HUMIDITY AND THE DEHUMIDIFIER

Humidity In Your Home: What To Do About It


Humidity is the amount of water vapor in the air. This can be caused by many factors, including the area in which you live and conditions in your home. There are many areas in our world where humidity is high, so your home is naturally susceptible to damage due to mold and mildew. Your home can also have high humidity due to flooding, plumbing problems, having a dryer vented to the inside of your home instead of outside, bathrooms without outside vents, or surface water drainage issues. Not only is your home susceptible to damage, but high humidity affects our health as well. High humidity can contribute to the following health issues: asthma, allergies and upper resperatory problems; increased risk of heat stroke and heat exhaustion for susceptible people, edema, rashes, nausea, headaches and migraines, mental lethargy and irritability, and even increased risk of illness and death for people with heart or circulatory conditions. To correct the high humidity in your home, you can do some things as a preventative measure, such as changing your dryer vent system or adding vents to your bathrooms, taking care of the water drainage issues, cleaning up from flooding or plumbing problems, etc. But if you live in an area with normally high humidity, have health issues aggravated by the humidity, or to prevent damage from future problems, you may want to invest in a dehumidifier.

How Does a Dehumidifier Work?

The air is pulled through the dehumidifier by a small fan, and through a cooling coil. As the air moves through the cooling coil, it chills the air to the dew point, which is the temperature where moisture condenses, or is turned from a gas to a liquid. This condensed air is channeled to a bucket or through a hose to be drained. The resulting cooled and moistureless air is reheated and blown back into the room, and the cycle begins again. Most dehumidifiers have a humidistat which measures the humidity in the air, and either begins working or shuts down depending on this measurement. And most dehumidifiers will automatically shut down if the bucket gets full.

How To Find The Best Humidifier For You

The best place to start your research is on the Internet. There are many online sites which can help you with your purchase. Some of the ones we used for this article include ConsumerReports.org, Consumersearch.com, Consumer Buying Guides, and Allergy Buyers Club. Here are a few things to consider when buying your dehumidifer:

Prices. You can get a pretty good home dehumidifier for $150-$300, depending on capacity. Most homes can get by on this, but there are larger models (with larger pricetags) available.

Drainage Options: If the water drains into a bucket, how difficult is it to access and carry out to be emptied. Does the unit automatically shut off if the bucket gets full? What is the capacity of the bucket? Perhaps you prefer a hose system, what are the specs for this?

Noise Level: How noisy or quiet is the unit you are considering?

Portability: Can it be easily moved to another room?

Warranty

Features You Might Like To Have

Humidistat measures the humidity in the air, and many models will cycle on or off depending on the humidity level. A good feature to have.

Automatically shuts off when the bucket gets full. Most dehumidifiers have this feature, which is handy if you're gone all day.

Drainage Bucket. Accessibility is the keyword here. You want to be able to remove it easily from the dehumidifier when it gets full. If you're using it in a basement, you may want to consider models with a hose attached to the bucket which will drain as the bucket fills.

Anti-frost sensor or defroster. As air is chilled and turned into water, frost can collect on the cooling coils. Some units address this problem by turning off the dehumidifier, allowing the frost to melt safely without adversely affecting the dehumidifier.

A Few Models For Your Consideration

Starting with small and inexpensive, the Bionaire BDQ24 starts at about $140, and gets good reviews for small areas such as closets, bedrooms, or RV's. This model removes about 20 pints of water a day, and gets good marks for it's quietness, too.

Whirlpool offers 3 models based on capacity. The smallest sells for about $150, has a 40 pint per day capacity, an electric humidistat, and gets good reviews from owners. The other two models are a little more money (about $215 and $230) and a larger capacity bucket (50 pints & 70 pints). Choose one of the larger ones if you will be using it in a bigger area. They also get good reviews.

The Comfort-Aire BHD501 has a 50 pint capacity and works efficiently in areas up to 1,000 square feet. It also has some features others do not, such as a washable air filter. This also shuts off automatically when the bucket is full.

Final Words

We hope you find this guide helpful as you make your choice about a dehumidifier. Use this as a starting point, there are more models and features than we can hope to cover in this article.


For removing the excess moisture from air, dehumidifier is used. It moves the air over a surface that is cooler than the temperature of the moisture. Humidity in the living spaces can seriously harm the home owners. For this crawlspace dehumidifiers are used to remove the humidity and moisture in your crawl space. Nowadays more than two dozens of dehumidifier brands are available in the market. In this age of competition discount dehumidifiers by famous brands are easily accessible in the market.

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