I have a large basement. When I bought the house in 2020 it came with a dehumidifier in the basement. A floor model, raised up a few feet on a platform, draining into a condensate pump that send water to the line headed to the septic tank. Eventually the dehumidifier had to be replaced, and I put a new floor model up on the platform hooked up the same way.
Recently I noticed the humidity was way high. The dehumidifier wasn’t running. I don’t remember what I did, but I got it started again. But it stopped, repeatedly. It had been set on Automatic, whatever that meant. I changed it to Manual, with a target of 36%. I still kept finding it off. If I unplugged and replugged it in, it started up, but next time I was down, it was off again.
I dug around for the timers I’ve used for the lights when away on vacation. One of them, a BN-LINK, had what I wanted. It handles eight cycles; I programmed it for 8 three hour spans ending 3:00, 6:00, . . . 21:00**,** midnight. Each period is on for 175 minutes, off for 5. The humidity is already down a bit after less than two days.
I am able to track the humidity because I have six of these around the house. They work with an app on my phone. They record temperature and humidity, and (when I remember to do it) the last week or two’s data can be saved to my phone. I have two in different parts of the basement, one in the dining room to cover the living area, then attic, sun room, and garage. (Attic temps over the last year range from 13.1 to 122.9 f. Attic humidity from 93.8%(!) to 17.6%.) This all can be interesting, though only useful on rare occasions such as tracking the problem I described above. I’ve had one stop working, so that has been replaced.