Santa Fe dehumidifier quit working

[RalphVa]

Last night, I checked the dehumidifier operation. Humidity was showing 64%. No water was being produced. Bought September of last year. Will be calling Santa Fe's 800 # to find out what to do.

Compressor obviously is not coming one. Unplugged it for a bit. Turned it all the way up. No water.

Had been working great to keep the humidity in encapsulated crawl space to 45-50%.

Think one other person on here mentioned they had troubles with their Santa Fe.

 

[RalphVa]

Lost the refrigerant. They're sending a new one. Need some ideas on how to get the heavy old one out and new one in. Near 70 #. We did enlarge the crawl space. Otherwise, I simply could not even get in there myself. It is located about 20 ft inside. There's a big dig just inside before the earth rises up to about a 1/3 way up to that entry hole.

Wife is thinking some 2bys to slide it on. What do WE get on to hold it and slide it? I'm thinking a movable thing carrying a little crane, like a garage door track. To put this one in, my wife and our friend a handyman got it in there. He is no longer available.

 

[kenmbz]

carpet to slide on and block/tackle to lower/raise using a tripod if you have the room ?

 

[5030]

Sure it's not a bad start capacitor? They are all cap start induction run.

 

[RalphVa]

Compressor runs. No water condensed out nor any heat output in the discharge air.

 

[Sigarms]

Don't have a solution for a PITA retrofit job, sorry.

However, if a HVAC contractor had installed that dehumidifier in North Carolina, if it falls under warranty within the first year of installation, the contractor covers the labor for the first full year.

From what I remember, you had that crawl space professionally encapsulated. What did the installing contractor tell you?

 

[RalphVa]

The encapsulation was done a few years before we put the Santa Fe in. We'd been using a couple of fans in the crawl space until early last year when we started getting a smell from it. Put the Santa Fe in last September. Smell went away. We'd stripped away the insulation in the ceiling of the crawl space in the meantime. Think some of the smell was from a tiny bit of mold we found on the insulation.

The new Santa Fe is due to arrive next Tuesday. We do not have to send the old unit back, just a manufacturer's label. We put the Santa Fe in and plan to replace it. We had the help of a strong handyman friend to put the one that's there now into the crawl space but we put it up on some 3x3s and leveled it out and put the water line in along the wall to a drain just outside.

 

[Sigarms]

Never dealt with Santa Fe, but it seems they are treating you right.

Personally I like Aprilaire, but they have problems from time to time for who knows for what reason, and they (Aprilaire) takes care of the issue anytime I've had to deal with them, couldn't ask for anything more.

Sounds like you had a refrigerant leak, lost refrigerant, thus the issue of no dehumidification. Santa Fe is taking care of it, period, can't ask for anything more.

People don't understand that the reason for the cost of a whole house dehumidifer is because it has it's own refrigeration circuit, including coil and compressor. At the end of the day, a whole house dehumidifier will still remove more moisture from a home vs a variable speed indoor blower, multi stage compressor system.

I've got to ask, when they did the encapsulation of your crawl space, did they offer a whole house dehumidifier in the quote as an option? For myself, it would be mandatory since all the grunt work is being quoted.

 

[RalphVa]

We have whole house dehumidifiers. They're called heat pumps and function in AC mode to dehumidify.

Tried opening an AC duct in the crawl space to dehumidify it. That and fans did not work. Did for a while though.

 

[Sigarms]

tra

We have whole house dehumidifiers. They're called heat pumps and function in AC mode to dehumidify.

Tried opening an AC duct in the crawl space to dehumidify it. That and fans did not work. Did for a while though.

A whole house dehumidifier will remove moisture from the air better in a home vs a multi stage heat pump with a indoor variable speed constant airflow blower motor running at low speed.

I also understand that as long as the AC is sized properly for the load, either multi stage AC or heat pump dehumidify better with an indoor constant airflow motor vs a constant torque motor, BUT, due to the huge advantage of the whole house dehumidifier, generally SOP in NC is to offer one (whole house dehumidifier) on every basement encapsulation to guarantee humidity levels, even from dedicated "crawl space basement" companies.

 

[RalphVa]

Cannot see it. A dehumidifier and an AC are basically the same thing. Would never make sense to add a "whole house dehumidifier" to an already existing AC or heat pump. I am a retired chemical engineer and dealt with refrigeration systems for most of my 31 years. That's all a dehumidifier is.

