Thanks I reached out to our HVAC person to find out options.

Are you certain about your humidity readings? I grew up in Victoria, and we certainly never needed humidifiers in what was a pretty humid climate, relatively speaking, year round (mind you, houses were "leakier" back then).

Yes I’m sure. Our nest thermostat tracks it. Which I wouldn’t believe all on its own but we had a flooring installer come out to check a few boards and he brought a humidistat which showed exact results as the nest thermostat.

We too are surprised at this in Vancouver!

I guess that's the downside of a modern, energy efficient house : ( I'm pretty amazed by that, though.

I’m sure it will be a very seasonal problem. Already today by turning heat down and adding the humidifiers I brought it up a bit.

What is the outdoor humidity? I don't think your issue is "an energy efficient house".

64% today outside

@sktn77a what are you suggesting could be the issue?

I'm in Ontario. Two humidifiers running all winter long. All my laundry air drys. I have a spray bottle and mist my living room (drapes, couch, anything soft) at least 2x evening. I leave bowls of water on the heat vents, and boil the kettle and leave the top open after getting my water. On really cold days when the furnace (electric heat pump) is on a lot I will simmer a pot of water on the stove too.

A dehumidifier is running all summer.

When we lived in Ontario we had similar. But Vancouver is so different. It rarely drops below zero here and rarely goes above 25.

The average outdoor humidity in that part of the world ranges from the mid 50s in summer to high 70s in winter, so, yes, I do think modern, tight house design would have something to do with the difference between inside and outside humidity levels.

Yeah, heck. The coastal northwest is a damp and humid part of the country, if that's where you are and not inland. I'd suggest just cracking open a few windows.

Buy a second instrument to measure humidity, they're not expensive. I'd suspect the Nest is not giving an accurate reading. Several HVAC pros I've asked seem to dislike them and recommend against using them.

Would NOT "mist" furniture and furnishings.

When you're home, put a huge pot of water on the stove and bring it to a boil ... then turn it down to a simmer. Add more water throughout the day as needed.

Invest in some flower pots with attached drain trays and some plants that like to be watered, hanging them on a bracket above the sunniest windows: heart shaped philodendron is one. You can mist the plants as well as water them.

So we have also used a humidistat. I trust it’s dry right now in the house. The whole reason we found out is floors had a few issues.

Thanks SJ McCarthy we have an hvac person coming. We don’t need AC yet. But it’s not a bad idea to do all at once. We have lots of good air flow. Last year windows open worked great :)

So as I said in my post we are doing most of the things you just listed. I don’t want to do those things all winter.

Inside air is very dry in the Pacific NW, especially in the winter. That high humidity outside is only because the air is so cool. High humidity at 60 degrees or cooler is quite different than at 90 degrees. We had a humidifier installed in our previous house. We now deal with extremely low humidity in this house. Adding a humidifier to your forced air will be the most effective solution.

DM, of course you understand relative humidity decreases when temperature increases and increases when temperature decreases. But for a given sample of air, the AMOUNT of water vapor in that sample of air doesn't change until relative humidity hits 100% and it condenses out.

If you take your 45 degree, 85% relative humidity air from outside on a rainy day, run it through a furnace to a higher temperature, and let the house settle at 69 degrees (as an example) your indoor humidity is likely to be 50% or higher. If you feel like you're getting blasted with dry hot air, I'll suggest your furnace is too large and is running frequent, too hot cycles. Hot air out of a furnace does have lower relative humidity but the relative humidity increases as the air cools to room temperature. Something sounds oddly wrong with what's happening in your house, something's taking moisture out of the air. Being heated in a furnace (or by radiant heat or by a heat pump) doesn't take moisture out of the air.

Different story if it's colder and dry outside. That air will have lower relative humidity and when heated indoors will be even drier.

We are not blasted with hot dry air. We have hot water baseboard heat. It is a different house than the one with the humidifier.

