It's Not a Dry Heat

The actual onset of warmer weather is really here. For the folks who don't live in the Mid-Atlantic region, let me explain--we don't get much "springtime" weather here. Nope. We go from "Crap, it's COLD!" to the proverbial "It's like a sauna out there" in what seems like two weeks. Sure, we get some nice flowers for a while, but the reality of living in an area primarily built on reclaimed swampland eventually strikes home every year in the form of pretty serious humidity. Just lately, we've been experiencing damn-near rain forest weather--temperatures in the mid-70s/lower-80s and rain, drizzle, sun, torrential downpour, sun, rain... at least it hasn't been necessary to water the new plants. But it's been humid. Really humid. And humidity is unpleasant inside the house. It fosters mold and mildew, it makes things smell funky, it creates an environment for all kinds of gross bugs... it's just unpleasant. Additionally, a humid basement affects the floors directly above, which means the basement won't be the only stinky, buggy part of the house--the first floor will get icky, too.

If you remember this post, I mentioned the need for a dehumidifier in our basement. We made it quite a while without one, but after about three weeks of mixed rain and sun, it became obvious we really needed to do something. All of the tell-tale signs were present (funky smells, extra moisture in the air, etc), and the basement really had a damp atmosphere. Now, I know most fully underground basements smell a little "off," but ours was actually getting a little... err... reeky.

Let me back-track a little here. We haven't really done much with The Serpico House's basement yet. Every other week, Avy and some friends hang out and do some belly-dancing down there, and I have a little amplifier and some guitars in there, too, but it's basically just an empty, carpeted room. It's nice... or, rather, it was nice... until the humidity started kicking in. Starting after Avy's dance rehearsal the other day, when the ladies emerged from the basement, there was a distinct aroma of something other than that of natural human exertion. It was a sort of moldy, vegetational smell.

And that's when I knew we really needed to get a dehumidifier.

So, I started looking around online... the average price for a consumer-level, standard-sized dehumidifier sits somewhere between $160-$350. Most dehumidifiers work by drawing moist air over a refrigerated coil with a small fan. Since the saturation vapor pressure of water decreases with decreasing temperature, the water in the air condenses and drips into a collecting bucket. Dehumidifiers are rated in pints (25-pints, 45 pints, etc), and this refers to the amount of water it can remove from the air in a 24-hour period. The higher the pint-rating, the more powerful the dehumidifier.

After digging around for while, we decided on this one...

It's an LG 45-pint unit. We bought a refurbished model because it came in at a pretty reasonable price when compared to a new one, and the reviews were all at least four-star our of five. It showed up last night, and I set it up right away. My first impressions were that it is somewhat larger than I expected, and it's pretty weighty, too. It didn't take much to get it going--set it down, plug it in and that's it. A fan noise starts up (it's not too loud to me), and you don't notice anything special happening right away.

I guess I started it up around 6:30pm. We went about our usual evening routine, and around 10pm, I went into the basement to check it out. I may be somewhat overly ambitious, but I am pretty sure I noticed that the basement had less of a mildewy odor. When I checked the collection bucket under the unit, it was about 1/2 full of water. I dumped the water and turned it on again. We went to bed about an hour later.

This morning when I woke up, I checked the dehumidifier, and it was still running. I checked the bucket, and it wasn't completely full (the unit is supposed to turn off when it's full), but there was a lot of water in there. I dumped it and started it up again. I could imagine this getting a little old... luckily, this thing is supposedly equipped with a hose-draining option (that sounds naughty!), which allows you to attach a length of garden hose to the unit and lay the other end in a sink or drain. This allows you to set the humidity level for whatever you like and let the unit run when needed without dumping the bucket. I think we'll eventually do this.

For now, the bucket works, and I foresee that the basement (and the rest of the house) will be more pleasant.