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What you ideally want in your AZ situation is a swamp cooler. My family uses them out in Idaho and Oregon.
An air conditioned house is really no different than a large and inefficient refrigerator. Your refrigerator removes moisture that rots food and cools it at the same time. Have you called anyone out to service the thing? From what I am reading it is ready to remove and replace. It could just need some servicing though a new one would be great. Get an oversized compressor to make sure you get ll that moisture.
I live in the DC area and we are having a humid crush right now. I run a dehumidifier in my basement, a must and let the AC run at ~75*. I also have a nice reciprocating fan in the big room upstairs to keep air flowing; the secret to truly staying cool.
I have no idea how the slave girls / guys to wave 'em might effect your indoor humidity...
But to address the OP's question about using a "humidistat" to regulate an normal A/C unit -- DO NOT DO THIS! Those humidistats are designed to control exhaust systems. True humidity controlling A/C units (like are used in data centers and other commercial buildings have the ability to use HEAT to prevent from FROST forming on the heat exchanger and that will literally DRY the air without cooling it at all if need be...
The older AC units have an evaporation pressure/temperature "approach" that is greater than newer units. In other words the operating temperature of the older evaporators is lower than newer ones. This will increase dehumidification.
As MrRational said if your unit isn't on it's not working. The first jobs of your AC system is to remove humidity or latent heat. If it's not on, it's not going to be removing that humidity. The second job is to remove sensible heat or what you register on your drybulb (typical) thermometer. Just because your thermostat isn't reading a drop in temperature to your liking does not mean it's not removing heat.
You should have your AC system in the summer set to the lowest fan speed possible so long as it does not cause coil freezing. That's typically not going to be a problem. You should see longer run times and with the lower humidity you should be able to keep your thermostat set higher and still feel comfortable. If you can't then you have a problem. That problem I would venture to guess is a clogged coil which lowers the effective surface area of the coil and and the same time insulates the fins from doing what they're suppose to be doing (see second paragraph).
As far as adding humidity to your home, that's adding latent heat and all though it may seem to make sense it reduces your body's ability to evaporate (a cooling process) sweat. As a side note people will add humidity in very high temperature areas like AZ because water has a high specific heat and can absorb almost 3 times the amount of heat as dry air without a change in temperature. You'll still need to remove the heat latent and sensible. This can be done with a exhaust that brings in new fresh "dry" air. Basically it's one of the more efficient ways to absorb heat and send it outside of the home.
The problem with leaving it On, is that would often have to have it set very low and it would run for God knows how long. You're right, even though the thermostat my not indicate a lower temp, I do feel the air get cooler.
The issue is like now, woke up and its about 72 inside but muggy. Humidity between 60 and 65. I can set the AC to 71 and it would probably run for 2 hours or more. I would end up manually turning it off after about an hour. I honestly dont know how long it would keep running if I left it on.
That's the only reason I was looking at the dehumidifier controller, so the AC would run continuously for so long.
This could be something SIMPLE. When was the last time you have the unit serviced? A good technician will have a thermometer for checking things like the differnce between intake and exhaust temps AND VERIFY the correct setting for blower. If this thing NEVER worked right maybe so yahoo installed the wrong compressor / blower...
Seriously call a qualified technician!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tilt11
The problem with leaving it On, is that would often have to have it set very low and it would run for God knows how long. You're right, even though the thermostat my not indicate a lower temp, I do feel the air get cooler.
The issue is like now, woke up and its about 72 inside but muggy. Humidity between 60 and 65. I can set the AC to 71 and it would probably run for 2 hours or more. I would end up manually turning it off after about an hour. I honestly dont know how long it would keep running if I left it on.
That's the only reason I was looking at the dehumidifier controller, so the AC would run continuously for so long.
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Couple of these will work...
