Short YouTube clip (Matt Kelly, Oct 20, 2023) answering whether UV light kills mold. Kelly explains that UV can kill mold, bacteria, and viruses, but the critical limitation is contact time — typical in-duct or add-on UV devices often don’t provide sufficient exposure to reliably inactivate airborne mold spores. He describes coil-mounted UV (to prevent coil growth) and a Sanuvox S300 installation that forces air around a lamp to increase contact time; closes with a promotional consultation offer.
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Lisa's asking, does UV light kill mold? So UV light can kill mold and different biologics like bacteria and viruses. The issue is contact time. So if you just have ultraviolet light, like, say, a rheem halo or one of those LEDs that stick in your H Vac, but the air blows by a million miles an hour, is that enough to kill the mold that's passing? No. That's why these are designed to go over the coil in your H Vac so that it's shining on the coil so that it's preventing growth there because there's contact time with the coil. Now, I do have a Sanuvox S300 unit on our H Vac system on the cold plenum, and it has a UV light in it. But when the air comes in, it comes in this side. It has to cross all the way here over the lamp, and then it turns and then has to come all the way back under the lamp before it then goes through my MERV 11, then goes through a HEPA. Okay. So they do that to increase contact time, but you're not going to find many machines that do that where it forces air around. Like, this is built for, like, going in clinics or hospital settings or places where you need this super cleaning. So they're focused on contact time on that before it hits the filters. But normally, no, you're not going to find a UV solution that's going to clean the air outside of, like, the rheem add on, which will go and protect your coil. Granted, just the top of the coil, if you've got mold growing on the bottom of the coil where the UV light's not hitting, if that mold's hitting there, mold spores hitting there, it's possible to start growing on the bottom. But that's just a symptom of a moldy house. But to make this answer even longer and more confusing, yes, it does kill mold. But in most options systems that are selling it, there's not enough contact time to actually kill that.
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