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Why don't they last more than 2 years? The one I have now worked great, even in the winter in the basement with temps in the high 40's. Now it was having trouble keeping it at 50%, and not it isn't taking out any water, and it is at 60%. 1/4 full overnight, and it went down to 59%.

A 30 qt, Whirlpool, and the latest, a 50qt GE.

Are any of them any good?

I took all the covers off this one, thinking maybe the coils were plugged, because the filter screen never gets dirty. They weren't, and there wasn't dust anywhere; a few spider webs. The outer filter on my Jet air cleaner gets dirty without being turned on!

The pump? was hot, the line going into the coils was cool; not cold.

What goes on them?

How come no one care about their products?

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Why be normal?

I went through half a dozen in about 10 years—all different brands. The coolant leaks out. I think it’s because they are built with crimp fittings on pipes with dissimilar metals. I bought an Oasis commercial dehumidifier (https://www.oasiscoolers.com/media/prod ... sheets.pdf)(~$600) from Amazon about 10 years ago. It had a 5 year warranty. It broke once and Oasis sent me the necessary part. Then the coolant leaked out (still within the warranty period) and they sent me a new one. That one is still going. It uses more electricity than the big box store ones, but it works. The humidistat in all of them isn’t accurate enough for us. I use an external humidistat to control it. I don’t think the Oasis is available anymore.

I suspect that our dehumidifiers work harder than the design target since we like our room to be in the low 40’s per cent humidity. A normal home application would keep it in the 50’s—much less run time required. If my current one fails, I’m likely to splurge the big bucks and buy a Santa-Fe.

My dehumidifier runs 24/7 in my shop. I'm in East Tennessee so we have enough humidity in the summer to keep it busy. My shop is not air conditioned unless I'm in there so the dehumidifier has to take care of that 99% of the time. I try to open it up and clean it once a year.

Before 2013 I had other brands that lasted on average about 2 years. Since 2013 I have bought only two dehumidifiers, both Frigidaire 70 pt models. The one I bought in 2013 lasted till 2020. The one I got in 2020 is still running. I have it hooked up to drain to the outside so I don't have to dump the tank. Here's a link to the one I bought in 2020, it's probably a discontinued model but they probably have an updated version if you're interested. Even though these have done well for me I still consider buying the small dehumidifiers a bit of a crapshoot.

Frigidaire FFAD7033R1, 70 Pint, White Dehumidifier:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UWP07LK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I am happy with Aprilaire. I have an Aprilaire whole house dehumidifier, which I supplement with one of the big box store, throwaway models to hit my target RH in the workshop. I fully expect the big box store model to die in a few years. They tend to. My Aprilaire, on the other hand, keeps going and going. Just clean the filter every so often.

The kind of dehumidifiers that don't die in a few years are not available at Home Depot; you have to either order them online or go through a dealer.

I have a 12'x24' shop building.
I just figure on my shop's dehumidifier costing me $100 per year, since I replace them every 2 or 3 years. I run a drain hose thru the floor so that I don't have to empty the container. I usually get 3 or 4 years out of my shop's window A/C, so I figure about $100 per year on it as well. They usually go out just as the warranty runs out, so I no longer save the boxes.
I used to fuss and cuss and spit on the ground when they quit working. Now I just smile and sit them by the street, and head for Lowes or Walmart.:>)

Frigidaire 30 pint that is now on its 9th year and it has performed flawlessly the entire time and continues to do so. It's in my lower level of my condo and I drain it into the sump so the pump eventually takes it out. No water schlepping for me.

When I bought it it was rated one of the quietist ones which was the big attraction.

My hygrometers are quality analog hygrometers and calibrated or I should say checked annually so I know for certain that my lower level is currently 46% RH and 72F. My upper level is 44% and 77F. With my commercial, 4,000 square foot Aprilaire humidifier my guitars and me... bask in 45% RH year round.

Some notes on using these. Again my humidifier is not a large one and it was even off when I just checked. It does its business and then turns off. I have it on from April 1st sometimes into November depending on the humidity. Even though it is down stairs I see the hygrometer upstairs move lower because of it and how it sucks moisture out of the floors and walls.

The reason it works so well is I am not turning it on and off and that will kill these little machines if you do that. Conversely if you size your requirement correctly for YOUR situation and this also means how leaky is your shop area, how big, ceiling height, RH in your area etc this is not difficult to figure out.

Since mine is on all the time all my walls, floors and building materials, carpet, furniture, even my guitars are all equalized at around 45%. If I had a part time shop and only turned it on when I want to say brace a top it will never be able to take the building materials down in RH as well which needs to happen over a bit of time.

