Home Dehumidifier Junk?

[Karl in NY]

Been in this house 18 years, and dehumidifier #8 just quit yesterday, 3 years after purchase. This one is a Frigidaire, still under sealed-system warranty...wattmeter shows 60-watt draw with it set in continuous-run mode, which means only the fan is running, and has zero water output...should be 800 watt draw with functional compressor. CSR said would be replaced, rather than repaired, after my description of symptoms. She said their cost for a new unit was less than a service call...Previous ones were LG and Whirlpool, all made in China, apparently by same factory, regardless of brand.

My failed 8 units include 5 replaced while still under warranty. The units only run for about 4 months of the year, in Summer, despite central A/C and conditioned basement.

Commercial, US-made dehumidifiers seem to start at over $1000.

Wondering if there is some middle-ground...this disposable cycle disgusts me, especially when remembering my parents' unit that ran 30 years and was still running when they sold the house.

Edit to add: this Frigidaire warranty only allows a single replacement, even if replacement dies in a month, with 2 years remaining on original warranty. That ain't fair. I will look into extended warranties
from 3rd party, like Square Trade, but I expect they have been burned enough on dehumidifiers that there are all sorts of weasel-clauses. I never buy "service contracts", but dehumidifiers are worth making an exception for, if even available.

 

[jack the toad]

I have no suggestions but am interested in a dehumidifier in the event you find a good one.

 

[Fishinfool]

I'll pas on a tip a repair man gave years ago - Keep the air intake filter clean. Said it reduced the stress on the unit, and improved longevity. I have a $200 GE unit I run in the garage / basement same as you, about 4 months of the year. I believe it is 8 years old now. Amazing the amount of **** in the filter when I take it out for a compressed air cleaning.

Larry

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

If the don't want the old unit back, why don't you bypass the humidity sensor. My unit, the fan runs all the time, but the compressor only comes on when the sensor tells it to. According to the LED panel that is around 40%.

While you are in there, check the continuity across the compressor poles and see if the compressor is bad. If not, hot wire it and put a switch on it.

When mine decides to run it will pull about 2.5 gallons of water out of the air in 24 hours. Since the internal tray only hold ".89" gallons of water, it quits working about 10 hours into the dry out. The hose connecter hole is so small it clogged in days. These cheep units suffer from bad engineering as well as normal failure probability.

Ivan

 

[Tom S.]

More and more appliances are being made "disposable" in that not only they don't last, but fixing either isn't possible due to lack of parts, or the cost isn't effective. It's a shame.

Even major stuff like furnaces are that way. I had our 40+ year old furnace replaced when we had central air put in. The sales pitch was our furnace was only around 60% efficient and the new 80% would quickly pay for itself. What a crock. Even during the warranty period we had problems. It averages a service call every year and a half and has doubled the cost of the furnace during that period of time. That furnace is reaching it's expected life cycle of 20 years. I'm afraid to go to higher efficiency furnace because the higher the efficiency, the more complicated (read trouble prone and expensive to repair) they are.

 

[JamesArthur60]

Commercial, US-made dehumidifiers seem to start at over $1000.

Been there done that, those $200-250 small units suck, maybe two years tops for run time and they stop. I've been the warranty route as well, but discovered the repair parts and labor costs nearly as much as a new unit. Last year I had installed a residential/commercial unit for my basement. They are very efficient, quiet, but costly. I purchased it from a local basement specialist company. It's called SANI-DRY XP. Basement Dehumidifier and Crawl Space Dehumidifier

 

[bigwheelzip]

Just a shot in the dark, but do you have good quality power off the grid?
I have two family members in NY who had the same problem as you, except their air conditioners and refrigerators also died young.
When I visit NY, I stay with them, so on a hunch I brought my UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) with me. It dropped into battery mode regularly and indicated insufficient voltage. Not a blackout, but power dropping below normal range.
A little digging found that compressors need pure sine wave power, so we got a few sine wave UPS's on sale. That was a few years ago, and none of the protected units has failed since then.
It's an expensive endeavor, as each unit was about $170 on sale, from Newegg. These 900 watt units go on sale at Newegg a couple of times a year.

