Is Your Air Conditioner Spreading the Flu and Mold in Your Home?

Your air conditioner keeps you cool at a cost (and we don’t mean your cooling bill). When you look at your air conditioner, it’s important to ask yourself, Is my air conditioner spreading the flu?

After cooling your home for awhile, mold and other bacteria can grow on the cooling coils. That means every time you turn on your air conditioner, you could be spreading all sorts of pollutants all over your house through your air ducts.

Luckily, there’s a simple solution to this. But before we get into that, let’s go into more detail how that nasty mold, viruses and bacteria got on your air conditioner in the first place.

How mold gets on your air conditioner coils

Cold gas is pumped through coils made of copper tubing with aluminum fins in your air conditioner. So, the coils get chilled.

Old Air Conditioner1 300X214 1

Then return air from your house is filtered and blown over these chilled fins. So now the return air is chilled as well. Much like a cold glass of water with ice in it, condensation forms.

Normally, the moisture drips off of the fins into a drip pan, where moisture is then drained away.

Here’s the problem

Remember, the return air from your home? Whatever mold or bacteria it’s carrying gets deposited on the moist copper coils. Most air conditioners can’t filter out all mold spores and bacteria. This is why choosing the right air filter can make such a big difference.

The moist coils become a breeding ground for mold, viruses (like the flu) and bacteria because these pollutants thrive in wet, dark environments.

This causes a variety of problems including:

  • Increased mold colonization of environment
  • Decreased airflow from air conditioner
  • Decreased energy efficiency with air conditioner
  • Reduced equipment life span
  • Higher electric bills
  • Mold odors
  • Increased allergy risks
  • Increased indoor air quality problems

So what’s the solution?

Why UV lamps are the solution

UV germicidal lamps are able to:

  • Kill harmful molds, bacteria, viruses and mildew in your home.
  • Reduce or eliminate allergens, asthma attacks, sinus problems and bronchitis
  • Keep coils sanitary and germ-free
  • Lower coil corrosion, which contributes to refrigerant leaks.

So, how does it do this? UV germicidal lamps emit a unique energy that penetrates the cell walls of microorganisms like mold and bacteria. This causes cellular damage at the genetic level so the microorganism can’t reproduce or spread.

Installing UV lights like the Biocide Chamber above or below your air conditioner’s coils therefore helps eliminate bacteria, mold and mildew by killing the organisms with UV light.

Concerned about mold growing on your air conditioner’s coils? Contact us today, and let us install our Biocide Chambers UV lamps to keep your family safe from harm.