The prices he quoted for putting in a dehumidifier is why you should try to do it DIY if you can. The dehumidifier is maybe around $2000. I had mine installed when we built the house and when that unit died I got a quote just to replace it (5 years ago when the units cost around $1400) of $4000. All they had to do was pull the old one out, put the new one in and reattach to the existing ducts and controller wires. The hardest part was getting the units in and out since they weighed just over 100lbs. I found a way to do that myself and saved a bunch of money.
I honestly have no clue how people afford to own homes if they can’t DIY stuff like that- there’s not enough HVAC pros and the costs will keep going up.
Problem is PE firms have moved into the trades and are acquiring and consolidating companies under the same umbrella. Good luck getting a “reasonable” price for anything related to HVAC, plumbing, or electrical. So for me DIY it is.
For the record those numbers arent a replacement dehu, they include a new one with ducts and controls. I definitely understand why people are turning to DIY. I can sell a dehu for 4600-5000 all day, so why would a contractor not charge thar much? Supply and demand economics.
@@HomePerformance All the more reason to impress upon the kids that vocational schools can be a much cheaper path to a great career. Supply and demand.
@@chaseweeks2708Not if private equity is sucking all the profit out of the business. The master HVAC license holder is just an employee, who doesn't know how profitable the business is, as the PE gets volume discount on the equipment, PE sets the price, PE pays the employees, owns the trucks, does the marketing, etc. It's great for the owner who sells out, but not so good for everyone who follows.
This is awesome! I have Tim coming out to my house in Jan to help develop a dehumidification strategy and this is an exact question I planned to ask, reheat vs ventilated dehumidifier. I also found him because of The List you started, thank you so much for providing these resources!!
Regardless of whether you are for or against ERH or Dehums, what cannot be taken away from Tim is that he went out there and put in the work to get numbers out of his own pocket. Much respect! I hope an OEM has the good sense to pick up this study and compensate him for it.
Such great information and automation! More people need to know this!!! I’d love to see a chart of VOC’s and C02 on that. If he lives alone 45 cfm is enough. Otherwise, I don’t believe it is enough when occupied.
I love me some West Coast and NE and “northern climates” but multi task or change channels for anything less than tropical. When he said North Carolina - I was keenly paying attention- when he showed his strong speaking skills and spot-on technical knowledge - …, This channel kills once again!
In my mind, as far as energy goes - it’s such a small price to pay to be healthy, avoid Dr. bills and sickness. Plus, you’d avoid potential mold or growth issues in the home. A dehumidifier and ventilation is a no brainer to me. The energy cost is so small. My new house made me very sick. We had to do a lot of work air sealing and adding ventilation and my health problems resolved. It’s worth every dollar!
Very nice. I live in a similar climate - metro Memphis area- and put the full inverter version of his Bosch in an existing home. Different setup inside because it is not as tight an envelope (1970s construction). Same ecobee thermostat system. Dedicated dehumidifier. Works great, saves money.😎
Upstate NYer here. I've got a pretty good house w/ exhaust only ventilation. We're dehumidifying about 6 months per year (May-October). It's increasing.
To your question about coil reheat I wonder if this would be viable by chaining of the Mitsubishi multi units which are intended to service multiple zones in commercial buildings. It would obviously take more physical space and be higher cost, but it seems like it would work.
I have a 3 ton heat pump with 10Kw heat strips and I have it set up for reheat with my Honeywell Pro 8000 thermostat. It seems to work very well and I have not noticed a significant increase in my power bill so far.
