Your message has been sent successfully. We will contact you soon!
Your message has been sent successfully. We will contact you soon!
A UV lamp installed inside the air handler has one job: to keep the evaporator coil and the drain pan from growing biological film. In a climate where the coil is wet for most of the year and the cabinet stays warm, that film forms reliably, and once it does it insulates the fins, restricts airflow and becomes the source of the smell people describe as musty air from the vents.
That is the claim worth making for coil sterilisation, and it is a narrow one. A lamp aimed at the coil treats the coil. It does not sterilise air moving past it at duct velocity, because contact time at that speed is a fraction of a second.
Coil treatment means a lamp mounted to shine continuously on the coil face and the pan. Air treatment means a higher-output lamp in the duct stream, sized so that the dose delivered at design airflow is enough to matter, and it is a different product at a different price with different maintenance. Selling the first while describing the benefits of the second is the most common misrepresentation in this category.
For most Florida homes the coil lamp is the one that pays back, because the problem it addresses is the one those homes actually have.
Placement decides whether the lamp works. It has to see the coil face and the pan, and it has to be positioned so the technician can reach it for replacement without dismantling the cabinet. Ultraviolet output also degrades nearby plastics and elastomers: flexible drain fittings, wire insulation and pan components in the line of sight will become brittle over time unless they are shielded or specified for it. A lamp installed without regard to what it is illuminating creates a different failure a few years out.
A UV lamp continues to glow long after its germicidal output has fallen below useful intensity. Visible light is not the indicator. Lamps are rated in service hours, typically annual replacement in a system that runs as long as they do here, and a lamp left in place for years is decorative. Replacement is part of a maintenance visit rather than a separate call-out.
A UV lamp earns its place on a coil that runs wet eight months a year. That is most of Coral Springs, Miami Lakes and Hollywood, and particularly the houses where the air handler sits in a warm garage rather than in conditioned space.
A lamp works on a coil that is already clean and a house that is not soaking wet: washing the coil and getting the humidity down come first.
A coil lamp treats the coil and the drain pan. Air moving past at duct velocity gets a fraction of a second of exposure, which is not a meaningful dose. Treating the air stream is a different installation with a higher-output lamp sized for the airflow.
Annually in a system that runs as long as they do here. A lamp keeps glowing long after its germicidal output has dropped below useful intensity, so visible light tells you nothing about whether it is still working.
Ultraviolet degrades plastics and elastomers in its line of sight. Flexible drain fittings, wire insulation and pan components have to be shielded or specified for exposure, which is a placement decision made at installation.
At the coil, often yes, because the coil runs wet eight months of the year. It earns its place particularly where the air handler sits in a warm closet or garage.
Inside the cabinet, yes. It is enclosed in the air stream and there is no exposure in the house, which is also why looking at it directly during service is not something we let happen.
Often, if the smell comes from the coil and the pan, which it usually does. If the smell comes from a return pulling attic air, the lamp changes nothing and we will say so.
