Your comment will not appear below until I’m assuming by ‘similar problem’ you mean condensation on ducts. You can follow him on Twitter at Articlesīad Advice About Indoor Humidity in Cold WeatherĪccidental Dehumidification – A Preventable Mess He is also writing a book on building science. He has a doctorate in physics and writes the Energy Vanguard Blog. Bailes III, PhD is a speaker, writer, building science consultant, and the founder of Energy Vanguard in Decatur, Georgia. Meanwhile, if you want more, you can ponder whether it’s possible to get condensation on a sponge.Īllison A. I’ve got things to say about that topic, too, but we’ll save it for another time. Water vapor interacts differently with porous materials like drywall and wood, though. That’s what you see in the photo above, on a window when it’s cold outdoors, or on the bathroom mirror after your shower. In this article, my focus is on condensation only. There are other important facts about dew point temperature, too. When a nearby surface has a temperature at or below the dew point temperature, condensation occurs. The point I’m trying to make here is that condensation is the result of two separate properties being aligned: the dew point temperature of the air and the surface temperature of a material in contact with the air. But it doesn’t have a dew point temperature unless you vaporize it. That metal air conditioner in the photo is definitely not a vapor. Materials have a temperature, but not a dew pointĭew point temperature is a property of a material in the vapor phase. (The dew point temperature is also related to pressure.) 3. The more water vapor per volume of air, the higher the dew point temperature will be. And that property is related to the concentration of water vapor in the air. Our atmosphere and buildings are filled with both the dry air components (nitrogen, oxygen…) and water vapor, so it’s OK to say the dew point temperature is a property of the air. More correctly, the dew point temperature is a property only of the water vapor in the air. The dew point temperature is a property of the air It tells us about the potential for condensation but not the actual occurrence. And the dew point temperature tells us when condensation like you see above will happen. It’s important to remember, though, that whenever we talk about dew point, we’re talking about a temperature. I’ve certainly been guilty of using the shorthand term “dew point” and will continue to do so. What are those two properties? And what else should we know about dew point? Let’s do a quick check on some important facts about dew point temperature and find out. Those droplets tell us something important: A property of the air in that crawl space aligned with a property of that surface to convert water vapor into liquid water. That photo above is the bottom side an air conditioner in a crawl space on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
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