Yeah, electric reheat is definitely expensive unless you live somewhere with really cheap electricity and low dehumidification loads. Using a preexisting source of heat, like hot gas, is definitely the way to go if you have a lot of humidity to get rid of. Residential is sorely lacking in that; as far as I know, the only residential systems with hot gas reheat are the high-end WaterFurnace geothermal units, and I'm not sure if those are modulating hot gas or just off/on. One concept I would like to see tried out is using the warm liquid line for reheat. I've seen it described in a paper from Carrier with a refrigerant-to-air coil and a three-way valve on the liquid line. It gets rid of the third line between the indoor and outside units, but there could be some problems with oil/refrigerant management. I would personally set it up with a brazed plate heat exchanger on the liquid line and a small pump loop to a generously sized water-to-air coil downstream of the air handler. It probably won't get all the way back up to a neutral air temperature, but it will definitely improve dehumidification performance with the added subcooling. Plus, the volume of brazed plates is fairly low, so charge and oil issues shouldn't pop up. The water coil also gives you the option of adding supplemental heat from a small boiler or water heater, for example, both for reheating if the warm liquid line isn't cutting it or for a hydro air setup for the heating season.
Wow, what a fantastic test and topic! Thank you Tim and Corbett for this. Looks like the biggest struggle is when its high humidity and same temp outside vs inside set point. Something has to run to extract the humidity out of the indoor air without making it colder inside. Could they make a VRF/inverter dehumidifier that could teeter on the edge of cold enough evaporator coil and warm enough condenser coil to minimize cooling but still have some de-humidification happening? Probably not as efficient in that mode but only needed when temp/humidity is so close.
The ROI is heavily dependent on electricity costs. In areas with very expensive electricity rates (like here in New England where our rates are probably 3X what he pays) then a more efficient traditional dehumidifier will probably even out the costs a lot faster.
Our only truly "dry" months here in Connecticut are typically December through February and our electricity rates are around $0.26 . Electric resistance heating gets VERY expensive here.
@DeuceDeuceBravo outdoor dewpoints over 62 are dehu months. Unless youre on the coast i doubt youre seeing a lot of that in March april october and november
I wonder how hard it would be to use a hot water reheat coil using a dedicated loop off a hydronic heat system (if you've got one) instead of the very inefficient resistive heating coils. Especially if the hydronic is using a heat pump, I think this might be almost as efficient as the dedicated dehumidifier. The tricky bit is actually building the system since nobody makes that system, and selecting an HVAC system that is both highly efficient and simple enough to be controlled effectively with BMS/IFTT. Would be a fun project though.
@@timdestasiohvac Oh yeah, pretty much a given that nobody is building that since it would require integrating with a third-party system. It's going on the list of possible DIWhy? projects I have in mind for our retirement compound when we finally start building it. I'm putting serious thought into building a lot of our eventual HVAC system myself, like a pair of ERV's (one for the garagemahal), V- or W- style airfilter boxes for everything so that I don't have to deal with those tiny expensive filters on the regular stuff, all of the BMS/Home Automation, and a bunch of other things. Not because it would be better, or even cheaper, but because it would be fun.
No one would be running hydronic heating while running aircon. You would have to tap hot water heater. Your also adding complexity and fail points, water does a lot of damage. It would be far easier and less risk to have an extra aircon gas line for the re heat.
That’s what I don’t understand about my house. I run the thermostat down at night from 70 to 67 for just under 12 hours but the humidity in my house is a big concern. Over 60% during the peak summer. I would think that the Mitsubishi unit would be running enough to dehumidify the home down to at least that 55 to 60% humidity range?
mitsi's etc inverters (at least downunder) roughly put tend to be designed for heating/cooling efficiency over dehumidification. so high airflow and warm coil. the exit air temp is not very cold. dehumidification mode is simply run it in on/off mode and slow fan speed.
The one concern I have is with using IFTTT for controlling HVAC equipment. There's a limit on what I trust a cloud service to control, and heat is not one of them. While the HVAC has enough inherit controls to prevent it from starting a fire, I don't want it controlling the thermostat in the winter more than a few degrees.
Hey Corbett my dehumidifier runs all day and night basically. Is that normal? I have it set at 45% humidity. Live in gulf coast Houston. Have 900 sf home spray foam all of it and have a 70 pint unit
Could you pass the return air over a second coil that has the heated refrigerant running through it on its way back to the compressor. You won't restore all of the heat, so a strip may still be necessary, but it should recover some, and should make the cooling somewhat more efficient. I don't understand why you would ever use a strip to reheat when the air outside is warm enough to do it for you.
