In article .com,
passerby wrote:
replying to Mike S. , passerby wrote:
retsuhcs wrote:

For years we have been using portable dehumidifiers in the basement
between May and September. This weekend I fired up the current one only to
note a return to the common pattern: the compressor runs but there is no
hot air exhaust or condensation because the tubing has corroded and
allowed the refrigerant to escape.
Over the last 10 years we've had perhaps 5 such units down there, making
the average lifespan ~ 2 years. Reading online reviews from actual
customers, it seems that for everything manufactured after the millennium
this is the usual pattern. And they all die in the same way.

I don't know about *all* manufacturers but my 3 years old 60 pint
Frigidaire looks and performs just the way it was when I bought it, so
there's definitely no 2 year preset time bomb in them. I would seriously
suspect the way the dehum is kept off season from Sept. to May to have
something to do with the extra corrosion, most especially after you've
gone through 5 of them. How are they kept? Do you put them back in the box
by any chance? You'd drain it for storage, I presume? What's the humidity
level over winter, anyway?

They're kept on the floor of the same basement room as the summer months,
just not run. I generally turn the dehumidifer off for the season once the
baseline humidity drops below 50%. During the winter, hot air from the
furnace is vented into the room, and the humidity is generally 25 - 35%.