Last week, I addressed strategies for controlling moisture sources in homes during the summer--one of the contributors to discomfort during hot humid summers. This week, I'll examine how to remove unwanted humidity using air conditioning equipment, starting with some fundamentals. To understand moisture removal, it's important to brush up on a bit of physics. Air is able to hold only a finite amount of water vapor, and that amount is governed by the temperature of the air.

In commercial buildings where cast-in-place, reinforced-concrete balconies extend through the insulated building envelope, tremendous heat loss occurs, and this thermal bridging often leads to condensation and associated mold problems. The German company Schöck Bauteile, GmbH, has the answer with the Isokorb product line.

How Isokorb works

High relative humidity is a significant problem in many regions of the country during the summer months. In hot weather, the higher the humidity, the less comfortable we are--partly because moisture does not evaporate from our skin as readily.

A new gas-filled panel insulation material that consists of pockets of low-conductivity gas in a honeycomb foil substrate provides insulation levels as high at R-11 for inch-and-a-half-thick panels.

About gas-filled panels

You would think that establishing a definition for “showerhead” would be simple. But, as the Department of Energy (DOE) is discovering after issuing a draft interpretive rule on the matter, nothing is simple when it comes to getting people wet.