A clumsy hack to get a hot gas reheat coil, duct the outdoor coil with a damper. When the house is too hot direct the air flow to use outdoor air so it can dump the heat there. Otherwise direct the air to somewhere in your house for reheating. Not very practical retrofit, but if a DIYer wanted to design it, install the heat pump as if it was a giant dehumidifier with the reheat coil down stream of the cold coil, with dampers that could bypass the hot coil and have it use outside air.
Heat recovery chillers will solve this problem. I expect they will be the norm once we move to flammable refrigerants and the US gets their head out of their A$$.
I'm always baffled when HVAC techs talk about dehumidifier prices. Do they not know we have internet access? $5k for a low end?! He has a 70 pint Santa Fe which is $1,300. Even Sante Fe's sister company Quest has a 335 ppd dehumidifier for $5,200. That's low end? Where do they get these figures? There's all of 3 or 4ft of duct in the return and supply. Even if it's a larger 240v system you have to run a new circuit to, it shouldn't take more than three hours to install. How does that add up to several thousand dollars of install costs. Also, hot gas reheat is the future. All commercial units have modulating hot gas reheat to control humidity. It's nothing new, just an extra coil in the air handler and a diverter valve.
The video content is very interesting! I am a little confused: someone sent me a TRC20 USDT and I have the recovery phrase: [pride pole obtain together second when future mask review nature potato bulb] How do I extract them?
We have had the same problems from a sprayfoam job on our little 520sq ft cottage. The sprayfoam company was recommended by a reputable builder and they ghosted me. We talked to 3 lawyers and an expert witness for sprayfoam. After reviewing crazy costs for legal actions we had to accept that we needed to eat the costs to fix it. My recommendation to anybody insulating now is to avoid sprayfoam at all costs. There too many things that can go wrong on the job. BTW they sprayed while it was raining cold and thick fog in addition to spraying to fast too thick according to other sprayfoam guys that looked at it. If anybody wants to know more I have a public post on Facebook with pictures and names of the contractors.
It will be nice when the American market discovers what China already had up and running well over to decades ago. Heat pumps that were connected to their domestic water.. hot 💦 . So you’re already electrified on both you’re using much less electricity because you’re using a heat pump to make your hot water not direct electric resistant heat elements.. All you do is add a water pump and some piping to a water heat exchanger after your evaporator and now you have reheat. And you’re almost not burning much more energy because you were burning it in the first place to cool down the residence. You already own a large buffer tank.. because it’s your domestic hot water tank. And for areas of the country where it’s $.48-$.58 a kilowatt hour the payback will be a much shorter faster time period than the breakdown and cost of replace and repairs associated with any additional equipment.
The prices he quoted for putting in a dehumidifier is why you should try to do it DIY if you can. The dehumidifier is maybe around $2000. I had mine installed when we built the house and when that unit died I got a quote just to replace it (5 years ago when the units cost around $1400) of $4000. All they had to do was pull the old one out, put the new one in and reattach to the existing ducts and controller wires. The hardest part was getting the units in and out since they weighed just over 100lbs. I found a way to do that myself and saved a bunch of money.
I honestly have no clue how people afford to own homes if they can’t DIY stuff like that- there’s not enough HVAC pros and the costs will keep going up.
Problem is PE firms have moved into the trades and are acquiring and consolidating companies under the same umbrella.
Good luck getting a “reasonable” price for anything related to HVAC, plumbing, or electrical. So for me DIY it is.
For the record those numbers arent a replacement dehu, they include a new one with ducts and controls. I definitely understand why people are turning to DIY. I can sell a dehu for 4600-5000 all day, so why would a contractor not charge thar much? Supply and demand economics.
@@HomePerformance All the more reason to impress upon the kids that vocational schools can be a much cheaper path to a great career. Supply and demand.
