Is keeping heating off a false economy?

moonrakerz

Cardew wrote: »

This will work!

Looks like a load of bowls to me !!

grahamc2003

spinningsheep wrote: »

I have recently purchased a dehumidifier and I am amazed at the quantity of moisture it extracts in a short space of time. It starts off very slowly and seems to get faster the longer you leave the appliance turned on. In 24 hours it extracted 4.5 litres out of my supposedly dry dining room, and it feels alot warmer in there, same goes for my bathroom too. I will rotate it round the house over the winter from room to room. I bought the Argos Value range at £89.99, very impressed by it, but TBH it's noise level is a wee bit higher than that of a fridge compressor, so not ideal to have on in the room whilst watching tv or sleeping, but thats no issue for me. Would recommend it to anyone looking for a dehumidifier. You can watch a video of it on the Argos website too. The water tank can be a bit of a fiddle to get back in sometimes as it says full even when empty but another attempt usually sorts it (people have slated this in some reviews on the Argos website, it takes 10 seconds to take it out and pop back in, get a grip!):rotfl:

Sounds like you room was warm and damp - great for the dehumidifier technology you have. But the perfomance of compressor dehumidifiers is very temperature sensitive, extracting a lot at warm temps, but less and less as the temperature drops, until at around 10C room temperature, the thing starts freezing up (literally), and stops extracting any water at all. In fact, when you read the blurb on dehumidifiers, they usually say they can extrat 10 or 12 litres per day - well they can at 25C and 100% humidity, which we tend not to get in the UK.

Dessicant dehumidifiers are a different technology altogether (more like the bowl of salt than a fridge), and have the characteristic of not being temperature dependent. They are less efficient (in terms of extraction per electricity cost), but they are the only option in cold areas (where damp is often a problem), below about 10C.

So the advice must be a compressor type for use above 10C, and a dessicant type below 10C.

To answer Cardew, I've had my compressor dehumidifier going for about 3 weeks now in the main room, just overnight, at a temp of about 21 (heated by a woddburning stove) last thing at night and around 19 next morning, and I've constantly collected about a litre each time. I think the furniture and walls are still getting drier - but I do finish drying logs in the room, and we breath, so maybe I'll always be taking out a litre - be interesting to see.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Nice one Cardew - is that an aberration of the lens used or has the weight of the home made jig & JCB caused the trailer to bow by 6" over its length !