I wouldn’t know how to transfer a photo to the straight dope. Its called Servpro low grain refridgerant dehumidifier.
Edit-apparently, its job is to get rid of water damage from what was used to put the fire out.
ServPro is the name of the company that deployed the dehu. It’s a large enough company that the manufacturer of the machine (likely DriEaz or Phoenix) makes branded equipment for ServPro, along with ServiceMaster or Belfor (just to name a few).
the low-grain refrigerant operates by passing air through a refrigerated coil. This cools the air, reducing its capacity to hold water. The excess water is “squeezed” out of the air and condenses onto the coil. The air is heated back up so that its relative humidity is low, increasing its capacity to pull moisture in from wet materials in the room. The warm air is also used in the dehumidifier to melt frozen water off the refrigerated coil, where it collects in a pan and is pumped down a tube to some nearby drain in the building. The “low grain” in the name means the dehu is specialized in achieving particularly low humidity levels (grains are a way to measure moisture in air).
The numbers you’re seeing are likely the hour counter. Other numbers that might be displayed are the temperature (in F or C), the relative humidity (in %RH), or maybe even the specific humidity (in grains per pound).
These type of dehus tend to heat the air by dint of their operation. They can easily heat rooms to an uncomfortably hot level (over 100F, but nothing like 500F or something).
Thats why it was getting sauna like; they closed the exit door to the stairs. It was way humid and humidity and electrics don’t mix well.
I think it’s safe to say that those numbers are not measuring temperature.
Servpro has more than one model of LGR dehumidifiers. The ones I looked at had a running hour meter on them, in tenths of hours. So 500 would be 50.0 hours and 700 would be 70.0 hours.
That can happen, especially in an enclosed hallway. The way a dehumidifier works is that internally, it’s a heat pump with a fan. The heat pump works by cycling a refrigerant through two coils. The first coil has the refrigerant at a lower pressure, which causes the refrigerant to get cold. Air from the hallway (or room or wherever you have the machine) gets pulled in by the fan. As the room temperature air passes over the colder coils, water in the air condenses out. The refrigerant also gets warmed up by the air, and has to do something with the heat it just pulled out of the air. The refrigerant then goes through a second coil at a much higher pressure. This makes the refrigerant get even hotter, and now that the refrigerant is hotter than the outside air, the heat naturally transfers out of the second coil and into the air. This makes your hallway warmer. The cycle keeps repeating, and water keeps condensing out of the air, and hot air comes out from where the second coil is located in the machine, over and over, for as long as the machine is running.
This is normal. This is how a dehumidifier works.
No, it’s not dangerous.
No. If it were that hot, you could probably boil water on the floor tiles and if you touched the floor tiles or the walls or the outlets you would receive a nasty burn and would have to go to the hospital. Hot like a sauna isn’t anywhere close to boiling water.
Thank you. Well, if it were too sauna like, wouldn’t affect outlets?
In the long term, a lot of humidity will corrode the metal inside the outlets. In the short term, it’s no biggie. It’s no worse than what people in the tropics who live near the ocean experience.
I’ve not heard of hot temperatures affecting outlets per se when I worked water damage restoration.
Temperature and humidity control are key components of proper water damage mitigation. When done properly, affected rooms take less time to reach drying goals.
One sort of conflicting thing that can occur in this industry is that mitigation companies (like ServPro) are paid per piece of equipment deployed, and equipment can be one of the most profitable aspects of a water restoration job. This can cause companies to deploy lots of air movers and dehumidifiers so they can increase the insurance payout. A lot of insurance companies these days require well-documented drying logs which justify the equipment load.
It’s not uncommon for the amount of equipment on a job decreases day by day, as the area gets closer to drying goals and the size of the area that is still affected shrinks. This usually requires daily visits from a technician to inspect the equipment, record moisture levels, and run equipment sizing calculations to see what changes should be made to deployment. Equipment sizing should generally be done in accordance with the S500 Standard for Professional Water Damage Restoration published by IICRC.
Not dangerous, but by propping the door open, you’re increasing the length of time before all of the moisture is removed from the room or hallway in which the dehumidifier was placed. Servpro is a big company that specializes in recovery from fires and water damage and I assume they had good reason to leave the stairwell door closed.
Propping open a fire door might be a bad idea.
It is just the door people use to go down the stairs.
Right, but if it is a “fire door” it should automatically close and latch.
For decades, the model codes adopted across the US have mandated fire door assemblies on apartment entries and stairwells. Fire doors are required to be automatically closed and latched if a fire occurs, and the doors themselves are constructed to withstand fire for 20 minutes to 3 hours
I don’t know much about apartments fire doors, it’s been many decades since I last dwelled in an apartment. But you should look into whether the door you propped open is a fire door.
given that this is all because there was a fire.
No. It’s a door designed to keep people alive as long as possible in case of fire.
If I was employed there and this was occurring, I would be contacting OSHA immediately.
The servpro workers kept it propped for over a week.
Not surprising at all, but someone should be checking on the legality. Being a potential hazard I’d call Servpro and see what they had to say about it and if I don’t find the answer to be sufficient I’d call the fire dept. and ask them to check on it. I would step carefully around this, the fire dept. might have given Servpro informal approval to do this which shifts the onus onto the fire dept.
Who will star in Terminator XXI: Rise of the Overheating Machines?
The fire made me afraid. It can affect you that way. Two days ago, the Servpros opened the stairwell door all the way, and today they shut the dehumidifiers off.
Most appliances are lazy, and don’t bother to make something of themselves.
Update!- after 3 weeks of a loud fan running outside my apt door-they’re gone!
What a relief.
What fire ?!?!
(Glad it’s all over now !)