@@chaseweeks2708Not if private equity is sucking all the profit out of the business. The master HVAC license holder is just an employee, who doesn't know how profitable the business is, as the PE gets volume discount on the equipment, PE sets the price, PE pays the employees, owns the trucks, does the marketing, etc. It's great for the owner who sells out, but not so good for everyone who follows.
Fascinating conversation with a true expert building comfort specialist. He’s definitely someone I would engage if I was doing a new build.
This is awesome! I have Tim coming out to my house in Jan to help develop a dehumidification strategy and this is an exact question I planned to ask, reheat vs ventilated dehumidifier. I also found him because of The List you started, thank you so much for providing these resources!!
Looking forward to it!
Regardless of whether you are for or against ERH or Dehums, what cannot be taken away from Tim is that he went out there and put in the work to get numbers out of his own pocket. Much respect!
I hope an OEM has the good sense to pick up this study and compensate him for it.
👍🏽👍🏽
Such great information and automation! More people need to know this!!! I’d love to see a chart of VOC’s and C02 on that. If he lives alone 45 cfm is enough. Otherwise, I don’t believe it is enough when occupied.
@@davidhoover2446 i have tracked it. My Vocs stay low and i ventilate on/ off at 600-900 c02
This is amazing info for anyone in a tropical climate
I love me some West Coast and NE and “northern climates” but multi task or change channels for anything less than tropical.
When he said North Carolina - I was keenly paying attention- when he showed his strong speaking skills and spot-on technical knowledge - …, This channel kills once again!
What was the ventilation strategy for the reheat? Is the dehumidifier able to run fan only for the freah air?
Yes, I literally just pull the 24V Dehu wire off so it continued as a FA ventilator.
In my mind, as far as energy goes - it’s such a small price to pay to be healthy, avoid Dr. bills and sickness. Plus, you’d avoid potential mold or growth issues in the home. A dehumidifier and ventilation is a no brainer to me. The energy cost is so small. My new house made me very sick. We had to do a lot of work air sealing and adding ventilation and my health problems resolved. It’s worth every dollar!
We agree!
if you put enough solar panels on your roof, you can use that energy with a clear conscience.
@@tealkerberus748 or I could not. I could think of better ways to spend 3x what I'd pay in electricity and not risk a roof leak.
Very nice.
I live in a similar climate - metro Memphis area- and put the full inverter version of his Bosch in an existing home. Different setup inside because it is not as tight an envelope (1970s construction).
Same ecobee thermostat system.
Dedicated dehumidifier.
Works great, saves money.😎
This is great. A lot to take in and to consider.
Upstate NYer here. I've got a pretty good house w/ exhaust only ventilation. We're dehumidifying about 6 months per year (May-October). It's increasing.
To your question about coil reheat I wonder if this would be viable by chaining of the Mitsubishi multi units which are intended to service multiple zones in commercial buildings. It would obviously take more physical space and be higher cost, but it seems like it would work.
Commercial VRF systems can heat and cool various zones simultaneously. The reasons why they dont do it is energy and SEER standards.
I have a 3 ton heat pump with 10Kw heat strips and I have it set up for reheat with my Honeywell Pro 8000 thermostat. It seems to work very well and I have not noticed a significant increase in my power bill so far.
Yeah, electric reheat is definitely expensive unless you live somewhere with really cheap electricity and low dehumidification loads. Using a preexisting source of heat, like hot gas, is definitely the way to go if you have a lot of humidity to get rid of. Residential is sorely lacking in that; as far as I know, the only residential systems with hot gas reheat are the high-end WaterFurnace geothermal units, and I'm not sure if those are modulating hot gas or just off/on.
One concept I would like to see tried out is using the warm liquid line for reheat. I've seen it described in a paper from Carrier with a refrigerant-to-air coil and a three-way valve on the liquid line. It gets rid of the third line between the indoor and outside units, but there could be some problems with oil/refrigerant management. I would personally set it up with a brazed plate heat exchanger on the liquid line and a small pump loop to a generously sized water-to-air coil downstream of the air handler. It probably won't get all the way back up to a neutral air temperature, but it will definitely improve dehumidification performance with the added subcooling. Plus, the volume of brazed plates is fairly low, so charge and oil issues shouldn't pop up. The water coil also gives you the option of adding supplemental heat from a small boiler or water heater, for example, both for reheating if the warm liquid line isn't cutting it or for a hydro air setup for the heating season.
