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lemoert

Plants for dehumidifying apartment

Lemoert
10 years ago

Hello there,

I am living by the foothills of the Alps (humid subtropical climate zone, Koeppen rating cfa, same as the American South, ish, except for the length of day) and have now as autumn has come realised that my new apartment is quite prone to keeping humidity in when I, unlike during summer, keep windows and balcony doors closed most of the time. This can, of course, be sorted by airing out the apartment every day, but that has the downside of also lowering the temperature quite a lot which makes heating up the apartment a bit of a waste. My first thought was to get a dehumidifier and plug it in, but then they're not all that attractive so I would need to build a cabinet and so on and so forth; then I got the idea that made me come here as a writer and not only, as previously, an anonymous observer.

The idea was that perhaps, perhaps there are plants that have an exceptional ability of picking out water from air, even if the relative humidity drops to what I consider to be comfortable levels. I have a large peace lily in my bathroom and it seems the air there is actually the driest in the apartment, as it should not be considering showers and what have you. This might be my imagination of course, but as they're supposed to purify the air I thought that just maybe it could be the case.

So, my question to all of you much better versed in plant care than me with my small herb and chilli garden on the balcony is, well, is this something I could potentially do? I am not looking for the suffocating dryness of air conditioners but just a level where I would not walk around being paranoid about mould. There is plenty of space for new plants, the thought of buying ones for indoor beauty has come and gone but only the mentioned peace lily and a small lemon tree in exile from the balcony is in here with me at present. So, ideas, ideas, ideas? (Well, apart from buying a dehumidifier or hanging bags of bentonite everywhere..) I'm not a stranger to oddities and plants that have to be shipped. Considering the price of a decent dehumidifier I would have quite a budget for plants to replace it with.

As for technical details the apartment is about 50m2 (500sq'), square in shape (one separating wall), decently lit from the west with 4-6 m2 (40-60sq') window area, and I generally keep a temperature of around 17-18 deg. C (~64 deg, F), although this probably drops to 15 deg. C (59 deg. F) at night. The day hours I get here would be the same as on the latitude of Montreal, QC, and Portland, OR, although, as mentioned, the climate zone is different.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be most welcome.

Many thanks,
Martin

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