Basement sits at 68% all summer and my 22-pint unit cannot keep up Dehumidifiers

Before you buy anything, work out where the water is coming from. Mine dropped from 68% to 54% with no new equipment after I extended two downspouts away from the wall and stopped drying laundry down there. A dehumidifier is a bucket under a leak; it works, but it works forever, at 400 to 600 watts, and you pay for that every month.

Target below 60% and ideally 30 to 50%, which is the range published guidance points at for keeping mould and dust mites unhappy. Chasing 40% in an unfinished basement in a humid summer will just run the compressor into the ground for no benefit, so I set mine at 50 and leave it. Also put a cheap hygrometer at the far end of the room, not next to the machine, or you are reading the outlet air and congratulating yourself.

Gravity drain is the single best upgrade and it costs about USD 15 of hose. Two things people get wrong: the outlet has to run downhill the whole way with no dips, and the little rubber plug in the drain port has to actually come out, which on mine required pliers and a swear word. Once it drains itself the unit runs the way it was designed to instead of parking every time a bucket fills at 3am.

You need a 70-pint, full stop. A 22 is a bedroom unit and you have put it in a space five times too big. Get the 70, run a hose to that drain so you never empty a bucket, and set it to 50%.

The joist smell is worth taking seriously on its own. Get a torch and look at the ends where they sit in the pockets, and at the underside of the subfloor near any bathroom above. If any of it is soft or blackened, that is a survey call, not a dehumidifier call.

Fifty pint, gravity drain, off the floor on a paver so the coil is not sucking the coldest air in the room, and check the coil for dust in autumn. Mine has done six summers on that routine.