How should I deal with a damp house?

if you have a furnace, leave the fan running 24/7. Otherwise a dehumidifie.

Place buckets of damp rid through the house and run a dehumidifier.

Its either because water can't get out, or water is getting in. Try a dehumidifier, and check your venting system. Good luck- you might want to call in a professional to rule out structural problems.

The 3 previous suggestions are good. My house sometimes smelled (especially in the basement) when it was closed up for a while, probably from lack of air circulation and outside humidity. I leave my furnace fan on all the time now, and notice a big difference (it didn't make much of one in my electric bills). In the summer, I now leave the central a/c on a high temp like 85°F, so it kicks in only on the really humid days, and dehumidifies, and that really helps as well.

If none of the suggestions mentioned by everyone work, call in a pro like Hillela G. said, because you may have mould in your walls or insulation.

Thank you. I will look into those suggestions.

1)Have you checked under the house? Could be leaks in the crawl space if there is one. If water stands outside after a rain then you have poor drainage.

2)Check drain holes on the a/c. Upstairs apt. the drain backed up and came through our ceiling.

3)If you use damp rid put small dish in several areas of house. Keep an eye on it to see if any of it clumps up faster than others. Those will be area to check more closely. You could also use instant rice to check also. It will start to get mushy is a lot of dampness.

4)Open windows any time weather will allow. Just a crack will let the air blow through.

Someone just told me run the fan in the cellar and I did buy arm and hammer product for moisture check your internet for stores in your area.

We have a part basement and a crawl space, our basement smells musty, we set a fan on the top step so it blows into the basement, all musty smell gone, they have an air return to blow upstairs air into basement, but it costs lots of bucks, a cheap box fan has done the same thing.

i've got a box fan at the end of my basement steps and a dehumidifier running. 24/7

If you don't have ceiling fans install them. We have them in all the rooms and in Houston it gets hot and the AC bill can be high. When we started circulating the air the bill went down and the house smells much better. This works in the winter too, just reverse the fan draft.