Draining Your Dehumidifier
And what happens when it’s raining for a few days and the ground outside is saturated with water. Humidity is high both inside and out. More water in the air means even more water in your basement.
Most people with basements have a dehumidifier of some kind but the most common ones have a little tank on them that you have to drain every so often. A dehumidifier works just like a little air conditioner in that it uses a liquid through small pipes to cool air.
Part of the benefit of this process is that air when cooled will cause water in it to form on the colder parts, in this case the small pipes, of the unit in the form of condensation. The water drips down into a small tank and you have to drain the tank before it ends up on the floor.
Now we come to the part about spending just a couple of hours from figuring out what you want to do and no more hassles with water hauling.
First you need to decide what you want to do. I’ll discuss two solutions to this problem, both you can do but one is more costly than the other.
You need to decide if you want to spend just a little bit, say twenty dollars or if you want to go whole hog and get a pump. The pump would be for the collection tank. It sits inside the tank and pumps the water out through a hose and to wherever you want it to.
The cheaper route is just a hose and setting the dehumidifier up off the floor on a shelf or counter. The hose is then drained into a floor drain, sink or other drain of the house.
I found a pump that costs around sixty dollars from Little Giant. This pump sits inside the tank and pumps water through a tube. The pump has an automatic on off switch, whenever the water gets so high in the tank it starts to pump. When it gets low, and before its empty it stops so the pump is not running without water going through it. This is important in most pumps as they will burn out parts if they do not have water going through them.
If you want to go with the pump you can check out local hardware and home improvement stores or buy one online. Search under Little Giant condensate pump to find the best buy and a reliable sales outlet. Use one you can trust to buy over the internet.
Or you can go to the source for yours from Little Giant:
Little Giant Pump Company
3810 Tulsa St.
Oklahoma City, OK 73112
Phone: 405-947-2511
Toll Free Phone: 888-956-0000
Fax: 405-947-8720
http://little giant.com
If you go with the pump, or if you just want the dehumidifier to drain by gravity, you will need to decide where you want to route the water to. And where you will position your dehumidifier. If you want to keep your dehumidifier in the same place you can. You just need to decide where to route the hose to.
As you can see in the picture I have mine on a shelf I made in my basement. The room is a little room off the main part of the basement, actually the old coal room. It gets quite humid here. So that is were it’s going to be.
I have attached a hose to the outlet on the tank and routed it to the drain for my furnace. Furnaces have a water drain as part of the newer ways furnaces are being made. My house did not have a drain pipe for it so I added one. It used to have just a clear plastic hose that ran from the furnace to the drain. Now it is a white plastic pipe that will not move around and pull out of the drain. It is just a piece of ½ inch pvc pipe with a couple of fittings.
It cost a total of about ten dollars to put in the pipe from the furnace to the drain across the room. You can look here for a good site to see how to work with pvc pipe and the glues and such to use with them.
http://houseandhome.msn.com/Improve/WorkingwithRigidPlasticPipe0.aspx
It might take some trial and error but the stuff is pretty reasonable in cost. Fittings are around fifty cents to a dollar a piece and a ten foot piece of ½ inch pvc is about two dollars.
If you use pvc the biggest thing you have to worry about is how fast the glue sets. When you apply the glue to the joint and push the pieces together, that is about all the time you have. By the time you are done pushing it together and look at the piece it’s stuck. It works by actually melting the pipe to get them to stick together. It dries so quickly because the glue starts to evaporate quickly and dry the parts.
I do not use primer on my parts but some plumbers say you should, but however you do it you have to test fit all your parts first. And when you are sure of how everything fits and is going to be, then you can start gluing.
I ran a piece of pvc from the furnace where the little hose comes out of the side down to the floor about one foot, then here put a 90 degree elbow. Then out about six feet to a 45 degree elbow to head it toward the drain in the middle of the room. Then the other piece about six feet to the drain.
I used concrete anchors to hold the thing in place, the hardware sells small plastic clamps for this. You can buy little plastic anchors that you use with a regular screw and a masonry bit to attach the clamp to the floor.
This all sounds like a lot but you’ll see that it is pretty easy to understand. The first thing for you is to decide where the dehumidifier will go and how you want the water to go out of it. If you want to use the lower cost of gravity you need to get the dehumidifier off the floor and up at least a couple of feet.
I used a wall with a two by four on it as a base. You can use any type of shelf as long as it is sturdy enough to hold the weight of the dehumidifier. If you have concrete walls you can use anchors in them.
There are small plastic ones that you drill a hole into the concrete and then hammer the plastic piece into the hole. A screw goes into the plastic expanding it tight into the hole and securing whatever you are screwing into the wall.
You have to use a special drill bit with the plastic inserts called masonry bits. There is a certain size bit for each size plastic anchor. The package will tell you the size.
Once you have figured out where the dehumidifier will go and have the shelf up or just have it in place you need to have the hose go where you want it.
It can be handy if you have a counter and a sink in your basement to put the unit there. And use the sink to drain the dehumidifier.
The tanks of most dehumidifier’s has a small hole about an inch or smaller in them to be able to attach a hose to. Or they may have a fitting included to attach one. Use this to drain the tank with. I had to cut a hole in mine using a drill. I used a large bit and then carefully cut the hole out with an Exacto knife, being careful not to cut myself in the process.
I then attached a fitting to the tank that attaches a ½ inch inner diameter clear hose to. You can ask at a hardware store or home improvement for help on what you will need for the hardware such as the fittings and hose.
I put the hose from the tank into a T of the pvc pipe for the drain of my furnace. You can use a sink or just have the hose go to a drain of the floor. You may want to use plastic ties to hold the hose in place so it does not get knocked around and come out of the drain or sink.
You can have the plastic hose drain into an existing drain pipe of the house. But it needs to be lower than the tank of the dehumidifier to drain properly. You will have to decide how you want to use an existing one but this can get to be difficult and you may run into problems with proper drainage.
If you are using some existing drain system such as one for an air conditioner or furnace that has already been installed in your home, you need to be sure you are doing the measuring and test fitting before gluing any pvc fittings.
If you use a pump the dehumidifier can be almost anywhere you want. In a corner or out of the way under stairs. You just need to make sure there is proper air flow for the thing to work. It needs air going into the unit past the cooling pipes in order to get air to condense on them.
Use the directions that come with the pump to attach the hose and power cord. The important thing before you buy the pump is to make sure it fits inside the tank of your dehumidifier. Measure the tank and use those measurements to check the pump size. You can use plastic ties to secure the hose along whatever route you are using to get the water to a drain.
Some hints for using the concrete anchors. You must have a drill to use them, and a masonry bit of the correct size, see the package for the size when you purchase them.
Drill into a solid part of the wall, not the seam or mortar joint. Go in about an inch from any joints if you are in a cinder block wall. Drill in about a half inch longer than the anchor with the bit, and go straight and level when you are drilling.
After the hole is in, push the anchor in and tap with a hammer to seat it completely in the wall, then using whatever clamp or shelf bracket and a screw attach it to the floor or wall.
You should be sure when you plug in both your dehumidifier and pump that you do not use small or cheap extension cords if needed. The dehumidifier will use a lot of power for itself, you need to use a heavy duty extension cord if you need one.
Fill the tank with water to test the setup and ensure it is draining properly. This sounds funny, I know. But you want to make sure it works properly before you leave it alone for any length of time. It would be frustrating to leave it and find out later that there is a small leak from some part and your floor is full of water.
If it’s leaking from a clamp, tighten it. Or if it’s a fitting that was glued apply some more pvc glue and wiggle the applicator around where it’s leaking.
