Dehumidifiers
Buy and sell dehumidifiers in Guatemala.
When fine drizzle settles over Cobán for days on end, a closed bedroom shows it as green bloom on leather shoes and a sour smell in the wardrobe. A dehumidifier deals with that by pulling water out of the air and into a tank. New or pre-owned, they come in three very different forms: compressor machines on castors that can fill a bucket overnight, plug-in electronic boxes sized for a single closet, and rechargeable silica pods that hang from the rail. Which one makes sense depends less on the brand than on how cold the room gets at night.
Compressor, electronic and silica dehumidifiers:
they look alike in a photo and do very different amounts of work. A compressor dehumidifier is a small fridge circuit with a fan: damp air passes over a cold coil, water drips into the tank or out through a hose, and a full-size one can dry out a whole bedroom. An electronic unit has no compressor, only a cooled plate, so it is light and silent and collects a glass or two of water a day. That suits a wardrobe or a cupboard of camera gear, not a room. Rechargeable silica pods change colour as they fill and dry out again when plugged in. If the trouble is dust or smoke rather than water, air purifiers are the right shelf. If the room is hot as well as damp, one of the airconditioning units takes moisture out while it cools.
Cold bedrooms and the litres printed on the box:
the extraction figure on a compressor model is measured in warm, very humid test conditions. In a house in Cobán, Huehuetenango or Totonicapán where the bedroom drops below about 15 °C at night, the coil frosts, the machine pauses to defrost, and it pulls a fraction of what the box promises. There, look instead for a desiccant model, which uses a silica wheel instead of a cold coil and keeps working in the cold at the cost of more electricity. In the capital during the rainy season, when washing hung indoors takes two days to dry, an ordinary compressor unit with a continuous-drain outlet is exactly the right tool.
Electronic boxes against full-size compressor units:
the price gap is much smaller than the gap in what they do. A plug-in electronic dehumidifier with a two- or three-litre tank costs roughly Q800 to Q1,300 new, which is within a few hundred quetzales of a compact compressor model that pulls several times as much water. A full-size compressor machine lists around Q4,000 to Q4,500. So a used electronic box fetches little, and the used machine to look for is a full-size compressor unit with a working float and an intact tank: the sealed refrigerant circuit seldom fails unless the machine was dropped or carried on its side, so most of its value survives.
A used dehumidifier’s tank, float and coil:
plug it in and give it twenty minutes. Pull the tank out while it runs; the compressor should stop and the full light come on, because a stuck float is how these machines flood a floor. After a few minutes the coil behind the filter should feel cold and bead with water. A fan that blows over a coil that stays at room temperature means the refrigerant has gone, and that is rarely worth repairing. Check the tank for cracks, since each one is shaped for a single model and hard to replace. On an electronic unit, ask for the power adapter, a separate brick and the part most often missing. And read the label, because humidifiers and aroma diffusers often get listed beside dehumidifiers and do the opposite job.
Photographing a dehumidifier’s label, tank and filter:
the label on the back gives the type, the rated litres and the voltage, so put it in focus. Add the tank, the filter and the display showing a humidity reading, which proves the sensor works. Say whether it is compressor or electronic, whether it has a drain outlet and whether the hose goes with it. If it lived in a cold house and still emptied a full tank every morning, say so: nothing reassures a buyer in Alta Verapaz more. Tell whoever comes to collect a compressor unit to bring a car where it can stand upright, and if it ends up lying down on the way, to leave it standing a few hours before switching it on.