Dehumidifiers remove excess moisture from a room, but does a dehumidifier cool a room? We explore the answer here.
Dehumidifiers are an increasingly popular choice, but does a dehumidifier cool a room? Not only can reducing humidity make your room more pleasant, but it can also help protect the people in your home from a host of health issues, including respiratory problems and allergies. Dehumidifiers can also stop the growth of mold, which can be damaging and dangerous to health.
Understanding how dehumidifiers work and what they do can help us answer the question; does a industrial dehumidifier cool a room? While dehumidifiers aren’t designed to reduce a room’s temperature, removing humidity can make it feel cooler and more comfortable. They can even have some surprising benefits, with dehumidifiers helping with snoring and other issues.
Dehumidifiers remove excess moisture in the air by drawing it in from the outside and cooling it. A refrigerant (or compressor) dehumidifier draws in air. This then passes through a cold coil that causes the moisture within the air to condense, becoming water that subsequently drops to a reservoir at the bottom of the machine.
Alternatively, a desiccant dehumidifier uses an absorbent material, such as silica gel or Zeolite, typically formed into a rotor. Air is pushed through the rotor, where the desiccant material removes moisture from the air. While they remove humidity, neither type of dehumidifier won’t noticeably affect the temperature of a room. However, removing humidity may make the room feel cooler.
Dehumidifiers aren’t the same as air conditioning units, which are designed to generate cold air that’s pumped into a room in order to lower the temperature. In contrast, dehumidifiers remove the moisture from the existing air within a space.
However, while not specifically designed to cool a room, air purifier dehumidifier still do an essential job within the home. A 2018 study from the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health found that humid air is associated with a whole range of health issues. No matter what causes dampness in a house, excessively high humidity can lead to the growth of damp and mold, which can be dangerous to health, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile, if the humidity level in a room is too low, researchers from Environmental Health Perspectives have established that it can cause a range of health problems, including skin irritation. Meanwhile, scientists from Biological Rhythm Research have also confirmed what most of us already know, that high humidity can also have a "deleterious effect on sleep". High humidity can make a room feel uncomfortable, according to this research from Temperature Medical Physiology and Beyond, as the sweat produced by our bodies to regulate heat doesn’t evaporate as quickly. By removing this humidity, the room can feel cooler and more comfortable. As a result, it's easier to breathe and sleep.
• Read more: Is condensation on windows bad?
So, do dehumidifiers cool a room? Sort of. High humidity causes heavy, muggy air that can feel clammy and uncomfortable. Stabilizing the relative humidity at an appropriate level (between 30% and 50%) can help a room feel drier, cooler, and more comfortable, according to research from Building and Environment. Dehumidifiers are designed to remove humid air from a hot room, which can have a cooling effect.
While a dehumidifier can make a room feel less warm, it's not its primary purpose. If your home is uncomfortably warm, we would recommend investing in an air-conditioning unit instead.
Just as dehumidifiers don’t technically cool a room, but can have a cooling effect thanks to the reduction in humidity, the same concept applies to an entire house. The key is to invest in a unit that has the capacity to cover a large area. The capacity of your dehumidifier is measured in pints per 24 hours and the larger the dehumidifier, the more water it will capture from the atmosphere.
When it comes to choosing a suitable air dehumidifier, there are two key aspects to consider. The first is the size of the space and the second is how damp or humid the area is.
