Does anyone want to talk Dehumidifiers?

[ratflavouredjelly]

hello! I wondered if anyone can recommend a good dehumidifier? I need it to take moisture out of an airing cupboard with penetrating damp where the plaster has blown.
I hear they come in all shapes and sizes. I wondered if there's a brand to go for?
Thanks girls :-)

Ebac! UK designed and made.

I love mine, it's maybe a bit too big for your airing cupboard, but I think that they have smaller ones too.

Just to add - apparently the important thing is how many litres of water the dehumidifier is capable of extracting / 24 hours (I found this out by searching MN, so hopefully you can find the same post!).

God, I'm so sad, I love dehumidifiers.

Here is the post that I mentioned - Mike1963 loves dehumidifers too .

We've got this one...

www.delonghi.com/uk_en/products/des-16e/

It's very good. We use it to dry the washing and it does a sterling job. Had two dehumidifiers from B&Q which gave up the ghost after a year - £150 down the drain...

flowermonkey - can you please tell me how you use the dehumidifier to dry your washing?

I bought one because we have a problem with condensation and I'd like to dry the washing with it too but don't know how. Do you just leave it on in the same room or do you have to hang the washing around it somehow?

Mine is a delonghi too, smilar size, different model.

I just hang my washing on an airer in the same room as the dehumidifier - mine also has a Boost button for drying clothes, but this isn't really necessary as the clothes dry more quickly anyway.

Thanks Achtung - mine also has a 'clothes drying' button but the instructions don't explain how to do it . Soon be time to use it again .

And sorry, OP - I would recommend delonghi too - it's really helped our damp problem and extracts a surprising amount of water from the room.

look at www.meaco.com

I had a delonghi one with great capacity, worked very well, and silently.
Lakeland do these hanging pouches for reducing humidity..they have crystals that attract moisture and you can just hang them in your cupboard (tiny baby size hangers they come on). Worked well to keep damp out of my cupboards. You can see water collecting in them and when full you can throw them.

This www.lakeland.co.uk/21540/Hanging-Moisture-Absorbers

I can recommend the delonghi10; i got mine from ebay for about £50. It was new but a return so box was a bit battered but otherwise perfect. It is quiet, doesn't use much electricity and very efficient

Hopping in with a question. I'm coveting a dehumidifier but worried about how much it will increase our electric bill. Anyone tell me how much you reckon it adds?

The problem with damp is that moist air in a property will always settle on one point - virtually every house has it.

The simple act of living and breathing in a house means that the CO2 we breathe out gives off enough moisture over time to create damp patches. This is made worse by people having baths, showers, drying damp clothes, etc.

As such a lot of the dehumidifiers you can buy in the likes of B&Q can do the job but only up to a point - I bought a good delonghi from B&Q for about £100 but it had its limitations. If you have a significant area of damp the choice is to either buy a prety hefty dehumidifier or to consider hiring one from a place such as the Hire Shop - link below:

www.hss.com/index.php?s=dehumidifier

You need to weight up the cost of buying versus the cost of hiring.

Ultimately, is the dam is significant then trying to dry it out may not work and removing the plaster, putting down new plaster might be the only option. Of course, if you do this and this point is the point in your house where moisture collects then, in time - perhaps quickly, it will become damp again.

Any comments on the cost of running a dehumidifier?

no, but draping wet washing around the house or over radiators is the UKs primary source of damp and condensation (the next cause is failing to use extractor fans during and after baths and showers). So try to invest in a washing line, or a tumble-drier, or a carport-type thing where you can hang it outside; otherwise hang it in the bathroom and leave the fan going until it is all dry.

A typical extractor fan is 20 watts and will run for 50 hours for about 10p.

When I bought mine in B&Q they had on every price label on the shelf the cost in pence per hour of running each model. No idea if they still do that.

We have a Mitsubishi that is cheap to run ad very effective. We bought it in our old house which suffered with condensation, and now use it to dry washing as it is cheaper to run than a tumble drier and kinder to the clothes

I have a bog standard one from Homebase, ditto my parents. Apart from having to be quite firm with putting the bucket back in (or it won't start!) it has very little to go wrong. I ran it in parallel for a while with our older one which had various features like swinging vanes, clothes drying buttons and high/low etc and it was way better. Old one got recycled.

My only problem is that the bucket's too small and it's always full by the time I get home in the evening! (And with small person about, I'm not going to go the hosepipe into a real bucket route or he would 'help' it to come out!)

I did get the extra warranty though. Just in case. I am always slightly suspicious of anything involving electricity and water...

"My only problem is that the bucket's too small and it's always full by the time I get home in the evening!"

that sounds alarming. How much water per day is that? Do you know where it's coming from?

I thought most had an automatic cut-off when the bucket was full?

There is always moisture in the air in every room in every house, especially during the winter. A dehumidifier will suck the moisture out of the air rather than out of a damp wall.

So you place it near the damp wall but, more often than not, the water it collects is the moisture from the air that is condensing near the damp patch.

As I wrote in a previous email, all homes will have a point in them where the moisture naturally collects. The moisture will move in the air from all parts of the house to this one point, or sometimes a few points.

The moisture comes from you and your family breathing as we give off moisture in CO2 every time we breath out, from moisture from cooking pans, damp clothes brought in from the washing line, etc, etc.

I only have experience of the big, builders dehumidifiers (the size of a washing machine) used after a burst pipe, new concrete, or replastering. With them, you put them in the damp room and shut all the doors and windows (otherwise you are trying to dehumidify the world) so I am anxious to know where all this water is coming from. If there is a wet patch on the wall, it helps to put a fan or blower pointing at the wall, so that the dry air in the room (as a result of the dehumidifier) is constantly circulating over the wet patch to dry it out faster, and is also circulating to the dehumidifier which will take that new moisture out of the air. These big ones also throw out quite a lot of heat, which also helps to dry out wet patches (but they also cost 20p to 30p an hour in electricity, so are not used lightly)