Whole House Dehumidifier Installation in Oakland County

Whole house dehumidifier or a portable one?

A portable dehumidifier is a fair answer for one damp room. If your basement is a single open space, the unit keeps it under 60 percent and you do not mind the noise or the bucket, you may not need us. Running a hose from it to a floor drain takes care of the emptying.

A ducted whole house unit earns its place when the problem is bigger than one room: a finished basement divided into several rooms, humidity that reaches the main floor, or a portable that runs nonstop and still loses. It removes much more water, sits out of the way by the furnace, drains automatically and is run by a control you set once. Capacity is rated in pints of water removed per day. We size it to the square footage, how tightly the house is built and how damp it actually gets, not to the biggest model available.

Why the air conditioner alone may not control humidity in the house

An air conditioner dries the air as a side effect. Water condenses on the cold indoor coil and runs down the drain, but only while the compressor is on. That leaves gaps. On a mild, rainy day the house never gets warm enough to call for cooling, so nothing is removing moisture. And the basement stays cool all summer, so the AC is never running on its account.

The other common cause is an air conditioner that is too big. An oversized unit cools the house fast and shuts off before it has run long enough to remove much humidity, which leaves the rooms cool but clammy. A dehumidifier can cover for that. When the AC is due for replacement anyway, the better fix is sizing the new one with a proper load calculation, which is how we handle air conditioner installation.

Where the water goes: drains and pumps

A whole house dehumidifier pulls a lot of water out of the air on a humid day, and all of it has to go somewhere without your help. The simple route is gravity: a sloped line from the unit to a floor drain or the sump. When the nearest drain is higher than the unit or across the room, a condensate pump collects the water and pushes it there through a small tube.

Much of what goes wrong with a dehumidifier goes wrong at the drain. Lines can slime up and pumps wear out, and the first sign is often water on the floor. Upkeep is short: keep the filter clean so air moves freely across the coil, and have the drain line and pump checked once a year. It fits neatly into a spring AC tune-up.

A dehumidifier is not waterproofing

A dehumidifier takes moisture out of the air. It does nothing about water coming through the wall. If you have puddles after rain, a damp line along the base of the foundation or white mineral streaks on the block, the first fix is outside: gutters, downspouts, the slope of the soil, the sump. The EPA makes the same point. Control the water first, then the humidity.

We will tell you if that is what we see, even though it means sending you to a drainage or waterproofing contractor and not selling you equipment. Check the easy sources too. A dryer vent that has come loose, or a bath fan that never reaches the outdoors, can load a house with moisture by itself. Our home ventilation page covers those.