Hi all,

My wife and I have a recently built house (almost 3 years old), its a large-ish (200sq) house with a single high wall 8kw heat pump. We run a small oil heater in the master bedroom as it is far away form the main living area where the heat pump is and therefor is usually a little bit cold without the boost of heat from the oil heater. 

This is our first full winter in the place and we have noticed our aluminum windows in most rooms and condensating a lot, we do sleep with bedroom door closed which i understand probably does not help but it's more of a necessity due to other people making noise in the house when others are trying to sleep etc, however I wouldn't expect this to be the sole cause of so much condensation, and we keep all internal doors open during the day with the heat pump running.

The house is warm enough, and obviously it's the warm moist air coming into contact with the cold aluminum thats creating this issue, so I wanted to check is this a normal amount.

I know one of the best things to do is open the house up for a few mins a day to exchange the air, but with a average temp in chch hardly hitting 5 deg and a 6 month old in the house this isn't overly ideal either.

I am curious if this amount of condensation is normal, the aluminum is drenched to the point it drips, is there anything else we can do to combat this?

I was thinking of getting a dehumidifier, would this address the issue, or due to the size of our house would we need a few?

If a dehumidifier is the way to go what should I look for? I don't know to much about them except how many litres per day they can remove, even then there is big price differences though, for example a 20L Mitsubishi can go for close to 1k and a 20L midea at Trade Depot goes for $300 and it has WiFi and a humidistat, there must be some advantages to the Mitsi for the price difference?