I'm Gonna Make You Sweat!

Friends, fellow southerners, other-people-that-do-not-identify-with-one-of-the-other-two-labels-but-still-are-within-earshot-of-my-blog-and-its-contents, hear me now:

We are in the thick of it.  That is to say, literally, we are in some pretty thick air.  That’s right folks, humidity.  It is essentially water, water droplets or water vapor floating around in the air.  Most of us can agree, this stuff is not welcome in our lives.  I mean for the obvious reasons, right?  You feel sweaty.  You feel gross.  Maybe you feel greasy or uncomfortable.  Your clothes are sticking to you and your sweat glands are turning you into some Everglades swamp monster.  Hyperbole much, Jeremy?  I will digress.

For all of you not familiar with our climate, let me explain it to you.  We get 53 inches of rain a year.  Our climate has no notable dry season.  We typically get 5 inches of snow a year (the average snow for US cities is 25 inches) 121 days out of the year it is raining.  This equates to 41 percent of the year.  In more reasonable words, it is wet.  It is wet often.  We have the Gulf of Mexico to thank for the wetness. 

Furthering the conversation about Chattanooga’s Climate, we can discuss heat.  I love maps.  Maybe it’s a guy thing.  I am not sure.  Anyways, let’s look at Chatt Town’s latitude (the lines that go from east to west or sideways.  Chattanooga sets on the 35° 2' 44.2669 latitude line.  What’s this mean?  Well it basically means it’s hot.  It’s hot because it’s close to the equator.  We are in line with some fine countries like Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan.  Now, I know that most of us can figure out common denominators about these countries.  The biggest one is they’re all deserts, right?  Not desserts, but deserts.  The long and short of it is, Chattanooga and its surrounding temperate deciduous forests are forests and not deserts because of the Gulf of Mexico and our relationship to the ocean.  Thank you ocean.

I now have to make this about heating and air somehow.  Here goes:

This relatively humid and hot combo will do things to your comfort level.  This is especially true in your home where the air can sometimes be stagnate.  Little do we realize our AC units act as de-humidifiers.  You’re currently asking yourself, “Jeremy, how does my AC unit act as a dehumidifier?”  I will tell you fine people.

Basically, your AC unit pulls air through your home’s return air.  This air will be warm and full of water droplets.  As it pulls the air across your cold evaporator coil, the water droplets condense into actual water.  Are you following me?  It’s basically how rain is formed.  A billion water droplets are forced up into the cold levels of the atmosphear, cooled and condensed into one another and then rain comes down.  Back to HVAC…

So, your evaporator coil has condensed the water vapor into water.  The water then drains out of the house via the, guess what, that is right, the drain!
De-humidified air is then pushed back through your duct work leaving you feeling dry and subsequently cooler.

Here’s the hook.  If you’re still, despite having a normally operating AC system, feeling sticky or icky, give us a call.  You could actually have a legitimate excess humidity issue.  We can offer solutions to solve this problem.  It’s not abnormal, especially in basements or homes near water to have excess humidity.  We would love to help.  Thanks for reading.

www.indoorairsolutionsga.com
706-820-6041
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