This is our first winter in our new house. We don’t heat the house massively, just an hour and a half in the morning and couple of hours around tea time. We have double glazing but it is very old skinny panels. We get a huge amount of condensation on all the upstairs windows. We have a little one so their is always some washing hung up somewhere drying. We don’t have enough space to have a dedicated drying room.

A few questions:
Will a dehumidifier help much with windows or is it a loosing battle.
Do they cost a lot to run.
Are they noisy.
Is it worth buying a decent one any recomendations.

We will get new double glazing but it is still a few years off.

you probably need to look at getting some more ventilation in place.

dehuimidifiers are ok but you’ll struggle to do a whole house. they basically wortk in a similar way to a fridge so not oo noisy but you wouldn;t want to sleep in the room with one.

We got a cheap one last year. Laundry dries much more quickly and we don’t need to have the heating on as much because the lower humidity means the air feels warmer and takes less energy to heat. What it costs to run you’ll probably save on heating. Has made the tumble dryer almost redundant.

Yes they can make a difference especially if you get it in the room with the drying clothes.

We had fridge type one that did a good job when new but has lost gas slowly and now struggles with output. Works best in hot houses as it relies on the condensor being the coldest thing in the room, if your windows are colder then the water will condense on them.

The other type is the desicant type which are more expensive to buy and run but keep the output high even at low temps
My mum has this and it works well, quiet adds some heat to the room, clothes drying mode etc

Nick

Try the search feature. Just to prove it works, I brought this thread back to the forum for you.

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/what-is-the-most-effective-way-to-use-a-dehumidifier

I’m very interested in this topic too.

I’m really looking for experienced based recommendations.

The item linked to above, I’m having difficulty discerning whether its a desicant type or a gas filled type.

Also, with this desicant stuff, do you have to replace it ?, if so, what happens to the old stuff and what are running costs for replacing with new, etc, etc.

Cheers

😉

I think this is a good topic. Like Bigsurfer we don’t really heat our house much. I took out the boiler 2 years ago, and we still don’t have one at all. We do have a 4KW woodstove and that’s it (a four bedroom house). It’s OK, and we warm up at the stove. It’s very cheap though (more or less zero using “roadkill” wood), but the rest of the house can get chilly.

Ventilation is hard to get exactly right in a cold house. It’s easy to recommend if you are burning loads of gas, but when you aren’t, there is a fine line between “cold” (with ventilation and condensation) and “bloody freezing” (with more ventilation and yet still getting condensation). Cold internal air just can’t hold the moisture, so it has to drop out somewhere.

What is the payback comparison for dryer air (still cold but feeling warmer as a result), versus burning the same energy as straight (but still not dry) heating?

I guess it depends on what sort of house you have.

I have an old house with solid stone walls. It can get pretty damp in winter, and condensation is a real problem, not just on windows.
A decent dehumidifier makes a massive difference – no more condensation, mould or damp and generally warmer and nicer in the house.

Being asthnatic, i would thoroughly recommend one. Keeping the air in the house dry keeps the number of dust mites down (they trigger my asthma).

We used to run an industrial sized frdge type. It was loud but coped with our above avarge sized house no problem. It lasted for about 12 years.

we now run this. Although a lot quieter, it stuggles with the size of house. The small water collection box is also a pain as it has to be empyed regularly. This basically stops the unit from running for long if you’re away from the house for a holiday, etc.

GlenH.

Yes, that sounds good, which dehumidifier you using ?.

We use one in our basement to dry the washing and it works really well. The noise is no problem and I don’t think it costs too much to run.

We bought it from B&Q and got the 2nd cheapest which was about £40 IIRC about 5 years ago. It has just started to sound different than it used to so I suspect that it may not make it through the winter, in which case we’ll get a new one.

The operating temperature range of the condensing variety is plenty wide enough for most houses, just not right for sheds/garages. I empty the water from ours into the toilet cistern. I think ours was reduced from £100 at B&Q.

There’s a fundamental mismatch between how houses are ‘designed’ and how they’re insulated – they’re designed to need to ‘breathe’ but we now stop all draughts and make walls non-porous to improve insulation. But that leaves no way of removing the excess water vapour that humans, cooking and washing generate.

But that leaves no way of removing the excess water vapour that humans, cooking and washing generate.

Yeah, tell me about it.

I’m now trying to get some sense out of the web, locating a decent one.
Cheers.

I did that too – then gave up and gambled on a cheap one!

I’d like one of those cunning heat exchangers that takes warm moist air out of your house, takes the heat out of it and puts it into dry air as it draws it in from outdoors. Unfortunately they cost a fortune…

Solo – I use one of these:

http://www.dehumidifiers-online.co.uk/ruby-dry-dehumidifiers.html

Only super quiet on low mode, but that’s all it needs most of the time. The bucket is a decent size too, so it doesn’t need emptying too often.

>There’s a fundamental mismatch between how houses are ‘designed’ and how they’re insulated

Eee, when I were a lad..folks had a Victorian, mostly unheated house (gas fires downstairs). Used to wake up in the winter to pools of ice at the bottom the the (sash) window frames.

Fast forward to my last place – Edwardian, same window construction (ie varying degree of draughts, central heating) – never *ever* had problems with ice/condesation on the windows.
Moved to a 20’s place a few years ago – the front’s got the old Crittalls (steel frame, small leaded panes) – loads of condensation despite the radiator underneath, and only in the unused front bedrooms, not in the (mainly unused) dining room below. As to what the difference is, I dunno 😮

^^^^^^ yup, that’s the dehumidifier I use in outbuildings at the bottom of the garden – seem t’other thread…

GlenH.

Thanks muchly, very useful linky.

Cheers
😉

I recently got this one
It’s great for drying clothes, and does stop condensation, although that said I live in a flat so can’t comment on how it would work in a house. Also cannot comment on cost as we’ve only had it a month or so and haven’t seen the electricity bill yet.
I’d recommend it though – I was staggered at how much water it sucked out of the flat in the first 48 hours; about ten or eleven pints.

Another advantage of the desiccant type like the Ruby Dry is that they are a lot lighter than the conventional type and easier to move around the house. We run ours downstairs in the evening and move it upstairs at night.