The comment about heating damp, above freezing outside air still applies. The type of heating equipment doesn't matter, the effect of relative humidity dropping with temperature increasing is the same.

I live to your south with milder temperatures but the last thing needed indoors here when it's damp or rainy outside is more humidity. Maybe there's something more going on with your situation or something beyond my limited understanding, the latter being very possible.

Whole home humidifiers on a forced air unit are very cheap. Cost around $400. around $150 to install.

@A S We have a humidifier on our furnace(the one I described above) it has a dial that you turn up in the winter for more humidity and then you turn it down in the summer. I imagine we will have to run a dehumidifier in the basement during the summer because we also have dry winters and humid summers!

Good sized fish tanks work.

Then there's humidifall, but that's more for folks that have far more dry seasons than you do.

Honestly for now we are leaving it. Winter is over in Vancouver and we are already up to 34% humidity inside today. This is something we will need to address but not an immediate issue and don’t want someone in the house doing unnecessary work right now.

We actually do have a fish! I had no idea Rosie was helping :)

This is a great thread to learn about humidity (or lack thereof) or temps. I live in Louisiana, where it's DAMP ALL THE TIME, with HIGH TEMPS. Summertime it's 90-100 with sometimes 80-100% humidity. Yuck. A/C runs all the time. It gets comfortable in winter - unless we don't have winter.

@ A S...this is a perfect time to find out what the humidity was like when the wood floor was FIRST installed. If you remember the month it was installed, you can track the humidity for that month. That is your 'goal' for humidity control throughout the year. If the average is 34% then that is what you are gearing up for. If it was installed at 49%, then that is your 'year round' goal.

***Ideally the humidity the floor was installed at will be the year round humidity level. Of course the IDEAL setting would have had the humidity control up and running BEFORE the wood acclimated. And before the floor was installed.

That **ideal** situation is past but you can reproduce it around about the same time of the year it was installed. To do this. you can track the RH through the same time of year it was installed in.

BTW, what are the 'issues' you mentioned?

We have some gaps between the boards. We have a few work cracks. One was replaced as heavily cracked. But they are also 9” wide boards so that impacts things.

They were installed in September 2018 so we have a bit of a wait till then.

September can be very wet/damp and can be quite cool or it can be hot and dry. It depends. If you can find the 'old' weather documents for your area (North Delta gets different weather than South Surrey or Coquitlam or North Vancouver).

And I"m sorry to say but 9" wide planks are a hassle even if you have perfect humidity control. Where these nail down? Or full glue down? Or nail + glue assist? Or nail AND full glue spread?

Which of the Vancouver 'burbs' do you live in? I'm in N. Delta so I have a bit of an idea.

Glue down.

Edgemont North Vancouver

Boards were onsite for about a week before install. It was a nice September. No rain and warm like summer.

I’ve also looked on the site of the flooring we bought and the edges aren’t really different than what we have.

In reality our house is built over a stream, it is wet here often, the house settled and the issues are mostly centralized along one area of the house.

I mostly want to manage this moving forward and document any issues as they come up.

Holding strong at 38-42% now but have not figured out a long term solution. Covid-19 not exactly helping. Have contacted local HVAC but am not getting replies.

Humidity is going up (you posted above it was sitting at 34%). You are on the WET side of Vancouver (North Shore gets up to 50% precipitation than the rest of Vancouver) with a stream bed underneath your home.

Keep calling the BIG HVAC companies. They continue to run their commercial business because building of commercial units is still HUGE for them. I work in S. Surrey and there are three warehouses going up behind my store...and HVAC vans are running in and out of that compound on an HOURLY basis.

In BC we should be looking at easing of COVID restrictions by June. That's the 'dry time' for Vancouver (and N. Van). But you still have to get through SPRING MELT which is going to drive the LOCAL humidity closer to 80% (exterior) because the hills around you are saturated with ground water with MORE being added with the melt of the snow pack.

