Found a gadget to help bail the water out of my Leaf

As dreaded, I'm finding that my LEAF, like all other cars I've had, accumulates moisture in its cabin that makes it very difficult to keep the windows clear. I've always yearned for an automotive climate control that would offer dehumidification as an intentional feature, instead of a side-effect of running the air conditioner to further chill cabin air that's already uncomfortably cold. I came across a couple accounts recently of industrious DIYers constructing Peltier-based air dehumidifiers, and so I did a little Googling to discover whether any such gadgets were commercially available. Turns out that there are, and I bought one of these EDV-1100 units on speculation, and I've had it in use for the past week or so. With its power cord fed through a nearly-shut window, I'm allowing it to run inside the LEAF's cabin overnight. Just by itself, it's able to extract a teaspoon or so of water in that time, but combined with the timed preheat (er, I mean "Automatic Window Pre-Fogger") feature, the dehumidifier wrings out about a cup of water!

The EDV-1100 seems a well-made unit, although I can't understand why it was designed to run on 9V instead of 12V.

Levenkey,

Thanks for the info. This looks like a good solution for dehumidifying my boat cabin and the leaf.

BarrE

I've got a Bionaire BDQ01-UC Mini Dehumidifier that I got for about $30 (gotta watch prices it's up to $50 on amazon now just months later) and I've used it in the car when someone left a window down and it rained (soaking the carpet and seats). It has an AC adapter (large brick), although it is 12V DC 5A 60W I don't know if you could run that from a car/boat battery.

Even then I had to add a ceramic heater (smaller than the humidifier) into the mix as the garage was cooler than you'd want for evaporation. I had to open a car door (turn off the dome light) put the heater on a cinder block and point it into the car and put the dehumidifier inside the car.

Just a dehumidifier alone doesn't work that well for pulling moisture out of the upholstery/carpet so if moisture is a big problem for you be sure to add heat to the mix.

I just hit the AC button, clears right away.

Another good unit, which I use on my boat, is the Sunpentown Mini Dehumidifier with UV & TiO2, model number SD-652Ti, which is available from walmart for $74.98.

Fog-X

ENIAC said:

I just hit the AC button, clears right away.

Click to expand...

That clears the rear window too?

dhanson865 said:

I've got a Bionaire BDQ01-UC Mini Dehumidifier that I got for about $30 (gotta watch prices it's up to $50 on amazon now just months later) and I've used it in the car when someone left a window down and it rained (soaking the carpet and seats). It has an AC adapter (large brick), although it is 12V DC 5A 60W I don't know if you could run that from a car/boat battery.

Even then I had to add a ceramic heater (smaller than the humidifier) into the mix as the garage was cooler than you'd want for evaporation. I had to open a car door (turn off the dome light) put the heater on a cinder block and point it into the car and put the dehumidifier inside the car.

Just a dehumidifier alone doesn't work that well for pulling moisture out of the upholstery/carpet so if moisture is a big problem for you be sure to add heat to the mix.

Click to expand...

Parking in the sun is very effective at warming things up.

Hi,

You should be able to avail of the dehumidification that is provided by the A/C AND not chill the cabin - just turn on the A/C and raise the temperature to the desired setting.