Charlie McDermott:
Welcome to Comfort on Porpoise, sponsored by Dolphin Cooling & Heating, who have been providing 24/7 Comfort on Porpoise since 1998. Hey, there, it’s Charlie McDermott, producer of the comfort on Corpus podcast. And once again, I have Lauren here co-hosting with me. Lauren, how are you doing?
Lauren Willeford:
I’m good. How are you today, Charlie?
Charlie McDermott:
I am good. I always feel great when you are a co-host, because what do I know about these topics? So I know today we’re going to talk more about the sanitation part of the air, can I call it the air experience? Do you guys use that terminology at all?
Lauren Willeford:
We don’t, but that’s not a bad way to put it. Hey, I mean, the AC is basically the lungs of the house, so it is the air.
Charlie McDermott:
And therefore, the lungs that are in our bodies inhale what’s coming out of the lungs of the house.
Lauren Willeford:
Correct.
Charlie McDermott:
That’s why I loved the topic today and what you’re going to get into. So let’s start with that. What are you talking about?
Lauren Willeford:
We offer a service called duct sanitization. A lot of people think when they think about their duct work, they think duct cleaning. And there are companies that do offer duct cleaning. Most applications for duct cleaning are with sheet metal duct work, because it uses this almost like a rotary brush that scrapes the interior of the duct and then there’s this vacuum attached to it. So as it scrapes, it kind of sucks everything out and into this machine.
That application of duct cleaning doesn’t work on most duck work inside residential applications, because it’s either made of duct board or what we call flex duct, both of which are made with fiberglass. So if you were to use that rotary style brush inside of either one of those, the duct board or the flex duct, it’s actually going to tear up the fiberglass, which then releases fiberglass particles, which would float through your air. And eventually you’d breathe them in. Nobody wants that. Okay. That’s bad. It’s just bad.
We have another solution and it’s called duck sanitization. And it’s a pretty simple process. The actual sanitization itself takes about 15 to 30 minutes, but start to finish it’s about an hour. Our techs come out and what we do is attach to your air handler. Typically the supply plenum, we cut a small hole in that and we use a machine called a fogger. We hook the fogger up to the supply plenum, attach it to that hole and we use a solution that’s called Bio-Fresh. Bio-Fresh is safe for both pets and people. So it’s not something where you have to leave the home, or it would be toxic, nothing like that. And we put the solution into the fogger machine and then pump it through the ductwork.
So by putting it right into the supply plenum, as the air moves, it’ll actually filter out through all of the duct work in your entire house. Now, the key to doing this is to make sure that you don’t wanna use too much solution cuz you don’t wanna make anything wet. So when we do it, we do it in a way that it’s basically this very fine mist that you almost can’t even see, will float through the ductwork, you know, come back out your vents and everything like that. It does have a little bit of a smell to it, it leaves kind of a fresh smell. But not any major scent to it. Because nobody wants to smell that, it wouldn’t smell very good. So we let that pump through the system for about 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of your house and how much duct work you have.
And as that chemical, as that solution goes through all the duct work, it basically just sanitizes any growth that might have started to develop inside your duct work. Most ductwork inside residential homes is typically fairly clean. I haven’t personally run across any cases where anyone had real significant mold damage, unless let’s say the house has been sitting for a very long time, like a year or more with no AC and no one’s been in it or anything like that. But this does help to eliminate anything that may potentially be in there.
We recommend that people do it when they get a new system installed. It’s a great time to do it cuz we’re in there taking out the old system. So that way we kind of clean everything. So you get a fresh start essentially.
Or we’ll all also offer it to people at maintenances. If they have a little bit of an older system or if we found growth inside the cabinet, which is what our UV coil light is designed to prevent and treat and kill as any growth inside the cabinet. If we found any growth, say someone doesn’t have a UV light, we may recommend adding the UV light, just to do the duck sanitation, to make sure that everything gets removed.
