Hi all,

We have large windows which face the street and this winter we've noticed an unbelievable amount of condensation forming all through the day and night. I wake up to find small pools of water on the floor where it has dropped off the frames of the windows, and it's also there through the day.

In this freezing temperature and small kids in the apartment, keeping the windows open isn't really an option. Would a dehumidifier work?

Also, probably worse is that the water seems to be damaging the wood overnight. Take a look at the attached pic of the flooring at the base of one of our windows: this used to be a natural light wood colour, but with water sitting over it over night, it seems to have got into the cracks in between the wood pieces and stained and darkened the wood.

I'm not holding out for much hope of repairing this damage, but is there any sort of treatment for the flooring which makes it water tight? Other than leaving towels under our windows for the rest of the winter, i'm out of ideas.

Thanks
Kash.

PS. The pic has attached itself upside down

You really need to get a de-humidifier don't you?

You can open the windows for a few minutes every hour during the day, the rooms will not cool down. In this cold weather the air is very dry, I am also having a lot more condensation than usual.

Can you keep the bath room door closed until the humidity has been ventilated away? Do you have a washing machine in your home, can you close the door and keep the humidity out of the living area?

Keep mopping up the water, if you get mould then there will be big problems eradicating it. If you are renting, you can ask your landlord for help. There isn't enough ventilation in the building.

A dehumidifier would help if the moisture is coming from inside for sure, can't say how much help it will be preventing condensation from rolling off of the windows and onto the floor, but it might.

I dealt with water damaged floors in the past so have some recommendations:

See if you can rig up some way to catch the water coming off of the sill that won't sit directly on the floor. Maybe some kind of small shelf where you can put a long, rectangular box (like a flower planter box) to catch the water. You need to find some way to stop more water from getting into the floor.

Contact your owner/agency immediately and file a report about what's happening and don't take an answer of "there's nothing we can do", it's not normal for that much water condensation to happen

Don't allow the floor to dry without having heavy weight on top of the wood tiles/slats. If it does they will warp while it dries and then you're done for. In the past I used a piece of wood big enough to cover the area weighted down by my barbell weights, as much as I could get to stay on top.

Also, call your personal liability insurance agent and tell them what's happening. Sometimes they will get involved with the owner to help stop the problem so that they avoid having to pay out on the damage claim.

A Swiss owner/agency may think they can brush us off but can't do that so easy with a Swiss insurance agent

Sbrinz, unfortunately, one area has already been hit by the mould. We're already treating it.

Dantesheaven, thanks for the tips. Looking at that damage (and that is probably the worst of it) what I'm wondering is whether we aren't already done for?

What I find mystifying is that last year we didn't have this problem *at all*, and it has just appeared out of the blue for us this year.

Anyway, thanks for the tips both. I'll see what I can pick up from Coop Bau-Hobby to prevent the condensation hitting the floor.

A dehumidifier is unlikely to work best option is open the windows for a while, regularly use a towel to wipe condensation off window, if there are external shutters close them as they will create a layer of warmer air close to the window.

The reason it happens is when the outside air is really cold to the relative much warmer inside air.

Contacting owner will most likely get the sort of advice mentioned above we had it first year here and got exactly that and pretty normal to get condensation up to 5-6cms wide in a single night in our place which we simply do the above things to. With the outside shutters closed we get almost zero condensation and with them open 5-6cms so it is really the temperature variation.

Only real solutions are to monitor it and do things like the above

Alternatively if you want to read up here there is some explanation even if they are tryin to sell you a product where you see either you need to really lower the moisture in air significantly or reduce the difference in the extent of temperature variation from outside to inside (close the shutters works for us)

http://www.thestar.com/article/278825

Interesting thread.
We actually have the opposite problem and need a humidifier during the winter because the air in our apartment is so dry.

I've had this problem in previous houses, and had great success with a large dehumidifier. You do need a decent size one though, big enough to process a lot of air; they aren't cheap, but they're cheaper than fixing the water damage. I'm sure Obi/Jumbo/Bau+Hobby/Ricardo.ch will have them.

You can also get windowsill boxes which you can fill with hygroscopic silica gel which can also pick up a little bit more water.

you need to increase the heating in the place. have a heater near the windows. what is probably happening is that hotter air in the apartment is getting to the windows and the moisture in the air is condensing.

i think this is why they place radiators normally under windows.

Good point here. As the outside air is rather dry at the moment, I wonder where all this moisture is coming from. We 'breathe' a lot out for one thing but perhaps you also dry washing in the flat, have saucepans on the hotplate without lids, allow the steam from showering or having a bath to get into the rest of the flat? Do you have a window in the bathroom or an extractor fan. If the latter, does it really 'suck' the air out. We recently had the 'piping' to ours vacuumed out and cleaned (rather like chimney sweeping) and seeing the 'photos' of 'before and after', it was a wonder any air was sucked out at all.

Letting the dry air in from outside (not long, but regularly) should help (it needs a bit of a draught to move the air through though, you don't just want to cool the rooms).

Hope you get the problem solved.

If windows did not fit so well you would not have a problem!

Experiencing the same problem here as well. On all our windows and even our skylights. Contacting our landlord so no damage fines will result. At a lost as to how to attack the skylights though.

A skylight had the same problem in our last place, but only the one outside the bathroom door. Get up on a ladder and wipe it down before it goes moldy. Air your place out big time.

Close the bathroom door after showering, dry clothes in a closed room with the window open/dehumidifier on, and air 10 minutes morning and evening (that's opening a window in every room in your place and getting the air circulating).

I hate it with a passion - but at least our place is well insulated unlike back home. I air 4 floors of house every day at the moment I'm hoping that the humidity difference should get better soon.