Tova

Matt and chalky, and the tins were left by the fence with a supermarket own-brand label. That is reassuring — I had been imagining the worst.

Two litres a day is unremarkable, and the reason it does not feel humid is that humidity is a percentage, not a quantity.

A moderately sized room holds a surprising amount of water in the air, and more keeps arriving: people breathe out roughly a litre a day each, showers and cooking add several, drying laundry indoors adds a couple of litres per load, and in a cold house moisture moves in from unheated rooms and from the fabric of the building itself.

The machine is not emptying a reservoir — it is intercepting a flow. It will keep collecting for as long as moisture keeps arriving, which is forever. That is not a fault and it is not evidence the room was unusually wet.

Also worth knowing: a room at a comfortable 50% relative humidity still has a lot of extractable water in it. "Does not feel damp" and "nothing to collect" are different statements.

For question 3 — honestly, no, and the arithmetic is the reassuring part.

An oven lamp is typically 15-25W, and it is only on while the door is open or while you are watching something, which totals a few minutes a day. Call it ten minutes daily at 25W and you are at about 1.5 kWh a year. That is a rounding error next to the oven's own consumption, which is measured in hundreds of watt-hours per use.

The replacement frequency is worth a look, though: an oven bulb dying every year is on the short side. They usually last several. If yours goes annually, the suspects are vibration from the door slamming, or the bulb being a cheap one, or a fitting that is not seating properly.

Buying the right type — usually a 300°C-rated appliance lamp rather than a generic bulb — often fixes the yearly ritual on its own.