4 ms·
At home it matters too. I recover faster from chest colds when I remember to keep the HEPA filter running. (instead of a simple speed knob, it boots up to a mul
by burfog 7y ago
At home it matters too. I recover faster from chest colds when I remember to keep the HEPA filter running. (instead of a simple speed knob, it boots up to a multilingual color display that I can't even dim, and of course the filter defaults to "off")
Here is a common air quality problem. Anybody have ideas?
My house is in a hot and humid area, so I run the air conditioning most of the year. The duct work appears to be made of bare fiberglass pressed into sheets, with foil on the outside. This is cheap, quiet, and thermally insulating. It does however have a soft highly porous surface that collects black mold.
It doesn't appear possible to do anything about the mold. Thanks to the soft porous surface, scrubbing would tear up the ducts and be ineffective.
Ideally the ducts would have a polished bare silver surface, sturdy enough to scrub. Well, nobody has that, it would be expensive, and I'd have to rip out the drywall of nearly every room in order to install something like that.
What do I do?
- im3w1l 7y agoI don't have any experience in this, but my intuition would be to seal it, mold and bare fibers both.
- proee 7y agoRemove the material with mold from the space. Duct work is a terrible idea in humid climates. It's better to get those individual wall AC units per room. Mold is nasty stuff that will cause long term health problems.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago> It's better to get those individual wall AC units per room. Ductless mini split units.
- t34543 7y agoMini splits still need to be cleaned and evaporator coils collect mold/mildew/contaminates just the same. Regardless of what you have periodic maintenance is what makes a difference.
- specialist 7y agoMaybe something like the wetandforget.com? It's active ingredient is alkyldimethylbenzyl ammonium chloride. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzalkonium_chloride#Bioactive_agents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzalkonium_chloride#Bioactiv... FWIW, I removed the galvanized steel ducts from my house. The insides were disgusting, despite the professional vacuum service. My allergy symptoms and whatnot improved quite a bit afterwards. Good luck. Please post whatever experiments you try.
- t34543 7y agoYou have duct board. It can’t be cleaned, only replaced. If you want to spend a lot look at double wall sheet metal ducts and never let your house sit without dehumidification.