Owning your own home

Thermostat (nest), or the display on the dehumidifier itself when it’s on.

You can get little digital weather station clocks on amazon for a few quid too.

Tado smart thermostat/ trvs do it at our place. Not sure it’s great to measure it at floor level but maybe they compensate?

1 Attachment

Some little thermometer thing and the dehumidifier. They are broadly similar so I assume accurateish.

Some are rubbish. Either one or both of these.

1 Attachment

fill a bottle cap with salt and a few drops of water and put it in an air tight box or bag overnight with the hygrometers, it should read 70% humidity, whatever it reads above or below that is how out they are, the super cheap ones you can't usually change manually but at least you'll know what to add/subtract to get the true reading. slightly more expensive ones or one's that work with an app can be changed easily.

Quick numbers from some morning dehumidification.

Meaco on for 4.5hrs
50sqm open plan downstairs (also no door separating upstairs)
Ambient temp approx. 18C
RH start 63%
RH end 51%
1.5L water collected in the tank

They just cost what they consume. Major upside of the desiccant type is they output that heat into the room, super efficient if you do the science on it. So in a hot country yes extra heat is not what you want, but in the UK you just run them and offset it against your heating.

If you fire one in a room with a TRV controlled radiator your costs will be the same during heating season, if not a tad less as you are not heating the moisture suspended in the air.

If its just me in, I'll use a dehumidifier on in one room and close the door, 300w for a small/medium room is enough to keep me from being cold.

So in a hot country yes extra heat is not what you want, but in the UK you just run them and offset it against your heating.

This is what I thought, but then I wondered if using gas to heat the room + compressor type dehumidifier would be less expensive as gas heating is an order of magnitude cheaper than electric?

FWIW I have two desiccant dehumidifiers and am shitting it on our 'leccy bill.

More AO ranting; I got from here (thanks @Hefty) that they're allowed one attempt to fix a washing machine that broke two weeks after the 30 day replacement period ran out. I hate AO so much, and Beko now too!

I've just heard that the part they need from Beko is out of stock, with no date available for it's replacement. The manufacturers (Beko), seller (AO) and repair engineer (Domex) obvisouly are all impossible to deal with as they're separate entities.

Frustratingly, I know already that the guy misdiagnosed the fault (he's replacinig a dryer part, the leak is in the wash cycle), so I actually know already that the part I'm waiting on is wrong.

My understanding is that their one attempt at replacement needs to be in a 'reasonable timeframe'. I don't imagine that part is suddenly going to appear in the next day or so and then it'll be about two weeks since the thing broke.

Anyone have any insight as to what that'reasonable' timeframe might be?

Haven't had my heating on yet. Am I doing it right?

I'm running the EcoAir | DC18 Compact Dehumidifier which is also great at drying clothes in a small room. Been pretty good so far - if you leave it on a low fan overnight (open plan & no door to stairs) it drops humidity by about 10%. In winter I aim for under 60%

From the blog:

Both compressor dehumidifiers extract more water at 15°C than a desiccant dehumidifiers and using around a third of the energy.

So I guess that's whether you want that wasted energy as heat. Personally I either have the dehumidifier in a hallway so the heat is pretty ineffectual or in a spare room with the door shut (often overnight) with laundry so I don't care about the temperature in there.

If you're dehumidifying the room that you are in then I guess it may make sense but is that common?

Warmer air should also get the moisture out of those drying clothes faster, right?

I'm using a Meaco Zambezi (desiccant) instead of heating in a 1 bed flat at the moment. Set to 55% sometimes it sits for a day or 2 before I empty it. Takes the edge off the cold and keeps stuff that's stored in there dry(er). Doesn't seem to cost the earth yet.

Beyond two weeks is definitely unreasonable.

You can’t wash your clothes because their machine broke, a reasonable person washes clothes at least weekly I’d say. Definitely more than every other week - no one owns more than 14 pairs of pants.

Maybe there ought to be a dedicated humidifier/white goods thread.

Maybe, but 3 times faster? Particularly given that there is a dehumidifier in there so the extra moisture warm air can absorb probably isn't as important as it is constantly recycled.

no one owns more than 14 pairs of pants

Say what? 14 is minimum, surely?

The manufacturers (Beko), seller (AO) and repair engineer (Domex) obvisouly are all impossible to deal with as they're separate entities.

Your contract is with AO, you don't have to deal with anyone else, tell them that and that if they want to deal with Beko/Domex that's up to them.

Have you asked to make a formal complaint/speak to their complaints department? I agree with @Hefty on the timeframe - you need to wash clothes, you can't.

I would be starting a chargeback/Section 75 claim personally. You are allowed to pursue one simultaneously with engaging with the retailer, you're just not allowed to pocket multiple refunds.

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

I'm in a flat built in the 30s and mine's around 60%, though we have stripped floorboards, air bricks, and central heating up to max. On the other hand we also dry all our clothes indoors, so swings and wotsits.

Go on then - how many pairs of pants have you got?

On a quick count, without digging through the wool laundry bin, at least 20. I like to have 7ish pairs I can keep packed in my luggage between trips (clean, of course) so I don't have to unpack before going on my next holibobs, and enough other pairs so that I can adopt a relaxed approach to laundry days.

Ah ok. I thought you were going to say, like, 40 or something.

By the time a few more emails have been exchanged @christianSpaceman will have been 20 days without a machine so even if you are the reasonable person and I’m the outlier AO will still need to give a refund.

Prob needs its own thread

Currently fitting an MVHR as part of an ongoing victorian renovation, so whatever we want it to be (between 50 and 65 would be fine, 40 feels too dry, etc).

Trying to airtight seal the envelope of an older house is proving interesting.