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June 24, 2005

Kill the dehumidifier
   by robinb9

Ok, we finished 2 yrs ago our basement, built a real nice office in it and find last summer we had this funny smell down there. We hunt and hunt to find the smell and finally realize it is in one of the closets we built. MOLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everywhere! We had to rip the whole closet out treat it for the mold and redo it. Someone tells us to by a free standing dehumidifier for the basement and that would take care of the mold permanetly. Ok so I go to Home Depot and buy a 45gal Maytag dehumidifier. Worked great, takes all the humidity out of the room, worked great for about a year then started to sound like it was about to take off and go through the wall. Noise was terrible that you could not think nor talk on the phone. We could not shut it off because then we would have the humidity back and the mold.

Ok the book says it has a 5yr Warranty on it. So I call the manufacturer and they tell me "I have to call this appliance number and they will fix it for me". Only one problem, it is about 30 miles from me and it is the only one in the whole state of NJ who fixes it.

You cannot ship it because it ways a ton and besides it would take weeks before I would get it back and I needed it for this heavy summer months. So I track down there in March 2005, takes 2 weeks to fix it (so they say), bring it home, now understand in March there is no humidity here yet so it is sitting idle waiting for May when there is finally humidity. The appliance place says they put it to tests in humidity to see if it worked fine.

Ok now it is end of May still the machine is not turning on. It has a thermisat on it that you can set to the humidity in the room. We set it for 50 (recommended setting) it is still sitting on 20. Impossible!! I go out and buy a little $20 humistat thermonitor and when I put it in the basement after a few hours guess what it says? 75% humidity and the machine is still saying 20%.

Ok I figured maybe they are both wrong so we take the machine and put it into the garage where there is more humidity than anyplace else. Still sits at 20%- we put the thermonitor there too and it says 90%.

Ok so I call back the appliance place and they say they cannot understand what is wrong--duh!.

So I track back there 3 wks ago and they look at it and say "duh- the humistat thermonitor on the unit is broken" uh huh!

Ok how long will it take to get a new one, I say? around 2 wks they say. Ok now what am i suppose to do for my wet basement now> Dunno they say. Well thank goondness I have a neighbor who has 2 of them and lends me hers till I get mine back.

I call this week to find out what is going on with it and the lady tells me they got the part in, put it in the unit and something else broke down so now they have to order another part. How long will this take? Prolly another 2 wks. By the time I get this back it will be winter again and I will not need it until the following summer.

Funny though, my son has the same unit and his has NO problems at all. I got myself a real lemon!

For this I say PFFFFFFFFFFFT, and begged my neighbor to let me keep hers till it is fixed. Thank goodness she is very nice.

Just my luck eh?

Published: July 8, 2005
Editor: stacy

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