Inside a faulty Aldi dehumidifier.

a dehumidifier an absolutely enormous dehumidifier so big that that's the reason I haven't taken a look at it so far it's because it just wasn't quite gonna fit in the bench it just barely fits in the bench the box was much bigger that's what kind of threw me initially and this was sent by Christopher and he said that initially he got this from little and it worked initially but then after a while it started giving problems and then conked out Christopher also stuffed as much chocolate as he could in the box including well not just chocolate as well including this particular cookie which well it's very big it's an enormous cookie it's such a huge cookie that I've estimated its calorific value at over 3,000 calories mmm maximum calories this image is also swamped out because it's really up high and this thing is a dark case this is what happens however we can cut straight to the chase I will be opening this but let's find out what the problem was well the problem was that you said there's the same severe distortion around the connector if you look at their power input pin here it is a it's black it's really burnt and the matching pin on the power supply is also a distorted and burnt here it's notable that this is obvious their common thing because it says plug fully inserted tick plug not quite from inserted cross I wonder if it's just that they've basically had problems with the fact that this thing runs about 5 amps and it's been causing problems with the plugs burning up the instructions with it it's very typical of these type of air units the instructions here are Dutch I didn't mean to cut their french instructions off because I read read French much better but doesn't really matter the French instruction of the other side I completely didn't sport it as I was like slashing the cart not before bending it so read it in Dutch relatively speaking we'll just extract the information need 65 watt 400 milliliters a day based on an ambient temperature of 30 degrees Celsius which is absolutely swelteringly hot that's the upper safety limit of office temperatures and 80% relatively relative humidity and what they mean there is that the thing works best in motion the hot temperatures and damp here that's just cheating a bit it's not going to take that macho in a serve law of temperature is capacity then the water reservoir at 1.5 litre automatic air water reservoir control with a lamp and the switch presumably and dannimal electric thermal electric healthier element so it is the solid-state Pilger element okay the power supply does work it's putting out 12 volts on this slightly charred connector i would zoom out but I can't see me I'm zoomed oh absolutely we're just gonna have to work with a core here the water drawer state oh and it's got the little flip flip spilled off the little floor that pops that pin up it's got a little bone for emptying it so you can just pull this guy out oops don't row and then just shove the bottom back in again and here is the little air funnel that channels of water into that inside the unit itself let's get all these bits out of the way inside the unit we've got the very common arrangement here but there's two micro switches one detects when the drawer is being pushed in the other detects when the water floats to hind cups the unit off so this one do they have this one's got a very gentle operation this one's firmer I would guess this is power and this is the water cut off I could actually check that in which wind does this go yeah this is the one that presses that is right the stiff one is the power and the soft one is the float one because it's not going to put a lot of pressure against it to get this open and I don't see any screws in the back for I see a trim in the front that is possibly hiding screws because there are pillars inside that look as though they're covered so I think this is going to be quite destructive I think I'm gonna have to try and push these clips and try and get the trim off I will focus down shortly if this takes too long I will try I've all out pause moment charmer just because I this could get it could be one of these trims that you under certain number of them and then when you undo the next one it immediately all Clips back together again so far so good but I don't like to I don't like to hold my breath in case things go wrong now we're on to the ones that you can't access the clips is it gonna come out is it going to come out more clips I'm wondering of a spudger would help here handy if you need to get this off and it - no I'm not sure there's any place to actually really sponge around here oh here we go here we go yeah right well that gives us access to the whole darn lot right Oh could you okay let's just notice the focus down a tiny little tad down here here is the fan that is drawing near how is that working it's drawing air over those vents is there a fan other side as well where is the bit that's actually taking the moisture I reckon this is gonna be the hot side and let's try and undo some of those screws down there they're quite deep down social use at one of these screwdrivers for that these might be the completely wrong screws to be doing this with maybe I should take these screws out of these I think these are just trim is this going to work we'll find out which of course there's a little poor marshalling board but that literally is all it does it's just a power distribution board in here so let's get that screw it and that scrout I will see if this does lift out it may not left out if it doesn't lift out rather than around too long oh that's not lifting out and I may end up just [Music] pausing woman Charlie and working out how to take out you know what I may just do that one moment please Endora back I did take the trim off because it turns out that trim has little lights at the edge here that's the light gauge and a little circuit board that clips in and the only way to get the connection off that from here is to actually well you don't have to take the circuit board oh I took the circuit board off just to show you it's good two resistors to LEDs it's not much to it it's just little indicator PCB but once you've lifted to trim off it also gives access to the cabling going down to the incoming connector the connector that's damaged to lift that out you unclip the cable for Mundy's little hooks here and there's a wedge here the ELISA sort of ratchet clip that you have to tilt the connector that way to lift it out if you lift it straight up but it won't come out but once you ver tilt it to side it will come out and there you can see slight Sheamus and the plastic there where it's melted but this gives you access to change connector or just replace it for something much more functional like a plate of terminal block or whatever you want to get this out it was the two screws there and the two screws here the four screws holding the means of chassis VIN but then to get out you have to lift up push the micro switches in and and that it's quite tricky really it lifts out a degree you push the micro switches and to raid them past this plastic trim here and then the whole module commode let us take a look at the module and see how it works so this is the classic culture based unit it's got a little circuit board but it's not doing an awful lot its main function is purely to marshal the power oh there's a little capacitor on it I'm not really