List Price: $2,318.40
Sale Price: $1,656.00
Today's Bonus: 29% Off
Just wanted to drop a note about the 'care and feeding' of this excellent dehumidifier. When it works it puts out a prodigious amount of condensate. But mine only worked about 3 4 yrs before I began to notice a drop-off in output. Both Sylvane and Therma-Stor have been wonderful to work with....but finding someone to work on it has been a chore, and its not over yet.
Turns out I was on the Last day of the 5 yr sealed system warranty but Therma-Stor had no problems honoring the 5 yr warranty. Given this thing weighs a goodly amount, I can envision a host of problems packing it up securly not to mention the cost of sending it to Therma-Stor for repair. And Therma-Stor agrees. They told me to take it to any local appliance repair facility (none of theirs in my area) and they would send them the parts, making me responsible for labor only. After all it is quite simply a standard refrigiration unit that works really well at collecting condensate. Easier said than done. The first place I took it was highly rated but I called ahead just in case and they said "bring it in, we'll take a look at it". They had it over two weeks before they decided there wasn't any profit in it for them and told me to come pick it up. The thing is, they apparently make their profit on parts, and mine were covered by the warranty.
I have other repair options (brother in law in HVAC business) and will pursue these, but Therma-Stor is proudly a business that puts the customer first. I emailed the repair recomendations to my contact at Therma-Stor and here is the response I received from him this morning;
"Mark, Thank you for the kind words. It was my pleasure to help out in any way that I can. That is why we are here. I will process the order to have an evaporator coil sent out to you so that a repair can be made."
Several days later and I have a brand new evaporator coil.
Thank you Therma-Stor.
But if yours ever starts to go bad on you, don't hesitate (like I did) to let them know.
UPDATE: Brother-In-Law has the unit and the new evaporator coil. He actually seemed delighted for the opportunity to tinker on something in the workshop. But from another review I read whose evaporator also went bad, it seems some repair facilities just don't want to burden themselves with this kind of work. I'll write again after the unit has been repaired.
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
Four years old; has failed for the third time.Worked beautifully when new; I'd have recommended it to anyone (and did to several people).
After two years, it had to go back to the factory for warranty replacement of the evaporator. One year later, back again for another evaporator (both at their expense under the three-year warranty, which has now been reduced to one year). Now (one year later), I've unplugged it because it was running constantly to maintain 52% RH at 70 degrees, and extracting about only 4 pints a day. ThermaStor would service it under warranty, but I'd have to ship it back (a significant hassle) and pay shipping this time; and our local HVAC guy doesn't want to touch it. It's time to recycle it. I give it one star; that's five stars for design and engineering, and minus four for quality and durability. Maybe this was just a lemon, but I suggest you pay attention to reviews from folks who have had theirs a couple of years or more.
The folks at ThermaStor were pleasant and good to work with; no complaints there. It's just that I expected the unit to last a lot longer than it did.
Best Deals for Santa Fe Dehumidifier - Whole Basement Dehumidification - Energy
My Santa-Fe Classic (Originally the Sahara) has been replaced twice by the factory and once by my personal extended warranty.I love it when it works but about every two to three years it has a compressor or evaporator issue, and needs major replacement parts. It is now 10 years old leaking Freon again, so it is setting in my basement not working and turned off. Keep in mind this unit never gets moved or disturbed in any way. Its in a normal clean basement that is not even very cool. I am using my 20 year old cheap 30 pint as a backup once again. These problems don't appear to be a batch issue, as this has been spread out over a 10 year time period. Local repair people really don't like to work on it. For what it's worth, local repair shops have not returned calls, or just don't want to follow up on the original diagnostic service call.
Foolishly I recommended it to some friends and to my embarrassment they both had similar problems. So that's three times for me and the same for two of my friends. I really wanted this to work but I can't ignore the track record of three users with major problems. Just another great idea poorly executed.
Honest reviews on Santa Fe Dehumidifier - Whole Basement Dehumidification - Energy
We have owned this unit for almost 3 years and it runs perfect. I had really bad allergies and mold issues in my lungs during the summer from living here in humid missouri.....not any more. We operate this unit in our basement and we have a 3 level house with each level having about 700 square feet. We have it draining into our floor drain in the laundry room. We chose not to hook it up to our central system, but we can still turn on the central fan and let me tell you what it will do.....So if we turn it all the way up, and just run it in the basement, it will pull the humidity down to well under 30% which feels wonderful on the lungs. Now if we turn the central fan the humidity will be around 30% in the basement but the top level of our house will be about 45%. So it will still dehumidify your whole house without being hooked up to the central unit, either run the central fan or leave it on long enough and it will pull the air from all over the house. Running our homes central fan by itself is dirt cheap. As for this dehumidifier it does not break the bank. We have it on a lot, and it does not add much to the monthly bill.Is there any negatives? If there was only one it is with dehumidifies in general. This unit will run down to pretty cold temperatures but won't dehumidify very well like any other dehumidifier in the cold. Anything over about 65 degrees and it will dehumidify beautifully. If it is under that it won't do as good of a job. So what I did is since our basement will typically get into the low 60's/upper 50's in the winter I found a solution. All I do is take a small portable heater and set it next to this unit and presto! The basement will once again be in the 20's % humidity despite the basement being colder than the rest of the house. In fact just this week my wife dryed an oil painting hung down next to this unit :)
Would buy again, and this wonderful Santa Fe unit saved my lungs.
No comments:
Post a Comment