Homes situated in humid climates often have to deal with extreme moisture levels. This doesn’t only affect the physical structures of your home and some of your furniture but can also affect your family’s health. Thus, many wonder how far a dehumidifier reaches.
Dehumidifiers are available in varying sizes and capacities with varying performances and reach. But generally speaking, small dehumidifiers can reach 400-600 sq ft of space while medium units can reach up to 1,000 sq ft. Large units can easily reach more than 1,500 sq ft while whole-house dehumidifiers can dehumidify up to 3,000 sq ft of space.
Performance and reach would still depend on the specific unit and the numbers above are only rough estimates. Always check on product information before making your purchase.
How Far Does a Dehumidifier Reach?
Excess humidity is a tricky issue, especially if you deal with this problem in your family’s indoor living space.
High humidity levels can be annoying and uncomfortable. It makes the air feel sticky, hot, and gross. Aside from comfort concerns, excess moisture and humidity in the air can affect and damage your house’s structure, furniture, floors, and walls. A combination of warm air and damp air can be a breeding ground for molds, fungi, and dust mites.
Moreover, it can aggravate allergies and other respiratory concerns like asthma.
For people who live in very humid climates, having their own dehumidifier unit is simply a no-brainer to control humidity levels. In fact, it’s become essential to reduce humidity issues.
Plus, having a dehumidifier in your home greatly improves indoor air quality and makes room for optimal relative humidity that’s beneficial both for your home’s structural integrity and your family’s health and safety.
As a homeowner who would want to combat issues of extreme humidity in the air, you might be wondering how far a dehumidifier unit actually reaches to remove moisture from indoor air.
This is a good question to be curious of and we’re here to help you figure this one out.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to give one exact answer to this question. How far a dehumidifier can reach varies on factors like the unit’s capacity and size.
Dehumidifiers are categorized in terms of capacity and size via “pints”. A unit’s pint-size refers to the amount of water and how much moisture from the air it can remove per day or within a 24-hour period.
Typical sizes and capacities range from as small as 20-pint to as large as 150-pint capacity. Several other sizes are also available within this range: 30-pint, 40-pint, 50-pint, 60-pint, 70-pint, and more, all depending on what your space needs.
Below, we go over these size and capacity variations and how far each dehumidifier category can reach:
Small-sized dehumidifiers
One can consider 20-pint to 40-pint dehumidifiers small-sized units.
A small size dehumidifier can easily reach around 400 to 600 square feet of indoor space. If this coincides with the space in your home that you’d want to dehumidify, a small-sized dehumidifier should suffice.
Medium-sized dehumidifiers
Dehumidifier units considered medium-sized include 45-pint units to about 60-pint dehumidifier units.
Dehumidifiers with this size and capacity range can work to remove excess humidity in spaces that are about 600 to 1,000 square feet.
Large-sized dehumidifiers
60-pint to about 70-pint dehumidifiers can fall under large-sized dehumidifiers and can easily work to dehumidify living spaces with very damp air of up to more than 1,500 square feet.
Whole-house dehumidifiers
Whole-house dehumidifiers can be incorporated into your home’s whole-house HVAC system if you already have one.
These are much more expensive than standalone units but can easily dehumidify up to 3,000 square feet of indoor space.
How to Choose the Right Dehumidifier for Your Home
A huge part of getting the most efficient dehumidifying benefits from your dehumidifier is choosing the right unit that will work best for your needs. To be able to choose the best and right one for your home, consider these two important factors:
Room size
First, you should consider the size of the space you’d want to dehumidify. Calculate the square footage of the area to ensure you’re going to get the next factor right.
Dehumidifier size and capacity
Once you’ve determined the size of the room, area, or space you’re hoping to dehumidify, it’s time to choose the correct dehumidifier size and capacity.
You can choose the appropriate size based on our guide above.
Remember, the correct size is crucial for effective dehumidifying. A unit that’s too small can’t work properly if the area is too big for its capacity. At the same time, a unit that’s too big for the intended area can’t work adequately either.
And though we’ve laid down above a guide on sizing and capacity of how much water they can remove, they’re still roughly a gauge and estimation. Always make sure to check on the specific unit’s capacity. Most products will list this in their product information.
Conclusion
Many homeowners find themselves dealing with the annoying issue of extreme humidity levels. Those who live in humid climates could find themselves asking how far a dehumidifier can reach.
It’s hard to give one straight answer to this question because it varies depending on the size and capacity of the dehumidifier. But generally, a small-sized unit can reach 400-600 sq ft of space while a medium-sized unit can dehumidify 600-1,000 sq ft. Large-sized dehumidifiers can reach more than 1,500 sq ft and whole-house dehumidifiers can accommodate up to 3,000 sq ft of space.
These numbers are rough estimates only. To be sure of the capacity and reach of a dehumidifier, always check its product information.
