Why a Dehumidifier Is One of My Favorite Gadgets
You should buy a dehumidifier. This will almost certainly improve your home environment. Extracting moisture from the air helps banish condensation and mold, making regulating the temperature in your home or apartment easier and less expensive. There’s a reason why dehumidifier discussions are so loud and sales are skyrocketing; it’s because they work.
Whether you’ve seen a compelling thread on Reddit, a life hack on TikTok, or an expert guide to the best dehumidifiers, the hype is real. I live in Scotland, where it’s dark and damp for months each year. We even have a word for weather: dreich (meaning dreary and dark). We also have a mix of poorly ventilated and poorly insulated homes that we heat twice a day. The result is windows soaked with condensation and black mold galore.
I’ve been using a dehumidifier for a year, in two very different homes, and it’s one of my favorite devices. I will never return to humid life. My Meaco dehumidifier is perhaps the most efficient device in my house. It’s not perfect – I’ll get to the downsides – but first, let me tell you why I like it.
Depressing humidity
Photography: Simon Hill
Most of the houses I lived in for the first 40 years of my life were damp. Many had single glazing, limited insulation and solid stone or brick walls with no cavities. Combine this with gas central heating, which heats the house quickly but is used sparingly, usually twice a day, and you get temperatures that soar and fall quickly, making it a breeding ground for condensation and mold. Cold and damp homes are a serious problem in the UK.
For a long time, I thought wet windows and black mold in the corners were just normal. I will never forget the date we left our last apartment in Edinburgh. When I moved the double bed with the large headboard away from the wall, it was completely covered in black mold. I had been feeling sick for a while and when I checked I had all the symptoms of black mold exposure. I was completely unaware of the risks associated with humidity.
Our first real house as a married couple with young children was a modern build, with double glazing, good insulation and efficient central heating, and it was the warmest house I ever lived in. But because there were no drafts, condensation appeared on the windows every morning. Cooking and drying laundry would make the situation worse, but opening windows during the winter made warming too cold and expensive.
I read about the potential benefits of a dehumidifier and decided to try it. Immediately the condensation disappeared, but the other big benefit was drying the clothes inside.
Dry laundry
Photography: Simon Hill
I know you’re not supposed to do this, but I grew up hanging my clothes on the radiators to dry. Or we would use a drying rack in the hallway. In some of the apartments I lived in, it took days for a pair of jeans to dry and there was a constant musty smell. But there were no dryers and often no or limited access to an outdoor space to hang clothes outside.
