I've never had much luck with a dehumidifier lasting more than a couple years.
Usually they start freezing up, or running but not dehumidifying.
This one, just over a year old, is different. It started shutting off the fan when satisfied but not the compressor. The power switch did nothing, it had to be unplugged. Made weird noises, too. And arced like crazy when I plugged it back in.
IMO, these are the one appliance where it's worth considering taking out the extended warranty plan. I did on one here and it crapped out in about the third year. But still there is some gotcha, they didn't have that model anymore and the replacement one was slightly higher capacity. So they wanted me to pay the difference in price, which was about $25 more. Still, between the extended warranty and the $25, it was less than half the cost what I would have paid for a new one.
I have to agree with you on that. Many people only have them last a couple of years. I don't understand it myself. It is just a refrigerator or AC unit in principle and they last many years.
I had a Sears. After a few years, the fan went. New fan was $50, so I figured it was worth fixing. Put the new fan in, less than a year later, that one failed. And this is just a basement, only running some months, even then nothing like 24/7. So, still not having learned my lesson, I bought another motor. That would smoked when it was powered up the first time. And I had it wired correctly.
That's why the next one, I opted for the extended warranty. It came up as part of the negotiation, I was trying to get a local store down to near an online price. The salesman offered up a package deal with the ext warranty included and it wasn't much more than the online price. Like I said, good thing, because it failed in less than 3 years. IDK what the deal is either. If someone made one that was reliable and it cost $50 more, you'd think people would buy them.
With that Sears crap, after the two motors, I was looking online and I saw a whole lot of people with the bad fan motor problem, going back years. And yet Sears parts was still selling crap fan motors, years later. One problem is they probably have no logging, tracking of failures to identify bad components, do a root cause analysis and change parts vendors.
I'm now dealing with one in the basement that was a replacement on a recall. It now seems to be on its last leg too. I'm really considering buying the Aprilaire which is really pricey, like $1100, but made in the US. Then I was thinking of installing it as a whole house unit, which is what it was designed for. It is needed in the house as we are in a wet mountain location. The central AC does a ok job of keeping the humidity reasonable, but the humidifier should lower the humidity with less AC run time. That all said, today, the temperature outside was in the 30s and the basement humidity is low enough for the dehumidifier to shut off.
Good to know; I've not seen them before. I'm moving to Florida and expect higher humidity than here in CT. I'll see how it goes, but that would be a good answer if it is too high for our comfort. We could have upgraded the Trane AC but it was big bucks for the variable speed, like $5k more.
Most of the dehumidifiers will not work very well if the temperature in the room gets much below 70 deg F or so. They work by cooling the air going through them low enough the moisture in the air condenses out..
I think you can get some special units that will work at lower temperatures.
That is why I always buy the 3-year extended warranty with it. Lot's cheaper than the inevitable replacement unit, plus Lowe's disposes of the old one instead of me having to do it.
-dan z-
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