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Do you have a window in the basement? Maybe connect the water line from the dehumidifier to an Automatic Condensate Removal Pump and have it pump water to the outside from the window.
There is a small window but (a) I don't want an open window to be letting humid outside air in and (b) the window well is barely 2 feet from the side of an adjacent back-door stoop. The other windows are too far away from where I need to locate the dehumidifier. Also there are critter (and cricket) problems in the area so I'd rather keep the windows closed.
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Originally Posted by markjames68
A separate condensate pump is better than splurging for a dehumidifier with one built in. I used to have it pump into my basement slop sink.
That's my feeling too. I figure that the combination of one of the Little Giant condensate pumps combined with a dehumidifier sans pump is the best option. Especially if my first dehumidifier doesn't do the job adequately or gives up the ghost quickly.
I also plan on getting a drain pan such as is used (in a perfect world, lol) under clothes washers - especially ones located on the second floor of a house, and the dehumidifier/condensate pump shelf unit on top of that. And then getting a water/flood alarm to put into it. Yes I know the dehumidifier is unlikely to be putting out more than 7 to 10 gallons even on a bad day but better safe than sorry, especially since I avoid going into the basement generally.
Can you tell that I don't trust the so-called "fail-safes" that are built into most appliances? LOL
When the AQ inspection was done last week, the basement humidity tested at 58% even though it was almost 80% humidity outside. Still smelled musty in the basement and the kitchen above it. I'm hoping to reduce the humidity to below 50% down there because that's the level at which mold grows. Below 45% would be even better but I don't know if that's possible in an unfinished basement hereabouts.
As far as the basement smell - if the ceiling in the basement is open - would you consider putting a vapor barrier there to keep the smell out of the kitchen?
Is there anything on the outside of the basement that is contributing to the dampness - water runoff going toward the foundation, gutters dumping water toward the basement?
Would you try setting a fan to exhaust to take the air / smell out through the window (with a screen on it to keep the bugs out)?
Sometimes there are several things needed that will fix and issue - not just one.
I have one in our basement. It’s 30 gallon. Had it for 4 years. It takes a few days for the bucket to fill running every two hours (then, two hours off): still running fine. We have absolutely no odor in our basement but also never did even before I finished it. Never saw a drop of water in it.
That's my feeling too. I figure that the combination of one of the Little Giant condensate pumps combined with a dehumidifier sans pump is the best option. Especially if my first dehumidifier doesn't do the job adequately or gives up the ghost quickly.
I also plan on getting a drain pan such as is used (in a perfect world, lol) under clothes washers - especially ones located on the second floor of a house, and the dehumidifier/condensate pump shelf unit on top of that. And then getting a water/flood alarm to put into it. Yes I know the dehumidifier is unlikely to be putting out more than 7 to 10 gallons even on a bad day but better safe than sorry, especially since I avoid going into the basement generally.
Can you tell that I don't trust the so-called "fail-safes" that are built into most appliances? LOL
When the AQ inspection was done last week, the basement humidity tested at 58% even though it was almost 80% humidity outside. Still smelled musty in the basement and the kitchen above it. I'm hoping to reduce the humidity to below 50% down there because that's the level at which mold grows. Below 45% would be even better but I don't know if that's possible in an unfinished basement hereabouts.
That’s pretty much the same pump I used. They are foolproof.
I doubt you’ll get it down to 45% without heating the whole place up and dramatically increasing your electric bill. Depending on the layout you might want to consider adding a fan somewhere to circulate the air around too.
As far as the basement smell - if the ceiling in the basement is open - would you consider putting a vapor barrier there to keep the smell out of the kitchen?
Funny but I was thinking about that just yesterday. It would need to be something thin enough to fit in the gap between the bottom of the flooring and all of the copper and Pex heating and house water piping running in that area ... and there's a lot of that. Wiring also. Housewrap perhaps, although that is vapor permeable (breathes) by design, which is good in the sense that it won't cause condensation but bad in the sense that it'll still let the (basement) air migrate through it.
When we bought the house we replaced the laminate floor in the kitchen with sheet vinyl, but did not pull out/replace the cabinetry -- which I assume is just sitting on the original subfloor. The ideal situation would be to seal the kitchen flooring from the top, but that would involve pulling out all the lower cabinets, countertops, plumbing, dishwasher, probably ruining tile backsplash ... not an option.
As a last resort I may have to try putting up a few sheets of Thermax (polyiso rigid insulation boards that are the only ones you can leave exposed, unlike EPS and XPS) just in that ceiling section and see if that helps. Thermax is fire rated Class I, and has a much lower vapor permeance than drywall. In that case the plumbing, wiring, etc would be running behind it.