UPS System - CP1500PFCLCD | CyberPower

CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD UPS 1500VA / 900W PFC compatible Pure sine wave-Newegg.com

PS: One of the units we protected was a big LG french-door refrigerator, which used to repeatedly make a loud banging noise and re-boot the LCD panel on the door every once in a while. Since it's plugged into the UPS, that behavior has stopped.

These units also protect your equipment from the surges that come from lightning.

Good luck.

 

[H Richard]

I had an "old", probably 1980's model, that didn't crash until about 2002. It was a Craftsman from sears. To replace it I got a Frigidaire, it lasted two years, got another did maybe 3 years. A third one, can't remember brand lasted about 3 years. I spoke to a fiend who was a appliance repairman and he just shook his head and said they don't make them to last any more. He did have an older one, from around the 90's, and it worked fine except it would cycle off and wouldn't re-cycle back on. He explained if it was turned off and then turned back on it would work fine. I took it home and pt it on a timer and set the timer to turn on 3 times a day and run for 2 hours each time. (It sits in my gun vault). It works great, keeps the humidity at 45%, and will kick off when it reaches that, so often it hardly runs at all.

 

[blues7]

Had a Kenmore for about 8 years or more. While not perfect it continued to work until I got a recall notice and a $75 check.

I've had about 3 or 4 Frigidaire (Electrolux) models since and keep getting them replaced on their dime.

In a word they suck. (And on top of their built in unreliability, the hygrometers are way off so you'd better have a standalone unit in the room to check your unit's settings.)

I've had my current Frigidaire for a bit over a year now but I also purchased the extended warranty for about $40 which will cover the next three years. Other than the hygrometer readings being well off, it's the best of the several I've gone through in the past few years.

 

[Tom S.]

Just a shot in the dark, but do you have good quality quality power off the grid?
I have two family members in NY who had the same problem as you, except their air conditioners and refrigerators also died young.
When I visit NY, I stay with them, so on a hunch I brought my UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) with me. It dropped into battery mode regularly and indicated insufficient voltage. Not a blackout, but power dropping below normal range.
A little digging found that compressors need pure sine wave power, so we got a few sine wave UPS's on sale. That was a few years ago, and none of the protected units has failed since then.
It's an expensive endeavor, as each unit was about $170 on sale, from Newegg. These 900 watt units go on sale at Newegg a couple of times a year.

UPS System - CP1500PFCLCD | CyberPower

CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD UPS 1500VA / 900W PFC compatible Pure sine wave-Newegg.com

PS: One of the units we protected was a big LG french-door refrigerator, which used to repeatedly make a loud banging noise and re-boot the LCD panel on the door every once in a while. Since it's plugged into the UPS, that behavior has stopped.

These units also protect your equipment from the surges that come from lightning.

Good luck.

Good point!! A friend used to live at the end of a power run, and he went through light bulbs faster than I could change socks. Sometimes it was so bad, the bulbs would barely light. Those kinds of power shortages are hard on motors, while spikes can kill circuit boards.

 

[Karl in NY]

I'm on the grid, with few, if ever brown-outs. I run the humidifiers on "continuous", but with an external Honeywell humidistat, which keeps the humidity at +/- 1% of setting, unlike the internal ones, which varied by +/- 10%. Wattmeter (Kill-o-Watt) shows a wattage draw of 60 watts, rather than the expected 750 watt compressor draw, so I'm guessing either the compressor is not running, or, else it has nothing left in the system to compress, due to a freon leak. A typical $250 chinese dehumidifier failure. The switch from all copper internals to all aluminum was the start of these failures, probably at least 15 years ago...with warranty replacements, the sellers still find them profitable, meaning they pay almost nothing for them.

 

[rwsmith]

This is very astute......

Just a shot in the dark, but do you have good quality power off the grid?

I was buying air conditioners for our auxiliary labs and taking them back and telling the people they were no damn good. They replaced them but were puzzled because it was a quality unit. Then I got a bright idea and got a power monitor. Turns out our 240V line was only running at 180 V. I felt kinda bad for continuously telling those people their A/C were trash.

