Begone, basement humidity!

June 21, 2007 6:54 AM

Are you experienced . . . with buying dehumidifiers?

I'm on the lookout for a dehumidifier to dry out a reasonably damp finished basement, with some mold but no standing water. The small amount of heat pumped out of the dehumidifier is actually a plus in my case -- it will get rid of the basement's continuous chill.

-Brand and model recommendations?
-Does it make sense to buy a dehumidifier with more umph than I need, for the sake of greater efficiency? (For example, buying a 1,000 sq. ft rated dehumidifier for my 500 sq. ft. basement).
-Other valuable tips?

posted by Gordion Knott to home & garden (10 comments total)

Dunno about brands or efficiency, but I do know this: emptying the tank gets real old, real fast. Water heavy.

You might consider buying a submersible pump along with the dehumidifier, to send the water into a handy nearby sink or drain or just out the basement window.

In my case the pump doesn't quite fit inside the dehumidifier's tank, so I have the dehumidifier draining into a nearby bucket which contains the pump and a float switch... which works fine but looks pretty stupid. So I guess tip #2 would be to, unlike me, compare sizes before buying instead of after.
posted by ook at 7:56 AM on June 21, 2007

Delonghi makes a dehumidifier with an integrated pump and a humidistat that uses real world units and is EnergyStar compliant.
posted by plinth at 8:01 AM on June 21, 2007

I am under the impression that the main difference in space rating of dehumidifiers is the liquid capacity. Some provide for continuous drainage which would make that irrelevant if you have a drain handy to your dehumidifying project.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 8:14 AM on June 21, 2007

I bought a basic Sears unit a few years back. It came with a little block-off plate that diverts water that would ordinarily go into the tank, to a hose fitting on back of the unit. I can from there run a hose into one of the floor drains in the basment.

As for efficiency, you need to look at how much clearing capacity the units are made for - maintaining a mostly-sealed 1000 sqft area is less work than maintaining a constantly-remhumidified (from people going in and out) 500 sqft. Other than that, having extra capacity is useless.
posted by notsnot at 8:15 AM on June 21, 2007

I looked at that Delonghi, but it sounded like people had a lot of trouble with the pump.

I bought a whirlpool from Costco online that seems to be working just fine. I have it on a table so I can have it drain directly to our laundry sink via a short hose.

Some dehumidifiers handle lower temperatures better than others. They should list their minimum operating temp.
posted by Good Brain at 8:44 AM on June 21, 2007

Piggybacking -- is there any reason that water collected from the dehumidifier can't be recycled?
posted by desuetude at 11:10 AM on June 21, 2007

I had a Danby that I liked very much back when my bedroom was in a finished but damp basement. It had the option of attaching a hose that could be run to a drain (e.g. in a laundry room), so you wouldn't have to empty the tank every day.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:46 PM on June 21, 2007

Desuetude, you'd be fine treating it as greywater. Actually, theoretically, it should be really pure, but I don't know about mold that might be growing in the damp parts of the unit.
posted by Good Brain at 12:49 PM on June 21, 2007

I have a couple of Kenmores that I run quite a lot, and the only thing I really don't like about them is that the fan motors need to be lubricated every nine months or so, and you have to take off the front cover and dismount the fan from the frame of the dehumidifier in order to lubricate the bearing closest to the fan blade. I haven't seen any other brands that don't have this problem, however.

If you run it in an area with any mold spores at all, you will get mold growing on the coils, so make sure the coils are accessible and that they are not so close together you cannot clean them with a paper towel or a brush. The aluminum cooling fins will not grow mold, but they will accumulate mold spores and dust, and they are so easily bent, to the detriment of their function, that I have found them difficult to clean. Vacuuming them is not good enough and I always end up dinging the fins, anyway. My best solution has been to take them outside and blow the dust off. If you do that, the dehumidifier should be light enough for you to handle.

Since you brought up the heat factor, I feel I would be remiss if I did not point out that dehumidifiers are about the most effective possible heaters in terms of raising the temperature of the room, because not only do you get all the heat generated by the electricity required to run them, you get the heat from the latent heat of vaporization of the condensed water, plus, if you empty the tank before the water reaches room temperature, or better, run it into a drain, you get all the heat it would have taken to heat the water back to room temperature.

Desuetude, my owners manuals say not to drink the water.
posted by jamjam at 2:26 PM on June 21, 2007

We have found dehumidifier happiness with contestant number four:

SOLEUSAIR 40 Pint Portable Dehumidifier model CFM-40

Allalong, we need ed two to cover our space properly, and contestant number one was an old Kenmore that conveyed with the house. It chugged along for a while, but was annoyingly noisy and never really inspired much confidence. An LG model in the 40 pint range was contestant number two, which died in a matter of days. When returning it to Home Depot, they were sold out that exact model and instead gave me a free-of-charge upgrade (I guess) to a model in the 60 pint range. That one was heavier than all get out, noisy, hot as Hell, and it also died, after maybe nine months. A little while after that, the old Kenmore gurgled and rattled its last, too.

Onlyconnect then researched models online, focusing on quality and quiet. She found convincing recommendations for the CFM-40 and we bought two, which have been better than I hoped. They collect water like champs, are much cooler running and DRAMATICALLY quieter even though these always run a fan (quietly!), which I like, because I suspect that keeps dampness hotspots from forming away from the units's sensors.
posted by NortonDC at 8:36 PM on June 25, 2007