As the title suggests, I’m torn between buying a heater or a dehumidifier as I have a limited budget.
I think a heater is generally cheaper than a dehumidifier, but it’s only useful during winter, and I heard that during wintertime using a heater also increases the humidity of your room. And I have some issues with mold growing on my shoes recently (already taken care of).
Meanwhile, dehumidifiers can help me with my mold problem, are generally more expensive (price-wise and electricity-wise), and I heard it also warms up your room, but only slightly? I really can’t stand the cold.
Can you guys give me some advice and the products you recommend?
You can solve for cold with clothing and blankets. You can’t solve for the year-round humidity here without a dehumidifier, so I’d recommend the dehumidifier hands down. If you can get one with a HEPA filter to help clean your air, all the better.
“ When space heaters warm air, the capacity of that air to hold moisture increases. However, since no new moisture is added, the relative humidity , the amount of water in the air compared to how much that air can hold, decreases . That makes the air feel even drier, especially when using forced air heaters”
I need a humidifier along with the heater in this weather. Air gets too dry and causes itchiness.
It also heats the room too, especially the less efficient ones.
The problem with a heater is that it isn’t always needed, as most days (these few weeks are freak occurrence) isn’t that cold but still with very high humidity. The dehumidifier solves 90% of those problem.
Depending on your place, your AC unit might already have a dehumidifier function built in and they don’t really use that much hydro. Some may even already have heating in them as well, but less common.
I use 嘉儀 Chiayi heaters. They’re great, warm up a decent size room and are inexpensive.
The KEP65 is what I have and I enjoy it. $2800 on PCHome. They’re also Made in Taiwan.
Dehumidifiers require you to empty the water iirc, unless they have improved. We had one for a while but didn’t use it much when we lived downtown. Just used an oil heater at night in the bedroom, when cold, and used AC when hot. We did use those little dessicant tubs in closets to help keep the mold off the clothes and shoes.
For optimal use you must pipe the drain on the dehumidifier to a drain, so you never have to keep emptying the tank.
AC dehumidifier function don’t work. It really just runs the AC over and over again, burning huge amount of electricity, but more importantly making the room extremely cold and therefore not really helping with humidity. They also don’t work if the outside temperature isn’t at least 30 because you’ll turn your room into a freezer.
I don’t mind some humidity in the air. The closet things were good enough for moldy clothes and shoes for us, except when we we living in the hills. But we ran either the heater or the AC most of the year
A dehumidifier would be a better investment on a limited budget however note that it won’t really do much with current temperatures unless it’s a high end unit. Most dehumidifiers work by cooling the incoming air and causing the moisture to drop out, when the temperature is already very low (for Taiwan) it’s difficult for your average dehumidifier to cool the air by any significant amount.
Running an electric heater will increase the capacity of the air in your room to hold moisture, unless your room is reasonably well sealed this will also lead to additional moisture ingress from outside your home, when you turn your heater off this moisture has to go somewhere…
Note that a dehumidifier is significantly more expensive than a heater. Perhaps consider buying a cheap heater now and then save to purchase a dehumidifier in the summer.
That’s new. At home we had to put water cannisters on the heating as heating dries out the air. And in Taiwan I know the air gets dryer when turning on a heater.
And older models freeze just shut and you need to defrost them for a few hours.
