Condensation

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astolpho

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 12, 2004
Messages
209
A question for you super cooling gurus. How far below ambient temperatures could i chill my water without having to deal with condensation?
 
Down as far as the Dew Point Temperature.
Which alters with Humidity.
So theres no hard and fast rule bar insulate anything where condensation could form.

Luck......... :D
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astolpho said:
A question for you super cooling gurus. How far below ambient temperatures could i chill my water without having to deal with condensation?
Click to expand...

It depends on stuff; relative humidity and temperature

There's an online calculator
here
 
There is an approximate way to know, according to the guys over at phase-change.com. If you wrap a thermometer in a layer of wet tissue paper and wave it around, the lowest temp you get is the dewpoint.
At least that's how I remember them saying it. :D
 
Oh man, I remember doing that experiment in science in eigth grade. Broken thermometers everywhere! :p

If you check out your weather forecast, most of the time they have the dewpoint listed in the current conditions.
 
If you check out your weather forecast, most of the time they have the dewpoint listed in the current conditions.
Click to expand...

That is of course outside dewpoint. Depending on how you cool your house, with a swamp cooler or A/C, the dewpoint could be higher or lower inside.
 
Here in hot CA I can run my chiller at 55-60f with no condensation. Room temp avgs 72f.
 
It would be in an airconditioned/heated apartment, with a heat pump, that should lower the dew point versus outside shouldn't it? Taking moisture out of the air.
 
I live in a very humid place, our stae motto is "Its not the heat, its the humidity." Typical dewpoints day to day are in the mid 70's. I have no clue as to how to determine the dew point inside my apartment though. Any ideas?
 
My easy judgement is always - put a glass of ice tea on the good furniture. If the owner of the furniture jumps to put a coaster under it you most likely have a condensation problem ;).
More seriously, take that glas of ice tea and a thermometer, and let it warm up. Occasionally wipe the condensation off, and record the temperature where you don't get any new condensation. Dewpoint. Having lived in Tucson, you learn to judge dewpoints by the cracking of your skin (there is no condensation on your ice tea).
 
I looked at the dew point calculator link above and tested it with the information I have about our outdoor weather today and it seems to agree with the weather service. I guess with a device that measures humidity and temperature in the house, I could plug the values in and get a good idea. I'm thinking it probably doesn't change much as long as I keep my thermostat set steady during the summer, I live in a warm climate and the heat pump probably doesn't run nearly as much in the winter which may raise the humidity in my apartment.
 
I'm a C++ programmer it would be ideal if i could get an input from the devices serially from the RS422 port and run the calculation algorithm in my PC, putting the result out to a thermostat to keep my water a few degrees above dewpoint. Sounds like a simple little program I could run in the background if I can find the devices.
 
Have a look at DataQ's basic A-D converters. Great for reading thermocouples, so I have no idea how to build a simple hygrometer with analog output.
 
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