How do you stop high condensation in a house?
I built a home in Jamaica, I'm experiencing a lot of condensation. I bought a dehumidifier, we empty it twice per day. Secondly, all the closets, bed head etc has a white powdery substance that smells awful. What can we do to eliminate this problem.
The white powdery substance you are seeing on your walls is efflorescence, which in itself isn't really dangerous. The problem, as you know, is that its presence indicates elevated moisture levels, and there are other problems that high humidity and condensation on walls can bring. This page is a great place to start understanding what is going on –
Condensation on windows in homes - Why is it there? How to stop condensation?
Jamaica is a tropical climate and therefore rather humid, so its not a surprise that you have high relative humidity. You are taking the right steps with a dehumidifier, the problem is that clearly your dehumidifier doesn’t have the capacity to treat all the air in the house. First, is there a floor drain in your house? More reliable than having to empty your dehumidifier daily is to have it drain through a hose somehow with all the other waste water of your home, that way it won’t shut off when the tank is full and you’re not around to empty it.
Is there anything special about your house that can help us solve this with you? It the home insulated and air conditioned, or do you just keep windows open for natural ventilation? If you have a dehumidifier you likely are keeping it sealed and treating the air, I just want to be sure of the conditions before we try problem solving it. If you do keep it sealed up, I would say step one is getting a second dehumidifier, but check the capacity to ensure that at least both of them together have the capacity to handle the volume of air in your house.