If you have municipal supply, you have chlorine and slime mold. Slime mold gets into underground municipal water systems; it is not harmful to drink, but, as you and I both discovered, it plugs up the pipes and makes a nasty slime. I have a 25 gal reservoir on a recirculating system and I draw municiplal water into a 5-gal bucket at least 48 hours before I use it in the reservoir. Letting water stand lets the chlorine go off to atmosphere. I also treat the water with 500-1000 ppm of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide which controls the slime mold. I do nothing for minerals but compensate for it by adjusting nutrient concentrations....the plants will use the minerals.

Oh never mind. I just went down there, ready to do battle with the slime, only to find that there is no way of reaching the area where that slime has collected. When I looked for screws to remove or panels to pop off there were none. And the mess is immediately behind the front grill (plastic), on a 3" little 'shelf' in front of the metal fins - an area that you'd think would be easy to service. What the heck? There are some additional screw on the back but they seem to be actually holding the "guts" in place and I don't want to mess with the electrical and the compressor itself. You'd think the front grill would just pop off, wouldn't you? To make matters even worse, when I shone a light in there I saw mouse droppings!!!! I had mice for a while in the old house - what on earth would they be doing in there? This machine has been going for years and never really shut down for very long (except between cycles of course). So now this machine's been blowing out mouse poop for who knows how long! Geez. I wonder if a small-appliance repair shop would be able to get this thing open and cleaned. I'm afraid if I attempt it, I'll end up with spare parts when it's all done. At $350 I'd hate to replace something just because it's dirty.

Golfer 1512, Once you clean the "Slime" you should install a UV Lamp. This will kill molds, bacteria, viruses,... Installing a two bulb Lamp over the coil will kill anything on the "A" coil. Tests have shown that only 20 minutes per month are required to eliminate mold on the coil. Hope That Helps! Dan Here is a link that might be useful: Honeywell UV Lamp

I'm fairly certain it's made from Elmers school glue and the activator they sell. It's the pink food coloring that's the real issue here, it appears to have stained the tan suede, even after the glue slime is removed. I was hoping maybe, if I put it out in the sun, it might fade...?