Owning your own home

yet anecdotal evidence suggests they work very well.
I don’t personally know of anyone who has fitted one without good results, think i would rather run a PIV than a dehumidifier.

Could well be they work fine. When I worked at the building place I used to see a lot of complaints between customers and tradesmen about them. Companies like Envirovent do a franchise type thing where you become an approved fitter for their products then work as a sole trader but use their branding. It means there's lots of trades out there which suggest them as a solution for every problem as all they do is fit PIV boxes. Much like the damp proofing companies which suggest wall injections as every solution.

TBH most people i know with them are geeks/nerds who want to know how they work and research what they need. if people are cooking/washing/using bathroom with no other moisture management then they will not work on their own.

At least installing one could be harmless, unlike botched damp proofing

You can do this with something as simple as a TRV fitted to the radiator in the room

How would you do this? Do you still need to turn the other radiators off or am I missing something obvious?

All radiators - except in the bathroom and the closest to the thermostat if you have single thermostat - should have a TRV :)

But yes if all your other rads don't have a TRV, this isn't going to work.

Got on the dehumidifier hype train. Where is it best placed - the hall, the living room, or the upstairs landing?

Where do you pant most?

Ah, I was hoping I was missing something obvious. Annoyingly can't get any TRVs that wouldn't look stupid for these

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Why, in the pantry of course

All this talk of dehumidifiers…

Which is the best to buy/hire, to help dry out moisture ingress as per pic attached?

The recent perpendicular rains have caused sudden and catastrophic water ingress in our bedroom bay window. I’ve been up a ladder to clean and re-seal the gutters and many gaps in the deteriorated external window frame sealant, as well as re-pointed obvious bits of masonry, so hopefully should have stopped water getting in.

The house is Victorian London Stock brick, but covered in nasty porridge-looking pebbledash, which will hinder any chance of the moisture evaporating out of the exterior…

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Why, in the pantry of course

See, this, this is why people keep coming back to LFGSS. High quality, wholesome content.

on the humidity chat - for anyone in an old-ish (victorian/edwardian) house, what’s your average RH%?

Ours is about 58-65ish most of the time, with low 50s when the dehumidifier is on (semi open plan downstairs)

Mine is in the low 70s, which is part of the reason I got a dehumidifier.

Well, that rad 1ft away would do a good job on a low setting.

Mine is 60-75%. I actually came here to post about this. I'm thinking of buying two small 12L dehumidifiers. One for downstairs in dining room and one upstairs in guest room where we dry clothes.

Was going to go with Meaco Arete One 12L but out of stock everywhere. Any other suggestions? Don't currently have a Which sub so any help appreciated.

I have the Meaco ABC 12L which appears to be pretty much the same without the HEPA filter.

It's light enough to easily carry up and down stairs.

How often do you have it on & is it expensive to run?

Meaco Arete One

That appears to be a compressor type machine, in the UK where standard temps you'll be using it in are 10-22c, a desiccant type dehumidifier is the best choice. Source - Science.

Ecoair DD1 simple is I think what we've got a few of, super useful, they work just fine down to basically 0c. 300w or 600w modes. Removes excess moisture from air and creates bonus heat.

Compressor types are really more suited to hot countries (24-50c)

Living in an old but well built flat with zero leaks or water ingress it sits around 35-50% RH in summer, 50-65% in winter. Above 65% RH I'd call a bit wet feeling, but would say thats normal to see in a bathroom or utility room most of the time.
Mates live in an even older and even better built flat, its 35-45% RH year round, almost makes your eyeballs itch in there (electric convector heating probably a contributing factor).

Have family living in a 3-400 year old scottish croft which has a badly poured concrete slab (1970's DIY job) with a wrecked membrane in it, above 70% all the time, have to run dehumidifiers in various places around the house to keep it from mildew forming in places with low air circulation. Only way to fix it is to remove the entire floor slab and replace, then do something with the 3-400 year old rubble walls to stop moisture climbing them. Has a very well built french drain + other water mitigation around it.

Most of October and November this year has been moist as hell, Glasgow has been 80%+ the whole time, everything is damp and sodden but weirdly warm.

Mine is around 65% in every room after the dehumidifier has been running a few mins and settled.

A day of running the dehumidifier for 6hrs (check previous pages for a before):

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We splashed out on the Meaco Arete One 25L, costs 10p/hr at current rates - don’t have a specific schedule for when and how long we put it on for, generally if the thermostat says it’s above 62% RH or so I might press the button. Though that 62% is completely arbitrary on my part.

Got the biggest one knowing we’d have it working in a big area (essentially allof downstairs, c.50sqm), it looks nice as these things go, the house was damp/had been empty for 18months when we bought it (incl. open window; uncapped+unflaunched chimney stack; cracked windowsil) and lastly that we were temporarily flush at the time of purchase as we had the renovation budget to play with (he says, 12 months later having not finished, run out of money, and needing to take out another loan to cover life shit…)

Will stick it on tomorrow and try to gauge how much water it extracts over a given time at a certain temp and RH.

Meaco disagree with this now.
https://blog.meaco.com/why-desiccant-dehumidifiers-are-not-always-better-at-low-temperature/

I looked at dessicant but they cost a bomb to run. The Meaco ABC I have seems to be doing ok at ~ 16 degrees.

How are people measuring the humidity in a room?

By temporarily removing ones hygrometer from the humidor.