This short YouTube transcript explains why HVAC systems produce a musty, damp, 'dirty socks' smell: air conditioning cools air over cold coils which causes condensation; the resulting water drains into a damp, dark pan where microbial growth develops and produces the odor.
Yeah. Musty. Is that kind of wet, damp, dirty socks, bottom of the hamper kind of smell? So that is musty. The reason it smells that way is because in air conditioning, you have to remove moisture to get humidity out of there. So air conditioning is all about removing heat. Right. So you're taking heat out of the air. It's going over a cold coil, which has refrigerant in it, and it's coming back out cooler air than what came in. So the byproduct of that is water. So that's why you have drain. That's why you see water dripping outside. So what will happen is, when you have that hot air going across that cold coral, you get condensation, and that's going to drip down to the drain pan. You have cold water sitting in a damp, dark spot. So the thing that happens is growth. Right.
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