paper over each vent. The paper stuck to the vent.
I don’t perceive an in/out cycle, unless the ‘in’ is vented by the gizmo into the attic space. . Not a lot of use.
There’s a cooker hood that vents to outside, which it must do whether the fan is running or not. The kitchen ceiling vent is next to the hood ‘chimney’. Belt 'n braces …
I lowered the venetian blind because the sun [!] was reflecting off the glass table. Seconds later - a massive cold front downpour. That’s three now, since I hung the washing out
I’m amazed at that level of humidity. We have mold issues occasionally in the Oxfordshire cottage, and that’s usually around 55 to 70% depending on weather and heating.
I finally twigged why I was never really warm in bed, despite ending up under 3 duvets and a fleece spread - body heat was not enought to rid the duvets of that clammy, damp feeling.
I bought an electric blanket - result! After 30 mins on #5, I go to bed with it on #1 for the night. Transformation … Just the one duvet and the spread now. And very little lekky to run it.
do you fling the covers back when you get out of bed… and open the windows to air the room… we’ve found that works well… even if the windows are only open for a few minutes…
we try to open windows on the side where the rain isn’t actually lashing down…
Used to laugh on seeing duvets and blankets hanging out of the windows… but we do similarly when the sunshines… to give everything an extra blast of goodness…
we don’t heat the bedroom but it sits around 15/16C in winter
Yes I do. But opening the windows won’t do much good because the humidty in the room is the same as outside!
All the windows have trickle vents which my ex-HVAC neighbour says is adequate to avoid the rooms being sealed boxes. And I keep all the doors open - including the front door overnight, as I found on Mon morning!
Made no diff to temp or humidty. Might as well be in a tent
Researching dehumiddies. Ideally, I need 3. P’raps 2, if I let the 2nd bedroom do its humid thing.
Interesting that all Spanish white matt emulsion contains ‘anti-humo’ additive.
Good idea - is that a traditional electric blanket that goes onto the mattress or one that you are using on too of the bed? Reason I ask is that I use one on the mattress when it’s nippy here, but don’t think it’s particularly low on power consumption. Always looking for lower power alternatives
I think the French government uses profits on nuclear generated electricity to prop up their tax receipts. The European stuff that seems to be resulting in all fuels being charged to consumers at the highest rate of whatever any of them must be charged at, regardless of actual cost, is probably in there too somewhere. So if one fuel type eg gas, goes up, electricity goes up to consumers even if gas is not being used to produce it. Well, that’s what it looks like anyway on sites like moneysavingexpert as I think these things were set when we were in the EU.
And despite calls for this, you’ll notice that just like the UK, the rather large % of petrol / diesel prices that goes to the governmentas tax, hasn’t been reduced here either. It seemed the government preferred as a first step to encourage retailers of petrol and diesel to sell to consumers for certain periods “at cost price only” and influenced Total, where I think they have a majority share, to lead this.
So prices to consumers for leccy flow as big revenue into the governments coffers here. France also makes a profit from selling electricity to other countries apparently, or did at least last year. I also suspect that as half or so of wage earners pay no tax, the govt here may be taking a much lower percentage of overall govt income, as income tax. Hence higher social taxes. There also seem to be much higher taxes on capital (eg CGT and inheritance) as far as I can tell, compared to the UK. And higher transaction taxes possibly too - a lot of things seem to require you to purchase a stamp at a tabac, which can be a high cost depending on the transaction - the tabac being the high street collector of government money I think!
I know very little about it but that’s just how it looks to me so far.