 

[Targets Guy]

We bought a new dehumidifier three years ago. It quit working just after the one year warranty expired.

Went back to the dehumidifier we bought 25 years ago. It still works.

 

[Jeff423]

This is a great thread. I never realized mine had an inlet filter! It was scary clogged. Vacuumed and re-installed - must be working better. This unit is a 12 yr. old Chinese made Kenmore. It seems to running OK but I'm starting to have problems with the membrane switches. I have to press some of them "just right" to get them to work.

Jeff

 

[blues7]

This is a great thread. I never realized mine had an inlet filter! It was scary clogged. Vacuumed and re-installed - must be working better. This unit is a 12 yr. old Chinese made Kenmore. It seems to running OK but I'm starting to have problems with the membrane switches. I have to press some of them "just right" to get them to work.

Jeff

FWIW, Jeff, Kenmore had a recall a couple years ago for fire hazard on some older units. (Mine was approximately the same age as the one you are referring to in your post.)

Might want to check with them to see if yours is or was subject to the recall. (They had me send in the plug and sent me a check for $75 toward a new unit.)

I'd feel terrible if I didn't take the time to mention it and it turned out that yours eventually caused a fire which could have been avoided.

 

[NYlakesider]

I had a Sears brand (no clue who built it) had that about 25 years. It worked good but was rather noisy. Left it in the house when we sold our home in the burbs.

Bought another Sears brand for our new house , (again company that built it I do not remember) It worked ok but it was a bit old fashioned. ( it would freeze up if the ambient temperature was low enough)



A few years ago I saw a Safety recall and my unit was in it. It stated the unit could catch on fire and to immediately stop using it and contact a 800 number. Did that and was told by the person on the phone we would get a decent bit of money when we sent them the info sheet (with serial number) on the unit and the cut off power plug and proof we had bought another dehumidifier. (any make) I checked and this was a legitimate recall/refund program. Did what they required and got a new one that worked in cooler tempts, much quieter for a very low output of my own personnel funds. What I purchased was a Soleusair brand.

Our dehumidifier is in the basement quite close to my loading area and gun safe so it important that it keeps the humidity low. It is plumbed into a floor drain!

So far so good all is working well. Hope I did not jinx my self by the post!

 

[blues7]

What I purchased was a Soleusair brand.

Our dehumidifier is in the basement quite close to my loading area and gun safe so it important that it keeps the humidity low. It is plumbed into a floor drain!

So far so good all is working well. Hope I did not jinx my self by the post!

I hope you have better luck with your SoleusAir. It was one of the first I tried after the Kenmore recall. I returned it to Lowe's within 60 days. (Their customer service was just awful. That's the politest way I can put it...so I was lucky that the Lowe's manager was a good guy and took it back without a hassle.)

 

[NYlakesider]

I hope you have better luck with your SoleusAir. It was one of the first I tried after the Kenmore recall. I returned it to Lowe's within 60 days. (Their customer service was just awful. That's the politest way I can put it...so I was lucky that the Lowe's manager was a good guy and took it back without a hassle.)

Thanks, like I said SO FAR so good! It self drains into the floor drain and I clean the intake screen often. Another month or so and it will not be on until next late spring! (Northern NY)

 

[federali]

I too have been through several dehumidifiers. I chalk it up as part of the cost of keeping my basement damp-free. Three year service life is about right.

 

[Karl in NY]

I was buying air conditioners for our auxiliary labs and taking them back and telling the people they were no damn good. They replaced them but were puzzled because it was a quality unit. Then I got a bright idea and got a power monitor. Turns out our 240V line was only running at 180 V. I felt kinda bad for continuously telling those people their A/C were trash.

That's a weird voltage. I once rented a house that had 208vac service (split 3-phase) and special appliances were needed. Was the reason for the 180vac determined?

Not the problem here...my Kill-a-Watt meter measures voltage, current, wattage, and even line frequency...I really only have it to keeps tabs on a portable generator, but all my networking stuff is on a buck/boost UPS line conditioner, but not the dehumidifier. When they were still actually servicing them, the usual cause of failure was due to a pinhole leak in the aluminum tubing.