do you have a large wide open area that you need to dehumidify it could be your shop that you're working in maybe a workout space a garage like I'm in today even a basement or a crawl space if you checked yes to any of those boxes if you're having humidity issues I've got just the product for you it's the Santa Fe Compact 70 dehumidifier and on today's video I'm going to take you through all of the reasons why I chose this specific dehumidifier and why I'm putting one in my garage stay tuned this is my 28x 302c car garage the ceiling Heights around 11 ft and I do have a ductless mini split installed and currently running so why am I installing a dehumidifier we step over here to the digital thermometer we're running at about 69° and 59% humidity which is not bad right now here's the thing I just opened the door for about 5 minutes about 30 minutes ago and the humidity spot 20% in 5 minutes we park our cars in here every single night I don't need the duckass mini split running every single day it's a waste of electricity it's a waste to drop that temperature down to 70° when I really don't care I'm not working out here every day I do the occasional oil change rotate my tires I've even done some jobs in here for my business spraying exterior doors interior doors trim different jobs like that so it's only on occasion that I need to run that ductless mini split to cool down the temperature however I would like the humidity to be at a normal rate in my mind it's going to cost me less money the dehumidifier will kick on and off as it needs and let me show you an issue that I'm having not running anything at all so you can see in this area right here I've got some sort of mold or mildew going on I've cleaned it up several times in the seven years we've lived here and I've got a little bit going on over here too so there's a couple issues I've also got a little bit of mold or mildew growing on my diamond coat baseboard I don't like that so for me the easiest solution was to just get one of these Santa Fe Compact 70D humidifiers let's go over the features of this particular unit first of all it's a convenient size it's only 21 in Long 12 in tall 12 in wide now this particular unit is rated to remove 70 pints of water per day so it's great for crawl spaces up to 2600 Square ft or basements up to 2200 square ft and it's got an industry leading 6-year warranty plus something that really drew me to it was the fact that it's got this dual coated coil this corrosion resistant coating it's also extremely energy efficient only drawing about 5.1 amps and it's got this Merv 13 air filtration built into it so so that's nice I want to breathe cleaner air when I'm in the garage but they've got a couple of nice solutions for mounting this thing let's say you're in a crawl space that gets a little bit of moisture on the ground or you want it up off the ground they've got some accessory feet that you can attach to the bottom of it to get it up off the crawl space floor they've also got another really cool accessory let me show you this I thought this was really cool they sell this small hang kit it comes with these straps that are adjustable that will Mount directly to the top of the unit and you can adjust them to where you've got the unit hanging perfectly level so if I wanted to I actually thought about hanging the dehumidifier from the ceiling or if you've got like a big commercial space or a shop building this would be the perfect solution however in my space I just rigged up this shelf and I'm just going to set it up on the Shelf now I beef the Shelf up really nicely that's a double 3/4 layer of plywood fan on fan runs can continuously to circulate air or fan Auto fan only runs when dehumidifier is on which is recommended I like that they give you the option of course you've got a control switch here where you can control how much it's going to dehumidify including an always on feature here's that filter that I talked about earlier that cool you can actually remove that and replace that nice filter that's going to clean the air so this thing's going to do more than just dehumidify the space nice that they uh included that they didn't have to but uh that'll keep the unit clean that'll keep the air cleaner here's our drain port at the bottom there's really not a whole lot to this unit as far as uh complexity so it doesn't really require a whole lot of skill to install one of these and that's another reason that I like it it does come with quite a lengthy extension cord let's get a measurement on that so I like to show these little details sometimes people want to know well how long is the extension cord little over 9 ft so about 117 in something like that that's going to come in super handy for me because once again I'm going to put that dehumidifier up here on the shelf and then I can just run that core down and plug it in to the same recepticle my tankless water heater on this is another nice accessory that they sell for this unit it's called the supply duct kit assembly so basically it's this collar it's got a nice little seal on here comes with a couple screws and you'll fasten it right here on the end of the unit and fasten those screws and now I can connect duct work to the end of this unit which is huge to me I picked up this 8 in flex duct from Lowe's I was going to use rigid pipe but they didn't have any in stock either way I got 25 ft of this flex duct for about the same price so I'm going to hook that into the end of it it was recommended to me by Santa Fe that I use the duct kit because what happens or at least what I'm understanding that happens is this unit will short cycle if you don't get that dehumidified air away from the intake so essentially what's happening is it's dehumidifying the air passing across the coils and then it's sucking that dehumidified air right back in it we don't want that Loop to occur we want to get that nice dry air away from the unit and pull in fresh moist air so that it can do a better job of dehumidifying the space they said I didn't have to have it but they recommended it it works better it's going to dehumidify the space better so got the kit I'm going to install that as well so here's the drain port at the bottom of the unit and they actually send the fitting that fits that drain port and this nice clear drain hose with the unit which is super cool however I'm not going to use this I'm going to use 3/4 in pecs let me show you why this is the only drain line that I've got in my garage I've got a trap catching the condensate from my tankless water heater and you can see I've got it hooked up with pecs up here so I think if I change out this coupling to a t i could just bust right out of that go up the wall and catch that dehumidifier sitting up there pretty simple first things first I need to install this fitting so this is just a Pex 3/4 I believe they call it npt fitting to PEX crimp next up I want to install this supply duct kit it's pretty straightforward