> Gree has received reports of at least 23 fires, 688 incidents of overheating, and $168,000 in property damage with the recalled dehumidifiers. Sold At:
Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards, Sam's Club, Sears, Walmart and other stores nationwide, starting in 2011 through 2014 for between $110 and $400.
It kinda looks to me like every dehumidifier sold in the USA+ for the last decade, then?
Dehumidifiers, refrigerators, and less so air conditioners, all have the same inherent risk of a big compressor that runs unattended for years. (For example, the Ghost Ship warehouse fire was attributed to a fridge compressor)
More than a recall of specific faulty models, it would be cool to know how to evaluate compressor health so one could periodically check whether something is at risk of overheating catastrophically
In my experience, catastrophic failure is extremely rare.
An overheating compressor starts burning its oil. That burned oil sludge then clogs everything internally, and eventually the whole system stops being able to work. It will generally get so hot it automatically turns off on overload at that point.
> it would be cool to know how to evaluate compressor health
The best way is probably to monitor low and high side pressure together with motor rpm and power. But I have never seen a fridge with manometers so ... I would listen for vibrations. Like, you can get to know how your machine should sound when happy. If it sounds unhappy, take it to the dump.
And it's a big irony that LG had to cease production of their otherwise excellent linear compressors globally because they were sued to death by legal trolls in USA.
I noticed a dehumidifier in the basement of the house I moved into. I did a search for the model number - looking for a manual - and found out it was recalled. Same thing - fire risk.
It's really unfortunate because I had a home inspection done after I moved in and part of that is I get an email every month about anything in the home being recalled and that wasn't part of it. Good thing I happened to search for that manual that day. I was able to get a partial refund on the thing, though, so that's good (it was quite old). It seemed to have been in a "fan" mode, not running as a dehumidifier (water tank was empty).
One of the commenters on that article says the manufacturer offered $37 in compensation for a unit they paid $200 for. That doesn't seem reasonable to me.
If a product is considered a risk to home and health, it should be law that the purchasers of that product receive at least a full refund (upon company paid return of the unit).
PSA: You can make your own dehumidifer using two buckets and some rock salt. You'll have to dump the water manually though.
> Because rock salt is hygroscopic it absorbs moisture from the air. If your plan is to get rid of the humidity in a damp basement, start with a 50-pound bag of sodium chloride to make your rock salt dehumidifier. These can be found at most big box hardware stores. While you’re there, you’ll also need two 5-gallon buckets. Here’s what you’ll need to do next:
> In one bucket, drill several small holes into the side and bottom of that bucket
> Nest the drilled bucket into the other bucket
> Fill the bucket up with rock salt
> Collected water will drip through the holes in the inner bucket into in the outer bucket over time
That's interesting but is sadly unhelpful without knowing how many gallons or liters it's able to pull out per day, or how far down it gets humidity, or how quickly it goes through salt.
E.g. my $200 dehumidifier pulls around 3 gallons of water out of the air per day, on a hot and humid summer day, to keep indoor RH around 55%.
It's very hard for me to imagine a bucket of rock salt pulling 3 gallons of water from the air, or being able to bring RH down to a target ~50% range. And even if it did, it seems like you'd probably spend more on salt over the course of a couple of summers than you would on a dehumidifier in the first place.
Can’t imagine how this would match the capacity of a good sized unit. I have been renting a garage that had some leaks, and the amount of water my dehumidifier extracted when it was damp was enough to have a solid trickle of water out of the attached garden hose (into a drain). This salt dehumidifier might be good for intermittent light dampness, but I can’t see this filling a bucket in a day like a condenser based dehumidifier.
They sold 1,500,000 units and there were 23 fires. I am happy they are so on the ball with this - but is this really the kind of risk one needs to worry about? 652,173 to 1. I just looked it up, and my odds of being in a car accident are 366 to 1 for every 1,000 miles driven. So 366,000 to 1 for every mile. Twice as dangerous as this dehumidifier.