Wow, what a fantastic test and topic! Thank you Tim and Corbett for this.
Looks like the biggest struggle is when its high humidity and same temp outside vs inside set point. Something has to run to extract the humidity out of the indoor air without making it colder inside.
Could they make a VRF/inverter dehumidifier that could teeter on the edge of cold enough evaporator coil and warm enough condenser coil to minimize cooling but still have some de-humidification happening? Probably not as efficient in that mode but only needed when temp/humidity is so close.
What are the pros and cons of running all three of his systems in one?
Awesome video. Any chance you can invite someone with a similar diy style makeup air solution?
Psychometric Saturdays are so good. I never thought I’d ever start to grasp that chart, Tim makes actual sense out of it 👏👏
Wow thx!
Fantastic episode. Great learning!
The ROI is heavily dependent on electricity costs. In areas with very expensive electricity rates (like here in New England where our rates are probably 3X what he pays) then a more efficient traditional dehumidifier will probably even out the costs a lot faster.
You also dont have the hours of dehumidification up there like we do here. I pay 11.6 cents per kw. Lots of factors.
Our only truly "dry" months here in Connecticut are typically December through February and our electricity rates are around $0.26 . Electric resistance heating gets VERY expensive here.
@DeuceDeuceBravo outdoor dewpoints over 62 are dehu months. Unless youre on the coast i doubt youre seeing a lot of that in March april october and november
I wonder how hard it would be to use a hot water reheat coil using a dedicated loop off a hydronic heat system (if you've got one) instead of the very inefficient resistive heating coils. Especially if the hydronic is using a heat pump, I think this might be almost as efficient as the dedicated dehumidifier. The tricky bit is actually building the system since nobody makes that system, and selecting an HVAC system that is both highly efficient and simple enough to be controlled effectively with BMS/IFTT. Would be a fun project though.
It’s 100% doable. We do it all the time in the commercial hvac world.
Its doable but not a turn mey package sold by any manufacturer.
@@timdestasiohvac who needs turn key when you’re in the trade.
@@timdestasiohvac Oh yeah, pretty much a given that nobody is building that since it would require integrating with a third-party system. It's going on the list of possible DIWhy? projects I have in mind for our retirement compound when we finally start building it. I'm putting serious thought into building a lot of our eventual HVAC system myself, like a pair of ERV's (one for the garagemahal), V- or W- style airfilter boxes for everything so that I don't have to deal with those tiny expensive filters on the regular stuff, all of the BMS/Home Automation, and a bunch of other things. Not because it would be better, or even cheaper, but because it would be fun.
No one would be running hydronic heating while running aircon. You would have to tap hot water heater. Your also adding complexity and fail points, water does a lot of damage. It would be far easier and less risk to have an extra aircon gas line for the re heat.
That’s what I don’t understand about my house. I run the thermostat down at night from 70 to 67 for just under 12 hours but the humidity in my house is a big concern. Over 60% during the peak summer. I would think that the Mitsubishi unit would be running enough to dehumidify the home down to at least that 55 to 60% humidity range?
Inverters dont dehu when they get close to thermostat setpoint
mitsi's etc inverters (at least downunder) roughly put tend to be designed for heating/cooling efficiency over dehumidification. so high airflow and warm coil. the exit air temp is not very cold. dehumidification mode is simply run it in on/off mode and slow fan speed.
Are there any systems that use hot water to reheat? seems like a good way to use that stored energy
Wondering why he didn't pull the dehumidifier intake from the roof ridge?
So much for me being excited that a series 7 Water Furnace geothermal system has a reheat coil system......