Guitar building has some associated costs that there is no way to avoid. When the newbs has a question about the bandsaw I ask them what they have decided to do about their RH solution because to me a proper RH solution is a must. And.... if you sell your stuff and or take in the valuable personal property of others you really in my view have a duty as the steward of these things, I think the word bailment applies to do what it take so that RH or lack of same does not damage anything.

Additionally my home is very clean and I work hard at it too so when I took my dehumidifier apart after 6 years of use there was nothing in it dust or dirt wise to remove. If you keep your shop full of sawdust dehumidifier fires are common in the US and they often occur from plugged up filters in a too dusty environment.

My last dehumidifier I replaced even though it still worked great after 10 years thinking the new one would be a bit quieter and it was and is. But the old one a GE where I used to work was still working great when I gave it to Goodwill.

One last comment if you click on your dehumidifier only when you are present in your shop or your shop is poorly sealed it will never be able to catch up and turn off on it's own and that poses a fire risk in a shop filled with combustibles... not good. Much better to leave it on all of the time and let it get to the point when it is turning on and off on its own. We all need a break now and then.

I have it in an unheated basement. No air upstairs, only baseboard heat. The upstairs USUALLY only gets hot a few days a year. This year it has been hot already a few days. The basement is still only 68-72. It doesn't get too much warmer. Last winter it got down to 49.

It seems to run pretty steady, I never just turn it off, except in the winter if the gauge says it is 45% and it hasn't been running. I would dump it in the morning, when I'd take my dirty clothes down, and very rarely would it be full. Some years it runs 1/2 of that, and the sump pump doesn't run for 10 months. Usually the sump runs more in the winter, because the sun and the trees aren't doing their job? Except when we get something stupid, like the 3" or so we got the other day. That's unusual.

It was perfectly clean inside, and the filter doesn't even get dirty. I rinse it when the light comes on, but it isn't dirty. Maybe it isn't sealed in there good. But the coils were clean like new. The first one we had lasted maybe 6 years. The last 2 maybe 2 years.

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Why be normal?

From the sound of it, the unit ran out of refrigerant. If you knew what was in it, and had the correct gear, you could probably top it up and get it going. Otherwise, it's probably not worth the service call vs buying new.

I had the Frigidaire FFAD7033R1, 70 Pint and it failed after not much more than a year. It had a 5 year warranty and Frigidaire replaced it twice cause they rarely lasted more than 18 months. I gave the last replacement to my son and bought an ALORAIR Sentinel HD55 from Amazon. That was 2 years ago and it failed this week so I can working with support about a replacement.
Kent

I've had good luck with mine but obviously you didn't. And I was starting to think maybe Frigidaire was making better units, guess it really is a crapshoot with those smaller dehumidifiers. They're probably all made in the same factory or group of factories in China I suppose.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

In all fairness, I'm working in an uninsulated basement so the dehumidifier is running continuously for 7 or 8 months, but the Frigidaire did keep the humidity around 46% most of the time and was pretty quiet. I keep it in an area separate from my work room to keep the dust down and kept the filter clean but to no avail. However, Frigidaire was very good about warranty support for the 5 year warranty so save your receipts.

Kent

I’ve been lucky and used this one for the last 9 years.



One thing that probably helps is I have a smallish 8x12 room that houses all the humidity controlled wood and it’s where I brace plates and close the box.

The floor underneath the laminate is the vapor barrier subfloor from Home Depot called Dricore. The concrete was painted first with Drylok and then the subfloor and then vinyl plank on top. Three of the walls are exterior and insulated. The ceiling is just drop ceiling tiles. It remains pretty stable year round and the humidifier doesn’t have to work super hard to keep it at 45%.



Maybe sectioning off an area is the basement could help?

Brad


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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insulation and proper sealing of an environment are pretty much 2 separate things...one crossover I can think of is closed cell spray foam insulation which does create some sort of seal as it is applied.

if you want to control the humidity you have to control the space... a simplistic (and technically flawed) statement would be temperature is a comfort issue and not really associated with humidity which is what you're worried about when trying to do fine woodworking.

Brad that looks like a great space to get lost in Lutherie. Would you please consider though moving the dehumidifier away from anything combustable and give it a foot or two of air space around it? Mine actually said to place it with 2 - 3 feet of space around it. These things do seem to catch on fire. Sorry to be a nag my friend.

