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Bathrooms get humid/damp* because there's lots of water involved with everything in there. They're not known as "Water Closets" for nothing. This is annoying, especially as the kind of microbiology that thrives in this environment is neither healthy or easily cleaned. The traditional answer is an extractor
fan. This is wasteful as any air extracted has to be replaced by air from outside - which is usually wrong in some way: too hot/cold full of Canadian particulates or already humid.
A dehumidifier, especially with a humidistat, works well here. They reduce humidity** like AC units do - but they don't reject the heat outside. As a consequence you have a drier, slightly warmer*** bathroom. People don't mind warm bathrooms, so no major drawbacks so far. AC units, like dehumidifiers condense water out of the air, and like heat, they all have a way of disposing of that water: since part of AC units is necessarily outside, they usually send the water to the same place. A dehumidifier doesn't have that option. So they have a tank in most cases. This needs to be emptied, which is annoying.
Toilets. Overall, a good thing given the alternatives. Because I live <1 mile from a river larger than all of England's rivers combined, we have to have a toilet that's obsessed with saving water. This means you nearly always have to flush it twice. This is annoying since you have to waste valuable life waiting for the thing to fill.
So, mount a dehumidifier above the toilet cistern. Have a float valve in the cistern connected to the dehumidifier tank. Now, when you flush the toilet it fills from both the standard mains water AND the gravity fed condensate from the dehumidifier tank. Your toilet fills faster and you never have to empty the dehumidifier tank.
*depending on the temperature
**hopefully - maybe check you didn't buy an alarm clock by mistake.
***Increasing temperature alone will decrease the relative humidity - so it's virtuous cycle.
Similar - refilling toilet cistern with rainwater.
Micro-reservoir
[Loris, Jul 25 2026]
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I have heard tales of these "dehumidifier" devices, usually associated with basements in the USA midwest/east. |
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Living in USA Left Coast Southmost San Diego, I've never seen such a rig, and assume it to be propaganda spread by Big Basement ™. |
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I do however own several humidifiers, for when the Santa Ana winds blow and the humidity drops to negative numbers. |
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But the concept is impractical and unlikely to function effectively, so (+) |
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My experience with dehumidifiers suggests that in these parts you'd gather about enough water for one flush every day or two, maybe - depending on the weather, how much water you're throwing around in the bathroom, and how long you're running it for. |
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I just manually empty the dehumidifier tank into the bowl instead of flushing, when we're running it. It helps that we're not obsessed with keeping the toilet clean enough to eat your dinner out of. |
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When I lived in a damp old house in Scotland, I ran a dehumidifier and it harvested a couple of litres of water every day. It did have a large tank which I would pour down the toilet. It also had a little nozzle connector inside just above the tank, so if you connected a hose of the correct size it would bypass the tank and the condensate would run down the hose. I never permanently set it up with the hose connected, but I know a place which has a similar machine mounted up on the wall with the hose properly routed out through a tiny hole drilled in the wall to drain out into the world. |
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However I will freely admit I have never seen this specific set up with the hose directed into the toilet cistern. |
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Problems I see include, the provision for overflow. If the machine runs and the toilet is not flushed, what happens to the excess condensate? Does there need to be a float valve on the tank? Could the machine not simply empty into the cistern? If the toilet was not flushed for a long time then the cistern overflow would vent the excess water outside as usual. |
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I'm not trying to replace the standard toilet filling, just add to it. So refilling is done by mains water AND from the dehumidifier tank via an in-cistern float valve. |
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I imagine you would need an overflow on the dehumidifier tank for the (likely rare) occasions when it has been running but the toilet isn't being flushed.
Every toilet I've ever inspected has its own overflow, so this wouldn't need an additional pipe going elsewhere, it can just run into the toilet's cistern. |
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Surely there's a better use for distilled water than throwing it down the toilet! |
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My climate requires catchment from roofs and extreme frugality with H2O. I shudder to think of perfectly good water helping turds flow a bit more smoothly. |
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Dehumidify all you want but find a better use for this perfectly clean water. Eye wash? Coffee? Tea? |
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//Dehumidify all you want but find a better use for this perfectly clean water.// |
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I'm not convinced dehumidifier water is all that clean without further processing. It may be low in dissolved minerals, but it can't be biologically clean - particularly not if it's sharing a room with the toilet. |
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Surely there's a circular principle here. Piss on a large shallow heated saucer, to vapourise the pee. Then brew coffee with the distillate. |
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//I'm not convinced dehumidifier water is all that clean without further processing.// |
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It's a long way from distilled. It's mineral poor, certainly but the dehumidifier will pull down any other volatile that like to condense in the same temp range. Various organics etc. Plus any bacteria/mold spores will be in there quickly. Then, because it's not chlorinated, something will establish a colony sooner rather than later. Down the toilet with it. |
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Whew! That was close. I almost made normal saline with it. |
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What's wrong with Canadians? |
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