I tried the dehumidifier once when we first moved in. Bought a brand new one for $200+, energystar, the whole nine ........ all it did was make my electric bill go from $70/ month to $150/month! Did absolutely nothing for the wetness factor down there. Ran 24/7 for 2 months non-stop. Ended up selling it on Ebay. The stove has been the best dehumidifier so far, but there really is no hope as Chris said. Water is just EVERYWHERE ..... under the floor, in the walls, etc .... The dirt section holds so much moisture, I think it would take 10,000,000 BTU de-humidifier just to make a dent!
I gave in & fired her up last night!
Couldn't stand the cold for 3 more days .... my Dec. start-up is officially shot!
It's been going for 15H:53M:37S now.
Of course,nothing is easy ... had some issues with the new coils. My custom made sharp "U" that I soldered together did not match the distance of the new coils coming out of the stove ...... you can see in the pic below that one is longer than the other .... but the new ones are equal ......so I took it out to the barn, heated it up & moved the fitting to where it needed to be. This opened a can of worms ..
5 trips to the barn later, I ended up cutting a new piece of pipe to join the 2 elbows together, & completely resoldered the joint. Problem solved.
Then, when I opened my Flowchek valve on the boiler (to allow HW from coils to enter boiler from top) it started peeing water out the thumbscrew on top!
Eventually I found the correct number of turns out that it liked, & it stopped leaking!
I was having nightmares about replacing that thing ..... all I wanted was to get warm -- NOT spend 8 hrs in the basement!
My chimney connector seems to be in no worse shape than previously -- still same amount of perforations. I've got a .04 - .05 draft & all is well!
