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A pest control company suggested that I get a dehumidifier to try to get rid of the silverfish bugs I've had in my room. I bought a cheap dehumidifier off of Amazon and a humidity monitor, but the dehumidifier pulled out like 1 fl oz of water out in the first 2-3 days total, and now that water is all evaporated.

Now it's not really even circulating air. But my indoor humidity is 20-22% which the monitor says is low, and it went down to 16% today. Is it just that the dehumidifier is crappy, or can it just not pull moisture out of the air at these levels of moisture?

HumInfo
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    Let me guess, you got a solid state/Peltier dehumidifier. Those tend to disappoint. Even so, household dehumidifiers are optimized to pull 90% humidity down to 40-50%, no household dehumidifier could possibly work if relative humidity is really 20-22%. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Apr 04 '16 at 10:22
  • Ding ding ding. there seems to be nothing between the $40 Peltier dehumidifiers (which I got) and the $200 more reliable ones. That makes sense, though - thank you! – HumInfo Apr 04 '16 at 16:23

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Take my advice with a grain of salt – I live on an extremely humid island – but my dehumidifier can be set not to work below certain relative humidities, and those are 40%, 60%, and 80%. A quick googling turns up a number of sites that suggest 40%-50% as the ideal range for health and comfort.

It may depend on where you live (Arizona?), but the 16%-22% you're seeing strikes me as very low. If that's what humidity is like throughout your house, even without the dehumidifier, I think it's safe to say you don't need one. I would wager that they don't really make consumer dehumidifiers that can remove moisture too far below that.

Ryan Lue
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    Thanks! Yeah, it does seem to be very low comparatively. I haven't seen as many silverfish bugs as a result, so who knows. I'm not even in Arizona – I'm in New York, it's just that my radiator has been on all day which I think is causing the humidity to be a lot lower than I expected. – HumInfo Apr 04 '16 at 05:53
  • Yes, radiators, wood stoves, etc. Tend to basically "cook" some of the moisture out of the air. Most commercially available dehumidifiers will switch from something like 50-40% humidity to "Always On" since they really are not designed to work much lower. – BrownRedHawk Apr 04 '16 at 12:35