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As I recall, many have had the experience that some dehumidifiers last only a brief time and others are more durable. Please give me recommendations for a portable dehumidifier for one room.

I'm looking for a dehumidifier too, and found this recommendation by violinmaker David Burgess:

Frigidaire Energy Star 30 pint-per-day dehumidifier, product #FAD301NWD
http://www.burgessviolins.com/products.html

and he has a page on the subject of humidity that might be of interest:
http://www.burgessviolins.com/humidity.html

I have no experience with the unit he recommends, but remember my last one was very noisy,
and hope to find a quieter and more efficient one for my 1200 square foot workroom.

I've got this one from Amazon. They still sell them for $220.

Frigidaire FAD704DWD Energy Star 70-pint Dehumidifier

I bought it in Sept 2013 and it has been running 24/7/365 ever since then. I have it hooked up so that it will drain outside of the shop. I also disassemble it every year and clean out the dust. I don't find the noise objectionable, about the same as a small window AC unit. I wouldn't call it quiet but have no problem listening to the radio.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I bought a Frigidaire ENERGY STAR 30-pint dehumidifier (FFAD3033R1) about a year and a half ago so it's good to see yours is holding up so well.

wbergman - I can't address your durability question since I haven't had mine a long time and I only use it when needed. However, I can say that when the outdoor RH is between 60% and 70% it can take the RH down as low as 35% no problem in my shop which is 19' x 23' with a 10' ceiling. I consider it to be fairly quiet when running. Home Depot carries them and, for what it's worth, there are more than 1000 reviews of it on the HD website and they are heavily weighted to positive.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

While shopping online, I happened to notice that Energy Star rating is eligible for $35 rebates from my local electric company. Maybe your local companies have this, too.

Meanwhile, my old dehumidifier is working again.

I have the updated version of that model. I bought it in spring of 2017. It ran great all summer. I put it away for the winter (temp is constant in my basement shop but I have to run humidifiers in the winter). When I pulled it out in spring of 2018 it didn’t work. Amazon replaced it for me for free. The new one worked great all of last summer. Then when I fired it up this spring the replacement didn’t work!!

I’m now outside of the warranty period.

I bought a different model and bought a 4 year extended warranty from a third party for $44. At least that way I should get 4 years of replacements before I have to buy them again.

I’ve heard of others having similar experiences. Perhaps they are OK if you run them year round but they don’t like being stored unused?

What did you do to clean it out? How much (and how) did you disassemble to get access to what you needed to clean?

I am wondering how the device detects humidity, in order to turn on and off. Seems to me if that feature fails, it will not work, but it might be an inexpensive fix; as opposed to a failure of the compressor system. Can anyone advise on how to trouble shoot?

My guess would be that the knob you turn to select the level of dryness is a humidistat. You might be able to take it out of the circuit and wire in a new one. To trouble shoot it you could bypass it and see if the rest of the unit works. If it does then you could buy a humidistat and wire it in place of the old one.
In cooler weather when dehumidifiers don't work efficiently I plug an electric heater into a humidistat which then "lowers" the humidity by heating the air. Since we are dealing with relative humidity rather than absolute humidity this works.

I've been running the Fridigidare dehumidifier in a 50 pint or 30 not sure which one for nearly four years now and it's been super reliable, pretty quiet at least the quietest I have ever used and it keeps my basement (1,100 sq feet) at 45% always. Ten feet away from it I have an annually calibrated Abbeon that only strays from 45% when I turn the dehumidifier off.

I would recommend these, mine has been flawless AND the humidistat is spot on according to the calibrated Abbeon. My basement is 55 - 60% without the dehumidifier. Mine came from Lowes and I have it draining in the sump pump well.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Have been through 4 so far. Bought my 5th one last week. They are not serviceable any more. I have resolved to buy the cheapest 30 or 50 pint I can find and plan on getting one season out of it. Anything more will just be a bonus. Frigidaire 50 pint died on me and bought a GEthis time. Had a Haier and other generic brands. All the same, junk throwaways.

Pretty much echo what has been said. Frigidaire had high numbers of failures due to rusting of coil frame and subsequent leaking of refrigerant. I am happy I bought the extended warranty on my Frigidaire that died after 2 seasons. I recouped about 85% of the price. It is probably old news by now but a huge number of Chinese dehumidifiers were recalled due to fires being started due to malfunction. If you haven't done so you can enter your make and model number on a master list to see if it has been recalled.
One thing to keep in mind is that pint ratings are fairly useless. The pint ratings are based on a constant high humidity and high temperature. Once the RH approaches 50% the standard compressor dehumidifiers only operate at 20-30% of pint rating specs.
As Victor said, most are junk throwaways. But dehumidifiers need to be disposed of properly by recovering the refrigerant. I had the distinct pleasure of forking over $32 to the Ann Arbor recycling depot for a dead dehumidifier. Lots of other stuff I would have rather spent the money on....

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

That's where I sort of ended up too...

