Quote:
Originally Posted by Piotrsko
Two comments:
1: you can get too efficient and the house becomes very uncomfortable, stinky and humid
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Wrong. An airtight home needs mechanical ventilation, which is normally combined with a heat exchanger to make an HRV: Heat Recovery Ventilator.
A well insulated house will get humid inside when it's humid outside at temperatures too low to run the AC. The remedy is a dehumidifier. My house has a Walmart Energy Star dehumidifier in the utility room. When the indoor relative humidity gets over 50-55%, we open the door to the room and turn on the dehumidifier for a couple of hours. We empty the bucket once a day and keep the indoor humidity below 50-55%. The result is a comfortable house with no mold or stink.
Old timers claim that a house "needs to breathe". That refers to a house that leaks a lot. Cold air comes in, gets heated, and leaves. Those houses have high heating bills, and get so dry inside that they need humidifiers. You get the same effect by opening windows on cold days.