Author Topic: Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier  (Read 4447 times)

mhdishere

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Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier
« on: June 28, 2005, 05:38:53 AM »
I'm going to be painting my basement floor this weekend (actually half of it, I painted the other half a few weeks ago).  I'm using latex paint, and the guy in the paint store recommended that I set up a dehumidifier to get the water out of the air so the paint would dry faster, since there's very little ventilation in the basement.  I don't have a dehumidifier, but I do have a small air conditioner I'm not using (it came with the house).  If I set it up over the slop sink so the water goes down the drain, would this do the same job?  I know it's probably not as energy efficient, but I'm thinking in the short term, it'll probably only run a couple days.

What do you think?

cfabe

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Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier
« Reply #1 on: June 28, 2005, 05:48:43 AM »
Yes, it will do the same job. Probably not as well, but it will condense moisture on the cold side.

K Frame

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Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier
« Reply #2 on: June 28, 2005, 06:02:00 AM »
As cfabe said, it will work.

A dehumidifier and an air conditioner work on the same principal.

You might also want to put a box fan in the basement to "stir" the air. This will allow for better dehumidification and faster drying.
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TarpleyG

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Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier
« Reply #3 on: June 28, 2005, 07:11:24 AM »
You need somewhere to exhaust the damp air to.  Needs to be set up in a window or something.

Greg

K Frame

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Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier
« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2005, 07:34:15 AM »
Greg,

Air conditioners don't work that way.

They remove moisture not by exhausting out a window, but by passing damp air over chilled coils.

Water from the air condenses on the cold coils and drips into a catch pan and out a drain. The same principal applies to a glass full of cold liquid on a warm, muggy day. Water condenses on the surface of the glass.

If MH were attempting to COOL the air in the basement, that's another story entirely. The unit would have to be in a window so that the hot side coils could exhaust the room's heat to the outdoors while the cold side coils chilled and dehumidified the air.

Since MH doesn't need to cool the basement, he's fine setting the unit over the slop sink.
Carbon Monoxide, sucking the life out of idiots, 'tards, and fools since man tamed fire.

TarpleyG

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Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier
« Reply #5 on: June 28, 2005, 11:48:39 AM »
Makes sense...My window AC churns out a lot of hot air, that's for sure.

Greg

K Frame

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Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier
« Reply #6 on: June 28, 2005, 12:54:33 PM »
Here's a good explanation of the difference between an air conditioner http://home.howstuffworks.com/ac.htm

And a dehumidifier: http://home.howstuffworks.com/question76.htm

The section on the dehumidifier is a bit misleading. It says that it heats the air back up to the temperature of the room after it's drawn across the cold coils.

Not entirely true...

A dehumidifer will ADD heat too a room (so will a refrigerator, or an air conditioner, for that matter) because you have to account for the heat generated by the unit's working parts.
Carbon Monoxide, sucking the life out of idiots, 'tards, and fools since man tamed fire.

mfree

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Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier
« Reply #7 on: June 29, 2005, 04:54:10 AM »
Dehumidifiers do add heat... when my furnace was broken a couple months ago and it was still hitting 40 in the mornings, I used a dehumidifer in my bedroom cranked all the way up and some bowls of hot water around to supply moisture so the darned thing would keep running Smiley  I had *just* missed the selling season for space heaters...

Anyhow, it was worth 10 degrees in the little room, though i kept waking up feeling like I had a hangover Smiley

cfabe

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Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier
« Reply #8 on: June 29, 2005, 06:56:06 AM »
Yep, a dehimidifier uses electric power, and that energy has to go somewhere... into heat! You should actually be able to find the ammount of power used on the id tag, and almost all of that goes into heat. Compare that watts to a typical 1500 watt space heater, to get an idea of how much.