So again, it’s like that whole notion of starting fresh and customers have been very happy with this service. It works well. It’s not extremely expensive, it’s very affordable. And it’s not something you have to do all the time. So it wouldn’t be like every year you need to have your duct sanitized. No, you might do it every three to five years. So one, two times over the course of say a 10 year lifespan of a piece of equipment. So it’s not needed constantly. It wouldn’t be, come in and sanitize my ducts every year, every six months, it’s not necessary.
Charlie McDermott:
That’s good to know. So you’d mentioned this in conjunction with the UV lighting. I know we talked about this in a previous episode, for listeners who certainly can go back and listen. You wanna give a quick overview of how that works?
Lauren Willeford:
Sure, our UV lights, which we have talked about before, it’s called a UV coil light. It emits UV rays like you get from the sun in high concentration. The lights are good for a year, excuse me, the bulb is good for a year. As far as the potency of its effectiveness, it goes inside the air handler, which is that indoor unit in the cabinet in an area where it’s going to cover the vast majority of the service area of the coil, but the light also reflects around the cabinet. So it helps prevent or kill any microbial growth, any bacteria, things of that nature. And because it is in the cabinet and all the air in the whole house is going to cycle through that air handler. It does come in contact with the air.
It’s not an air purification system, so I’m not going to call it that, but anything that would be in the air, if it passed by the UV light, it would be killed. And that’s real simple. The original ballast install with the bulb and then annually with that product, you do have to replace the bulb in order to keep the efficiency because it is a stationary bulb. So over time dust will collect on there, which diminishes the UVS potency.
Charlie McDermott:
Wow, good stuff. So, you know, my back ground with health clubs and all and you know, I’ve always been a big fan, pre COVID, doing everything we can to boost our immune system or at least keep keeping chinks away from the armor, you know?
Lauren Willeford:
Yes.
Charlie McDermott:
I think a lot of little things accumulate over time. And then when something like a COVID or heck even the flu or, or God knows what else, hopefully nothing crazy, but stuff happens. So what can we do to put the odds in our favor? I love your terminology, the lungs of the house. I mean, truly your air system is the lungs of the house. And if we lived in an area that has a power plant that spews out all pollution? I don’t know if that’s what they do. We don’t allow that, but if something that really tarnished the air grew up in our neighborhood, we’d all put for sale signs up and go someplace else.
It’s those things we don’t see that can really make a big difference either for or against us. So love, as I said, when we started this duct sanitation, I love what you guys are doing to do everything we can for those invisible chinks in the armor and continue to help us not only stay healthy, but stay cool or give us comfort on porpoise.
Lauren Willeford:
Yup, comfort on porpoise. So yes, between duck sanitation and UV, those are things, as you mentioned, to kind of help prevent any chinks in the armor. And you know, they’re a benefit both to your system, I mean, neither one is a required part in order to make the system actually run, but they help. They do help with your indoor air quality. They do help as far as keeping the inside of the cabinet clear, which all the air in the house comes in contact with.
So it does, every little thing can certainly help. And we don’t tend to think of our AC until it breaks, but these are some things that we can do to try and make it better, extend the life, get a little better air quality out of it. You know, there’s all things that we can do along the way.
Charlie McDermott:
Love it, Lauren. Well, once again, open my eyes and I know our listeners are looking forward to the next episode.
Lauren Willeford:
Yes and I wanna wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving. We’ve got that coming up this week. I can’t believe we’re already getting to Thanksgiving. This year has just flown by!
Charlie McDermott:
Yes. Well, you have a wonderful one and we will look forward to catching up again post Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas!
Lauren Willeford:
Sounds great. Thank you so much, Charlie. Thanks for listening, everyone.
Charlie McDermott:
Thanks for listening to Comfort on Porpoise. To learn more about our sponsor, Dolphin Cooling & Heating visit www.dolphincooling.com or call 239-596-9044. That’s 239-596-9044.