January 2007
I decided to a review on the Aquaultraviolet pond line of UV's. This company has been around a long time and has put out some decent products
I have a fair amount of experience with these over the years, setting them up, changing sleeves, bulbs and ballasts
This review assumes you know the basics of UV design and are familiar with lamps, quartz sleeves and ballasts etc.
As always, these reviews represent my honest opinion and knowledge at the time of writing |
Aqua Ultraviolet produce a range of UV's for all pond volumes from 100 to 17,000 gallons.
Their smaller units are 8, 15, and 25 watts. The larger sizes, 40, 80, 120, 160 and 200 watt models are all basically using the same sized body and 40 watt bulb - they just string several of them together in series
These units also come in black and several years ago, AUV introduced wipers to keep the quartz sleeves clean.
AUV also introduced quick release couplings as people often made the mistake of gluing solid pipe into them. As always, I recommend rubber couplers. The I.D. (internal diametre) of these units is 2 inches. This allows for good flow through for the typical 1.5 or 2 inch bore pump. There is an external ballast housed in strong metal box. A ballast regulates the operational current which saves energy and stops the bulbs from potentially burning themselves out. For the most part, the unit is robustly built. Performance is good to excellent - these units work as advertised |
There are some very poor design choices with this unit which are not initially obvious
Flooding Your Ballast ?
AUV has chosen to use anti-kink hose to connect their electrical lines to the bulbs. We don't sell anti-kink hose because it becomes brittle and cracks after a few years, especially if exposed to the sun. Besides that you can't use rubber couplers and therefore have to struggle with insert fittings
It is not uncommon for a quartz sleeve to crack. They are extremely thin and need to be in order to allow maximum UV light transmittance. But when the sleeves crack, the anit-kink serves as a conduit for the water, bringing it right into the ballast box and shorting out your ballast. If you are lucky, your anit-kink hose will have cracked before this happens and the water will drain out instead of continuing into the ballast
This would illustrate poor design even at the prototype level. AUV revamped the ballast for the 40 watt model making it much smaller and this refresh ballast can't be flooded - larger models continue to exhibit this potential problem and replacement ballasts are not cheap
Bulb Connection
Again, the harness is the week spot on this unit. Although its not too difficult once you know, disconnecting the harness from the lamp/bulb is not easy. There is a series of threads and rotating parts - picking the right one and avoiding twisting the unit seems to be harder than it should be. Recent models have an easy-twist connector which has improved things
Bulb/Lamp Replacement
Not only have my customers broken sleeves while replacing bulbs, I have myself more than once had this happen. Bulbs should be installed with the unit horizontally placed. If you try to do it vertically, the mere act of letting the bulb drop 1 inch will crack the quartz sleeve. This is not so much of a fault with AUV's product, rather a warning. AUV's warns of this near the back of their manual but they show an exaggerated drop of the bulb, it really takes no force at all to do break the sleeve. Some manufacturers supply O-rings and/or a rubber like thimble which fits on the end of their bulbs to prevent this from happening |
Build Quality
The unit is solid and for all intents and purposes, unbreakable.
As mentioned, I don't like the anti-kink hose. Ballasts on 80 watt units and above are heavy gauge metal. The newer smaller ballasts are an upgrade and made of the same material as the UV bodies
Functionality
This UV works well and has realistic flow and sizing charts. However, other models on the market have larger diametre bodies which allow for larger volumes of water to be sterilized using just 1 bulb. This advantage becomes more apparent with ponds over 4,000 gallons. Its less expensive to change 1 bulb than 2,3 or 4
Recommendation
For ponds up to 4,000 gallons we recommend these units. They work, the price point is good and inline with competing units. However, for large ponds, 1 bulb units like DeltaUV's EP line are a better choice. AUV's 120, 160 and 200 watt units mean 3,4 or 5 bulbs to replace - this is very expensive. Additionally, there are multiple quartz sleeves that can be broken and leak
For ponds over 4K, we have difficulty recommending these units due to the high cost of replacing 3 or more bulbs |
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