| Brand New System Not Removing Humidity
My husband and I live in the southern Chicago suburbs. Humidity does get quite high in the Chicagoland area. I am extremely sensitive to humidity and would like to keep it as close to 30% as possible.
To save gas/electric costs, on April 24, 2008, we replaced a functioning Carrier system (I'm SO sorry that we did) with an 80% efficiency American Standard Freedom 100,000 BTW 80%, 2 stage variable speed furnace with matching coil. We also installed an American Standard Allegiance R-410A 3 1/2 ton 14 SEER air conditioner. We also installed an Air Bear media filter system. They also installed a new Honeywell Programmable thermostat.
From day one, I felt that the humidity was too high in the house. I have bad allergies and often keep the house closed up just to keep the humidity low and the allergens out. The Owner/Installer told me to hang in there because an AC will not efficiently remove humidity unless it can run for a good long while. That made sense to me so I waited until it got hotter here in Chicago. The humidity levels were bearable while the heat was still running although I did turn off our humidifier because I didn't want to add any more humidity to the heating system.
I've had the house closed up for about a week and a half straight now. I bought a hygrometer and the humidity inside will not go below 55-60% with the thermostat set at 71 or 72 degrees which is my normal setting. I didn't do the salt test on the hygromter but I did put it outside for about 6 hours and monitored the humidity reading against a close local weather station. So I feel I know the differential readings on my hygrometer.
The company came back out last Thursday, checked freon and all installation items and says everything is fine. They even talked to American Standard and got some suggestions. I called the owner of the company that installed the system on Friday to tell him that what they had done had not helped. On Saturday morning, he told us to turn the thermostat to 65 degrees and let it run to get the humidity down. We did that and the humidity lowered from about 60% to 45% over the course of about 8 hours. The system ran without stopping the entire time. The temperature never went below 71 degrees even though it was only 83 degrees out yesterday. Once it got about 7:00 p.m., it finally went down to 69 degrees. As soon as we turned the thermostat back up to 70 degrees, within an hour, the humidity level in the house went back up to about 53%.
On the day before, I noticed that the air, set at 72 degrees on an 80 degree day would come on for 10 minutes and be off for only 10 minutes. Is this normal or is this what is called short cycling? If so....what does that mean?
I am horribly uncomfortable. The installer acts as if this is an ok humidity level. As I said before, we had an old Carrier AC unit from around 1991 that was able to cool properly and keep the humidity at or below the 30% level. Nothing else changed in the house. This installer has been doing our maintenance on the old system for about 8 years so he knows that we never had an AC issues. He's coming back out on Monday but says he's stumped and has never seen this problem in 37 years. Do we have a lemon AC?
We bought the American Standard extended full system warranty for 5 years. Can we hope for any help from them? Should we call another AC installer to look at it?
Help.....my husband and I are not mechanically inclined at all nor do we have anyone else who can help us.
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