DIYbanter - View Single Post - Dehumidifier - Runs constantly, but I would have expected it to produce more water..

Smitty Two

In article . com,
wrote:

On Aug 14, 6:47 am, wrote:
wrote:
I recently moved into a new house, and inherited a four year old Haier
AHD40, 40 pint dehumidifier which runs in an unfinished basement. Now
that the summer is here, the thing is running around the clock,

And adding heat to the house.

I have tested the unit to see how much electricity it is using, and it
turned out to be around 16 kw/h over 24 hours...

... 16 kWh (note units) is 54.6K Btu.

The thing is, that for my 16 kw/h of electricity, the unit managed to
suck up just over 7 liters of water...

Condensing 7 liters of water adds an additional 15.4K Btu.

Any thoughts from anyone would be greatly appreciated...

You might circulate basement air up through the house whenever
the basement RH is greater than 60%, using a humidistat (maybe
the one in the Haier unit) and use an $80 window AC upstairs
to remove moisture and cool vs warm the house in summertime.

Where is the moisture coming from?

Nick

As far as I can tell the moisture is coming from the the normal
humidity in the air, that you would get in the hot summer months.
There is an additional crawl space with a dirt floor, which I am also
sure adds to the amount of moisture in the basement. However, we moved
into the house at the end of April. I know that in May the
dehumidifier was only running part of the time, so the summer is the
main reason for the increased humidity.

Your idea about circulating the air up through the house might be
worth thinking about, but what I am really wondering is if the
dehumidifier, at just four years old, should be removing more that 7
liters of water for 16 kwh of electricity, as the energy star website
suggests that a modern dehumidifier should be able to remove 1.5
liters per kwh. If I were to buy a new unit which started to remove
the moisture at 1.5 liters kwh, then this would surely have the effect
of reducing the humidity in the basement to less than 60% far quicker
than my unit, which would mean that it wasn't running all the time,
and would instantly slash my power bill.

I am wondering if anyone knows why a dehumidifier, that is rated to
remove 1.5 liters of water per kwh, would fail to do just that? Is the
only reason because the unit was faulty, or are there environmental
factors?

You can chase vague concepts and suppositions around all day, but I'd
suggest borrowing a good quality unit of equal capacity from a friend,
neighbor, co-worker, family, etc. and try it out for two days. Then
you'll know.