Lela Claiborne
Owner and lead technician
Reads every logger and writes the summary you get back.
Humidity and dehumidification · Charleston, SC
Read the room before you buy the machine.
Charleston air holds water in every season. Before we quote a dehumidifier, a bigger air conditioner or a closed-in crawlspace, we log your humidity for two days and tell you what the numbers say.
30–50%
Indoor humidity the EPA suggests60%
The EPA's upper limit indoors60°F
Dew point of a 75°F room at 60% humidity
Colder surfaces than the dew point sweat. That is where we start.
What to measure first
Five readings, in this order.
Equipment comes after the numbers. This is what we log, and why each reading comes before the next.
Room humidity and temperature
A logger sits in the room that bothers you for 48 hours. One reading tells you little: Charleston air swings from a cool, dry morning to a wet afternoon.
The dew point
From those two numbers we work out the dew point, the temperature at which air starts leaving water on a surface. Anything colder than it will sweat.
Surface temperatures
Windows, supply registers, a duct run, an outside wall. We compare each one to the dew point to see what is sweating, and why.
How long the air conditioner runs
A cooling cycle that ends in a few minutes cools the air without drying it. We time the cycles on a warm afternoon.
What is under the floor
On a raised house we read the crawlspace the same way. Damp air under the floor moves up into the rooms.
Before we come out
Take the first reading yourself.
A small humidity gauge on a shelf is enough to start. These notes make our visit shorter and the numbers easier to read.
A short list for the week before
Put a gauge in the room that bothers you, away from a window and a vent
Write down the reading in the morning and the late afternoon for three days
Note which windows or vents sweat, and at what time of day
Look at the filter and photograph the nameplate on the air handler
Notice whether the air conditioner shuts off before the room feels dry
If the house is raised, note whether the crawlspace vents are open or blocked
Keep any bills from the hottest weeks
Dehumidifier options
Four ways to dry a house, and what each needs.
Which one fits comes out of the readings. We name the one we'd choose and why, and what we would try first.
A portable unit
One room, one tank or one drain hose.
Good for a closet, a spare room or a stretch between visits
Needs emptying or a drain line
Won't dry a whole house
A whole-house dehumidifier
Ducted into the air handler, draining to a condensate line.
Good for a house that stays damp all summer
Needs ductwork it can connect to, and a drain
Sized from the readings, not the square footage
A crawlspace dehumidifier
Sits under the house, in a crawlspace that has been closed in.
Good for a raised house with damp air under the floor
Needs the vents sealed and a ground cover first
Without those, it dries the neighborhood
A better-matched air conditioner
A system sized to the house that runs long, steady cycles.
Good for a system that is oversized or short-cycles
Needs a load calculation before anyone picks a size
A replacement, so the largest cost of the four
The price comes after the readings.
What a humidity job costs depends on the house around the machine. We write down what drives it, and what the estimate includes, before you ask.
Who comes to the door
Six of us, four you will talk to first.
Lela owns the firm and reads every logger herself. Matias speaks Spanish with customers who prefer it.
Matias Delgadillo
Installer, ducts and crawlspaces
Runs the drain lines, seals the vents and checks the readings again after the install.
Reid Sherwood
Service technician
Places the loggers and times the cooling cycles.
Sadaf Kohli
Scheduling and written scopes
Books the visit and sends the scope after the readings are in.
After the readings
What the numbers changed.
“They left a logger in our hall for two days and showed us the line on a graph before they said a word about equipment.”
Zelma P.West Ashley homeowner
“I assumed I needed a bigger air conditioner. The cycles were three minutes long. We changed what was running, not the size.”
Gerard W.Mount Pleasant homeowner
“They read the crawlspace before and again after the vents were sealed. I could see the difference in the two pages.”
Heidi S.Johns Island homeowner
Sample reviews.
Service area
Charleston, and the islands and towns around it
Humidity checks and dehumidifier installs from the peninsula to the sea islands and up Highway 17 and I-26. If your street isn't listed, send the address and we'll say whether we can get there.
Charleston County
- Charleston
- West Ashley
- James Island
- Johns Island
- Folly Beach
- Mount Pleasant
- Sullivan's Island
- Isle of Palms
- Daniel Island
- North Charleston
Berkeley County
- Hanahan
- Goose Creek
Dorchester County
- Summerville
- Ladson
We don't go to Beaufort, Colleton or Georgetown counties.
Questions
What people ask before the first reading.
What humidity should my house be?
The EPA suggests keeping indoor relative humidity below 60 percent, and ideally between 30 and 50 percent. A Charleston house that sits above that for days at a time is worth measuring.
What is a dew point, and why do you start there?
It is the temperature at which the air in a room begins leaving water on a surface. A window, a duct or a cold wall that is colder than the dew point will sweat. Knowing it tells us which surfaces to look at and how much drying the house needs.
Will a bigger air conditioner fix a clammy house?
Usually not. An oversized system cools the air quickly and shuts off before it has removed much moisture. We time your cooling cycles before suggesting any change.
Can a portable dehumidifier do the job?
For one room or a closet, often yes. For a whole house, or the air under it, a portable unit runs constantly and still leaves the rest damp. The readings show which case you have.
Does my crawlspace need to be closed in?
Not always. We read it first. If the air under the floor is damp and the vents are letting more in than a dehumidifier could remove, closing it in is the first step. We tell you what we found either way.
Does a dehumidifier remove mold?
No. It lowers humidity so conditions are less friendly to mold, but it doesn't remove mold that is already growing. If you can see mold, ask a mold professional to look at it; we are not mold remediators.
Book a humidity check
Tell us what you are seeing.
A few lines is enough. Sadaf calls back to set a time for the loggers, and the visit fee comes to you in writing before anyone drives out.
Phone(843) 555-0102
Hours
- Monday – FridayToday
- 7:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- SaturdayToday
- 8 a.m. – 12 p.m., by appointment
- SundayToday
- Closed