Cheap Ways To Reduce Condensation In Your Home

Amid a Cost of Living crisis and with winter looming, it’s understandable that we’re worried about how to keep our families warm and dry during the cooler months of the year. Unfortunately, many of the measures we might take to do this could lead to condensation, alongside other property care issues.

So, the question is: how can you reduce condensation in your home for a low cost, whilst retaining the maximum amount of heat in your property?

What is Condensation?

Condensation is the result of warm, moist air encountering a cold surface and cooling into water droplets. You’ll most often find condensation in wet rooms like your kitchen, bathroom, or utility, where showering, washing clothes or cooking all create a moisture-rich atmosphere. When this moisture-laden air isn’t given a way to escape the property, it collects on cooler surfaces like windows and tiles, creating the perfect breeding ground for mould to germinate.

Why is Condensation More Common in Winter?

Condensation is a concern year-round, but it’s more commonplace in winter where cooler external temperatures meet the warmth of your home. Surfaces such as windows or external-facing walls are more readily cooled by frost and snow, and when met by the heat generated by your radiators or boiler, makes it the perfect environment for condensation to occur.

What Are the Best Cheap Ways of Reducing Condensation?

There are a lot of different ways to reduce condensation in a home, whether it’s adapting your living habits or implementing cost-effective solutions to reduce the likelihood of condensation forming.

It’s recommended to keep your property at a steady temperature, so warm air circulates through your property consistently, reducing the chance it encounters cold air within your home. However, it’s going to be less likely that people are willing to heat their home as much, as often, or even as warm as they have in the past. With that being the case, how might condensation be reduced in cooler homes?

How Do I Remove Condensation with Ventilation?

Keeping your home ventilated is crucial: Sealing your house completely will only help you retain moisture inside where it can cause harm.

A good first approach to take is to improve your ventilation. Practices such as Lüften encourage you to open your windows daily for around 10 minutes. This replaced the dense, warm air with fresh, dry air and ensures moisture is released outside rather than collected on your windows or walls.

However, how do we then combat the cold? While this might be more difficult in winter than summer, alternating the rooms you inhabit is the ideal approach. You should open the windows and doors upstairs in the morning to remove the moist air generated during sleep. In the evening, ventilate the downstairs rooms just before heading off to bed.

If you’re using a room, make sure the door to that room is shut to retain any heat already present, and using a draft excluder at the foot of the door will help keep the heat in. This way, you’ll ventilate the rooms you’re not using and retain a comfortable environment to work or relax in. Once your windows are closed again, you can optionally turn on your heating for a 30–60-minute burst, which will quickly restore warmth to your home without needing to be on constantly.

Ventilation doesn’t just extend to open windows either. Passive ventilation like trickle vents on windows or wall vents can allow moisture to escape naturally if you don’t want to leave your windows open. All ventilation should be clear to allow ideal air flow, so make sure you move any furniture or clutter away from them to improve their effectiveness. This will also reduce the amount of surfaces where condensation can collect.

Rearranging your home and allowing for better airflow is just one cheap method of reducing condensation. If you are open to spending a little money, you can investigate different methods of ensured ventilation and condensation control.

How Do I Remove Condensation by Changing My Bathroom Habits?

The bathroom is one of the most common rooms for condensation problems to manifest, especially during the winter. That’s because it’s the room most likely to generate a lot of steam from bathing or cleaning.

Like the practice of Lüften above, opening a window during a shower or bath will drastically reduce the amount of moist air remaining in the room (especially if you don’t have an extractor fan to help). 20 minutes is usually enough to rid yourself of any steam, but leaving it a couple of hours can also help you dry out the remaining moisture left in the bathtub or on the tiles. If you’ve got any remaining moisture once you’ve shut the window, wipe down your surfaces with a towel or squeegee to remove the last remnants of water.

Another option is to adjust how you use the bathroom, or for how long you use it. For example, reducing the time you spend bathing reduces the amount of steam you generate. Another option is to reduce the temperature of the water. Nothing beats a hot shower in winter, but using just a bit of cold water in the mix will reduce steam generation. Finally, dry your towels outside where possible or with the help of an open window if you do leave these in the bathroom.

You should also consider your bathroom doors: If they are left open during bathing or just after, it’s highly likely that condensation can leave the room and affect the adjoining rooms and hallways. The cheap and easy way to stop bathroom condensation from affecting the rest of your property is just by closing your bathroom door.

General mindfulness will go a long way in helping to lower the amount of condensation being generated in your bathroom.

How Do I Remove Condensation by Rethinking My Kitchen Habits?

The kitchen is just as big a culprit for creating condensation as your bathroom. Thankfully, there are also some inexpensive ways of reducing condensation while you’re using it.

Ventilation, again, plays a key part in removing condensation from your kitchen. Having your windows or a back door open will help, but if you’ve got a cooker hood or extractor fan in your kitchen then even better. Either method will help you remove steam from the kitchen, whether you’re cooking, cleaning, or just boiling the kettle for a cup of tea.

You can also think about your appliances: Running a dryer, dishwasher and cooking on a hob all at the same time will generate a large amount of steam. Running these gradually through the day instead will spread out the amount of steam generated at once and allow it to escape gradually through passive ventilation.

Finally, if you’re drying clothes on an airer, it can help to put the airer outside even in cold weather. If the ground is dry outside, then there is potential for clothes to dry. A moderate breeze can help dry your clothes faster even if it’s cold outside.

Are There Other Ways to Remove Condensation?

If these suggestions aren’t enough to control condensation in your property, then you may need to invest some money into more permanent condensation control. Investing in mechanical ventilation or even a dehumidifier can provide some relief from moist atmospheres. If you’re using a dehumidifier, it should be an ideal size for your property, and will need to be used consistently to achieve an ideal humidity level within your home. You should also move it between rooms to ensure moisture is removed from the entire property and not just the worst-affected areas.

If you have noticed that your property has developed damp because of condensation even after you’ve taken measures to reduce it, then you might need some help from the professionals. Our team have a wealth of experience in diagnosing the cause of condensation, as well as helping reduce the level of condensation in your property. Our quotes are always tailored to the problem at hand, and we will always provide clear, accurate breakdowns of any work we recommend. If you require professional guidance, request a survey to have your property investigated, or get in touch by calling us on 0800 288 8660.