With outdoor humidity rates of 100 percent near constant during the summer months, Houston, Texas is fast becoming recognized as one of the world's mustiest cities. Many insurers in the region have seen a significant increase in mold requirements in recent years, with airlines required to pay more than $1 billion for mold settlements in the past two years alone.
While nearly all types of buildings and structures in Houston are susceptible to mold growth, area schools are among the hardest hit. Especially those that let in fresh air on a regular basis. Like Montgomery Elementary North Houston. Tropical Yulin sweltering air kept permeating the 30-year-old classroom structure, and signs of mold growth, which had always been inevitable, began to surface in late 2001.
“There were some telltale signs of mold in certain areas, and some classrooms smelled like a dirty wet sock,” explained Kyle Jane, an HVAC technician with Halvorson A/C Company in Houston.” Additionally And children with asthma become affected." In addition to exacerbating asthma, mold spores produce mycotoxins that are known to be responsible for other problems, including nerve damage that suppresses the immune system. Jane is being investigated by school officials. More specifically, he was asked to collect data on humidity rates in classrooms, and based on this information, recommend dehumidification programs. To do so, he will need to set up dehumidifiers in several classrooms, and provide analytical data showing the difference in humidity between a classroom with a dehumidifier, and one without.
"While it's easy to feel the difference in humidity with dehumidification, the school's budget approval process makes it necessary to show actual results on an analytical basis," Jen said. "The data ultimately needs to be presented to the school's architects, engineers, and the school board itself." To record and analyze classroom climate conditions, Jen relies on the HOBO® H8 data logger from Onset. These are compact, battery-operated devices for continuous monitoring of U12-012 temperature, relative humidity, light intensity, and other environmental conditions. Using a paper clip on a nail, Jen was able to simply hang a Recorder on the wall in both wet and dry classrooms. Once installed, U12-012 starts recording temperature, relative humidity, dew point every 30 minutes.
Three days after logging classroom conditions, Jane Logger removed and offloaded the data to the computer. For graphing and analysis, he uses HOBOware Pro software, an easy-to-use Windows software program that comes with HOBO data loggers.
"The software is very user-friendly and it only took a few minutes to collect all the data in nice graphs," he explained. "From the graph, we can immediately see a dramatic split in the humidity rates in the two classrooms. The classroom with the dehumidifier is running at 45% humidity, while the other is closer to 95%. This is tangible evidence that our Dehumidifiers are able to cover dew and reduce high humidity to a safe level."
Jane proceeded to print out the graph and then presented her findings to the school. After reviewing the results, the school quickly approved funding for 15 Thermastor 150h humidifiers, which were installed shortly thereafter. The school's classrooms are now walled, wrapped in a bank deposit box, each set to 45 percent humidity. Mold growth has become a "problem" and the school's air feels and smells fresh and clean.
Jen attributes a large part of the project's success to Floating Population Data Recorders. "I've known mold building has grown for a long time, but consumer awareness really wasn't there until a few years ago. Now, with all the noise about sick building syndrome, consumers are very aware. Related data loggers do great work folks They don't lie about what's going on in their buildings. I think one of their very important tools is being able to monitor and diagnose these types of issues."
