Dehumidifiers: Home and Commercial Dehumidifier Buying Tips and Reviews

Dehumidifiers are used to control the humidity within the atmosphere of a room. They remove the moisture from the air to lower the humidity. The recommended levels of humidity are between 40 to 50%. Dehumidifiers can be extremely helpful in humid places to keep your home or office free from atmospheric moisture.

Dehumidifiers can be used to remove the humidity within a room or a house or a basement or even a closet, and even in commercial circumstances. Humidity can cause a variety of problems such as:

• Increasing dust mites which can lead to allergies,
• Causing condensation on water pipes and windows which can lead to pipes rusting and wallpaper peeling or even wall paint blistering,
• Rusting of metal and warping of wood,
• Condensation on electrical items which can cause a lot of damage and can be extremely dangerous, and
• Smelly, musty areas which lead to the development of mold and fungus which can damage health.

How Dehumidifiers Work

Dehumidifiers work on the principle that water condenses on a cold surface. A fan is used to blow warm air onto coils of cold metal. As result, the humidity condenses onto these coils and the water drips down into a bucket. Then this cold air is passed over the warm coils and this brings the air back to room temperature.

Types of Dehumidifiers: Home Dehumidifiers & Commercial Dehumidifiers

There are a variety of dehumidifiers in the market. Each of them has a variety of features and performance levels. Dehumidifiers are broadly classified into two categories: Home Dehumidifiers and Commercial Dehumidifiers. Home Dehumidifiers are used to reduce the humidity in the house. Commercial Dehumidifiers are used in commercial environments such as in factories and offices. These usually are high performance and load bearing dehumidifiers.

Home Dehumidifiers: Buying Tips and Reviews

There are a variety of brand names in the market which make and sell dehumidifiers. These include: Kenmore, LG, and Whirlpool to name a few. It is very important to shop around for the right dehumidifier which will suit your needs.

The box in which the dehumidifier is packed in often contains pertinent information such as the size of the room, the amount of moisture that can be removed etc. Knowing this information can help you decide if you want to buy a single dehumidifier for your whole house or whether to buy smaller ones for each room of your house. Also for this information to be useful, you need to know how much humidity exists in your house in the first place. Also, if you have a leaking roof or a bad plumbing then you need to buy a dehumidifier which will remove more amount of moisture from the air.

There are some other features to look for while shopping for a dehumidifier. They are:

• An auto shut-off facility when the water storage tray gets full. Some dehumidifiers have a feature wherein the water gets drained off via a floor level drainage system. This can often prove to be a very beneficial feature. Alternatively, a dehumidifier may have some sort of a visual indicator which will tell you when the water tray is full.
• A good feature to have in a dehumidifier is the presence of a built-in humidistat which is a hygrometer (humidity meter) which controls the amount of humidity in the room. This prevents the room from getting too dry.
• On the other hand, a frost sensor is also useful because it can shut down the unit automatically when it gets too cold.
• Often it can be useful to have an on / off switch on the front panel of a dehumidifier for added convenience.
• Having wheels on dehumidifier units can be useful for mobility purposes.
• Low noise is one of the most preferred features in dehumidifiers.
• Also most dehumidifiers have variable speed settings for the fan.

Depending upon the features present in the machine and on your requirement, you can purchase either a whole house dehumidifier or smaller dehumidifiers for each room of your house.

Places such as basements and bathrooms have a lot of moisture. There are special dehumidifiers which can remove a large amount of moisture. These can be useful in such areas of your house.

Some people also prefer having dehumidifiers in their closets so that their clothes do not get the musty smell. These closet dehumidifiers can vary from panels filled with silica gels to electrical dehumidifiers specially designed to be installed in closets. If you are going for silica gel panels which can be mounted in the closet wall, look for those which have some kind of an indicator which tells you when these silica crystals need to be refreshed. The process of refreshing silica crystals is simple: either you can place them in the sunlight or you can put them in the oven on low heat. This ensures that the moisture within the crystals evaporates, making them useful again.

Thus, good dehumidifiers will help remove the humidity from the atmosphere of your room / home and make your home a moisture-free zone for you to live in peacefully and comfortably.