Edit: off by a zero, so my conclusions are weaker than i originally thought.
Full transparency is probably impractical as soon as the product is complex enough, but whenever inside a product there is one "main component" (such as is the case here), that should be indeed be properly traced - and it would cut the crap from companies who slap their brand on a plastic case hiding mostly the same core component - sometimes at laughlingly distant pricing points.
I'll preface this saying that I'm not an expert on dehumidifiers and don't work one them, but I do have a background in hardware electrical design and thermal engineering.
There are different types of dehumidifiers, typically you'd use a refrigerant based system. Without proper ventilation the compressor can overheat, the refrigerant is also typically flammable, lubricants also. Design flaws and not maintaining the system can cause reliability issues. If a device has been designed by a competent team, there should be a thermal cutoff ie when the motor gets too hot it will shut down. A badly designed system may not have this at all, or the thermal sensor might be somewhere stupid meaning the measured temperature isn't the one that matters, its also possible the cut off is too high. It's also possible a crap compressor/motor is being used and driven too hard for the use case.
Bad wiring is also possiblly an issue.
With a peltier system. They use a lot of power. Components can get really hot such as the power electronics used to drive the peltier cooler.
Another poster mentioned water and electronics together with poor design can cause fire risks. This is absolutely true.
Without actually having these failed devices I can't really give much more insight than that. But I hope it gave anyone a basic idea.
I have a GE one that looks almost exactly like the but wasn’t in the recall. It seems they overheat. During the summer when it’s humid, the thing is running pretty much 24/7 and while it reduces humidity, it blasts out heat.
But, every 8 hours or so it shuts down for ~20 minutes. Never understood why. I now suspect it’s because it needs to cool down. I’d guess that the component that triggers the cool down is faulty in these listed units.
I don't know about this recall, but I've learned over the years that dehumidifers seem to be a frequent recall risk due to fires.
One of my dehumidifers (my penultimate one) was replaced because it started giving of a smoking smell, and I learned that it was the subject of recalls because they would spontaneously and violently start on fire.
I got my money back but reading about the history of fire hazards in this product category has made me very nervous about owning any dehumidifier.
The problem is they can also prevent a lot of property damage due to humidity, so it's a sort of pick-your-poison problem.
They have electricity and they have water, so I would guess it has a higher risk than someone without water... but I don't think there is a global problem from humidifier fires (outside here)
I've bough an AM04 heater/cooler device. It was ok. But some 2-3 weeks after warranty has ended, it stopped turning off when achieving configured heat level. It'd turn off the internal fan ("fanless" is false advertising as there's a super loud fan inside, just not visible from the outside) but would still output heat. The effect was the smell of heated/melting plastic and dangerous increase of temperature around the device.
I've contacted Dyson despite the device being (barely but) out of warranty.
They've graciously offered a replacement - a brand new AM05 model. The color would be glossy white instead of matte gray/blue, but the device was supposedly an upgrade with predecessor's problems fixed. I've got no warranty, but I wouldn't expect it. It'd by 2 years after I got the device.
Guess what has started happening with the replacement AM05 model after (again!) just few weeks since the warranty would have ended? It had the exact same defect AM04 had - it wouldn't turn heating off after reaching configured setting, but would cut off just the fan, resulting in melted plastic smell and air temperature exceeding 65+°C close to the seemingly powered down device.
A dedicated site[1] now exists for recalling just these two models: AM04 and AM05. But fuck Dyson - I'll never purchase any of their unsafe devices again and I don't want their free replacement crap.
If humidity is a serious problem you could consider getting a proper central unit installed. A lot of new construction in the Gulf Coast region is including these in the HVAC systems. It's like a mini 1/4 ton A/C system inside your system. I had one that came w/ the house but it didn't last very long (Honeywell). Replaced it with an Aprilaire unit.
I can tell when my dehumidifier is off or not working because I'll see really bad condensation forming around registers. Keeping RH below 55% is an extreme battle this time of year. My dehumidifier runs 24/7 for about 9 months of the year and the main heat pump runs about 80-85% of the day.
