Whole house dehumidifier with no central air?

Question

I moved into my home in the winter of last year after the house had been vacant for 1 - 2 years. In the summer during bouts of rain for 2 - 3 days, humidity levels in the house increase dramatically. The humidity in the basement was 85%, and there was growth on things like cardboard, clothing items, etc. in the basement. I bought a stand alone dehumidifier for the basement, which got the humidity levels down to 45% or 50%.

Notably, the upstairs of my house also gets extremely humid during long bouts of rain, which results in a funky smell that gets noticeably worse. I recently heard about "whole-house" dehumidifiers that can be installed directly into HVAC systems. This solution seems like it would work for me rather than installing ~4 noisy, stand alone dehumidifiers throughout my house.

From what I can tell, whole-house dehumidifiers seem to be linked with an AC system. My house does not have central air, but it does have ducts for the heating system. Will I have to install central air in order to achieve my ultimate goal of installing a whole-house dehumidifier?

Answer 1

You could just put the furnace on "fan" mode and run one dehumidifier anywhere in the house that the air circulates from the central system.

i.e other than perhaps the capacity being low, you could do this with what you have now, if the basement is part of the conditioned air path from the furnace, by just setting the thermostat to "fan" and letting the air circulate, while the dehumidifer runs. If your furnace offers a choice of fan speeds, a low one would be quieter and waste less power, while still circulating the air around.

If it's not already set up to auto-drain, you might want to arrange for that.

For a conventional central solution I expect a heat pump or AC is required.