Your Basement Laundry Could Be Better

After a few years in basements, laundries have mostly moved above ground in homes built in the last 25 years or so .

But if your home was built before upstairs laundries were the norm, your washer and dryer are probably in the basement. While this makes sense from a space saving standpoint, damp basement conditions are not ideal for laundry. Here are a few improvements you can make to your basement laundry room (or room).

Basement laundry problem

Yes, it’s inconvenient to carry dirty laundry down the stairs (if you don’t have a chute) and then go up the stairs when it’s clean. But there is a bigger problem that affects both your home and your laundry.

“Laundries tend to produce quite a lot of moisture and heat, and when you put your laundry in the basement, there are fewer places for moisture to dissipate,” interior designer Brett Elron told Realtor.com . “This can lead to more cases of mold and rot on your floors and walls.”

Also, if your basement is too damp and damp, any laundry you leave there may end up smelling musty.

How to improve the laundry room in the basement

Luckily, there are a few things you can do to improve your basement laundry. Here are some of them:

• Install ventilation and exhaust fans: There are several options and settings, but the idea is to get damp air out of the basement and bring in fresh air.
• Open windows : This is not possible in all basements, as many have glass block windows, but opening windows or doors (if there is a screen door) allows for natural ventilation.
• Make sure your dryer is well ventilated : Not only are non-ventilated dryers a fire safety hazard, they add a lot of moisture to basement air, increasing dampness.
• Keep an eye on humidity levels . If you don’t already have a way to determine the humidity level in your basement, buy a small digital room thermometer that also measures humidity (there are plenty of options for less than $10 ).
• Get an air purifier : make sure it fights mold spores in the air.
• Add some lighting : Basements tend to lack natural light, making stains on clothes hard to spot. A table lamp or clip-on accessory light can make a big difference.
• Air drying upstairs or outside : The lack of sunlight and ventilation in the basement not only means that laundry will take longer to air dry, but also that wet clothes will increase the humidity down there.

What about dryers?

If your basement is over 60% humidity, a dehumidifier can help. However, a dehumidifier is only a temporary solution because it does not eliminate the source of moisture.

In fact, according to the University of Minnesota , they can make things worse: “By drying out the air in the basement, moisture enters the basement more quickly, causing concrete efflorescence and flaking, and further damage to interior finishes.”

To prevent this from happening, you can program your dehumidifier to maintain an optimal level of relative humidity, which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency , is between 30% and 50%. If you don’t have this feature, keep an eye on the humidity levels in your basement to make sure it doesn’t get too dry.