By Trent Hamm
A few days ago, a friend of mine told me that she runs a dehumidifier in her laundry room because it gets fairly steamy in there at times when the washer and dryer are both running. She takes the tray from the dehumidifier and adds it to the washing machine in order to save money on her water bill.
Right off the bat, this tip struck me as being a bit out of balance. How much water does a dehumidifier really extract? How much energy does it take to continually run a dehumidifier?
I was on the case.
First of all, I wanted to know how much water a dehumidifier would extract from the air. I checked out the Energy Star site on basic dehumidifiers and found that if we assume the room is very damp and is 500 square feet in size (which is substantially larger than the laundry... More...
