AprilAire E080 Pro 80-Pint Whole-House Dehumidifier, Energy Star Certified, Commercial-Grade Whole-Home Dehumidifier for Basement, Crawlspace, or Whole House up to 4,400 sq. ft.

Previously burned up 3 large dehumidifiers purchase at retail stores. This does the job without complaint for a standard 2 story family home. Easy connecting plastic pipe to the drain. Intake ducting parts available at home improvement store to draw moist air from the most humid part of the house; and direct the dry air to the HVAC intake. Runs quiet, easy air filter change. I expect this unit to last a very long time.

Took relative humidity from a constant ~75% down to 50% in about a day after installation. Now cycles of/off only as needed. No more condensation on cold pipes/surfaces and clammy feeling basement air is gone. And I will now be able to finally permanently remediate a recurring mold issue.Unit is well built and looks made to last. Easy to install and level. Actually quieter than a room dehumidifier that it replaced. Worth the money.Application: 1200 sq ft partially finished basement in a high water table area. No water seepage issues, but basement has historically been damp even with room style dehumidifiers. Unit could be ducted into HVAC system, buy I chose to run it stand alone in basement. Has also passively reduced humidity in the rest of the house via HVAC cold air returns in the basement.

I recently improved the insulation and sealing of my northern NC home. I contacted with an insulation specialist who removed the insulation between the ceiling and the attic, then sprayed a thick layer of open cell foam under the roof, on the gable ends, and between the floor and the top of the sealed crawl space. They also installed an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) in the crawl space.The ACH50 blower door test result was about 2 after this work. For context, a passive house is required to get below 0.6. anything below 5, and they recommend an ERV. Below 3, you definitely need an ERV. A typical untreated American house might be in the 8-10 range. I was happy with this result. To get better, I think I'd probably have to take off all the siding and re-wrap / re seal, which would be rather expensive.The side effect of this enhanced sealing was that the humidity level in the house went way up (around 65%), so I purchased the Aprilaire unit. After initial install, the humidity dropped fairly quickly to about 50%, but with the unit running 24/7 it seemed to stall out at that number. Over the next 3 weeks, however, the humidity continued to drop to as low as 40% as well the dampness that had gathered in the house sponged out. If you're shooting for a significant drop in humidity, be patient. Don't assume that the initial stall out humidity level will be all you're going to get.As one of the other reviewers commented, the 'up to 4400sq ft' statement is probably for a relatively dry northern zone. If you're in a really humid southern USA environment, you will probably need a bigger unit if your house is over 2000 square feet of conditioned space. It's probably about the right size for my well sealed 1500 sq ft home to control between 45% and 50% in the main living space. For a 3000 sq ft place, or perhaps smaller if it is less well sealed, I think I'd want to purchase a 140 pint per day unit instead of this unit's 80 pint per day capability.My next issue was that the company that installed the dehumidifier and model 76 controller (not the same as the company that did the rest of the work), set and wired the unit in remote mode. This means that the system was controlling to the humidity level at the unit in the crawl space, not the panel in the living space. This meant that the controlled humidity reported at the panel was about 55% while the actual humidity in the main living space was down at 40%. This meant that the dehumidifier was burning a lot of unnecessary energy.After swapping a few emails with the extremely helpful tech support people at Aprilaire, I was able to rewire the stem and set the E080 in 'external' mode. Reconfiguration was an initial problem until I was told to press 'mode' a couple more times after disabling remote mode and enabling external mode to get to 'done', where the unit writes the changed configuration to non volatile memory.Now it's controlling on the humistat in the model 76 controller. The humidity reported by the model 76 matches reasonably closely the level reported by my Nest thermostat, and the dehumidifier will cycle between 46% and 50% (burning a more reasonable amount of energy that the previous configuration).

With help from a professional, my installation is complete. Three topics:. Mechanics/machine - 5 stars Within two days, it had taken a whole lot of moisture out of my crawl space. It is very quiet, and I am pleased.. Ah, but the installation - 3 stars The specs of the size are wrong in that they are for the box, but not the screws that stick out, nor the 1.5 inch water outlet. It would not fit through the floor joists into the crawl space. I inquired about how to disassemble the drain system to get it through the joists. Company won't say. Their suggestion was to return the unit for something smaller. I ended up sawing the outlet off, then reattaching it once in the crawl space.Specs for capacity -So, how big a unit is needed? They rate them by square feet of coverage, yet square feet in a house is at least double or triple the volume as the same space in a crawl space. Rating by volume would be the better measure.The airflow sticker is on backwards. Only a HVAC person would see that quickly before installing and connecting it to outflow duct work. I am not an HVAC person, but I did figure it out.. Electronics - just two stars here. I purchased an Aprilaire 76 remote control. It works well, but you actually cannot set a desired humidity level from the remote. You can only set general setting - the humidity will change within that setting depending on the air temperature. I had read where the instructions were a bit confusing, and they are, but workable. But... the actual electronics do not work like the remote set up instructions say they work. One should press and hold some buttons to get in to a setup mode to enable remote control. I never did find the set up mode but somehow, turning on and off, plugging and unplugging, it recognized the remote control.Overall, in the three days, I am pleased with the unit. I must say that for the premium price of Aprilaire, I expected much better specifications, support, and manuals about the electronics that actually fit with how the equipment works.

Using this to handle humidity in a 3300 sq./ft. home. 50% of the house was built in 1918 and the other in 2006. We recently installed hardwood flooring on the entire first floor. This unit was needed to maintain a very specific relative humidity so the floor doesn’t swell and contract with moisture variations that were not manageable with the furnace and AC alone. This unit sit in our basement and drains directly to a floor drain. This can be installing directly into the duct work but I did not use that option.Within 24 hours of installing, the relative humidity was pulled down to our target 52-55%.Runs quiet and efficiently. My new floor will be trouble free from now on.