I’ve read every single manual on the Internet and I still don’t understand what the difference is. I’ve also used both settings and don’t see much difference. When I use dry, the room cools off, but the machine will shut down and turn back on which I find very annoying. When I use cool the room, the room will cool but the machine stays on.
It’s currently nighttime with the 70° temperature outside in the 71% humidity. WWYD right now, for example?
In: Technology
Dry and Cool mode do the exact same thing, as far as the AC itself is concerned.
When warm air enters the AC condenser (in the big fan unit) and hits the very, very cold condenser unit. The warm air gives up its heat to the condenser as they attempt to reach the same temperature. The now-cold air goes into your house, and the now-warm refrigerant heads back to the outside unit.
That’s just one part, though. When that warm air hits those fins, the temperature of the air immediately dives *way* below the dew point, and that causes all of the moisture in it to immediately drop out of the air and… well, *condense* onto those fins. This is why every AC unit has a drain line coming out of the house somewhere, because the nature of AC is that it produces water that has to be dealt with.
Incidentally, the original reason this whole setup was invented was to dehumidify. The whole “air cooling” part didn’t actually come until a few years later. Originally, the condenser (inside set of fins) and the evaporator (outside set of fins) were both in the same air flow path (modern dehumidifiers are still built this exact same way). After dumping a bunch of water onto the condenser fins, the now-cold air would hit the evaporator coil, which was generally a good 50 degrees (or more) hotter than the air, and this would cause any remaining moisture to quickly *evaporate* as it passed through the evaporator coil.
Now obviously your house AC isn’t going to be able to change the air path to turn itself into a true dehumidifier, but just running the air through the cold condenser coil is enough. The difference in the two modes is whether it is prioritizing temperature, or humidity. If you set it to “cool”, it’s going to turn off when the target temperature is reached, be it 72 or 68 or whatever. If you set it to “dehumidify”, it’s going to keep cooling, beyond the temp set point if necessary, to take the humidity down to whatever its goal is. 40-70% is generally the “comfortable” range for humidity.
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