The rules this site follows

The no-fabrication rule

This is the first rule because everything else depends on it. No number appears on this site that we cannot trace to a named source or compute from one with the arithmetic shown.

In practice that means "Data unavailable" is an acceptable sentence here, and it appears more often than is comfortable. Fourteen of the twenty-one units we cover have no published wattage and no named entry in the ENERGY STAR certified list, so those pages give the certified class band and say plainly that the specific figure does not exist. The alternative - printing a plausible number - would be indistinguishable from research to a reader, and that is exactly why we will not do it.

Specifically prohibited, without exception:

• Estimating a specification and presenting it as published
• Using one model's figure under another model's name
• Restating another publisher's measurement as our own
• Inventing a price, a rating or a review count
• Fabricating a testimonial, a user quote or a case study
• Claiming a credential, certification or qualification we do not hold
• Claiming or implying we tested a product

What counts as a source

Tier 1 - preferred, cited by name and linked

• Manufacturer specification sheets, manuals and product documentation
• The US DOE dehumidifier test procedure and the standards derived from it
• The ENERGY STAR certified product list and program criteria
• EIA electricity rate data
• EPA guidance on indoor humidity and mold
• AHAM standards

Tier 2 - acceptable with attribution

Retailer listings for live price and availability, and retailer-hosted rating data. Both are attributed to that retailer at the point of use and are never restated as our own findings.

Not acceptable

• Another affiliate site's numbers restated as fact
• Aggregator search-volume pages
• Anything recalled from memory rather than looked up
• Any figure whose source cannot be named

Citation practice

• Every number gets a source, inline, at the point of use
• Computed figures show their formula and inputs - a computation is not a citation, but its inputs need one
• Every guide and reference page carries a Sources section
• Reference tables carry the date the data was retrieved
• When we cite a competitor's finding we name them and link them. We do not launder other people's research

Our position on testing

We do not test products. There is no chamber, no meter and no shelf of units. Units we claim to have tested: zero.

This is stated on the homepage, on the methodology page, at the foot of every product card and in every roundup, because it is the single most important thing a reader needs in order to weigh what they are reading. Publications that do run instrumented tests are linked where their measurements are relevant.

No image on this site is captioned, positioned or laid out to imply it is our own hardware or our own test setup. Stock photography is used for atmosphere and context only, and never as evidence.

Why there is no score

A star rating or a score out of ten from a publisher who has not used the product is a number pretending to be a measurement. This site's content model has no score field, so there is nothing to render and nothing to mark up - and none of the structured-data node types that express a publisher's own rating appears in our markup anywhere. Product, Offer, ItemList, Article, FAQPage and BreadcrumbList, and nothing else.

Where a retailer's own rating data is shown it is attributed to that retailer and never restated as ours.

How recommendations are made

• Buyer first, always. Where a cheaper or lower-paying product is the better buy for the reader, it goes first. Commission never sets an order.
• Every roundup names something to skip. A recommendation with no counter-case is an advertisement.
• Every product carries a stated reason not to buy it. The data model requires it - a product entry without a skip condition will not compile.
• We do not recommend what cannot be bought. No comparison is written whose buy button cannot exist, and no product appears without a verified retailer listing.

Corrections

Errors are fixed at the top of the affected page with a dated correction note. They are not silently overwritten.

To report one, use the contact form or email info@thedryindex.com. A link to the source that contradicts us is the fastest route to a change. We will check it against the primary source and, where we were wrong, correct it and say so.

Where a manufacturer disputes a figure, we will publish their position alongside ours and name the source of each. We will not remove a sourced figure because a manufacturer would prefer it gone.

Update cadence

• Prices - daily, automated, with the verification date rendered on the page
• Whether a pick is still live and still the right call - monthly, and on any stock-out
• Model specifications against manufacturer sources - quarterly
• Wattage and running-cost data against the ENERGY STAR certified list - quarterly
• EIA state electricity rates - quarterly and on each release
• DOE, ENERGY STAR and AHAM standards - annually, and immediately on any change
• Full internal and outbound link audit - quarterly

A page's last-updated date changes only when its content actually changed. We do not blanket-touch dates to look fresh, and the XML sitemap reads those real dates rather than the build timestamp.

Independence

• No manufacturer has any input into what appears here, in advance or afterwards
• No product placement is sold, at any price
• No free products, samples or loaners are accepted - we do not test, so there is nothing to accept them for
• No link exchanges, no paid links, no private blog networks, no reciprocal-link trading
• No cross-linking to other sites purely to move ranking signal around

Who writes this, and who checks it

Scooter M. writes the site. There is no editorial team beyond that and no expert panel, and we are not going to pretend otherwise by inventing a masthead. Where a question needs a credential the author does not hold, the page says the reader needs a professional rather than improvising an answer. More about the author.

Generative tools

Where software is used in producing pages here, it is used for drafting and structure. It is not used as a source. Every factual claim on this site traces to a document we retrieved or a dataset we processed, and the sources are listed on the page so you can check them rather than take our word for it.