Why does your basement smell?
During the warmer months many of our customers complain of having a “smell” in their below ground space. These smells are often a sign of mold growth and can be a major source of suffering for people with asthma and allergies and a major inconvenience for homeowners. This is not just a basement problem; it is a whole house problem. It is estimated that 50% of the air that we breathe while on the first floor is air that comes from the basement which means that you and your family are breathing in smelly, dirty, moldy, and humid air even when you are not in the basement!
Air rushes into the home through lower levels of our home and then out through our attics. In the summer that means warm/humid air is coming into the basement (air in the basement is naturally cool) and transferred to the rest of your home. When the outside air is cooled upon entering the basement, condensation can form on your building materials, duct work, and pipes. This moisture can create mold and mildew which is what causes the smelly problem! We can’t seal 100% of outside air leaks so we have to manage the relative humidity in our below ground space. The SaniDry Basement & CrawlSpace Air System is the answer.
Most dehumidifiers on the market today are simply just not powerful enough to dehumidify your entire basement or crawl space due to their weak blowing motors. Another problem that many homeowners face with standard dehumidifiers is the daily annoyance of having to empty the water collection trays;trays need to be emptied at minimum once a day! These dehumidifiers typically remove only 30-40 pints of water per day, provided that the wet air is even being circulated enough to be dried. The SaniDry XP can remove 110 pints of water per day and has a powerful blowing motor that is strong enough to circulate the air into a finished basement space, while conveniently and discreetly being stored in the unfinished area of your basement! Its MERV 11 air filter will remove particles from the air as small as 2 microns, and theoptional odor filter helps rid the air of stronger odors. With its completely digital interface, you can set it and not have to worry about it again!
My next door neighbor asked me to inspect his basement last year because it had a “funny smell”. As soon as I walked in the basement I was immediately hit by the strong odors. My hygrometer read 75% relative humidity! I could see rust stains on the pipes and duct work and even drip marks on the floor below. He had a huge moisture problem that had been left untreated for years which made the space unusable. Everything they stored in the basement would smell and get moldyover time. After explaining to him and his family how the SaniDry could alleviate all of his basement problems, he immediately scheduled installation of a SaniDry dehumidification system. One year later, he is truly amazed at how quickly the SaniDry transformed the space for him and his family, and they could not be happier with the product. Give us a call today for a free estimate on how Quality 1st can transform the way your living space smells and feels!
**Interesting fact about air distribution: Now that you understand how the stack effect presents a major problem in two-story houses you can imagine what kind of pressure it causes in high-rise buildings. This pressure is so significant that when skyscrapers were first developed at the turn of the century, revolving doors were a necessary invention because people could not even open the front door due to the pressure created by the stack effect in these buildings. The cold air was rushing in with so much pressure that it was difficult to push the doors open.