 

[Sigarms]

Cannot see it. A dehumidifier and an AC are basically the same thing. Would never make sense to add a "whole house dehumidifier" to an already existing AC or heat pump. I am a retired chemical engineer and dealt with refrigeration systems for most of my 31 years. That's all a dehumidifier is.

I'm not an engineer.

What I can tell you is the first one I installed was about 15 years ago, and out of curiousity and working with the manufacturer took extensive data with it running and without it running during the summer (not a crawl space application, but for my 3 level house with 3 sperate HVAC systems). No one could answer how the RH level would affect my other floors as the dehumidifier was tied into my first floor system so I thought it would be a great experiment.

Been involved in more jobs that I can count with dehumidifiers since then. They work as advertised, particularly with some troubled homes where new systems and ductwork still didn't solve the issue.

The issue is every structural envelope can have various RH levels for a host of reasons.

Put in a 90 pint a day dehumidifier, and it will bring your RH down by at least 5% (and much higher if you're using a single stage unit with a constant torque blower motor).

What is the RH level now in your own house?

During the summer, I run my first floor tstat at 77f and it feels like it's 70 becuase the RH level is at 40%. Before that, it would run 50-55% RH during the summer.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Cannot see it. A dehumidifier and an AC are basically the same thing. Would never make sense to add a "whole house dehumidifier" to an already existing AC or heat pump. I am a retired chemical engineer and dealt with refrigeration systems for most of my 31 years. That's all a dehumidifier is.

The difference is that the AC removes the heat and the dehumidifier returns it to the space. Also the AC is controlled by temperature and the dehumidifier is controlled by humidity with a humidistat.

The reason they call it "air conditioning" and not "cooling" is that the AC does two things, cool and dehumidify. However, the run time is determined by a thermostat. If you have an area that doesn't need much cooling, but needs a lot of dehumidification -- like a crawl space -- an air conditioner isn't going to run enough to dehumidify as much as you need. A dehumidifier is controlled by a humidistat and will run until the moisture hits the desired level. If it dumps too much heat into the space the AC will kick on and remove it.

Dehumidifiers are particularly useful in cool, damp climates where you might need drying and warmth at the same time.

 

[Sigarms]

The reason they call it "air conditioning" and not "cooling"

For as long as I've been doing HVAC, still don't understand why some companies call themselves "heating and air conditioning". When you condition the air, it's for both heating and cooling purposes. For some reason, we all associate air conditioning with cooling.

What determines home comfort isn't temperature, but humidity. You know you have a SHARP service tech when he lays a psychrometer in your home and checks it to determine the actual humidity level in your home.

On a sidenote, the nice thing about a whole home dehumidifier is the fact that you can configure the unit as a stand alone for a speciffic space or you can tie it into the existing homes ductwork. You can also configure it to bring in fresh air.

You hit the nail on the head why they work so well for damp, moist crawl spaces as a stand alone unit.

 

[RalphVa]

Think this 2nd Santa Fe is short some refrigerant. Here's all the water it made in 24 hours of operation at 75 F and 58% humidity in the crawl space. This is 3 to 3.5 gallons. Supposed to make 8.75 gallons/day. The first Santa Fe did well for 9 months and then ran out of refrigerant sometime in May.

Waiting to see what the company is going to do now. Told them that I did not want to go to a 3rd unit. Hoping for money back. Will go with an Aprilaire unit.

For those of you who posted about humidity in the rest of the house: the 2 heat pumps have temperature and humidity set points. Upstairs is set at 76 F for when we're asleep and about 50% humidity. Think main heat pump has similar set points.

 

[RalphVa]

The 3rd Santa Fe is being shipped. By the time it gets here this 2nd unit MIGHT have the humidity down to the 45% set point. It's 51-52 now. Probably not, wavering there.

We have the install down pat. We can get it in and out without the 2x4s, etc.

 

[RalphVa]

Santa Fe sent a 3rd unit. It does not produce any water at all. Sent them the checks I did from what they'd sent for the 1st unit. Got their standard thing that "due to short age of the unit, etc., we're sending another..."

We've made an appointment with a local encapsulation/dehumidification outfit. May go with them and just eat the $1300 paid for the Santa Fe.

The outfit doing the service is contracted out by Santa Fe. Santa Fe only have a 30 day guarantee with them. Six years with the service outfit. Do we just keep receiving and swapping out units until the 6 years is up?

DO NOT BUY SANTA FE dehumidifiers!