These cost $150. A cheap DIY minisplit is over $1000 (double that if you get one that doesn't need a vacuum). I'd love to have the minisplit HVAC in my shed, but cost drives me away.
My dehumidifier isn't on the list but I believe maybe it should be. Several times now it gets into a state where it's very loud, abnormally hot and it turns out the compressor is stuck ON even though the fan is not running. Even powering it down (with the button) will not turn off the compressor.
Unplugging it and plugging back in will sometimes fix the problem. Looked into it and it turns out the power relay is getting stuck in the on position. I have to open the dehumidifier completely to get access to the relay and then tap on it with something hard. This has worked to unstick it, at least so far.
I think maybe this relay isn't up to its task. I was curious about replacing it with something similar but couldn't find anything remotely as small for switching 120 VAC mains power.
For reference, my dehumidifer is a Toshiba TDDP7011ES2.
The relay in question is a Sanyou SFK-112DMP.
I dunno, maybe this will help someone out there figure out what's going on.
I recently read that dehumidifiers can essentially serve in place of a tumble dryer but with vastly reduced energy costs. You simply hang your washed clothes in the same room as the dehumidifier and it speeds up the drying process by quite a lot. Think I will purchase one eventually.
I have a GE dehumidifier whose model doesn't appear to be on this list-- but it doesn't matter much: I found it almost completely useless, it ran constantly while removing fairly little water. I replaced it with a desiccant based dehumidifier and found it worked much better, removing much more water per unit time and unit energy.
The effectiveness of heat exchanger dehumidifiers falls off very rapidly at lower temperatures, which was exactly when mine needed to run. At lower temps desiccant dehumidifiers work much better.
The GE dumidifier also vibrated the storage container at levels that were audible hundreds of feet away... while the desiccant is essentially silent except for the polite white noise of the air moving through it.
You know what sucks about dehumidifiers these days?
In the past, they had a feature where you could cycle them 4-hours-on, 4-hours-off.. not anymore, now it's either sensor, continuous on, or run for an interval then shut off and stay off.
To answer the question why not use sensor?
They advertise +-5% accuracy on the humidity meter.. except on my current model it is WILDLY inaccurate. I calibrated an analog dial myself and the sensor shows there's a +30% reading difference between the machine and the dial.. no wonder it was never running..
They do use a sensor. E.g. the bestselling dehumidifier on Amazon (HomeLabs) does exactly that. Same as Frigidaire, etc. Mine seems to cycle on/off about 8-10 times per hour -- it turns off when humidity reaches 5 percentage points above its set point, and turns off once it reaches 5 percentage points below.
I've had humidifiers/dehumidifiers in the past that have been off by 20 to 30 percentage points of humidity, but honestly that was never really a problem, because I just set the target off by the same amount. Also it really helps if you have fans circulating the air -- especially with ultrasonic humidifiers, it can easily humidify the nearby air by 20-30 percentage points and turn off, because local humidity really has gone up, but it hasn't spread throughout the room.
[+] [-] akeck|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gry|2 years ago|reply
2013: https://greedehumidifierrecall.com/ProductEntry.aspx
2023: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2023/Gree-Recalls-1-56-Million-...
EDIT: The story does include both links, but "four more people have died" doesn't read like a link containing the latest models.
[+] [-] evanelias|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] h2odragon|2 years ago|reply
> Gree has received reports of at least 23 fires, 688 incidents of overheating, and $168,000 in property damage with the recalled dehumidifiers. Sold At: Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards, Sam's Club, Sears, Walmart and other stores nationwide, starting in 2011 through 2014 for between $110 and $400.
It kinda looks to me like every dehumidifier sold in the USA+ for the last decade, then?
