As the title states, my house has been holding a constant humidity of 75-80% with all of the rain we've had in North Texas.

This is my first pier & beam home, what can I do to get this down around 60% consistantly so I don't have to crank down the A/C to dry it out? I checked under the house in the crawl space and there is not a moisture barrier of any kind and the dirt itself is pretty damp by my standards.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

Use a dehumidifier? Or run the A/C.

Could vent the crawl space until it dries out.

As said, You can run the ac down to 65 degrees or get a dehumidifier system. You may check to see if you AC system has the functionality already.

This time of year it's going to happen. Just not enough heat load.

My wife and I recently bought a 1949 pier and beam.

I don't know which sensor to trust: the Nest is saying 68-70% humidity, but my stand alone sensor ($25 on Amazon) is reading 50-55%. Either way, it is fairly high.

We had our wood floors in the kitchen redone in addition to sanding the existing flooring. The wood flooring guy acclimated the wrong wood (white oak) for two weeks and then swapped it with red oak the day of the install. He claimed it was okay because he wasn't going to seal it for days and it'd breathe.

However, the moment it started raining heavily 6 weeks ago, the new floors started cupping pretty badly. I called him up and he told me not to panic, that it could take some time for them to go through these transitions. I don't know: minimum guidelines for wood install is to let it acclimate regardless if it happened to be a drier period of time during install. I have no idea if they came from an outdoor lumber mill that was covered: humidity in the summer would have been very low with the heat.

We too have zero subfloor barriers. The installer told me he just put a felt pad underneath, and that we could look into spray foaming the underside as a future option. I will be livid if our kitchen flooring doesn't settle down and will want him to resand/level them.

At a minimum there should be 30 lb felt between the subfloor and finished floor. I've worked on numerous pier and beam homes that have had moisture related issues. Most were caused by bad grading and lack of guttering or downspouts terminated too close to the exterior beam.

So i should probably look at getting some gutters, checking condition of insulation under house, and possibly a moisture barrier on the dirt crawl space before going full bore with a dehumidifier? I probably need to get under there anyway to replace water lines with PEX or at least insulate the existing ones.

I had my floors re-done recently, but they just sanded and stained the original hardwoods. There was no removal & replacement.

Dehumidifiers are not super expensive, but checking on a vapor barrier between the crawl space and your home should be step #1.

If you go through the process of sealing up your crawl space, Energy Vanguard has a good post about the process.

https://www.energyvanguard.com/service-category/crawl-space-encapsulation
https://www.energyvanguard.com/crawl-space-encapsulation-method-step-1

Hah. That crawl space in the link looks like a palatial retreat compared to our 3' - 1' tall dirt slum.

Make sure water is not draining into the crawl space when it rains.

I'll echo what was said about encapsulating the crawlspace. Also, ducting in a dehumidifier is a great way to help things out. You should also seal up as many penetrations as possible with spray foam.

If you are reading 50-55%, that's perfect, you don't need to do anything. Bad things happen above 70 and below 30%.

I don't know which to believe: my $25
Amazon Sensor which says 54% or the Nest which says 71%

We have a 1915 wood siding house in Fort Worth and our humidity has been hovering around 65-75% the past few weeks but today it's at 55 which I assume is due to the heater running. Thinking about buying a dehumidifier

Pier and beam houses and humidity in fall/spring are a PIA. Look into a portable dehumidifier or one of these:

https://www.ultra-aire.com/dehumidifiers/xt105h/

Thanks for the recommendation. Will do some research into this.

I think it says 530 watts at normal operation.

evan_aggie said:

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I don't know which to believe: my $25
Amazon Sensor which says 54% or the Nest which says 71%

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Have you cleaned your t-stat lately?

evan_aggie said:

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Hah. That crawl space in the link looks like a palatial retreat compared to our 3' - 1' tall dirt slum.

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Grade it and install some vapor barrier, it's amazing how much more useful a clean space can be.

make sure you are not running an exhaust fan (toilet or dryer) excessively.

In commercial buildings with humidity problems, it is because people make the area a negative pressure by sucking air out of the building and drawing in humid outside air.

I've had the same discrepancy between my Nest and my standalone digital thermometer/hygrometer. Nest has always read about 15% higher humidity than the $15 thermo/hygrometer sensor.

Have you considered a dehumidifier?

Possibly, but I think we will do closed cell foam underneath.