The one concern I have is with using IFTTT for controlling HVAC equipment. There's a limit on what I trust a cloud service to control, and heat is not one of them. While the HVAC has enough inherit controls to prevent it from starting a fire, I don't want it controlling the thermostat in the winter more than a few degrees.
Is Bosch down to 1.5 ton? I thought their smallest size was 2 tone?
Hey Corbett my dehumidifier runs all day and night basically. Is that normal?
I have it set at 45% humidity. Live in gulf coast Houston. Have 900 sf home spray foam all of it and have a 70 pint unit
Could you pass the return air over a second coil that has the heated refrigerant running through it on its way back to the compressor. You won't restore all of the heat, so a strip may still be necessary, but it should recover some, and should make the cooling somewhat more efficient.
I don't understand why you would ever use a strip to reheat when the air outside is warm enough to do it for you.
A clumsy hack to get a hot gas reheat coil, duct the outdoor coil with a damper. When the house is too hot direct the air flow to use outdoor air so it can dump the heat there. Otherwise direct the air to somewhere in your house for reheating. Not very practical retrofit, but if a DIYer wanted to design it, install the heat pump as if it was a giant dehumidifier with the reheat coil down stream of the cold coil, with dampers that could bypass the hot coil and have it use outside air.
Good lord yeah thats hackery for sure
If you do a self install of a santa fe, which you can get for 1.6k, the payback is like 2 years, so no matter what a better option.
@HomePerformance correct your title to IFTTT, as this is the platform mentioned.
Thx good catch
Heat recovery chillers will solve this problem. I expect they will be the norm once we move to flammable refrigerants and the US gets their head out of their A$$.
Hey Mikey!
I'm always baffled when HVAC techs talk about dehumidifier prices. Do they not know we have internet access? $5k for a low end?! He has a 70 pint Santa Fe which is $1,300. Even Sante Fe's sister company Quest has a 335 ppd dehumidifier for $5,200. That's low end? Where do they get these figures? There's all of 3 or 4ft of duct in the return and supply. Even if it's a larger 240v system you have to run a new circuit to, it shouldn't take more than three hours to install. How does that add up to several thousand dollars of install costs. Also, hot gas reheat is the future. All commercial units have modulating hot gas reheat to control humidity. It's nothing new, just an extra coil in the air handler and a diverter valve.
Fell asleep halfway in
A proper dehumidifier is much more energy efficient than doing it with heat pump + reheat. Look into it
The video content is very interesting! I am a little confused: someone sent me a TRC20 USDT and I have the recovery phrase: [pride pole obtain together second when future mask review nature potato bulb] How do I extract them?
@@VũThịÁnhTuyết-r8m was that english?
Sounds like a bot planting a seed
We have had the same problems from a sprayfoam job on our little 520sq ft cottage. The sprayfoam company was recommended by a reputable builder and they ghosted me. We talked to 3 lawyers and an expert witness for sprayfoam. After reviewing crazy costs for legal actions we had to accept that we needed to eat the costs to fix it.
My recommendation to anybody insulating now is to avoid sprayfoam at all costs. There too many things that can go wrong on the job. BTW they sprayed while it was raining cold and thick fog in addition to spraying to fast too thick according to other sprayfoam guys that looked at it. If anybody wants to know more I have a public post on Facebook with pictures and names of the contractors.
It will be nice when the American market discovers what China already had up and running well over to decades ago. Heat pumps that were connected to their domestic water.. hot 💦 . So you’re already electrified on both you’re using much less electricity because you’re using a heat pump to make your hot water not direct electric resistant heat elements..
All you do is add a water pump and some piping to a water heat exchanger after your evaporator and now you have reheat.
And you’re almost not burning much more energy because you were burning it in the first place to cool down the residence. You already own a large buffer tank.. because it’s your domestic hot water tank.
And for areas of the country where it’s $.48-$.58 a kilowatt hour the payback will be a much shorter faster time period than the breakdown and cost of replace and repairs associated with any additional equipment.
Thats already here dude where you been?
@ I know it’s here, but so few contractors ever even heard of it, and the rest are afraid of it.