And of course, as we all know, no farmer would ever dream of siphoning it into their family car just to avoid tax…
It’s also stained with the same red dye as it will happily burn in most diesel engines.
Yes, it is also AFAIK supplied with the same red stain (which can be detected by HM Customs&Excise even after considerable dilution).
As @Griffin36 says they are pretty much the same product.
Not really, no. In the UK “red diesel” is exactly what you’d get on the garage forecourt to put into your tank - just with the addition of red dye for identification purposes as it attracts a lower level of duty.
Heating oil (also called gas oil in the UK) is the same fraction (as identified above) but might differ slightly in some other parameters, it will happily burn in your diesel car (but then, so will vegetable oil**)
** strictly this isn’t that great an idea though - not without either additives to the cooking oil or modifications to the engine (it’s more viscous and can be more acidic as the Top Gear crew discovered to their cost).
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Unfortunately, I can relate an almost identical experience here, during my first marriage. We had new tenants with young children that turned the flat they were renting from my ex-wife into what can only be described as a mould cultivator. The house had been previously rented to a couple that had lived there for 20 years or so and never had a problem with mould.
The problematic tenants got the social services involved, it took court action to sort it out, very messy. All because the tenants wouldn’t follow basic heating / airing rules to “save a few bob”.
There’s a fair overlap though.
To expand on your post, and the article that you linked.
Refrigerant dehumidifiers are probably the easiest to understand - they work like a 'fridge to cool a surface below the ambient room temperature and then pass the incoming air over it. As it cools it can carry less moisture - get the incoming air below its dew point and the moisture condenses out. The air is then passed over the “hot” side of the heat exchanger to pick up waste heat before slightly warmed, dry air is expelled.
They generally use less power than desiccant dehumidifiers which can be a consideration and work best when the incoming air has a high relative humidity. The also work best when the ambient temperature is at least as high as the temperature drop that their refrigeration circuit can produce because, otherwise, the heat exchanger will freeze.
Desiccant dehumidifiers are slightly harder to understand - the basic operation is that incoming air is passed over a desiccant material (usually zeolite) and then expelled, dried, out of the unit.
The problem is that there is a finite amount of desiccant material in the unit so it has to be “regenerated” - this is done by heating air and passing the heated air through the desiccant. This produces a warm, moist air stream which is dried in the same way as as in a refrigerant dehumidifier - by passing it through a heat exchanger to drop it below the dew point. The difference is that the “cold” input air is just room air.
So, if the room is warm they don’t work as well BUT they will happily work down to freezing or even below as the moist air is heated there is much less chance of it freezing in the heat exchanger. Also “warm” is relative - the heated air is significantly above even a warm room so it can still be cooled below the dew point.
However desiccant dehumidifiers tend to use more power to run the heater.
So - ambient air below about 10-15°C, or relatively dry conditions go for a desiccant dehumidifier. Ambient air above 25-30° with high levels of relative humidity - go for a refrigerant model. 10-25°, either but refrigerant models will typically be smaller, llighter and consume less power for the same drying capacity.
I would dispute those temperatures - we have both types - we bought a dessicant one when our house was our holiday home and temps were set to 6 degrees.
The refrigerant one extracts so much more water than the dessicant one did and we are running it at approx 15 degrees.
OK but your comment doesn’t seem completely out of line with what I just wrote. Did the two units have the same notional drying capacity BTW?
I have both types as well. I use desiccant in the UK garage (easily drops down to freezing or below) as well as the cellar in France (though I gave up as clearly an “infinite” amount of moisture in the soil/walls and I think I’d need a big industrial unit to make sufficient impact). Generally in the house I use the refrigerant model as it’s easier to move around.
I think the dessicant type have a very limited range of efficient use and if someone is looking to put one indoors in a even just slightly heated the refrigerant type is very likely to work better (ie suck out more moisture).
It is staggering the amount of water they will extract and worthwhile permenantly draining one via a pipe rather than the internal tanks as the moment it is full the unit will switch off.
Paraffin heaters are just about the worst condensation creators known to man!!!
In my own case the desiccant model is the one which tends to drain more water - YMMV, of course.
There’s a second dessicant type which expells the wet, warm regen air via a flexible hose to the outside. These are very efficient at really dropping ambient humidity, but they do use a lot of electricity and can make the environment uncomfortably warm. This type are often used in a post-flood recovery situation, and the larger units aren’t really suitable for conventional domestic duty because of heat and noise.
What happens is that if someone did that then the next time their car needed a mechanic’s attention then key parts of the engine would be dyed red and I guess that would be a trigger for mechanic/garage to report to police and it would go to Customs & Excise, in the UK at least. With a very hefty fine ensuing.
Sadly.
They do create a lot of moisture. Paraffin heaters create something like nine pints of moisture for every eight pints of fuel burned…so you are probably correct that it is the heaters causing the mildew problems. (my guess too).
I thought these heaters were mainly used for greenhouses though? Don’t they put off a lot of CO2? That can’t be good for her or her children
And with a bit of luck she’ll get legionnaire disease. Dehumidifiers are notorious if used incorectly for spreading bad stuff. Happy new year
Most festive!
What an appalling remark!
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SuKe be careful of your often unannounced visits as you may leave yourself open to legal action unless it is part of the Contract she signed. Droit de visite du propriétaire : les situations possibles
I think (hope) it might have been tongue in cheek!
Thanks. We never make unannounced visits, I always call her first. We are on good terms with her and she is always pleased to see us. 
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I have nothing for comparison but our Zambezi dessicant machine seems to extract a lot of water on the lowest setting run for two hours a day.
Well done. She is obviously more concerned to get the problem solved than being troublesome.