My experience over the last 30 years has been consistent with Ken's observation. I need to dehumidify the shop for four months out of each year. The units I select are always substantially larger than required to do the job and are appropriately placed for efficient and safe operation. Refrigeration duty cycle during the season is always less than 50%. And on average they last three calendar years each (or one run time year each). Some have lasted twice that, and of course some a lot less. When I had better longevity with a particular model, I've got a similar unit from the same manufacturer the next time, but I never got the same longevity from the next one. So I assume it was just dumb luck that some units lasted longer than the average. I take the same view as guitarjtb does on this subject: Essentially, dehumidification of the shop is just budgeted as a yearly cost.

A couple of other things I'll add. Most home-use units carry a one year warranty. You can find some units with three and five year warranties, but it is wise to read those warranties carefully. Most require the unit to be shipped back at your expense if something goes wrong under warranty. All of the longer warranties I've seen have been on the refrigeration unit only - not the rest of the machine. All this by way of saying that it may be appropriate to do the math on some warranty scenarios before springing for a longer warranty unit.

I've recently taken to posting one star reviews on Amazon of units that fail before three calendar years, no matter where I buy them. In response, manufacturers regularly contact me offering me a replacement unit or partial refund, if and only if I take down the bad review. I have never taken a manufacturer up on this offer. I'm adding this here because it can give you some idea of just how useful (or not) customer reviews can be on commerce sites, and also because if such deals are taken it could reduce your overall cost for dehumidification.

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R.M. Mottola
LiutaioMottola.com

Author of the books Building the Steel String Acoustic Guitar and Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms.

Thanks for the info. Another thing I might add about dehumidifier warranties is that most of the ones I've read exclude commercial use. So, I have never tried to get warranty service on one. Shipping a unit back and waiting for an answer is way more trouble than I want to go to. While I am waiting, the humidity in my shop will sky rocket, and I am basically shut down from any gluing, over a relatively small amount of money. Lowes and Walmart are only 7/10's of a mile from my shop and I can be up and running in less than an hour.

That's a good call, Hesh, I don't have 2-3 feet of clear space anywhere but I did get that box from behind it so there is clearance all around. I need a bigger shop!

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I adopted a radical solution 20 years ago. Found mold growing all around the house in July after wet month. My shop is in basement of 65 year old house with 1/4 unfinished crawl space. I had gas space heater, unvented ,which I use to keep above 68 in winter. Sealed off crawl space.
HVAC friend suggested I oversize the AC unit and run the heater low to force the AC to work hard. It dried out the house. Then when I started guitar building in 2014 I went through 2$200 models and discussed the worthless stuff now available.

I checked RH all over the house and found the basement 65, 1st floor 55, and 2nd fl 50rh. Summertime. The $200 models just seem to put off heat as they remove water for a while: then just heat. So maybe the heater was all I needed. That's wheRE I am today.

I assemble the box in winter when house is 50% or lower.
The rest of year I keep it 60% or lower and make necks and prep sides, backs and tops.
The wood prep is done outside to keep dust out of house.
This would only work for low production but works for me. The expensive Models are all that work. So my oversized AC Mold under control and I can get it down in fall and winter to build box.

This came up while answering someone else's question somewhere else about controlling shop humidity, and although not specifically addressing Ken's question it is related and relevant.

Legionella pneumophila is the bacterium that causes Legionnaire's disease. It grows inside the cells of molds that can grow in damp places. The insides of air conditioning systems and similar devices, including dehumidifiers and cold humidifiers are pretty much ideal breeding grounds for these molds and by extension Legionella. One way to mitigate the mold problem is to regularly clean the insides of the device. But dehumidifiers are generally not constructed to make cleaning easy. On a side note, the air handler units of ductless heat pump systems as currently designed are nearly impossible to clean effectively, and as these gain in popularity and stay in service for a while I fully expect Legionnaire's outbreaks to be traced back to these.

The reason I bring this up in this thread is to mention that there may be a major health advantage to having to pitch small shop dehumidifiers every few years. When you pitch the busted unit, you're also pitching the mold that grew in it over time, and then you start over with a brand new clean machine.

FWIW and while on the subject, I need to humidify my shop in the winter months and I use a wick type humidifier to do it. It is impossible to clean the wick but it is replaceable, so I put a new one in at the start of every year, and then clean the insides of the unit, which is very easy to do. So between having to toss the dehumidifier every few years and being able to replace the humidifier wick and clean the insides of the machine, I'm probably doing pretty well in avoiding the possibility of a Legionella infection.

_________________
R.M. Mottola
LiutaioMottola.com

Author of the books Building the Steel String Acoustic Guitar and Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms.