Deft De-Damper (Wickes 20L Portable Dehumidifier Model 156448) (Wickes Portable Dehumidifier 156448)

Member Name: m5imi

Product:	Wickes Portable Dehumidifier 156448
Date:	08/09/08 (1087 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Simple to use, gets the job done, great value for money

Disadvantages: Display difficult to read in poor light, could be quieter

Having just moved into a new home and started to notice patches of Mildew I decided I needed a dehumidifier. Checking out the prices on the Internet quickly brought me to Wickes. I paid £89 (September 2008) which is considerably lower than anything else I've seen with similar capability. I decided to pop down to my local store so I could eye-ball the item before parting with my cash, although the Wickes on-line shop was offering free delivery.

The box it comes in is smaller than I expected (about 2 feet tall, 1 foot 3 inches wide and 1 foot deep), yet is still large enough to be reused as a hiding place for a small child. It was no problem to lift and carry out to the car although it weighs about the same as a three year old boy (15Kg). Once home I discovered there was very little else in the box but the unit itself.

Apart from removing a few bits of sticky tape (the nice stuff that doesn't leave goo behind) it was ready to be plugged in. It has a couple of hand holds at either side to help lift it out of the box and four good sized castors so you can roll it close to a plug.

The manual is clear enough but doesn't really have a lot that it needs to say. Apparently you are supposed to use a vacuum cleaner on the snap out filter every two weeks. You are not supposed to poke things into the grills or do other silly stuff (so keep toddlers away from it). The eight page A4 booklet includes a short troubleshooting section - Problem=not working, Cause=no power, Solution=switch on.

I am impressed with the build quality. All the bits fit together well and it has a resilient feel to it. Although it won't get mistaken for a piece of artwork it looks functional and is not unattractive. It comes in a beige sort of off-white sort of creamy sort of colour. The mains cable is a modest five feet which is not nearly long enough for me. I'm afraid I quickly disregarded the manual's safety note on the issue of using extension leads.

It really is simple to use. The control panel on the top has four buttons and an LCD display. One button switches it on and off. Another button lets you set time delays for starting and finishing (so perhaps you could run it during cheap electricity times). There is an up/down button that lets you set the desired humidity level (the machine will then only do its thing when the humidity is above your set level). Finally there is a button to flip the fan speed between low and high.

During operation the LCD display tells you the temperature and the humidity (% relative humidity) and confirms the fan and desired humidity settings. I found the display a bit disappointing. It is set down well below a plastic cover and has no back light. The desired humidity setting numbers are too small to comfortably read although the other information is a reasonable size. The most annoying part is that the unit pumps out air through a vent at the top - so as you squint to see the information you have a blast of dehumidified air drying your eyes.

The unit sucks air in through a filter about half way up its back. It pumps out slightly warmer air vertically from a vent on the top. This makes it useful for drying things positioned above it: damp clothes, freshly washed hair and small children. I would have liked to have an adjustable vent to allow the air flow to be directed horizontally as well. This small design change would help with things like: drying damp walls, cupboards and larger children. But it doesn't have one.

Wickes supply about ten feet of PVC tube (13mm diameter) for continuous draining. So far I have only used the integral water collection tank. It holds about 4 litres and includes a float/sensor that stops the machine when it gets full. It is easy enough to remove, empty and refit the tank. Another little annoyance however is that, on a couple of occasions, when removing the tank a tablespoon of water has dribbled out onto the floor - it is supposed to be helping me dry the place out.

In order to help compare these units they publish the litre per day moisture removal capability. This unit is rated at 20 litres but this is only achieved at 30 degrees C in a constant 80% relative humidity. It seldom gets to 30 degrees C in Norfolk and my damp problem is not quite at 80%. I left the unit running in my damp kitchen overnight. I got about one and a half litres of water and the humidity reading went from 65% down to 50%. A little Internet research suggested that a comfortable/desirable level is 45% and that you need to drop below 60% to stop the spread of Mildew.

The manual says it has a power input of 350 Watts although I guess this is when running at high speed with the compressor doing its temperature thing (the compressor works like in a refrigerator and switches on and off as needed to maintain the temperature differential that allows condensation to form inside the machine). My current electricity provider gives me a KW/h for about £0.15 so running this flat-out for a whole day might cost as much as £1.26. Using a plug in power monitor I discovered that, for my installation, it used 33 Watts with just the fan running on high and 260 Watts when doing its best to suck up moisture. After one hour I had used less than a third of a Kilowatt suggesting my daily bill will be about £1.

Operation could not be described as whisper quiet. I suppose I was hoping for better but, with a big fan and a mini refrigerator built inside, perhaps I was not being realistic. I wouldn't want to try sleeping with it running in the same room. Today I had the thing running at high speed at one end of my sitting room while I sat and watched TV at the other end. I guess there was about 20 feet between us and soft furnishings to soak up the noise. It was unobtrusive enough that I forgot that it was switched on. I think the sound levels vary depending on the surface, how hard its working and how full the water tank is (it got much rattlier when the tank was three quarters full). I suspect that its in this area that the double-the-price models will win out.

In conclusion? Well, it successfully removes water from the environment. It is still a little early to say how much this will affect my life but the rooms I've used it in do seem to smell nicer. Overall I am pleased with my latest toy!

[This review first published on Wickes web site]

Summary: It does a good job at a great price