If you need to run temporary dehumidifiers to MAINTAIN 45%, then you may have to until an HVAC company gets back to you.

I read it was fine as long as between 35-55% is that not correct? I wasn’t planning on running dehumidifiers...

The range is 35% - 55%...with a caveat. The caveat being: a swing of +/-5% of the average. That is to say: 42%-52%. The 47% being the average. So long as you have that +/-5% is INSIDE the 35% - 55% you are fine.

I would look into the historic records for September 2018 for the average daily humidity. That's what you are trying to maintain because that's the environment into which your floor was installed.

Do you have A/C?

No AC. Average daily humidity outside won’t help though?

This is average daily humidity. But that’s outside not in.

The average outdoor humidity will INDICATE the indoor humidity. That's when you take a week of readings in your home and compare the indoor to outdoor humidity. You then extrapolate the difference (can be as much as 40% at times).

Then you go back to September 2018 and use your extrapolation to infer the probable indoor humidity from September's out door humidity. No worries. You have time.

Don’t know if anyone suggested this but houseplants are a great way to help add humidity to your home.

Yep. We have since gotten three new plants. For now the humidity inside is sitting at 45%

There is definitely a lot of variance but we will take out time figuring it out.

As the humidity goes up ('cause it's been raining for 4 days...liquid sunshine my @ss!) how are your floors looking?

To be honest same. Lol

Any chance you have had a consult with your builder?

Yes we’ve met with builder and flooring installer and flooring rep. Lots of meetings.

How warm are you keeping the house? Your RH levels are what one would see in the Okanagan over winter.

My former house (over a century old, not air tight, gas heated) in the middle of east Van always had humidity in the low 60%. Current house outside Victoria, decade and a half old, heat pump heated is pretty much the same, actually a bit dryer in summer than winter.

We are fine now the problem is in winter. We have forced air but our thermostat is on main floor so we have two bedrooms that are extremely cold unless we keep it at 23. In their rooms that ends up being more like 20 if they are lucky. Today we are at 45% inside today

The BR may be poorly insulated. Also, are there cold air returns in those rooms If not, either leave the door open or make sure there is at least a 1"/2.5 cm gap at the bottom of the doors. If doors are closed, there may be no way for the cold air to leave the room so even forced air doesn't get into the room.

Still hard to believe that your house will get so dry in winter given the typical RH outside and average winter temperature.. Then again, we've never heated to 23C in either house.

Bedrooms are not poorly insulated. Brand new house with force air and the two rooms are farthest away. Not uncommon for there to be issues as a result. Doors are open at all times other than sleep when we actually reduce heat to 19 so irrelevant.

I would tend to believe the flooring guy who came and measured and our readings which were same as his. Honestly not on my mind at all right now! Old post.

Will consider options as we hit fall

I'd still check the insulation (and ducting to boot). Brand-new doesn't necessarily mean well or properly built.

Depending on your heating system you might want to check if there is a way for the heater fan to blow all the time, low speed when not heating, higher speed when heating, so there is continuous circulation rather than the fan coming only only when the heater is on. Leave the fan on continuous even if it is single speed just to see what difference it makes.

We built the himself. I saw the insulation and ductwork. This is a custom home we actively participated in during the entire process.

The continuous fan is a good idea.

FWIW, my current house was also custom built by the previous/first owner (who, if you live in Edgmont, probably used to live within a few Km of you) too. He acted as his own GC and unfortunately used the lowest bid for everything, and I am finding all the shortcomings at decade and a half later (e.g., earlier this year, french patio doors attached by just _one_ screw - the two others were attached by two screws each). His background may have been a commodities trader and he believed many things were a commodity (his wife and he were not of limited means either).

One of the issues with the HVAC was that the air return from the bottom floor was never completed (by far) so cold air wasn't really being sucked out of the bottom floor.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. It is not ours though. We have pictures from every stage of install and I can tell you with certainty the ducting is all attached just fine and well done and the insulation is as it should be too.