Serving St. Petersburg
Humidity & Moisture Drying St. Petersburg, FL
When the outdoor air is wetter than the building, opening windows adds water. Drying means a closed building and conditioned air. The building is closed to outdoor air and its air is dehumidified, because in the humid season outside air adds water. Materials are read until they match unaffected material in the same building, including inside block and slab.
Shut off the water, then pick up the phone
Often needed alongside
- AC Condensate & Drain Line Leaks
An air conditioner makes water every day it runs. When its drain clogs or its pan cracks, that water goes into the ceiling or the slab.
- Wind-Driven Rain Intrusion
Wind pushes rain sideways through window frames, stucco and the base of the wall. The roof can hold and the house still take water.
Frequently asked questions
Why do the crank-out windows in an older St. Petersburg apartment drip?
More than a quarter of St. Petersburg homes are in buildings of ten or more units. Where one of the late 1960s still has crank-out awning windows, their gaskets harden over time, and the closed sash no longer seals. Outdoor air seeps in onto the metal frame, which the cooled room has chilled, and water beads on it and runs into the sill and the wall below. New gaskets stop the seepage.
What holds up the ground under the bluff-top houses of Roser Park?
Concrete block walls. In 1914 the neighborhood's developer walled the ravine banks along Booker Creek, 5 to 6 feet high, to keep the soil beneath the houses above from subsiding, and some sections were later rebuilt as concrete slab walls. Through August, rain soaking into the bluff behind those walls drains only slowly through or under them, so the ground at the houses' creek-side foundations stays wet.
How does the floor of a garage apartment behind an older St. Petersburg house get damp?
In Roser Park most houses have an outbuilding, usually a garage apartment, garage or shed, built at the same time and of the same materials. A garage apartment's floor is the garage's ceiling. With the apartment cooled, the underside of that floor runs colder than the humid summer air in the garage below, and water condenses on it and soaks into the boards. Insulating and sealing the garage ceiling keeps that air away.
St. Petersburg's own page carries them beside the local figures.