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The Verge story dangerously links the "get your refund" call to action to the 2013 recall which does *not include* the 2023 recall models.
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.
The 2023 link still says "manufactured between January 2011 and February 2014" though, so even the new recall is for models from 9+ years ago?
https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2023/Gree-Recalls-1-56-Million-...
> 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?
The dehumidifier I bought last year is not on either list, but it is a bit more expensive than most models.
https://www.midea.com/us/air-conditioners/dehumidifiers/easy...
That's pretty scary, since the common wisdom these days is that appliances bought from brick-and-mortar stores should be safer/more reliable than the random thing bought off Amazon.
There was a similar recall 2 years ago, for a different list of products.
https://www.consumerreports.org/appliance-recalls/dehumidifi...
The dehumidifiers that I destroyed (cut the power cords and mailed them in) a few years ago were replaced with something else. I don't recall the name of them, but they were sent to me as part of the recall at no cost. It would be kind of amusing if the replacements were part of this recall.
Do you mean every dehumidifier made by Gree or every dehumidifier period? I have an LG and haven't seen a picture of it in any of the articles.
Costco sells DeLonghi dehumidifiers, so not quite all.
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.
Also some refrigerants like R290 are flammable, so right sized leak with right mixing and spark can be cause of fire or small explosion.
Desiccant dehumidifiers don’t use a compressor. The alternative may have risks however.
Grenfell was a fridge iirc
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).
"Fan mode" in an old dehumidifier usually means that the refrigeration charge has been lost.
They (almost universally) do not have service ports, but you can charge them using a bullet piercing valve (search for Supco BPV31) and restore functionality.
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).
For an over ten years old dehumidifier?
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
> Empty the outer bucket as necessary
> Refill the rock salt as needed
(https://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/comments/wziu44/the_basem...)
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.
We need supply-chain provenance and OEM transparency for technical products just like we need them for food production.
Is there something fundamental about these items that might apply to other dehumidifiers?
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
Reminds me of Dyson-branded crap I've purchased.
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.
Anyone know what the persistent design flaw is? (Or are dehumidifiers intrinsically a fire risk for some reason?)
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.
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.
So what do I do, if I have a closely-related product that isn't on the list? ADEL20LYQ1
dehumidifier that caught fire is actually quite an effective way to dehumidify, shouldn't even use that much electricity
It amazes me that there is no way to really get the word out about this recall.
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.
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..
Use hanging bags like you'd use on a yacht instead; no risk of fire at all.
Search for "hanging bag moisture absorber" on your favorite shopping site.
Found we have one these. Glad The Verge covered this
CPSC evaluated the recalled dehumidifiers and found that they can overheat, smoke, and catch fire
I have one of these, I think (will have to check the nameplate). It was given to me. How would a refund work here? Is there some standard sum involved, or do I need evidence of what was paid for the unit originally? I don't have this.
What ever happened to embedding a 2 cent thermal fuses in products like this?
Does anyone know if dehumidifiers sold in Europe (UK) in the last 10 years are also dangerous? It’s concerning when you see such a large number of products in a category being recalled.
Great how almost all of them are "UL Listed".
Having looked due to this headline I notice Toshiba is absent from this and previous dehumidifier recall episodes.
If anyone has one of these it might be smart to set it at a humidity percent where it's not running all the time.
Keep it real:
This is why we absolutely DO need a reliable "twitter."
Mastodon's the right model for this; companies and governments (and safety orgs) need to go ahead and set up their servers and run these things.
This is one of these things that's painfully obvious to me and I'm not sure why there's not more of a push for it.
Even the BIG COMPANIES benefit; this model would have prevented the "Eli Lilly" thing.
This is a product recall on one manufacturer, sold under 13 different brands. Not really HN worthy
> Have you seen these dehumidifiers? Stop using them or you might die.
I always think this is a funny way to word it. I mean, you're going to die either way. At the most, stopping using them might push it back further. But a car crash might even the playing field too. I think implicitly accepting language like this often indicates that a person isn't accepting the fact of the bigger picture.