Terms of use

🔴 Safety, and the limits of a number on a screen

Electricity and standing water. A dehumidifier is a mains appliance being asked to work in the wettest part of a building. If there is standing water in a basement or crawl space, treat the power as the first problem, not the humidity: do not walk into water to reach a plug or a unit, and if you cannot isolate the circuit safely from outside the wet area, get an electrician. Run these units from a properly earthed, GFCI-protected outlet, not a daisy-chained extension lead, and keep the plug and any pump connections above the level water could reach. Nothing on this site is electrical advice for your installation.

Condensate pumps fail, and they fail into your basement. A unit draining continuously through a pump is moving several gallons a day; if the pump seizes, the float sticks, the hose kinks, freezes or is lifted higher than the pump is rated for, that water goes onto the floor. This is a common and expensive failure, and it is the reason to insist on a safety float switch that shuts the dehumidifier off when the pump cannot keep up, to gravity-drain instead of pumping wherever the fall allows it, and to physically check the discharge line periodically rather than assuming it is fine because the unit is quiet. Where a plumbing connection, a condensate drain or a sump is involved, that is a job for someone who can see it.

A dehumidifier is not a mould remediation tool. Controlling humidity limits future growth; it does not remove, kill or make safe mould that is already there, and it does not fix whatever is letting water in. The EPA’s homeowner guidance draws the line at roughly 10 square feet of visible mould — beyond that, follow its remediation guidance rather than a product page, and areas of 100 square feet or more, contaminated sewage or flood water, or anyone in the household with asthma, allergies or a compromised immune system, mean a qualified remediation contractor. Find and stop the water source first; the machine is what keeps the space dry afterwards.

Our figures are planning aids, not a performance guarantee. The sizing on Damp Down is computed from published capacity ratings and standard dampness bands, and it tells you what to shop for — not what your space will do. Real performance depends on things we cannot see from here: temperature (a refrigerant unit loses capacity as air gets colder, which is the same physics behind the 2019 rating change, and can frost its coil in an unheated space), air sealing (a vented crawl space or a leaky rim joist keeps importing humid outside air, and no amount of pints per day wins that fight), how wet the space actually is, and whether there is ground moisture or bulk water still arriving. Treat any result here as a starting point, then measure with a hygrometer and adjust.

Accuracy and updates

We work hard on accuracy and we show our reasoning, but this is a website and errors happen. Product prices, ratings, availability and specifications change constantly, and the figures here carry the date we captured them. Treat any price on this site as historical and check the current one before buying. Capacity ratings can also change when a manufacturer revises a model behind an unchanged listing. If you find something wrong, tell us — corrections are welcome and we would rather fix a page than defend it.

No warranty

The site is provided “as is”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We do not warrant that the information is complete, current or fit for a particular purpose, and to the fullest extent permitted by law we are not liable for loss or damage arising from your use of it — including damage to a building, its contents or its equipment, or from a unit that turns out to be the wrong size for your space. You are responsible for what you install in your own building.

Third-party links

We link to Amazon and to other sites, including trade forums and technical publications that compete with us for the same readers, where they have better information than we do. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content, their products or their privacy practices. Commercial links are disclosed on our affiliate disclosure page.

Content and reuse

The writing, calculators and original analysis on this site are ours. Quote us, cite us and link to us freely — that is what the internet is for. Republishing pages wholesale is not on. Product names, brands and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here descriptively; no affiliation or endorsement is implied by either party.

Who operates this site, and governing law

🔴 Placeholder — to be completed before launch. The operating entity and the governing jurisdiction for these terms are [ENTITY PENDING] and [JURISDICTION PENDING]. We have deliberately left these blank rather than assert a company or a legal venue that does not yet exist — a site whose whole argument is that its claims are checkable should not open with an unchecked one.

If any part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. We may update them, in which case the date at the top of the page changes.