Dehumidifiers?

[ruadisneyfan2]

Can anyone recommend a good dehumidifier? We have had so much rain this summer & spring and starting to get a funky odor in our house. We notice it most when we return from vacations. (AC set at high temp.)
At first we thought our cat was peeing, upset that we were away. We got a black light and looked everywhere but no signs of cat urine. whew! We love her and it's a relief to know the problem isn't her.
A friend mentioned she needs a dehumidifier in her basement and if she doesn't run her AC enough, she gets an odor in her house too, musty kind of smell. That got me thinking of how dh brings a glass of water to bed and sometimes the glass sweats on the coaster so I thought that funny odor from that side of the room was mold getting on the wood furniture. Now I'm thinking our crawlspace is very damp.

So I started reading reviews of various models on Amazon, my starting place for most shopping. lol! So many people are recently discovering they needed one, even after 20 yrs in their home. Many people say it pulls so much water out of their basement/crawlspace, that they had to use a hose to hook it directly to a drain or they would be emptying the bucket every day, or even twice per day.

We have a small crawlspace, maybe 3' high, all cement floor with cinder block walls. How on earth can we hook one to a drain? AFAIK, there is no drain pipe down there but I'd have to have dh check. I'm curious how other people have theirs set up.

I'd appreciate any feedback.

 

[ellone]

It doesn't sound like you'll be able to hook it up to a drain. We have ours set up to a drain, but it's in our basement where I already have a sink next to my washer & dryer. I don't run it all the time - even though it's an energy star model, it would cost too much to run it all the time. So I run it 2-3 times a week and it does the job quite well.

 

[Sadie22]

We have a large basement. We run two dehumidifiers in the summertime. DH empties the condensate containers daily.