zlacker

Where do you live? Winter is when people traditionally use humidifiers because the air inside tends to be dry. (Cold air outside has a low absolute humidity, so relative humidity will be low when you heat it up inside.)

>>buzzde+(OP)
Likely Laketown, near the Lonely Mountain.

>>buzzde+(OP)
A lot of EU heats by steam/water radiators. These don't dry the air the same way forced air heating does.

You are right about absolute/relative humidity, but our basement feels damper in winter than summer.

>>buzzde+(OP)
London. Cold enough that anything in an old Victorian building won't dry but warm enough that the air remains humid.

>>double+j1
It’s worse if you live in a well insulated energy-efficient building. In winter it’s cold so nobody wants to open the windows. The lack of ventilation means that the moisture has nowhere to go and just accumulates.

>>mellav+D
Forced air and radiators dry the air equally. Steam radiators sometimes can add humidity to the air it is limited and only when they are initially heating up before the valve closes. What causes dry air in the winter is the act of heating air up. Relative humidity is based on the temperature of the air, so if there is a fixed amount of water in the air, as you heat it the relative humidity goes down. So in the winter cold air slowly comes into the house via air leakage. This air is heated up which drops its relative humidity down. I have lived in houses with baseboard heat and with forced air, and recently converted my house from baseboard heat to forced air. There is no real difference in the relative humidity in the house.

>>double+j1
I dunno about that - I live in Norway. Most folks dry their clothes inside for most of the year. They take a little longer to dry in the winter, but it really isn't an issue.

>>zarzav+l2
We're in central Europe. A few degrees colder than London in Winter, I doubt it matters. I've done it in houses built a hundred years ago (though they were modernized since, obviously) and ones that were build recently with high degrees of insulation (almost but not quite passive). Not an issue. I usually did open the windows for a couple of minutes.

>>sbradf+i3
The way I understand this at the gut, conversational level, is by noticing that hot air can carry more water, therefore it will dry your skin faster, which is what "feels" like the air being dry.

Heating doesn't remove water from the air, as you explained. But that's what people assume when they argue that "heating doesn't dry the air" as I've heard in the past. Using relative humidity is a good explanation.

>>zarzav+l2
Shouldn't be if your building was designed properly, with a proper Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) e.g. [0]. The long and short of it, fresh air is slightly heated by stale outgoing moist air.

[0] https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy-efficiency/products/product-i...

>>sbradf+i3
Forced Air generally increase the exchange of new air from outside. Individual rooms will tend to be above or below ambient pressure which causes an exchange of air with the outside. Carefully balanced systems can minimize the effect, but homes are rarely built with this in mind.

You can get a related effect with thermostats which raise and lower the house’s temperature over the day as air expands with increased temperature.

>>Broken+r3
Having lived in both Norway and England, Norwegian houses are much warmer and drier indoors during the winter. Every house in England I lived in was damp, basically uninsulated and had terrible heating systems.

>>Broken+r3
London has an interesting climate - despite being fairly far north it doesn't get that cold in winter. It is common there to not have whole house heating. Norway isn't far London, but it is enough worse a climate that pretty much everyone has some form of central heating and keeps their house warm year round.

For this discussion is means that in London the indoor climate is livable, but terrible for trying clothes, while in Norway the indoor climate is nice and drying clothes indoors is helpful for adding humidity.

>>ihavea+M4
Even so, it does not explain why one method of heating the air would feel different than another, unless there is something physically different in their effects.

Radiant heat feels somewhat different than warm air, but if radiant heat from the radiators of a steam or water system is significant, would that not make them feel dryer? Our house has water radiators, and I do not notice the radiant heat from them.

I believe Retric's explanation is the correct one, given that human activity tends to increase the absolute humidity of interior air.

>>mellav+D
Steam radiators absolutely dry out the air.

>>Retric+q5
That is definitely an issue that is out there. Sadly cheap builders try and get away with a single return per floor in a house which is simply not enough. My point is mostly that forced air versus hydronic isn't what causes a difference in dryness of air. It largely comes down to the quality of the install of each and the tightness of the home. Hydronic is typically more expensive and tends to be found it better built homes. My house is an exception to that rule though, I am still working on sealing up air leaks from where all the pipes ran for our baseboard heat.

>>bluGil+L7
Central heating is fairly uncommon in Norway.

>>double+j1
I lived for years in Paris. Dryer don’t exists there. You just don’t have space for one … Is the weather THAT different in London ?

>>dopido+6c
> I lived for years in Paris. Dryer don’t exists there. You just don’t have space for one … Is the weather THAT different in London ?

Do you not have space for a washing machine either? In many apartments in the US the dryer is stacked on top of the washing machine. It doesn't consume any additional space.

>>mlindn+Jg
I can't speak for Paris, but often in UK apartments the washing machine will be in the kitchen under the counter, so above them is counter-space.

>>bluGil+L7
Note that Oslo is at 59.9 degrees northern latitude, while London is at 51.5 degrees northern latitude. Going the same 8.4 degrees south from London takes you to the Pyrenees, or Florence.

>>mlindn+Jg
Yeah I actually have one like that in my US flat.

It would not have fit in my first Parisian flat. ( to be fair… nothing was really fitting there )

Also when you rent a unfurnished place in France it’s empty-empty.

There is no frige/oven/washer/drier combo like in a US non-furnish rental.

In my personal case I saw a drier as yet another anoying piece of furniture I would have to deal with when moving

>>varjag+U9
I haven't been to Norway, but I've been to Sweden which seems like it should be similar. All houses there have central heating.

Maybe you are thinking about district heating? There are a few places in the world where the heat for an entire town comes from the same plant and is piped around. This is also called central heating which makes it confusing, thought district heating is the more correct term from what I can tell. I'm talking about a single heating system that handles the whole house, not a system that handles the whole town.

>>dopido+6c
Dublin is pretty similar culturally and climate-wise to London.

People use combo washer-dryers.

>>bluGil+LY
No, they aren't. Most houses that I've been in have electric heating, but not central heating. Folks heat each room seperately. Occasionally, it is baseboard heat. More commonly, it is portable heaters or electric panel heaters hung on a wall and plugged into a socket. Heated floors in the restroom are fairly common.

I personally have a small attic apartment in Trondheim (Norway). It has bathroom floor heat and came with one wall panel: I actually just use one oil-filled electric radiator and keep a fairly cool bedroom. Wood heating is pretty common too - one of the scents of fall is the lighting of fireplaces.

That said, more central heating is starting to become popular in the form of heat pumps, but I honestly only know one person that has one - and they are on a farm in the countryside instead of here in the city.

>>NeoTar+Ho
The washing machine is in the kitchen? Where's the dishwasher supposed to go then? In the US under the kitchen counter is where the dishwasher sits.

>>mlindn+r26
In a large enough kitchen you have both!

In a smaller kitchen it’s more likely that the dishwasher will be sacrificed than the washing machine (since it can be replaced with a sink)