HVAC coil cleaning, what’s all the fuss about? - by Gamble Wiseman

Spring is here! Along with it, everyone’s favorite allergen; pollen. It makes your nose run, your eyes blurry, and sneezes become an abundant part of everyday life. It also sticks to everything. Did you just wash your car? Congratulations, now it’s yellow. You don’t like yellow? Too bad, pollen doesn’t care about your feelings. Just imagine what it’s doing to your equipment’s condensing coils!

There are days when I’ll be on a roof for a building survey in the spring and it looks like the coils are all wearing sweaters. While it might be nice to think of this being cozy during the cooler months, even a light coating of dust, pollen, or grime on these components can be catastrophic. Studies show that a buildup of just 0.042 inches of dirt on a heating or cooling coil can result in an efficiency decrease of 21%. Furthermore, 9 out of 10 systems failures are caused by dirt and dust. It is essential that these systems are maintained regularly and kept clean.

Many times, when the spring season comes along, we get calls from building and business owners whose systems go down because of dirty coils and filters. If these coils had been cleaned regularly, those systems would never have gone down. Since we started adding coil cleanings biannually to all our maintenance contracts, we have seen a significant reduction in these calls from our existing customers.

There are also several air quality products that help keep these components clean. For example, the iWave-C sanitizes the air while also making your filters more effective, while an electrostatic filter will pull more particulates from the air while the fans are running than a normal pleated filter.

The point is, if you haven’t thought to have this service taken care of, call your HVAC contractor now before the season gets too busy or you’re out of luck. Better yet, call us if they haven’t suggested you clean your coils!

Gamble Wiseman handles commercial maintenance at Cotti-Johnson HVAC, Inc., Taunton, Mass.