Revised:
March 8th, 2021
At Fire & Ice we’ve heard this for years: summertime come, things start to warm up a little bit and guess what comes back? That smell in the basement. “Oh, it’s uncomfortable down there. It just smells yucky and I don’t want to go down there and do laundry. Everything down there smells kind of musty and moldy.”
Well, it’s true. What happens in a home, and it doesn’t matter what type of basement that home has, or crawlspace for that matter, all the moisture and humidity in that home in the summertime doesn’t leak in through the doors and windows upstairs. It comes from the basement. Matter of fact, 80 to 90% of all the air you breathe upstairs comes from the basement and the “odors” that go with them come from your basement or crawlspace.
So, we’re very proud to be bringing out and using Aprilaire whole-home dehumidifiers. Now, these are more of a commercial application and boy are they tremendous products. The feedback from our customers is like night and day.
Now, these dehumidifiers are put in your basement or they’re put in your crawlspace and there’s a couple different ways our guys can recommend it based on your needs. They can be just standalone, set in your basement, and put into a floor drain, and they dehumidify your basement. Remember by dehumidifying your basement the air upstairs that your air conditioner has to deal with is also much dryer. Which makes it a lot easier for your air conditioner to get that heat outside. It really increases air conditioner efficiency. Which saves you a lot of money.
Now, the other thing you can do like in this situation. This is a fantastic install that one of our guys did. This is actually ducted into the HVAC system itself. So, the neat thing about this I am dehumidifying this entire home. I can dehumidify independently from an air conditioner call or with an air conditioner call. But the real beauty of these dehumidifiers is efficiency.
Everybody’s heard this before. If you’ve ever been to Miami Beach or been out to Phoenix, Arizona and they’re both 100 degrees. One of them is 6% relative humidity and the other is 96% relative humidity. One of them is horrible and one of them is where you want to go vacation. Well, by putting in a dehumidifier in your system you literally change those conditions for your air conditioner. It makes it work so, so much better.
Now, the other thing is, many, many of our customers have those little portable dehumidifiers. There’s millions of them out there and unfortunately, and this is information we can get to you, most of those have been recalled. Almost seven million of them. They catch on fire, they’re dangerous. And that’s information our comfort advisors can get to you if you see these things. But those portables use probably $200 - $300 more in electricity every single year than a whole-home Aprilaire unit. The Aprilaire units are made in the United States. They’re made in Wisconsin. They’ve got an iron-clad 5-year warranty. They’re excellent, excellent products. I will tell you that people who have these put into their homes are just amazed at what they do. It’s a great product. It’s something that we offer to our customers. It’s something you definitely want to talk to your comfort advisor about.
