Damp in Buildings
The temperature drops from the air surface inside the building to the air surface outside the building, say from 20 degrees to zero on a cold day. Somewhere along that gradient (location dependent on humidity) is the Dew Point, where water condenses from vapour to liquid. If the air-to-air gradient runs through clothes in a wardrobe (or on the back of a door), then the Dew Point may occur in the clothes, which get wet. The air-to-air gradient needs to be restricted to the building fabric, with the Dew Point occurring preferably in the cavity, where the condensed liquid water then simply drains away to the base of the wall and then to the outside. People should be very careful not to let their clothes rest against an outside wall, for the clothes can get damp from "interstitial condensation".
Another factor is restricted air circulation behind furniture, which can lead to condensation and mildew appearing on the internal wall.
Read more about this topic: Dew Point
Famous quotes containing the words damp in, damp and/or buildings:
“Men felt a chill in their hearts; a damp in their minds. In a desperate effort to snuggle their feelings into some sort of warmth, one subterfuge was tried after another ... sentences swelled, adjectives multiplied, lyrics became epics.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The primitive wood is always and everywhere damp and mossy, so that I traveled constantly with the impression that I was in a swamp; and only when it was remarked that this or that tract, judging from the quality of the timber on it, would make a profitable clearing, was I reminded, that if the sun were let in it would make a dry field, like the few I had seen, at once.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)