installing a dehumidifier
Hey, everyone. We’re in the attic of a custom home we’re building in Ramona, CA. You can see the spray foam that’s all up here around me. We’ve talked about it in the past. We’ve also spoken about dehumidifiers and why we put them in there. But today, I want to discuss installing a dehumidifier for a house. We will show you how it’s put together and go into more detail on how we do it and why, so let’s go ahead and get started.
Why Do We Insulate the Attic?
The spray foam insulation in the attic is up against the roof sheeting. We do this for a couple of reasons. The first one is that it is excellent in performance and energy efficiency. The air doesn’t get through this, so you save a lot on your utilities. Another important reason is that they are concerned about getting embers inside your attic space for high-wildland fires and extreme fire zones.
One thing that burns homes down is if you get embers that fly in through vents. So if you have O’Hagin roof vents, you can get ones that are fire-rated where they have quarter-inch mesh or baffles in them. Thus, embers won’t blow in.
But this is even better because we can use spray foam insulation all up inside everything: the entire roof sheet, throughout the house, the garage, etc. We’re not required to ventilate the attic because it is semi-conditioned, so we do it down. So you can look to my left and see the gable end on the wall. That goes all the way down to the plate line of the extra walls. You’ll also see less insulation on that end, but you don’t have to have your gable end vents, so there’s no issue with getting any embers into the structure.
So those are two significant reasons that we do this. The one concern with that, though, is dealing with actual humidity inside of the attic space.
How Are We Installing a Dehumidifier in an Attic?
Imagine you have your living, cooking, and showering spaces down below, and you have hot, moist air in the home, and it’s rising into the attic, even though it’s a semi-condition. Because your HVAC system is below, you don’t get the air movement like you should up into the attic. We don’t want any issues with moisture that could create rot or mold inside of the attic space itself, so one thing that we do is put these dehumidifiers in, which solves that problem. That’s the dehumidifier purpose.
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Santa Fe Dehumidifier
We install the Santa Fe Dehumidifier in the custom home, with a model number of Santa Fe Ultra 70H.
How Does it Work?
Installing a dehumidifier starts with an intake on the side. If you look into this, you will see that this dehumidifier has a filter, just like in your HVAC unit or furnace inside your home. That goes into the intake and filters out the air pushed out of the duct.
As for the duct, a Y runs back behind the spray foam, dumping out on the other side. The workers put a mesh on the end to keep anything from getting into that duct. But the idea is that it pushes the air toward this side of the house and starts to move some airflow around, so it’s dehumidifying. It also takes off, goes in the opposite direction, and points into the other home area you can see beyond. So that helps to control the humidity on that side of the home.
On the other end, they have control with a humidistat by the intake, so it’ll kick on at whatever dehumidifier setting you want: humid, normal, or dryer. So you can decide what you want and how often it’ll run.
This dehumidifier operates off of a 3-prong plug. You can see it right here plugged in, and it works super well.
The other thing we also have here is the condensate line connected to the dehumidifier. This is actually from the moisture that’s pulling out of the air. It has to run down the dehumidifier drain hose, and then the primary condensate from the furnace is tied in. It tees in at the bottom, takes off, and runs out and down into a drain that the plumber will probably tie at a sink below in a bathroom area.
Anyway, this is the primary area of the home. We’re going to look at it from a different angle in the garage because a firewall separates the latter. That firewall now stops the airflow going from how the dehumidifier is being conditioned. It’s not getting conditioned in the garage, so I’ll show you what’s happening.
Looking at It from a Different Angle
All right, we made it in the garage part of the attic. We were talking about how the firewall separates the house from the garage, so airspace does not allow the air to move back and forth between the house and the garage. What we’re looking at here is another dehumidifier for garage. It’s the same unit, the Santa Fe unit, that we saw earlier.
When we were on the other side, you couldn’t see the intake very well, but you could see where the air comes in on this side. The dehumidifier filter looks very similar to something you pick up at Home Depot to replace the inside of your HVAC unit. Then, you can see this condensate line much better — just three-quarter inch of PVC, and it goes down to the top plate and into a sink inside the garage.
Check Out the End of the Duct
The workers installing a dehumidifier got a zip tie running around here, and the opening has the mesh that keeps anything from getting up in the duct. The duct runs back and attaches to the main line and Ys in the middle. Then the upper portion of the duct goes to the big RV bay on the other side. They’ve used the dehumidifier for RV and garage to supply and care for this two-car garage and the RV bay on the other side. So it’s directing the humidified air.
Final Thoughts on Installing a Dehumidifier
I hope you learned something new about dehumidifier installation. Contact us for more information about building a custom home or an ADU. Thanks again, and we’ll see you again soon.
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