[+] [-] xkcd-sucks|2 years ago|reply
More than a recall of specific faulty models, it would be cool to know how to evaluate compressor health so one could periodically check whether something is at risk of overheating catastrophically
[+] [-] Night_Thastus|2 years ago|reply
An overheating compressor starts burning its oil. That burned oil sludge then clogs everything internally, and eventually the whole system stops being able to work. It will generally get so hot it automatically turns off on overload at that point.
[+] [-] rightbyte|2 years ago|reply
The best way is probably to monitor low and high side pressure together with motor rpm and power. But I have never seen a fridge with manometers so ... I would listen for vibrations. Like, you can get to know how your machine should sound when happy. If it sounds unhappy, take it to the dump.
[+] [-] Ekaros|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thebruce87m|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benoliver999|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emdashcomma|2 years ago|reply
It's really unfortunate because I had a home inspection done after I moved in and part of that is I get an email every month about anything in the home being recalled and that wasn't part of it. Good thing I happened to search for that manual that day. I was able to get a partial refund on the thing, though, so that's good (it was quite old). It seemed to have been in a "fan" mode, not running as a dehumidifier (water tank was empty).
[+] [-] criddell|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclowd9901|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] housemusicfan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstarfish|2 years ago|reply
> Because rock salt is hygroscopic it absorbs moisture from the air. If your plan is to get rid of the humidity in a damp basement, start with a 50-pound bag of sodium chloride to make your rock salt dehumidifier. These can be found at most big box hardware stores. While you’re there, you’ll also need two 5-gallon buckets. Here’s what you’ll need to do next:
> In one bucket, drill several small holes into the side and bottom of that bucket
> Nest the drilled bucket into the other bucket
> Fill the bucket up with rock salt
> Collected water will drip through the holes in the inner bucket into in the outer bucket over time
> Empty the outer bucket as necessary
> Refill the rock salt as needed
(https://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/comments/wziu44/the_basem...)
[+] [-] crazygringo|2 years ago|reply
E.g. my $200 dehumidifier pulls around 3 gallons of water out of the air per day, on a hot and humid summer day, to keep indoor RH around 55%.
It's very hard for me to imagine a bucket of rock salt pulling 3 gallons of water from the air, or being able to bring RH down to a target ~50% range. And even if it did, it seems like you'd probably spend more on salt over the course of a couple of summers than you would on a dehumidifier in the first place.
[+] [-] peatmoss|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icedistilled|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VincentEvans|2 years ago|reply
Edit: off by a zero, so my conclusions are weaker than i originally thought.
[+] [-] virtuous_sloth|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rapht|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EricMausler|2 years ago|reply
I bought one recently and do not see it pictured, but would like to know if there's any additional due diligence I can do
[+] [-] seatsniffer|2 years ago|reply
There are different types of dehumidifiers, typically you'd use a refrigerant based system. Without proper ventilation the compressor can overheat, the refrigerant is also typically flammable, lubricants also. Design flaws and not maintaining the system can cause reliability issues. If a device has been designed by a competent team, there should be a thermal cutoff ie when the motor gets too hot it will shut down. A badly designed system may not have this at all, or the thermal sensor might be somewhere stupid meaning the measured temperature isn't the one that matters, its also possible the cut off is too high. It's also possible a crap compressor/motor is being used and driven too hard for the use case.
Bad wiring is also possiblly an issue.
With a peltier system. They use a lot of power. Components can get really hot such as the power electronics used to drive the peltier cooler.
Another poster mentioned water and electronics together with poor design can cause fire risks. This is absolutely true.
Without actually having these failed devices I can't really give much more insight than that. But I hope it gave anyone a basic idea.
[+] [-] cududa|2 years ago|reply
But, every 8 hours or so it shuts down for ~20 minutes. Never understood why. I now suspect it’s because it needs to cool down. I’d guess that the component that triggers the cool down is faulty in these listed units.
[+] [-] derbOac|2 years ago|reply
One of my dehumidifers (my penultimate one) was replaced because it started giving of a smoking smell, and I learned that it was the subject of recalls because they would spontaneously and violently start on fire.
