dehumidifier for bathroom

WhoisDannie

My toilet cistern is always dripping water from the condensation that forms on the cistern especially on the bottom.

This is caused by the very cold mains water made worse since I got a combi boiler, so now no tank in the attic..
Also having a shower doesn't help, even removing the condensation from the walls with a Karcher squeegee.
I have an extractor fan which runs for most of the day.
I have checked and the cistern is not leaking.

The heating in the bathroom is a towel rail connected to the central heating but it is not very good, 

Are these small dehumidifiers like a Buy Challenge 0.5 Litre Mini Dehumidifier | Dehumidifiers | Argos
any good or are they not worth the effort?

The photo was taken at 6pm 

badatDIY

Forget the dehumidifier for a moment - what kind of fan do you have? How old is it? Does it go straight out through a wall? Into the loft? How is it activated (i.e. separate switch or pull cord vs. when light goes on)? Does it have a run on timer (i.e. does it run for a certain number of minutes after the light goes off or you switch it off depending on the answer to my previous question)?

The reason I ask is that chances are your fan isn't working very well, and sorting that out is likely to have the biggest effect before starting to think about dehumidifiers. The other problems with that dehumidifier in the bathroom are: a) where would you plug it in and b) the one you've selected would fill up very, very quickly in a bathroom.

Doozergirl

You can buy decent fans with a humidistat so they'll run until humidity levels are normal again.  I think I'd be doing that as your fan can't be working very well.  

Towel rails rarely produce enough heat for bathrooms, I'm not sure why this country is obsessed with them.  

WhoisDannie

The fan is a  ST100T Silent Tornado Hi-Power Bathroom Fan with Timer about 7 years old in the ceiling then vented through the attic to the soffit..

badatDIY

WhoisDannie said:

The fan is a  ST100T Silent Tornado Hi-Power Bathroom Fan with Timer about 7 years old in the ceiling then vented through the attic to the soffit..

You could think about getting an inline fan - if installed properly they will shift about 3x as much air per hour than one of those axial fans. Especially if you have a very long duct run through the attic!

No guarantee it would cure condensation on a cistern, but would certainly help with steam from showers and maybe therefore get the humidity down in your bathroom. You can get separate humidity sensors to attach to in-line fans (I think) but i just opted for a run-on timer.

Depending on how quiet you need it to be the Manrose MF100T seems to get good reviews and can be bought for about £50 - it's about as twice as powerful as your current one. I opted for a VentAxia ACM100T which is a bit more pricey (£120ish) but it's 3x more powerful as your current one and even quieter than the Manrose.

TLC electrical have a useful calculator to see what kinda power you might need - https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Technical/Ventilation/Ventilation4.html

Doozergirl

You don't to buy a separate humidistat, you can buy the fans with them in!  Vent Axia certainly do a similar one to that mentioned but with humidistat.  

 It's a no-brainer to get the humidistat version over the timed one because it runs for as long as it needs to when it needs to, and doesn't run for ages if you just go in for a wee ☺️

MACKEM99

We glued an exercise mat material to the inside of the cistern.  Quite a messy job but has made a lot of difference. 

MACKEM99

Doozergirl said:

You can buy decent fans with a humidistat so they'll run until humidity levels are normal again.  I think I'd be doing that as your fan can't be working very well.  

Towel rails rarely produce enough heat for bathrooms, I'm not sure why this country is obsessed with them.  

To warm/heat the towels perhaps?

Mojisola

We had this problem in our previous house - solved by lining the inside of the cistern.  I can't remember what we used but this site suggests cutting up a yoga mat - www.diydoctor.org.uk/projects/condensationcisterns.htm
Ours was an older, larger cistern so there was still plenty of water to flush the loo - I don't know if this would work with the modern, smaller ones.

Doozergirl

MACKEM99 said:

Doozergirl said:

You can buy decent fans with a humidistat so they'll run until humidity levels are normal again.  I think I'd be doing that as your fan can't be working very well.  

Towel rails rarely produce enough heat for bathrooms, I'm not sure why this country is obsessed with them.  

To warm/heat the towels perhaps?

Well yes, you need a warm towel if the room is freezing.  

You can put a rail, or many rails over a radiator. In fact you can even attach rails, or many rails to a radiator, but the primary purpose has to be to heat the room, not a towel.  

Even chrome plated towel rails only throw off half the heat of white ones, yet people seem to love them.  

Devongardener

One quick cheap fix is to collect shower water in a couple of buckets and use that to flush the loo.  Not ideal for a family I know, but with just the 2 of us it works.   You could also fill the buckets from the bath tap and use once they have got to room temperature.  A bit weird I know but definitely money saving!