I have a damp basement in my old house. A dehumidifier runs all the time and helps tremendously, but dumping the tank is inconvenient and needs to be done every one or two days. Not anymore!
For less than $15, I now have a better system. A plastic barrel ($5 or less, mine was free), a scrap piece of counter top (plywood would work, too, ask your friends), $4.00 of tubing and a $9.00 pump, and I no longer have to pay for water for my plants.
Set-up your dehumidifier to drain directly into the barrel. Place the pump (mine is around 400 gallons per hours) in the bottom of the barrel (you can wire it to a clean stone to keep it on the bottom of the barrel) and lead the hose up and out. Make sure it's long enough to reach into your watering cans and/or buckets.
The barrel holds almost a week's worth of water in my house (yours may differ!), so less dumping and when I want to water my plants, I put the hose attached to the pump (at the bottom of the barrel) into my watering can and plug in the pump. My watering can is full in little time, and I am not paying for the water as I would if I used the hose. When you're done filling all of your containers, unplug the pump. The dehumidifier is running anyway, so why not make it convenient to use the water collected?
Remember: with a system like this, the dehumidifier will keep running even if the barrel is overflowing because its reservoir is always empty, so if you are going away for a while, be sure to re-plug the reservoir on your dehumidifier so that you don't wind up with an overflowing barrel!
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