Do dehumidifiers really work?

So I’ve been thinking, do dehumidifiers really work?

My house is a Ranch layout with a basement. For years before we arrived there had been some water issues.

The gutters were all broken, water was not being routed away from the house but instead puddling up in the front and seeping down into the concrete and dirt in front of the house. There is a wannabe French Drain installed inside the house along the walls of the basement, but it has been rusted out for years.

You can actually see dirt/mud down in them, which I fear might mean that the foundation has some very weak support up under it, but I can not be sure w/o tearing it up.

We have temporarily fixed the gutters and routed all the water runoff from the yard and roof away from the house. We noticed an immediate difference not only outside but inside as well. The basement still has a very damp feel and some what mildew-ish smell to it so I snatched two dehumidifiers from my parents and have been letting them run in 1 of the two 20×25 rooms in the basement for the past few weeks.

Every morning, the water tubs in the dehumidifiers are full of water, and every afternoon when I get home the tubs for the dehumidifiers are again full with water. But how do I know this is water that was in the air, that these things really work? I did some research to figure it out, and it’s really a very basic concept.

Cool the air somehow, the moisture will condense, capture condensed moisture in a tub.

One of the dehumidifiers froze over when we were running them in the winter time. I guess the air + cooling unit was just too cold, it turned into a big block of ice on the machine.

The other one however did not, but it was unable to pull any moisture from the air. Now that its hot neither of them have any problems filling up the tubs.

After only a few weeks, it’s hard to tell if the dehumidifiers are making a big difference in the basement rooms as far as humidity goes. I am hopeful that over time all the efforts put together will really work.

Anyway, I hope to answer the question do dehumidifiers really work? I think the dehumidifiers help but I have a feeling that all this effort may be in vein unless I continue this project for a very long time.