Breathe easier, Sharonville
We install filtration, humidity control and ventilation equipment in Sharonville, Ohio. We measure humidity, particulates and ventilation before recommending anything. Most calls get handled the same day, and someone answers the emergency line at any hour.
Filtration, purification, and humidity control for allergy season, dry winters, and everything the Cincinnati-area air brings inside.
Matched to your air, not a catalog.
The basement smells musty and it is spreading upstairs.
Basements run cooler, so humid summer air condenses down there, and anything the air handler pulls in gets distributed to the whole house. Measure the relative humidity before doing anything else. Above about 60% the answer is dehumidification and finding where the water is coming from, not air freshening. Check the obvious sources first: grading and downspouts outside, an uninsulated cold-water line sweating, and a condensate drain that is discharging where it should not.
Does cooking really affect indoor air that much?
More than most people expect, particularly with gas. Cooking puts fine particles and combustion byproducts straight into the room, and a range hood that recirculates through a charcoal filter rather than venting outside does very little about it. Use the hood every time and check that it actually vents outdoors. If it does not, opening a window while cooking does more than any purifier will, and it costs nothing.
What do UV lights in the ductwork actually do?
Two quite different jobs get sold under one name. A coil light aimed at the evaporator keeps growth off a surface that is wet for half the year, and that one has a straightforward case: it keeps a coil clean and it keeps the musty smell down. An air-stream light is meant to treat organizms as they pass, and air moves quickly, so contact time is short and the benefit is much harder to demonstrate. If someone is quoting UV, ask which of the two it is and what it is being asked to fix.
Do air purifiers actually work?
The ones that move enough air through a good enough filter do, within the room they are in. That last part is where expectations go wrong: a portable unit sized for a bedroom does very little for a house. Whole-house media filtration built into the ductwork treats everything the system circulates, which is a different scale of job. Look for how much air a unit actually moves rather than the room size printed on the box, and be skeptical of anything whose main claim is ozone or ions.