Ok so I just found this thread last week and pulled the trigger on all the parts and have now inadvertently run an experiment to see how much water the dehu pulls out vs the fridge itself.
I’m going out of town for a week on Saturday and was freaking out about drying my purple lemonade auto that was just ready for harvest and so searching found this thread - thanks to Hook Daddy and everyone for all the valuable info.
Unfortunately, when I received the Koolatron from Amazon. It was obviously used / open box with scratches everywhere and all of the shelves just thrown inside. I initiated a return to Amazon to get a new one but the clock was ticking so I decided to just use it without drilling the hole in the back so I could return it and just chuck the dehu in there with the cables for it and the sensor coming through the door. It still seals well around it and I think the loss of seal is negligible.
In any case, I decided to just try and fit everything in two shelves and worry about doing a proper build until my new unit arrives.
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I did a bud wash and wet trim and threw it all in starting at 55f / 65%rh since I wanted to dry the excess water from the wash more quickly than Hook’s recommended 55f/76%rh to start.
Everything seems to be working as expected with the temp going btw 55-59f while the rh bounces btw 61-70%.
When I woke up this morning I checked the drain catch for the cooler and it was almost overflowing - awesome. Then I checked the dehu reservoir and there was barely enough water to cover the entire bottom of it. So not much at all. I couldn’t measure how much was in the runoff from the fridge itself but I’d estimate it’s 4-5x more than the dehu reservoir.
I know there’s been discussion of how much the dehu is necessary vs just a heater so I thought this was an interesting data point. There was also no ice buildup at all on the dehu fins.
I’m not sure the results would be the same for a full load of fresh flowers but it definitely appears that the fridge is doing the lions share of the moisture extraction.
I still have questions and would like to see what would happen if just a heater was used, something like a small reptile heating pad with minimal power draw. I also wonder if the dehumidifier casing acts as an insulator to prevent the peltier from freezing up. Also, when the dehu does freeze up, does it prevent it from working as a heater, which then affects the fridge and stops it from pulling moisture, as Hook Daddy has observed in an earlier post.
