Keeping a reasonable degree of humidity is necessary in our habitation, especially in wintertime in Quebec, for the sake of our health and our comfort. The CMHC provides facts and precious advice on this problem, and it invites the occupants, the tenants and the landowners, to take the necessary means to make an apartment more comfortable.
Too weak a degree of humidity could also cause problems to the occupants. One suggests [to the occupants] to procure a hygrometer, which is a small low-cost device that one can find in most hardware stores or supermarkets. The relative humidity of your home should go down about 30 % when the weather is cold. Too high a degree of humidity may cause moulds which can provoke several inconveniences such as minor irritations to important allergies or illnesses.
The CMHC gives practical advice should you have problems with humidity in your dwelling:
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Track sources of excessive humidity, like a pervious or humid basement or an underfloor space with an earthen surface, and do the necessary reparations as soon as possible before the coming of the big chill.
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Turn your bathroom ventilator on while you are taking a shower until fifteen minutes after finishing. Also turn on the hood of your stove while cooking. Think about replacing the bathroom ventilator if it is noisy or inefficient by a small silent and eco-energetic model that can function almost without being noticed, all the while allowing you to save money.
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Adopt practices that will help you to keep the house dry. For instance, have your laundry dried outside instead of inside the house; use a dryer whose evacuation hose goes outside; do not stockpile heating wood inside the house and use a dehumidifier in the basement during the summer months as well as in the fall.
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You should perhaps increase the degree of heating, because the cold surfaces in unheated or in poorly heated rooms are subject to condensation.
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Should your house remain humid, it is probably because you have neglected to improve an important source of humidity. Try to increase the ventilation by keeping on the bathroom ventilator and, after a few days, verify if your hygrometer indicates a lower relative degree of humidity.
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Finally, for some houses, the installation of a ventilator-heath-recuperator (VHR) may turn out to be a judicious solution for the problem caused by winter humidity. And, while installation costs of such a VHR may be high, this device may also generate important savings in the long run, all the while improving global interior air quality.
More information can be obtained by communicating with the CMHC at