Humidity Blues...no mo!

My POS Sears dehumidifier bit the dust a few weeks ago in my basement. I pretty much ignored it and went on with my life. After some time I noticed my floor was bowing upward. This is not good... Took the dehumidifier back to Sears for repair. Two weeks later, I got it back and it still didn't work. First of all, I don't know what they pay at Sears, but it's not enough. The people there were clueless. I think I could write a blog on the ineptuted of Sears employees, but I'll save that for another day.

This all got me thinking, I need a real dehumidifier, so I called a local HVAC company Air Craftsman for a quote. They quoted $2,500 for a real whole house unit. But after getting the quote I figured I could do it myself for less.

So I bought an Aprilaire 1700 from Westside Wholesale in Cali for $1,049 plus shipping. They had the best price out there and they shipped it the same day I ordered it. I give WestSide an A+ for fast service.

Aprilaire 1700 Review

The unit weighs about 100 lbs and is incredibly well built. I went to Home Depot for ductwork, and found they didn't have what I needed, but Lowes did. So I spent another $100 for ductwork and pvc pipe for drainage. Installation took about 4 hours. That included cutting two holes in the drywall and framing them out to install the vents. I stashed the dehumidifier under the steps in the basement and have two intake vents and one exhaust vent back into the main part of the basement.

I fired it up 2 days ago and my humidity has dropped from 71% to 43% and my floor is almost perfect. The bowing in the floor has relaxed and I'm a happy camper.

Noise level is low, but you can definitely hear the the movement of air, but it's slight and it's way quieter than my old Kenmore portable unit.

The cool thing about this unit is it has a dehumidistat built in and all you have to do is set it and forget it. I also bought a Aprilaire model 90 remote dehumidistat for it. I've yet to install it, but it will allow me to set the humidity level as well as power on/off without crawling into the crawl space.

I had my buddy Dennis (an electrician) come over and install a dedidicated 15A circuit for the unit.

Bottom line I saved $1,000 easy by doing it myself. The Aprilaire 1700 unit seems well built and functions as I would hope for it to.