Model Forum / General / Models / February 2010

Gentlemen,

I recently bought a dehumidifier to hopefully reduce the rusting
problems in my "workshop".
Hopefully the following may be of interest

The Dehumidifier purchased was a New Meaco DD122FW MK3. This is a
dessicant type dehumidifier purchased particularly as it will run down
to 1 deg C. Cost was £148.99 inc carriage
The "Workshop" is a garage attached to the house.
5.7m Long x 3m Wide x 2.2m High Single brick construction on 3 sides
double on the fourth. The "up and Over" door exists but has been clad
on the inside with 70mm thick foam. The flat roof ceiling is
plasterboard covered but with no insulation. An externally venting
tumbledryer is used in the garage.
I have a Lidl Temperature and Humidity sensor in my adjacent office
with an additional remote sensor placed in the garage. When placed
adjacent to each other they gave equal humidity readings (normally
about 68% in the office)
The Meaco unit was installed on the 3rd of February at 11.00 am and
left to run in "Auto" continuously. (Auto should control to a humidity
of 55-60% RH). At that time the Humidity reading in the garage was 87%
and the temperature 7.8 deg C. The unit was connected via a power
monitor.
After 24 hours the Humidity was down to 69% at 9.6 deg C and 3.15L of
water had been collected with a power usage of 8.4Kw hrs.
The unit runs at about 27watts with the fan on (continuous) and about
400watts when the humidistat kicks in.
On the 10th of February (1 week) at 11:00am the unit had pulled a
total of 8.12L of water with a total usage of 24.64 KW hrs. The
average humidity over the week was a pretty constant 68%. Lowest
temperature (seen) was 5.2 deg C and highest 10.8 deg C. (No
additional heating was used). Little work was done in the workshop
(too cold) but the tumble drier was used a few times.
If we consider that steady state conditions had been achieved after
the first 24 hours then the future consumption is likely to be
(24.64-8.4)/6 Kw hrs per day = 2.71 at my current electricity charge
that is £0.30 per day.

The fact that the unit did not achieve the expected 55-60% humidty
level was noted. The remote sensor was checked for calibration as per
info seen on the web (salt test) and was found to read 82% when it
should have read 75%. This infers that the current reading of 68% is
actually 61% which indicates that the Meaco control is reasonably
close. (All of the figures quoted above were actual not adjusted
readings).

I will continue to monitor the unit at different settings and will
report back if any changes result.

I hope that the above is of interest and would be VERY interested to
hear of results from any Compressor type dehumidifier installations
for comparison.

Richard