The Home and the Humid Climate Can Be Friends

A week of rains (caused by typhoons and the southwest monsoon or "habagat") has gotten me thinking about humidity and how it affects comfort. In a tropical climate, humidity is something we are quite used to: that the air is full of vapor doesn't bother us so much as it does people who live in temperate climates, for instance. Humidity makes one feel sticky on top of feeling hot in the summer; it's what makes the home muggy despite the cool winds of the rainy season.

Part of taking care of the home is keeping an eye on humidity: too much humidity makes everyone feel sticky and irritable, not to mention it increases the risk for things like piles of paper, books, not-too-often-used clothing inside the closet, and board furniture to develop mold.

It's useful to have a hygrometer at home just to see if it's getting too humid. The normal, fair-weather measure for us is 60% AH. When we do the laundry and hang them to dry, it goes up to 77-80% AH; when it rains, we read 85-89% AH. Depending on the air flow that goes through the house, we either feel stickier (less air flow) or not (more air flow) when there is high humidity. Air flow is a crucial player in the personal comfort of those living in the space. So it's good to think of solutions to maximize it in the home.

Air flow

In our old home, because it had only one side for windows, the air didn't flow through it so well. We had to place fans strategically around the house and keep all the openings open (except for the main door, of course) to allow for air exchange. At the start, we kept everything closed and used the aircon to do the dehumidifying (surprise! that's one of the functions of an air-conditioner), but this was not sustainable in the long run. It relied too much on the air-con, and what if it broke down? (It did, eventually, in the middle of the pandemic, so we didn't want to have it fixed.) We learned the hard way that the unit being able to function without the air-con is the goal because the home should be livable even in a power outage or interruption.

So, when we planned out our new home, we looked into how we could maximize the air flowing through the unit taking advantage of electric fans and the air well of the building we live in. As a corner unit, it also has two sides of windows so the air can flow easily enough. We located the fans strategically to encourage this natural air flow even more.

Positive and negative air pressure

You know the air is flowing correctly through the condominium unit if it is flowing out into the corridor, and not the other way around (also called positive air pressure). In our old home, we used to contend with the smell of the corridor seeping into our unit. (You can't control what neighbors do in their unit; some may be smoking, and the secondhand smoke wafts to the corridor and into your home.)

When we shifted to all-openings-open mode, the occurrence of secondhand smoke seeping into our place became minimal. We learned from this and applied it to designing our new home; nowadays we use fans and keep the windows open. We use the air-con on days when the temperature is too high or when the humidity is too high; also on very rainy days, since the water goes into the windows when the winds are very strong. Otherwise, it's natural air flow cooling the unit. The smell of the corridor outside stays outside.

Contending with humidity

Other takeaways we made on caring for the home in a humid climate include choosing the right furniture. If you can, choose solid wood furniture and avoid particle board furniture that are not well-made. When we had particle board cabinets, the mold formed at the back (especially when we stopped using the air-con), particularly in the part of the cabinet against the corner of the room.

The sunlight is also a crucial player in keeping mold at bay. So, allow the sun to go into the unit every now and then. Don't cover the unit in curtains all day, every day. In our new design, we turned one bathroom into a "service yard" as it had a corner window that had glass going from waist height to the ceiling. We kind of felt too exposed to bathe there; so instead we converted it to a place in which to dry the laundry and to wash big things that needed washing, such as dirty fans, shoes, or carpets. No curtains here; we let the sun do its thing.

We also had louvres/vents built into the doors we installed. The design allows the air to pass through the doors, and it looks nice to boot! It makes the home cooler and at the same time keeps private the rooms behind the doors.

Open the windows!

When you open the windows to the let the air flow, you also let in the noise from outside. In a way, it prevents the home from feeling like a box. Sometimes, you hear the happy commotion from the fire drill happening in the building across the street; other times, the laughter from another building travels into the window and it's as if the person laughing is right there next to you. On the con side, sometimes the noises you hear are not nice: the revving of a motorbike or car whose driver feels like the road outside is a racetrack, screeching tires, and noises of people arguing or shouting at each other in annoyance.

When you open the windows, you notice, too, that mid-year the direction of the winds change, and the marks of the shadows on the walls move. The sun changes position throughout the year because of the Earth's position relative to it; the seasons change (in our case, the wet and dry seasons), and the winds change. Sun up and sundown change also, and it helps you feel the differences of seasons and the time of the year more. (So, Christmas feels more like Christmas, and summer, summer.)

So while the air-con is useful especially in a humid climate, it's good to pay attention to the times you can switch it off and open the windows to let in the air. It's better for the enviroment, your electric bill, and mental outlook, too. As condo living has become more common, there is a chance that we're always "protected" from the natural elements. But there are ways to still live in nature and enjoy it, and one such way has to do with how to maximize the space's ability to contend with the natural climate.

"We learned the hard way that the unit being able to function without the air-con is the goal because the home should be livable even in a power outage or interruption."