PowerSwitch

I saw an article a few days ago which suggested that dehumidifiers can be useful room heaters.

Apparently people feel warmer in lower humidity environments.

And the dehumidifier pumps out heat and also provides 'distilled' water which might be of use.

Accordingly, I tried a 700 watt dehumidier in our main room yesterday evening for about 3 hours.

It cerainly seemed to work : the room went from 19C to 20C and the humidity went from 50% to 45%.

Maybe I was imagining it, but the place certainly felt warmer and no longer chilly.

(The heat exchanger in the heatpump will recyle those 700 watts)

Has anyone else tried this?

Yes I use one dehumidifier regularly, they do raise the room temperature and can be used as a substitute for space heaters under certain conditions.

If the RH is higher than desired then use of a dehumidifier will reduce the RH and warm the room. Opinions differ as as to the ideal indoor RH but between 40% and 60% is widely accepted.

A very high RH can feel "damp, cold, and unpleasant" and reducing this will improve comfort and it may feel warmer as well as actually being slightly warmer.
There are limits to this though. Reducing the RH to less than about 50% will tend to make a space feel COOLER. A low RH promotes the evaporation of perspiration and therefore tends to make a space feel cooler.

Therefore use of a dehumidifier to raise the room temperature is only worthwhile if the existing RH is excessive. If the existing RH is in the normal and comfortable range, then nothing is gained, and a relatively expensive machine is being worn out to no purpose.

We used it a lot when completing our house build, great for drying out the fabric of newly built house. These days, only occasionally, when drying washing the the bathroom.