I got my money back but reading about the history of fire hazards in this product category has made me very nervous about owning any dehumidifier.
The problem is they can also prevent a lot of property damage due to humidity, so it's a sort of pick-your-poison problem.
[+] [-] brianwawok|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] progbits|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voytec|2 years ago|reply
I've bough an AM04 heater/cooler device. It was ok. But some 2-3 weeks after warranty has ended, it stopped turning off when achieving configured heat level. It'd turn off the internal fan ("fanless" is false advertising as there's a super loud fan inside, just not visible from the outside) but would still output heat. The effect was the smell of heated/melting plastic and dangerous increase of temperature around the device.
I've contacted Dyson despite the device being (barely but) out of warranty.
They've graciously offered a replacement - a brand new AM05 model. The color would be glossy white instead of matte gray/blue, but the device was supposedly an upgrade with predecessor's problems fixed. I've got no warranty, but I wouldn't expect it. It'd by 2 years after I got the device.
Guess what has started happening with the replacement AM05 model after (again!) just few weeks since the warranty would have ended? It had the exact same defect AM04 had - it wouldn't turn heating off after reaching configured setting, but would cut off just the fan, resulting in melted plastic smell and air temperature exceeding 65+°C close to the seemingly powered down device.
A dedicated site[1] now exists for recalling just these two models: AM04 and AM05. But fuck Dyson - I'll never purchase any of their unsafe devices again and I don't want their free replacement crap.
[1] https://www.dysonrecall.com/en-us/info
[+] [-] cheschire|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bob1029|2 years ago|reply
I can tell when my dehumidifier is off or not working because I'll see really bad condensation forming around registers. Keeping RH below 55% is an extreme battle this time of year. My dehumidifier runs 24/7 for about 9 months of the year and the main heat pump runs about 80-85% of the day.
[+] [-] bluGill|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullstop|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c64d81744074dfa|2 years ago|reply
Unplugging it and plugging back in will sometimes fix the problem. Looked into it and it turns out the power relay is getting stuck in the on position. I have to open the dehumidifier completely to get access to the relay and then tap on it with something hard. This has worked to unstick it, at least so far.
I think maybe this relay isn't up to its task. I was curious about replacing it with something similar but couldn't find anything remotely as small for switching 120 VAC mains power.
For reference, my dehumidifer is a Toshiba TDDP7011ES2. The relay in question is a Sanyou SFK-112DMP.
I dunno, maybe this will help someone out there figure out what's going on.
[+] [-] rcarr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nullc|2 years ago|reply
The effectiveness of heat exchanger dehumidifiers falls off very rapidly at lower temperatures, which was exactly when mine needed to run. At lower temps desiccant dehumidifiers work much better.
The GE dumidifier also vibrated the storage container at levels that were audible hundreds of feet away... while the desiccant is essentially silent except for the polite white noise of the air moving through it.
[+] [-] jpm_sd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cab404|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmaly|2 years ago|reply
I was lucky to see it on HN. I run a dehumidifier almost constantly during the months of May to October to maintain humidity for a piano.
[+] [-] SamuelAdams|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sunspark|2 years ago|reply
In the past, they had a feature where you could cycle them 4-hours-on, 4-hours-off.. not anymore, now it's either sensor, continuous on, or run for an interval then shut off and stay off.
To answer the question why not use sensor?
They advertise +-5% accuracy on the humidity meter.. except on my current model it is WILDLY inaccurate. I calibrated an analog dial myself and the sensor shows there's a +30% reading difference between the machine and the dial.. no wonder it was never running..
[+] [-] crazygringo|2 years ago|reply
I've had humidifiers/dehumidifiers in the past that have been off by 20 to 30 percentage points of humidity, but honestly that was never really a problem, because I just set the target off by the same amount. Also it really helps if you have fans circulating the air -- especially with ultrasonic humidifiers, it can easily humidify the nearby air by 20-30 percentage points and turn off, because local humidity really has gone up, but it hasn't spread throughout the room.