uv sterilizer + fresh water=?

[jschall]

I've used many models of those brands and am confident in them... I'm also quite well read on UV lights and I am not aware of any brand I would steer you away from. Just avoid the "foreign knock offs"...

Heh. Mine is just one that my LFS owner had lying around. It has no brand on it. It has a spiralled piece of plastic tube going around an 18w UV power compact and the whole thing is inside a tubular reflector.
I researched the plastic and they're most likely using FEP, which is transparent to UVC light.

 

[jschall]

Heh. Mine is just one that my LFS owner had lying around. It has no brand on it. It has a spiralled piece of plastic tube going around an 18w UV power compact and the whole thing is inside a tubular reflector.
I researched the plastic and they're most likely using FEP, which is transparent to UVC light.

And of course, if they're using some other kind of plastic, the whole thing is useless and the plastic is going to degrade in the light and short out the electrics then start flooding my floor.

 

[squint]

I had one of the first UV sterilizers to use the coiled plastic tubes. It leaked almost from the start as did its replacement.

Even if it wasn't plastic, I would avoid any sort of spiral. UV is effective a certain distance away from the bulb and a tube-shaped bulb has an effective area that's a cylinder. If you fill any part of the cylinder with air by confining the water to a coil within that cylinder, you're irradiating air instead of water. Sure, the coil may increase the amount of time the water is exposed to the UV but it also decreases the amount of water. If you wanted to decrease the flow rate you could just use a less powerful pump while still utilizing the area of effect of the UV.