I've had one of Soleus' CFM-25 dehumidifiers for 4 years now, and I was amazed by how quiet it was. So was my mom -- she bought 2 of them (in the 40 pint size) for her basement. The CFM line wasn't Energy Star qualified, though, and I'm very eco-conscious -- I recycle and compost everything I can, I've insulated my house to the nines, I walk back and forth to work rather than driving for as many months of the year as the weather permits. So I thought I'd give one of the Energy Star models a try, despite the notes on the larger Energy Star model that it was considerably louder than the non-Energy Star Soleus CFM-25 model I already owned.
My old one (which is still running but needed help to deal with my basement) is a 25-pint model. This new Energy Star one is a 40-pint model. It isn't much larger than the 25 pint one, to my surprise. But yes, it's MUCH louder than the other model. I wouldn't want to keep this one in my basement television room.
But since this one is in the room with the sump pump and the washer and dryer, I don't mind its noise as much as I would in other locations. And this one is rated for winter use as well as summer, which is also a bonus for me.
On the other hand, one of the reviews on the non-Energy Star CFM models said that the only thing keeping that line from an Energy Star rating was the fact that it didn't cycle off, based on the reviewer's own energy use testing. And I think I may need a larger dehumidifier down there to replace my 25 pint one -- as I said, the 4-year-old one definitely still works, but according to the humidity meter on the new Energy Star one, it's having a hard time keeping the humidity down to 55% if the 25 pint one fills up and the 40 pint's running solo. I want to keep the humidity down to the recommended 50% to cut down basement mold and mildew issues. And the 40 pint model fills up its bucket a LOT faster than the 20 pint model does.
Ah, yes, about that filling the bucket thing. I tried to attach a garden hose to the 40 pint model to have it dump into the sump pump. It took several tries to get the garden hose tightened down enough to actually be water-tight, due to very limited finger space. It has threads on the outside of the little adapter-slot that are meant for garden-hose-size adapters, but I can definitely understand why some people couldn't get it attached well enough to use a garden hose and had to use an internally-fitting smaller-diameter hose on the inside instead. Even with the hose as finger-tight as I could get it, it filled up its bucket and stopped running a couple of times before I got down there with a pipe wrench and made sure the hose was on all the way to the base of the screws. And even at that, there are still some drips in the bucket, though now they're just that (drips) and I don't have to check it twice a day like I used to.
I took a star off the rating for the combination of the noise (compared to Soleus' much quieter other models) and the difficulty of getting a drain hose to really attach right.
The two things I do like better about this model than about the quieter and smaller CFM-25 one are:
1) The digital humidity meter, which the CFM line doesn't have. The humidity meter tells you in real time what the actual humidity is (I'd had no idea that my small dehumidifier by itself was leaving the spring-rain basement humidity in the 75% area until I tested a manual humidistat down there, yelped, and went to order this guy to help it out).
2) The higher capacity means faster dehumidification, not larger physical size. Even when the hose wasn't attached right and this one was filling up its bucket, I noticed that it filled its bucket about twice as fast as the smaller one did, even though the small one and the large one have about the same size of bucket. (It looks like I should've had 2 40-pint dehumidifiers down there all along, rather than 1 25-pint and 1 geriatric Kenmore something-or-other that kept icing over and that I finally replaced with this one.)
If you need quiet but lots of dehumidifying, I'd recommend going with Soleus' 40 pint or larger non-Energy Star CFM-line model. Those are unquestionably a LOT quieter - like I said, I can keep that one in the TV room and even forget it's there.
This Energy Star one is just as loud as my ancient Kenmore one was, though I like it much better than the old Kenmore due to the humidistat and the non-icing-over of this one.
If you're putting it in a room where you don't care about noise, but do like the Energy Star rating, go with this one.
The next time I get one, I'm going to get a 40 pint or 50 pint non-Energy Star quiet Soleus CFM model to replace the 25 pint one in the TV room. I'd like better humidity control, and whenever the bucket on the 20 pint one fills up, the 40 pint one can't handle keeping the humidity down to 50% by itself. It does keep it down to 55% or so, but it's got to be running all the time to do that. I'd prefer that there was the dehumidifying capacity for this one to live up to its Energy Star credentials and cycle off when it's not needed... if it's ever not needed, though I'm hoping summer through winter will have a better chance at that than the rainiest several months of the year have so far.
(My basement is about 800 square feet, and most online calculators tell me that I should only need 25 to 40 pint capacity, which is why I was so surprised to find that the 25 pint one wasn't even close to handling it and the 40 pint one has to struggle whenever the 25 pint one fills up, so I'm looking to have 2 40s down there eventually. Clearly, the online calculators are not meant for people whose houses are built on what used to be swampland and a creek bed.) |
Works as advertised
Friedrich D50C 15 Programmable Dehumidifier with 115 Voltage, 630 Watts & 50 Pints, Energy Star[ReviewAZON asin="B0007Y0P72"]... »