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Is there anything on the outside of the basement that is contributing to the dampness - water runoff going toward the foundation, gutters dumping water toward the basement?
There are two window wells that could have been done better and I've been trying to get people out here for estimates to redo those areas. There's no obvious pooling of water or water intrusion but both areas were DIY efforts and thus neither of them have covers. In the area under the kitchen there's a very small window well but that area is covered, protected, and dry. If that spot has a problem it's that there's no air circulation at all there on the exterior; it's in a tight corner formed by the house wall, the sunroom extension foundation, and the brick steps to the sunroom.
It is POSSIBLE that if there was a roof leak in the past, the lower section of that outer kitchen wall, between the cabinets/drywall and the exterior sheathing, could be damp or wet. If so, the upper part of that wall/insulation could be dry; fiberglass batts act like a sponge and it may not have been bad enough for the water damage to be visible from the basement. Right now the exterior siding is cedar shakes but that is going to be replaced at some point this year. At that time I do plan to have the contractor remove the sheathing along that wall section and examine it from the outside.
One of the bedroom walls here had that situation (old roof leak, repaired but exterior wall beneath it not removed and dried out.) When the late afternoon sun heated up that wall, I could detect a smell in that room. Turned out to be from the moldy insulation in that area. There was no visible sign on either the inside or outside of the wall .... just the odd smell, and only if the siding got warmed enough by the sun to drive the smell inward through the painted wall. On a cloudy day or before 3 or 4 pm on a sunny one, no smell whatsoever. But I've kept notes on weather conditions re: the intensity of the musty smell in the kitchen cabinets and it doesn't seem weather dependent (sun exposure, wind, temperature) in any huge degree. It is often worse from late afternoon into the night though. Weird.
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Would you try setting a fan to exhaust to take the air / smell out through the window (with a screen on it to keep the bugs out)?
Running an exhaust fan in a basement during the summer would bring more outside (humid) replacement air in, thus making the basement even more humid (and smell worse.) Systems like E-Z Breathe and Wave are based on the principle that any time you move air out of a space, you are also sucking replacement air into it, so you need to pay attention to where that replacement air is coming from and how much of it there is. That's why people who have high-cfm kitchen exhaust fans should crack a nearby window open while they're running (assuming the outside air is more desirable than the air from, say, their basement or crawl space), and why bathroom exhaust fans work best when the door is at least somewhat open rather than closed.
Last edited by BBCjunkie; 08-14-2018 at 09:53 AM..
We had one of those when a house we bought came with a hot tub. It was great for draining it when we had to, although when the water level dropped below about an inch or so, the motor just spun and didn't move any out. The last inch of so of water had to be manually bailed out.
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OP many people I have known use a window a/c to dehumidify their basement it works great and drains outside. At the end of the summer you can cover it or take it out, the automatic thermostat will cycle the unit as needed so you don't have to check/empty it each day.
VAYankee, actually an air conditioner was one of the first solutions I considered, although instead of a window AC I was thinking of the smallest possible ductless unit. It would take a bit of custom carpentry at the sill plate level for mounting purposes, but it could be done.
The approach seemed logical because, after all, a dehumidifier is essentially the same appliance as an AC. It has the same working parts (compressor, condenser, and evaporator coil) and differ only in where the resulting heat from the process ends up.
But when I approached a few AC companies with this, they all told me it would be a bad idea for an unfinished space. Aside from the "never run an AC when the outside temp is 65 or below" rule, it was explained to me that ACs only dehumidify efficiently when there is enough of a cooling load in the area it's operating in. Because basements in our area are typically cool and damp (especially unfinished ones, where there are no insulating layers between foundation walls & floor and the interior space) the cooling load is low to begin with, so the AC ends up cycling on and off constantly. A constantly cycling AC isn't going to be running long enough to lower the humidity level very much. But if the AC thermostat is set too low to compensate for this, thus lowering the basement air temp even more, you end up with condensation on the pipes, the inside of your typical crappy single pane basement windows, anything down there that's metal (such as the heating oil tank), etc. That's not good either.
They said the idea would be more workable if the basement was either finished or in a warmer climate than the one we're in.
My neighbor attached a drain line to his dehumidifier and hooked up a Little Giant-type pump. His furnace has an identical condensation pump w/drain line and so he copied the precise connection already utilized. Now he has two drainage hoses plugging into a large PVC waste pipe (both connections are heavily sealed around the edges with serious goop).
No smell that I can detect. I am not a plumber so I may not be properly describing the location of precisely where the condensate lines plug into the waste drain line. Your experience may vary, of course.
Last edited by Quick Commenter; 08-15-2018 at 05:28 AM..
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