Whole basement dehumidifier

I’ve been renovating part of my basement for the last while in an attempt to turn an old, musty space that was poorly finished into a combination gym and playroom for my daughter. We are almost done with what turned into a six month project and one of the last steps was installing a dehumidifier to keep it from getting too moist in the summer months.

After killing two portable units in years past I finally went looking for something a bit stronger and that could handle the entire basement area (almost 1500 sq feet). Thanks to the mighty Google gods I stumbled upon Sylvane’s website and more specifically a Sante Fe dehumidifier that seemed to be just about perfect. It could handle the size of room, would allow me to duct it in and was EnergyStar rated.

Everything showed up exactly as ordered and very fast (two days!) by UPS truck. I installed the unit in a closet that I had wired up specifically for this type of dehumidifier (it had a drain available) and mounted the remote controller on the outside of the wall. I then ran ducting into two rooms (a trick - buy flexible 10″ ducting at your local Lowes or Home Depot and strip off the insulation…it works perfectly and is really easy to work with).

The one issue I ran into was that I forgot to order a special switched plug for the external controller - so I just wired in a new receptacle that was powered off the controller. Problem solved. All in the installation took me about 4 hours including some head scratching to get the ducting to fit (I forgot to include it when I measured the space).

I insulated the walls of the closet to cut down on the noise but the unit is actually not that loud despite pushing a lot of air. You can definitely hear it but you need to be in the same room as where it is running or very close. It is about as loud as a forced air furnace when running.

I love it when a plan comes together.