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daestrom wrote:

Dehumidifiers produce heat...

It's cheaper than electric resistance heat, with a COP of about 1.6.
You can measure this with a Kill-a-Watt meter and a measuring cup.

The COP doesn't matter as far as adding heat to the house goes. A kwh
of
electric to run a dehumidifier adds a kwh of heat to the building, just
like a kwh of electricity through a resistance heater.

Wrong. It adds 1.6 kWh.

Care to explain where the extra 0.6 kwh came from??

Sure. Evaporating water takes energy. Condensing it releases energy.

Granted the vaporization energy removed from the moisture gets dumped into
the room as latent heat, but that energy was always there, you've just
used
some entropy from the electricity to change the heat of vaporization to
latent heat.

I'd call that sensible heat. It makes the house warmer :-)


Yes, you're right I meant raising the sensible heat.

But if the basement or whereever has 100% RH at 50F, then your dehumidifier
is discharging it's heat at about 55F, not much use there. I have never
seen a dehumidifier that can extract moisture in a 50F basement and direct
the heat into a 70F house.

The only dehumidifiers I've seen take the air and cool it to remove
moisture, then warm the same air back again with the condenser coil of the
same vapor cycle. Sure, in 68F basement with 80% RH, you can warm the air
out of the dehumidifier to a higher temperature, but it's still in the
basement. In winter, when the basement is 50F, your dehumidifier will only
succeed in warming the basement air to 55F or so. Still not much use in
that.

You have a dehumidifier with separate evaporator and condenser coils so you
can place one in the basement and one in the living space? And able to work
well with a 30 F delta temperature? Not your 'average' dehumidifier.

daestrom