You can buy a really expensive unit or you can buy the cheap ones and throw them out when they die... They seem to do about 2 seasons for me.... You can do the math based on the current retail prices on how many years a good one has to last to break even... It's sort of sad that we live in a throw away world now - but that's reality for now....

hI Mr REIN an john SAME HERE , THE Frigidaire died after 3 yrs I tried coil cleaner on Fri, everything worked but as you said no refrigerant. I/ve bought abt 5 since living in the midwest. No more . Went to hd and got a lg window unit ac on sale does the trick so far . Turned up the ac in the house to 75 , and now its drier.. I like warm temps , but cool ac does dry out the house much better, Perhaps we should have moved to NM then a swamp cooler would be needed LOL., Setting up a new shop is way more work than I bargained for I plan on Looking for a mini split system for the 1200 sq ft shop in the rear . The garage shop will be used mostly for assembly, and light work . The main shop has all the big power tools. PS FYI . our local guthrie ok goodwill took the frigidaire dehumdiifier

When I clean mine I remove all of the plastic panels and blow out all of the dust with compressed air. I use brushes for areas where it gets wet and gunky. Not sure why this one has lasted 6 years, previous models only lasted two seasons before quitting.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I suspect that the environment that we run these in has a great deal to do with how long they last. My area is basically sealed and can be brought down in RH and stay down with very little assistance once it's down. Mine is set at 45% one actually turns off for a few minutes every day.

If I were running any brand dehumidifier in a leaky situation or overly wet situation I'm sure it would not last as long as mine has so far.

Regardless no panacea here that what I have will be the end all to be all and I'll likely be replacing it sooner than I would have hoped too. Nonetheless it may be that the nature of these things these days is much like every thing else, disposable.... sadly....

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I echo heshs comment too many things are stamped ROC aka republic of crapola, and wind up in the trash bin. What a waste of time money energy and resources

I would gladly pay another $200 for a dehumidifier that was solidly built and serviceable. Unfortunately that is usually something you only find in commercial products - which I will get when they make sense.

On a side note, I suppose one of the reasons my dehumidifier has lasted so long is that it is always on, my shop is only 300 sq ft and building is pretty tight so the dehumidifier has a moderate duty cycle and the shop is usually pretty clean so the dust is kept down. Plus, I expect I got lucky and got one of the good ones

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

The one that crapped out yesterday was purchased 5/25/17. So, I get about 2 years out of them. I just figure on it costing me about $8-$10 per month. I had the 35 pint Hisense from Lowes. I replaced it with the 50 pint model. It brought my 300 sf shop back from 55% to 42% in less than 1 hour.

I have a Hisense 70 pint dehumidifier for my 1000 sq/ft shop. It's the third or fourth dehumidifier I have had in the past 10 years and the quietest of them. I can leave it running while working right next to it, while the previous ones I had to turn off while I was working near them because they were so loud. I've had this one for about a year and half now and it's going strong.

I think just as important is to get a high quality certified hygrometer. The hygrometer on these dehumidifiers and cheap standalone hygrometers are breathtakingly inaccurate. I've seen them off by 20%. I use an Abbeon hygrometer certified to 3%. With my dehumidifier set to 40%, the Abbeon will read about 50% (located about 5 feet from the dehumidifier). Another option is to use a sling pshycrometer to calibrate cheap hygrometers regularly.

https://www.abbeon.com/Item--i-AB167

Is the consensus on dehumidifiers , just a crapshoot and pot luck ???. Reason I ask is that we need a dehumidifier in our new 600 sq ft garage , We are not going to use epoxy paint . Too much work for too little reward IMHO. I will wait to hear other reports before buying . I looked at the sylvane products , but its over 1k , and who knows how long they will last . Thank you everyone!!

It is foolish not to seal the floor. It is not that much work. I did an acid wash and 1 coat of epoxy on my garage floor 25 years ago and it is still working great. The floor coating also make it much easier to sweep or vacuum the floor clean than bare concrete.

When I made my current shop, the only reason I didn't do epoxy was the acid wash. There was no access to the floor drain without crossing finished basement and no ventilation. I probably should have just figured out how to make it work. How much of a problem are the fumes from the acid wash really?

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I think having it running all the time is probably the thing that makes the difference. I suspect that it is during the months it sits unused (4 or 5 months of dry wi yet here when I’m running 2 humidifiers instead) that the refrigerant leaks out. The temp remains constant in my basement space but the humidity swings from 20% in the winter to almost 80% in the summer. My dehumidifiers only seem to die when they are sitting unused.

I have 2 dehumidifiers, both purchased from Sylvane. A Santa Fe, don't remember which model but it's an upright configuration, i.e. taller than it is wide. Cost about $1300 back when, and it's been running (a lot) for about 7 or 8 years without a hiccup. It's installed in a fieldstone wall basement in a 200 year old house in eastern Massachusetts with a history of dampness and it's done a fantastic job of drying it out. I set it to keep the humidity somewhere around 55% year 'round. The spend was painful initially but since then I've totally forgotten the sticker shock and have not had to give a thought to dampness. Judging from my experience in my previous house I probably would have gone through 3 consumer-grade models in that time. Well worth the money for me.

The other one is in my shop which is built on a grade-level slab. The slab has a 6 mil poly vapor barrier laid over it and sealed to the bottom plate of the walls which are built on top of the concrete stem wall that extends above the slab. There's 2" of closed cell foam over that, 2x10 joists on top of the foam, and 8-1/2" of rock wool insulation between the joists. Topped with 3/4" plywood. So the one and only vapor barrier is on the bottom, between the slab and the floor system. All this is to say that the shop dehumidifier doesn't have to work as hard so I bought a smallish Danby model from Sylvane. Can't remember the model or the cost but it was a consumer-grade dehumidifier. It think it was in the $200 range. It's been running great with only an occasional vacuuming of the filter for 3 years so far.

Update on new dehumidifier. The dehumidifier controls indicate that the shop is at 42%. The hygrometer on the wall across the room indicates that the room is at 41%. So either they are both right, or they or both wrong. But for now, the new one seems to be working fine. Just count on averaging spending $100 per year. Personally, I am comfortable with the consumer grade units, and just getting a new one every 2 years. They work so well, when they are new.