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swehAfter the fun of the leaking heater I've been trying to get the floor to dry up. The part of the basement where the heater and furnace are dried pretty quickly. Just a cheap thin carpet there (but amazing how well that keeps the floor clean; concrete floors just attract dirt). But the area just outside of that (the main "furnished" area of the basement) had a thicker carpet and underlay. Where the water had flowed in that direction the carpet was wet. I'd been running the dehumidifier for days and it was still saturated. The dehumidifier was saying the air was under 35% humidity so was stopping and even if I put it on "permanently on" setting it only pulled a very small amount of water out of the air. WTF? The carpet just wasn't drying and was beginning to smell. Last time I had a leak (the dehumidifier didn't stop during the summer when its bucket was full and so started pooling water onto the carpet) and it dried up over night. Why wasn't it now?
Last night as I was pondering this I noticed the thermometer. This is in indoor/outdoor type with a thermocouple at the end of a long wire. Since I now have better technology (wireless) for this, I just stuck this up on the wall of the basement and let the wire hang loose. Effectively I have temperature measurements for the near to ceiling and near the floor of the basement. Ceiling was 70F, floor was 60F.
A dim bulb illuminated my mind. The water wasn't being drawn out of the carpet because the floor was too damned cold! It's essentially a concrete floor with (ugh, asbestos) tiles and then a felt underlay and then the carpet. The bottom of the underlay was probably too cold to let much water evaporate into the air (despite having a fan heater near it trying to dry it out) and so the dehumidifier had nothing to do.
Solution; pull up the carpet and underlay so it's not touching the floor. With the heater on it started drying out. I turned the heater off overnight (fire worries; I would check it every hour or so while I was up to make sure it hadn't dried out too much but can't when I'm asleep or at work) and this morning it was still drying quite nicely. Maybe by the weekend the carpet will be dry again.
Water... ugh!
Last night as I was pondering this I noticed the thermometer. This is in indoor/outdoor type with a thermocouple at the end of a long wire. Since I now have better technology (wireless) for this, I just stuck this up on the wall of the basement and let the wire hang loose. Effectively I have temperature measurements for the near to ceiling and near the floor of the basement. Ceiling was 70F, floor was 60F.
A dim bulb illuminated my mind. The water wasn't being drawn out of the carpet because the floor was too damned cold! It's essentially a concrete floor with (ugh, asbestos) tiles and then a felt underlay and then the carpet. The bottom of the underlay was probably too cold to let much water evaporate into the air (despite having a fan heater near it trying to dry it out) and so the dehumidifier had nothing to do.
Solution; pull up the carpet and underlay so it's not touching the floor. With the heater on it started drying out. I turned the heater off overnight (fire worries; I would check it every hour or so while I was up to make sure it hadn't dried out too much but can't when I'm asleep or at work) and this morning it was still drying quite nicely. Maybe by the weekend the carpet will be dry again.
Water... ugh!