sure that's for but it's not really that significant it's possibly since this is pretty no DC era not really sure maybe it's just mmm no no sure why they've got to look faster there and there's not a lot on it yeah we've got the two switches that are basically a both grunt ooh this one needs to be in to actually allow it to operate this one when it gets pressed up will stop the unit so they're just there are only two wires going to that once the normally will monitor normally closed the fan will power up when the thing is running and there's also there's a heat sink in this side underneath this fan well actually you can see the fins earlier that's the that's the heat dissipation heat sink but the bit that the water condenses on is this heat sink here which is the cooling the condensation heat sink and the way it works if i hook this up and it is just 12 volts social hook positive under there and negative onto there and I shall pour it up and holy parrot named volts just so it doesn't go completely wild and if you press the enabled switch and the fan starts running and after a while you can't really detect because it's certain has been killed by the your flowing plaster but you can't detect the heat off this one yet but if it was left running for a while you would but this one after a very short period of time it gets notably colder even in this house which is already very cold that is getting icy cold it's getting so cold that ice could probably start forming on it which it probably could happen really right so we've got a cold side we've got a hot side the fun is actually pulling air in and across that venting it through here so the path of Aaron's unit is in the front row then I'm just looking here because so the air comes in through the front grille of this and it passes over the cold side first and that condenses moisture there the air then flows under here and this furnace is sucking it in from that side the fan then blue is the air through because it rotates in this direction I will just demonstrate that you can see is that really showing its rotate in this direction so it is pulling the ear in from other side round the case and then in over this heated surface to keep the hot side cool and then it's blowing venting over the unit so the point of this here is that I felt your Junction let me just see if I can expose the Peltier let's use the correct side that would be even better so under here we're going to see one of the very very common thermoelectric place with a bit of heat sink compound it maybe even a spacer maybe not lots of heat sink compound a plastic friend hold a position this square plate here is one of those Peltier Junction plates let me show you one of those plates a culture plate it's two wafers of ceramic with a set of gue round edge and inside is and every corner chipped off a series of what are effectively thermocouples is exactly up and down and a thermocouple is a junction between two dissimilar metals this is the best my knowledge I've never really explored these things too much but as opposed to if I wish to heat this up one side of it and cool the other side this would generate a small current I actually are generally quite a high current and a decent voltage but what they're doing in here is the run it in reverse the power it and well it is Tec thermoelectric cooler that is the fun of this particular table and what happens is this side will get cool and the other side will get hot you have to keep the hot side cool because if it reaches to high temperature can damage the the couples inside the junctions but basically speaking one side will get called the other side get warm the air is being pulled across that cold surface to condense and then drip down into the tree but then to keep the other side from overheating that cold air is then passed by this fan over the other side with a greatly heatsink to keep itself cooled and then it's not efficient so that the hot side is there much larger than the cool cool side and it just basically it's a device that just creates called Mon Seine hot another it's quite remarkable that it can do that um and if I was to push this and now the fan is running this side is going to get very cold very quickly yes it's like absolutely painfully cold okay it's interesting that compound isn't agreed it's not exactly what calm moist it feels quite solid I suppose it's done its job I think the temptation would be to add a bit more and that is totally dry is that intentional it's just age or or the manufacturing but there're habits and to fix this you just basically you could maybe with if it didn't melt the terminal sure could maybe just file and sort of some Mars on here or just open the case and flip this connector out and replace with a new connector or something improvised but inside there's not a lot to go wrong they're not efficient though one nice thing about them though is that I'm just looking there these are wires for where's the fan what isn't there I'm intrigued is there a thermal cutout or something right okay I think we have to investigate this one moment please it looks like a single-shot thermal fuse so if this say gets far too hot if it gets blocked and the temperature rises too high it will kill the unit completely and permanently well unless you know about this little device under here well that's a bit naughty the device inside is an empty tech there electric cooler 112 700 s : the 5:1 to 7:05 T 1 2 5 BC 2018 so it's not that old hmm interesting so dry but they're not efficient however one good thing about them is that they will operate at low voltage they you know are though the rated firm at 12 volts if you're two runs at a lower voltage it will still have that differential effect I'm not sure at which point at loss start taking water out of the air but it means that if you'd a remote cabin somewhere let a humidity problem and you were to put a solar panel just a 12-volt solar panel just dedicate to this then no matter what level of sunshine there was it would just run at a speed M and the the amount of water it took out would probably vary beyond a certain voltage but certainly in in direct sunlight it would be just continually running the background taking moisture out particularly few how do we dream pipe to the to the drainage unit or just had it plumbed a paper track well yeah plunder Pope either directly into this or into the actual the little bucket but there we go and it's a it seems a design weakness this the dry thermal compound is a bit shady me miss I suppose maybe that's silicon rubbery tape thermal transfer sticker would've been quite good there but there we go and I've taken it apart we've seen inside we've seen the problem is and that's about it interesting devices but as I say just not very efficient if you want a real dehumidifier for a proper house application get a compressor based one if you're in a very hot environment or if you're in a very cool environment like this Houston winter get their desk and Drummond's they'll pay themselves off you know they don't last forever but they'll pay themselves off in a relatively quick time because they're just so infinitely more efficient at drawing water out than these solid-state ones

Channel: bigclivedotcom

Views: 189,962

Keywords: aldi, dehumidifier, thermoelectric, faulty, repair, fix, 12v, quiet, water, moisture, removal

Id: boytzuOOFqY

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020