Musty Smell
“Why does my home smell musty?”
Musty is that kind of wet, damp, dirty socks in the bottom of the hamper, kind of smell. The reason it smells that way is because in air conditioning you have to remove moisture to get humidity out of the air. We have to remove more moisture here than in Arizona so moisture gets to be a problem.
Air conditioners are all about removing heat. You are taking heat out of the air. It is going over a cold coil, which has refrigerant in it, then it is coming out cooler air than what came in. The byproduct of that is water. That is why you have drain lines and why you see water dripping outside. What will happen is when you have that hot air going across that cold coil you will get condensation and that is going to drip down into the drain pan. If that drain pan is not draining, or something is the matter, things will start growing in that drain pan.
You have cold water sitting in a damp, cool environment so the thing that happens is growth. The strongest bacteria in the world lasts 24 hours, so if it not in the air, or it is a bug, or a virus, it is going to die and it will sit in the bottom of the drain pan for a period of time. The first time you turn on your heat or the air conditioning, you will get that damp, musty kind of smell. There is all kinds of mold so we don’t call it mold we call it growth. The way to prevent that from happening is to introduce UV into that system somehow.
We do it here with a coil scrubber which shines on the indoor coil and with UV power nothing can grow. If you want to prove that point, everyone has that mat at the front or the back of the house, that has the mildew and is kind of wet. Take that mat and stick it out in the middle of the yard, in the sunshine, for a period of time, and it will be clean and dry. Nothing can grow when UV is present. In the indoor air environment, in the air handler, that is not present. We have to make it present with the UV light. UV light will solve that problem. The same power of the sun we can bring it into your system. That will stop the dusty, musty, wet odor smell in your system.
Your friend in comfort and energy savings,
Derek Cole
Derek Cole is the General Manager of One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning®, an independently owned and operated franchise based in Laurinburg, North Carolina since 1953. He has more than 15 years of experience in the HVAC industry and has created two You Tube broadcasts, The Comfort Experts and #AskDerekCole, filled with tips and tricks on saving energy and being comfortable. He was named the Top 40 under 40 in the HVAC industry by the News magazine and featured in Entrepreneur Magazine Franchise Player Spotlight. Derek has also been seen on CBS, FOX, NBC, ABC, Huffington Post, and Bloomberg Business sharing about One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning® and home comfort tips.
