If you want another source to read up on that type of system, see ultravation. The more sophisticated systems use UV lights that are mounted by the coil in the ductwork to kill germs and work on smells. These require additional electrical to be hooked up. Recommend for allergies, etc.

I have had a Cleaneffects since Oct 2007. I am very disappointed in its effectiveness. It was recommended highly by Consumers Reports at the time. They don�t recommend it that highly any more. We have severe respiratory problems here, so I was anxious to get it. I am embarrassed to admit that I was such a sucker, but hopefully it will help someone else. I was told by two different installers that the filter wouldn�t work with my old furnace, and modifying the furnace to make it work would cost more than a new furnace. I got the new furnace (Trane) even though my old one worked well, and it wound up costing me about $7000 to get both the furnace and the Cleaneffects filter. It would have been worth every penny if the filter had performed as Consumers Reports claimed, but it hasn�t even come close. I still had a couple of old room filters around and one night my wife got so stuffed up that she decided to pull one out and put it in the bedroom. It cleared her up right away. I bought a couple more room filters and we are using them extensively now. The air is much cleaner and the room filters cost a lot less than the whole-house system. I have maintained the system with diligence and in accordance with the manual, so those who say that system failures are due to laziness of the maintainer are wrong in this case. Here is why I think many users, such as me, are disappointed: When the contractors talk about how these things work, they say that enough air moves through the filter to account for changing all the air in the room several times a day. That is true, but it is misleading. If all the air in each room went through the filter even once a day, I believe the system would work pretty well. But in reality most of the air in any room takes the shortest path from the furnace output to the furnace intake. Some of the air gets exchanged (and therefore cleaned) over and over again, but most of the air remains undisturbed and un-cleaned. In my home, furnace outlets are near the ceiling as are the furnace intakes. So air near the floor doesn�t get churned up and seldom gets into the filter. A small room filter cleans the air near it, so the best solution is lots of small room air filters. In other words, a furnace-mounted whole house system is a flawed concept. In order for the system to work properly the furnace fan would have to run constantly at high speed and the house ducting would have to be designed so that the air will always be well-mixed. Air can�t be cleaned by the main filter if it never gets into it. You can make it work better with a lot of small fans, but if you are going to do that you might as well use small room filters. I wish Consumer is Reports had done a better job of reviewing this a few years ago, and I wish I had applied a little more common sense to my purchasing decision. It is true that I have a much better furnace now and possibly the best air cleaner I can get using a furnace-mounted system. That is looking at the bright side, but I often think about how I could have used that $7000 for other things. It was an expensive lesson.

no not a swamp cooler. After thinking about this further my further educated guess is water chilled condenser. Basically how this works is water is used from a cooling tower to cool the refrigerant, that is piped into the big box below the air handler. The big box is where the compressor sits. I've attached a picture that shows basic configuration of how this works. The return is likely attached to a fresh air economizer. I am going out on a limb when I say that as we don't know the location of this 'condo'. Why would they do this? space is a premium in a condo. The more units they can cram into that space the more condos they can sell. It's far more cost effective 'space wise' to have one 'water cooled' condenser that serves the whole condo complex. The condo dues cover the cost of the water cooled condenser. If you have a problem with your unit, the unit is accessible thru your own condo. This can limit theft problems, or contractors stumbling onto the wrong unit and damaging something among many other out comes. Magic 8 ball, out. PS: it could also be geothermal ground loop. Like if there is a pond or lake on the premises.

Hi my electronic air cleaner is in the attic and I would like to replace the electronic cells with regular Merv media, each cell is 16 x 26 x 5 This means if I would like to replace all of them I would need to purchase 4 at that size, The problem with this is that they are very pricey, Amazon sells 4 filters for $80 My question is do I have to actually remove these metal cells and replace with media filter or can I use the other pre filter compartment which is 2 feet to the right, that compartment is only 1 inch in depth so the filters would end up being half the cost.