four screws and check it out finally a company that gets it that is not a Phillips head screw that is a T15 Torx head wow that's impressive uh if that tells you anything about Santa Fe it should tell you that they know what they're doing how many companies have you seen that they ship their products with the same old Phillips screws and they strip out easily Santa Fe sends theirs with a T5 Torx head screw that is just awesome pretty [Music] simple time to install the flex duck I want this SU build up pretty decently there we are you guys ever seen HVAC contractors that just use uh zip ties for their air seal I have far too many times and it's disturbing I want this thing taped up nicely insulation not really necessary on this duct work but to make it look I don't know presentable we'll go ahead and keep it on there there we go actually should keep it nice and tight don't try this at Home Folks this thing's heavy ooh woo man that thing's heavy uh-oh I think I'm going to have to get a ladder woo okay I already cut off a little bit of this excess I'm going to go ahead and trim it back a little bit more I got my alha knife here makes pretty quick work of this now that can just kind of sit there like so I think that looks great something that's kind of cool on these units not nice adjustable feet so I want to get this thing nice and level let me climb up another step here okay right there's pretty good so we're off just a here I want it perfect man got it nice and level now I need to somehow route the cord over here I really don't want to put an extension on it I don't think I'm going to have to which is nice look at that ready to go how sweet is that about the perfect length really all right let's get our plumbing rolling here we need to bring down that 3/4 in line and tie in right here let's start on that finally finished plumbing in the drain I'm not too happy with it honestly I didn't think it was going to look like that so I'm going to go ahead and stick a 90 on it towards the wall 90 it over and 90 it down I just don't like the thought of having additional you know blockage potential with those '90s but I think it'll be fine I'll just keep my eyes on it I want it to look better than that so what we're going to do is we're going to turn it on I've got it set to Fan Auto and I'm just going to turn it all the way to the on [Music] setting I don't know if you can hear that but it does make a little bit of noise not too bad what's cool is I've got it hooked up to an energy monitoring receptacle and I've got that tied into my sense app so here it is Santa Fe Compact 70 we click on it currently sitting at 472 watts is what it's pulling right now of course I just turned it on 466 Watts that's just really not bad at all honestly that is not bad at all especially for the size of that unit remember 70 pints per day come up here take a look at it just blowing out the end you can feel the air coming out of it but there's not a ton of air it's not enough to really stir things up so if you're in a Dusty environment I guess I've just got it blown out towards that wall I considered putting a 90 on it but I think it's going to be just fine I think it looks really good too it's it's not really an eyes sore um one more thing that I'm going to do other than replum that drain so I'm going to go ahead and stick some sort of bracing or stops I guess I should say around the dehumidifier that way if for some reason it slightly vibrates off or something happens I don't want this thing falling off the shelf so I'm going to go ahead and Brace this up secure it really nicely um in the future tomorrow probably because I'm going to get those crimp Rings uh and '90s tomorrow so what I want to do though is I want to test how well this thing's going to work right now I'm sitting at 48% humidity and 71 degrees I'm going to turn off my duckass mini split and I'm going to open the garage door now let's see what the weather is looking like out there right now heat advisory for where I'm at let's see what our weather app says home currently feels like 101 humidity is at 84% so I'm sure it won't take long for this to rise I'm going to get it up to you know 70 plus% whatever I'm going to turn this off and then we're going to time how quickly it can bring the humidity down to say 55% or whatever so yeah let's go ahead and do that right now I'm going to go ahead and shut this unit [Applause] [Music] off shut her down all right just over 5 minutes that I've had the garage door open we're up to 70% 5 minutes just over 13 minutes and we're sitting on 82% humidity surprise surprise so what I'm going to do is first things first I'm going to shut that garage door then I'm going to kick on the dehumidifier then I'm going to start the timer and I'm going to put this camera on this tripod and do a time lapse and we're going to see how long it takes to drop the humidity down to a respectable level and while that's doing that I'm going to go mow my [Music] yard here we [Music] go 83% right now [Music] 2 hours 57% I've been doing some talking around it it was at 56% but that is super impressive to dehumidify this entire garage let's see 28 ft deep 30 ft wide 11 ft tall yes I had to use a calculator to figure that that's a little over 9,000 cubic feet of air space to dehumidify that in this space you know 26 27% drop in 2 hours that is super impressive to me and this is not a tight you know room I mean it's got a 20t wide by 7t tall garage door in it and we all know garage doors are leaky currently the unit is pulling about 504 Watts it's going to be super interesting to continue to monitor this data as I run the unit it's not accurate right now you can see it says it's been on for 13 minutes and 4 seconds that's not accurate at all but the more time that this thing is plugged in and running the more accurate data I'm going to get from it and that's after you know 2 hours 12 minutes roughly so I hope you guys enjoyed the video I'm going to probably do some sort of follow-up video in a few months I'm going to try to dial this humidity in this garage into to about 55% something like that I think that's kind of going to be the sweet spot for me 50 55% and I will let you guys know how much energy it is consuming and how I'm liking it here in a few months so look look for that I've also got a link in the description down below if you're interested in the Santa Fe Compact 70 they make the best dehumidifiers as far as I'm concerned I did a lot of research this is the company that you want to work with this is the company that you want to go with if you need a dehumidifier whether it be your crawl space your whole house garage like I'm in workspace shop these are really nice units very userfriendly easy to install hope you guys enjoyed the video if you did please give me a thumbs up it helps support the channel and click that subscribe button below if you haven't already I appreciate the support and we'll see you you on the next one