How Does Humidity Affect Air Conditioning And Heating


Too much humidity can make people feel hotter in summer and sometimes high levels of humidity can affect how effective your HVAC system is. What most people don’t realize though is the fact that heating systems are also affected by excessive humidity not just cooling ones. Modern HVAC systems today are designed with inbuilt humidifiers and dehumidifiers which are both designed to control the level of humidity at one particular time. So how exactly does a lot of humidity affect your HVAC systems? Here is a simple explanation.

Effects of Humidity on Cooling

A lot of people will often associate the HVAC system’s ability to its size. It’s not always true to conclude that the bigger a system is the more effective it will be. If your HVAC system is far much bigger than what you need, its ability to remove humidity will be highly curtailed. With the moisture in the air, it becomes very difficult for the HVAC system to cool your home. Ultimately, you will spend more energy and get less cooling. The best way to deal with this is to simply buy an HVAC system that has the right size and ideal for your home. Additionally, you can also have a dehumidifier installed in your HVAC system to deal with the moisture in the air.

How Humidity Affects Heating

Just like cooling, the capacity of an HVAC system to heat up your home will be significantly reduced depending on the humidity present in your home. However, unlike in cooling, this works in reverse. In other words, a drop in the level of humidity in the home affects the ability of the HVAC system to heat up your home which is different from cooling where an increase in humidity affects the HVAC system. There are very innovative humidifiers that can be installed in the system to deal with this. When humidity levels drop the home feels colder and the more the HVAC systems needs to work in order to heat it up.

The effects of humidity on cooling and heating are very real but the good news is, there are practical solutions to explore.

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