After asking best way to dehumidify a room, I've been nosing on Amazon ... since we're totally double glazed, we do have a condensation issue - ironically the only place we don't is the bathroom. Maybe the extractor fan is doing it's job.
Looking at the options, I see you can get smaller units (around £35) or quite large ones (around £150).
Since we're a bungalow, we have quite a large floor area ... would I be correct in my intuition that we'd be better off going for 3 or 4 smaller units than one massive one ? Presumably these machines have a "range" beyond which no matter how much they can extract, they simply won't reach (is this a partial pressures thing ?) ?
For example this one (close to the one Tim Watts kindly suggested below)
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I can't see any spec about covered area, but reviewers claim they've been told it's enough for a 3 bed *house*. Would I be expecting too much for an "L" shaped bungalow ?
I'm interested in getting one. The one I had my eye on (spotted in a Robert Dyas catalogue pushed through the door) was the DeLonghi DEM10 (£139.99 from several sources). It seems to get good reviews. Any comments?
I bought 3 on ebay. All were practically new (2 came with the original packaging), all work fine after 9 months use and all cost £30- £40 each.
People buy them after a spcific incident - e.g. washing machine flood - and then sell them on because they can be a bit bulky. The type which only come on after a certain humidity level is reached (i.e. most of them) are economical in use for obvious reasons.
We have a bungalow with front and back halls, and a dehumidifier in each, for use when SWMBO deems it necessary. One of them is a Blyss, made in China for B&Q. Avoid it. It's noisy and throbs. A beat-frequency between the compressor unit and the fan, about 2cps, perhaps a bit less. Goes away when either fan or compressor stops, although both are still noisy when run independently. Dehumidifies the air though.
One thing you might not realise is that humid air is less dense than dry air of the same temperature and actually rises although this won't be an issue in a bungalow but in my last house I put the dehumidifier on the landing rather than downstairs where the water vapour was being generated. Not sure if it made any great difference but it seemed like a plan. However what I did conclude is that if you do have any real sort of damp problem then a dehumidifier is little more than a band aid on a broken leg. It'll never cure it. I never did get to the bottom of why that house was damp but think it may have been something to do with the previous owner filling in and concreting what had been a suspended wooden lower floor and perhaps not getting the waterproof membrane quite right. There was occasionally, mainly in winter, a suspicious wet patch right in the middle of the concrete kitchen floor even though there were no apparent leaks round the walls and I think it was coming up from underground. Eventually everything leather went mouldy, it started to smell and all the dehumidifer did was cost money on electricity. Happily it's now someone else's problem, my new place is modern, dry, warm and comfy and the dehumidifier something I'll hopefully never need to use again.
I have two dehumidifiers here; one is a cheapish compressor one from B&Q (claimed 10 litres a day) and the other is an Ecoair dessicant-wheel type (10 litres a day). Both have internal easily-emptied 1.5-litre water-tanks, both take a 7mm plastic pipe for continual running (you'll need to ensure the pipe can drain away ouside or into a big bucket that you'll need to check).
These comments refer to my units, others will likely be different:
Compressor-type pros are ...a) cheap, b) adds a small amount of heat to the room (and that's about it)
cons are... a) noisy b) won't dehumidify under 15 degC, c) running costs.
Desiccant-wheel pros... a) can be set to run in 'quiet' mode (and it's pretty quiet but you might not want it in a bedroom at night), b) goes into 'tickover mode' once the humidity level is reached, c) can dehumidify down to 2 degC, d) has luxuries such as ioniser, timer, two pre-set humidity levels, e) adds a small amount of heat to the room.
cons are a) running costs, b) faint not-unpleasant plastic-type odour from the desiccant wheel in operation.
If I was buying one now, I'd go for the desiccant-wheel type, but ensure it had a user-variable humidity control (so you could set it at a level that just avoided whatever problems you were trying to avoid in order to minimise running costs).
How many to buy? I'd start with just one, and see how you get on with whatever choice you make. If your bungalow internal doors are left open, put the dehumidifier in the room with the problem and see how things develop. If you keep the internal doors shut, you might need more that one unit, but certainly start with just one. If you have a central hallway, and it lies between the kitchen and bathroom and the problem room, then try the dehumidifier there first.
Given the costs, I wouldn't recommend buying several units all at once, as you might not need them after an initial period. A good week of running one unit might solve your problems, as the internals of your bungalow equilibrate at the new lower level of humidity and might thus cope with temporary rises e.g. from cooking or showering.
We have recently bought a Mitsubishi MJ-E14CG-E1 compressor dehumidifier having spent ages researching stuff like reliability, running costs, noise and ease of use.
My initial thoughts are that, located in the main hallway of the bungalow at the junction of bathroom, bedrooms and outdoors clothes cupboard, it is functioning quite well. When first switched the humidity display indicated 72 and took around 4 hours to bring the area down to 60. I then set it to automatic with a 60 setting and it seems to cope with this without problem.
I was told that the Mitsubishis are the quietest of the compressor type but I don't think that I could sleep with it running unless I had the bedroom door closed. The specified power consumption is 260w but I have not checked this as yet.
The tank on this model holds about 3.5 litres so it is not a case of having to empty it that frequently.
In our case improving ventilation to reduce the level of humidity is probably not much of an option as we are close to the sea and surrounded by trees.
I own both types and would echo all Terry's comments. The desiccant wheel ones may have higher running costs but to me, seem to be *much* more effective. Have a look on eBay for refurbished ones. I managed to buy two for £40 (rrp> £200) as the first one had a minor non-critical fault and when i contacted the seller, he just sent me a replacement and didn't want the first one back.
Of course a dehumidifier won't help with endemic damp problems of the kind you describe. What they are good for though, is temporary dampness for example in a bathroom after showering, or when drying laundry or other wet stuff indoors (which I also do in my bathroom).
Of course a dehumidifier won't help with endemic damp problems of the kind you describe. What they are good for though, is temporary dampness for example in a bathroom after showering, or when drying laundry or other wet stuff indoors (which I also do in my bathroom).
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