UV Lights: Here’s Why They Make Sense in Your Yuma Home

Southwest Arizona has the reputation of being one of the driest climates in the country, but during the peak of the cooling season, the humidity rises during the monsoon. Many homeowners don’t realize that UV lights can actually help combat the side effects of high humidity on central cooling systems. Ultraviolet lights use the same spectrum of the sun that disinfects. These lights alter the DNA of organic compounds, keeping them from reproducing.

As the air passes over the evaporator coil inside your A/C or heat pump’s air handler, water condenses andUV Lights: Here's Why They Make Sense in Your Yuma Home ideally, drains through the drainpipe. However, if your A/C doesn’t run long enough at a time, the water tends to stay inside the drain pan and collect on the evaporator coil, and could foster mold growth.

UV lights placed inside your air handler or ducts near the evaporator coil can stop mold and other bacterial films from growing. Unchecked, these types of growths can cover the evaporator coil, which retards the efficiency of your cooling system, driving up energy costs.

Besides covering the evaporator coil, the mold spores can blow throughout your home and grow wherever there’s enough moisture to support them, such as the kitchen, bathroom or laundry area. Mold also can irritate allergies or trigger asthma attacks. If it’s black mold, it’s possible for it to cause serious health problems for your entire family.

If you use a heat pump, you’ll also experience reduced heating during the winter from mold or other biological contaminants covering the coils, so it’s important to take steps to stop harmful biological growth in the air handler.

Another way to take advantage of the benefits of UV lighting for your HVAC system is to use it with a variable-speed air handler that uses a fraction of the electricity a single-speed motor does and runs more continuously and quietly. You can run the air handler around the clock and benefit from UV protection year-round, reducing the presence of biocontaminants in your air.

If you’d like to improve your HVAC system’s efficiency and clean the air with UV lights, contact Hansberger Refrigeration & Electric Company. We’ve provided trusted HVAC services for the Yuma area since 1952.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Yuma, Arizona about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about UV lights and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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