• nBodyProblem@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    No it’s not, there must be something else going on in your house and the person you responded to. Gas doesn’t dry the house any more than electric heating.

    Winters are dry because the dew point is generally pretty low in the winter. Relative humidity is a function of air temp and dew point; the greater the difference, the higher the RH.

    If you take cold air with a low dew point and heat it to a comfortable temperature you will always get a low RH as a result and the air doesn’t care how that happens.

    • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      A little more eli5:

      Hot air stores more water inside itself, and cold air stores less.

      As such, cold air that is completely full of water and can’t store any more is at 100% relative humidity, aka 100% saturation.

      When that air warms up, it’s able to store more, and as such the relative humidity goes down, similar to getting a bigger bucket that has the same amount of water. It’s now less full.

      Thing is, your body doesn’t care about how much water is actually in the air, it only cares about whether it can take/give water to the air. Hence relative humidity is the only thing that matters.

    • taiyang@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Yeah I don’t think gas would be dryer, except it’s cheaper so we ran it more often. Now I wear sweaters instead, it’s less dry.

    • gears@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      See I had never really thought the method of heating would matter, so that makes sense.

      Now as to why this house feels so much more dry compared to the apartment, idk. Maybe the smaller apartment was more humidified from showers / dish washer / cooking than the larger house is.