Without having a good basement dehumidifier, a wet basement can bring all the mold, rust and mold to your house. Why should you even bother to look at your wet basement? The reason is obvious. Having excess water moisture will eventually damage the expensive furniture in your house or even your health in long term. Basement mold will attack your respiratory system and that may lead to serious problem if any of your household members has allergies.
Instead of telling you to spend a few hundred bucks to buy a basement dehumidifier, I will show you in this article a few easy ways to deal with this problem without getting a basement dehumidifier.
You have to understand that there are usually two causes of wet basement, namely poor drainage outside and condensation inside. You will need to find out which is the cause and before you actually wasting your money on a basement dehumidifier that you do not need.
First, you may need to get some aluminum foil from your kitchen and tape to the area where wetness can accumulate. There is no right or wrong answer here, run a few tests on different spots according to your instant and seal the foil against the area. You are almost done with it. Just leave the foil there for 2 days and remove it to see which side is wet.
Since our goal here is to test whether the moisture is coming in from outside or is accumulating inside your basement, you can immediately tell the moisture problem is caused by condensation problem if the side facing you (or facing your room) is wet and vice versa.
In this article, I will first show you how to deal with condensation (wet side facing your house) first, because it can be fixed easily without having to buy a basement dehumidifier.
To begin, you need to know what condensation is. Condensation occurs when the water moisture in the air meets the cold area in your basement. A wet basement is usually caused by the accumulation of such moisture condensed on the wall or surface area. You are very likely to notice this happened during spring and summer. To fix your wet basement, we can use both dehumidification and insulation.