UV Lights Can Keep Your HVAC System Clean
UV lights are important to indoor air quality because simply filtering airborne pollutants often isn’t enough to ensure healthy air quality. Contaminants in your breathing air include much more than inorganic particles like dust and lint. A large component of indoor air pollution are living microorganisms such as mold spores, bacteria and viruses.
While high-efficiency pleated air filters can remove these pathogens from the air, they don’t destroy them. In fact, these organisms often continue to thrive inside the filter media, replicating rapidly and dispersing spores into the airflow circulated throughout your home. The sterilizing power of ultraviolet light has been used in hospital operating rooms and to purify water for decades.
Now UV lights installed inside your HVAC ducts utilize this natural principle to disinfect the air in your home. Certain wavelengths of ultraviolet light that are harmless to humans disrupt the DNA of microorganisms exposed to the light. This prevents these pathogens from reproducing and destroys them both in the air and on surfaces inside your HVAC system. UV lights can be incorporated in your heating and cooling system in three configurations:
- Standalone lamps resemble small fluorescent tubes and are inserted into your return ductwork through a small access hole. Because all the air in your home circulates through the ducts many times per day, continuous exposure to ultraviolet light ensures healthier air quality, free of microorganisms.
- Whole-house filter units often integrate ultraviolet lights in a mechanical filter array consisting of high-efficiency pleated filters. The ultraviolet rays disinfect the filter media and destroy captured microorganisms.
- The wet, dark passageways inside the A/C evaporator coil provide a breeding ground for mold that can obstruct airflow, reducing system performance and efficiency. UV lights mounted at the evaporator coil provide continuous disinfecting effect to prevent the establishment of mold inside the evaporator coil.
Sobieski Services is your partner in ensuring healthy indoor air quality for your family with technology like UV lights. Our goal is to help educate our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC & plumbing systems).
Image Credit: davidkennardphoto