Thursday, August 25, 2011

Dehumidifier vs Humidifier

Anybody ever seen on of these? I'm surprised you don't hear about them more often up here. Maybe things have changed as this is the second or third dehumidifier I've seen on Craigslist over the last couple months.

Back in the late 70s I bought one. I was living at a small place out on Beechwood Drive in Cutten. It only had a small electric wall heater and was very cold in the winter. I felt it had to do with how damp the house was. I'd heard about dehumidifiers somewhere and decided to try one.

I drove down to Sears but couldn't find one in their appliances section. I asked the sales guy where they might be found. He kept replying as if I wanted a humidifier. He apparently had never heard of a DEhumidifier. Why anyone would want a humidifier up here, unless they had a house with wood heat, was beyond me. It's damp enough around here as it is.

So we went back and forth: "We have plenty of humidifiers." . I'd reply, "I don't want a humidifier. I want a DEhumidifier. It takes the moisture out of the air, not into it.". He didn't seem to get it but we finally ended up looking in the Sears mail order catalog and found one. Seems to me they were fairly expensive for the time at around $150.00, but I ordered one.

It finally arrived. I set it in the living room, turned it on and watched it go to work.

They work like a small refrigerator. They have coiled copper(?) tubes that get real cold. The moisture in the air condenses on them and drops into a storage container sitting below the coils. I'd guess the container held about 3 gallons.

For the next 3 days I was dumping it out every few hours. It was amazing how much water that thing pulled out of the air. You'd think that moisture from the outside would replace the water that was going into the container but that didn't seem to be the case as after the 3 days water collection really slowed down and I could get by dumping it out once a day.

And the house felt a lot warmer. It really did work in making the house more comfortable. I'm surprised more people don't use dehumidifiers up here as cold and damp as it can be.

Do we use one now? No, but this house doesn't seem that damp. Besides, I don't want to use any more electricity than I have to. When I've seen them being given away on Craigslist for free, though, I've been tempted to snag one. Maybe one of these days I will and see if it makes this house seem any warmer.

7 Comments:

At 7:45 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

More people don't use dehumidifiers because they're so freakin' loud, certainly much louder than a refrigerator. They're intended to be used in basements where the loudness isn't an issue and they can be hooked up with a drainage pipe that automatically sends water outside. See that circle on the back? Yeah, punch that out and hook up a pipe and you're in business.

Sure, there is a storage bucket as a back-up option, but it's not the primary way people use dehumidifiers.

 
At 7:53 AM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

I don't recall the noise bothering me, although there was a guy giving away one on Craigslist the other day who said the noise was too much for him.

I never knew about the hose option. Neat idea, but even some pros don't always use it.

A few years ago, after the Matteoli's house got flooded, they had Paye's Carpet Cleaning come in to clean up the water. The guy brought in 3 or 4 huge dehumidifiers. We ended up being tasked with emptying out the storage containers every few hours and they held over 5 gallons each, if memory serves me correct. For some reason he didn't run a hose outside.

 
At 9:31 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

how funny. do you live in a cave??? patronizing the wrong kinda store.

 
At 9:51 AM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

Sears? Sears is great. I don't go there very often but they sell just about EVERYTHING. Who else in town sells dehumidifiers?

 
At 3:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Steven Wright does an hilarious bit about putting a dehumidifier and a humidifier in a room together and watching them battle it out.

 
At 11:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fred, go to any grow supply store and you'll see dehumidifiers. They are crucial for indoor growing.I always assumed the ones on Craigslist were from indoors closing down.

 
At 5:33 AM, Blogger Fred Mangels said...

I had no idea.

 

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