Charlie McDermott:
Welcome to Comfort on Porpoise, sponsored by Dolphin Cooling & Heating, who have been providing 24/7 Comfort on Porpoise since 1998. Hey, welcome everyone. This is Charlie McDermott, back in the Comfort on Porpoise studio with Lauren. Lauren, how you doing?
Lauren Willeford:
I’m good. How are you, Charlie?
Charlie McDermott:
I’m doing great. Great to see you. Although unfortunately, our listeners can’t see you, but if they could, they’d be just thrilled to see you, but we’ll have to deal with your voice today, once again. There’s so much we can talk about but you had shared with me this new product or service that you have, you call drain guard. My goodness, you know when I first got into my home here it didn’t take long before the ceiling was raining and it was sunny outside and I’m going, “What’s going on here?” Welcome to Florida, Charlie.
Lauren Willeford:
That was before you had us as your service provider, right?
Charlie McDermott:
Yes, for sure. And Lauren, I’ve got to say, we’ve been in our home, we moved here in 2015, full-time 2016 and we have gone through countless AC companies, guys, whatever you want to call it. This was the first summer where I, and I’ve said this Barb number of times, I don’t walk into the house like fingers crossed, hoping and praying that it’s cooler inside than it is outside. The AC was awesome all through the summer, it was great. I went from hoping and praying that the house stays cool to I just expect it now. And thanks to you guys.
For our listeners, we brought Lauren’s team on board here, I guess last year. You guys came in, did a review, took care of a few things. We had an ongoing issue and to this day, until you guys came on board, I never really understood. Is it okay if I blabber on here by the way?
Lauren Willeford:
Oh yes, I appreciate it, Charlie. That’s okay!
Charlie McDermott:
I don’t know anything about cars, I don’t know anything about electricity or wiring homes, I certainly don’t know anything about AC. And if you’re going to work with a company, you’ve got to work with someone you can trust in all those cases, because if the car repair guy says, “Hey, you’ve got a fratastat indicator thing that you need a thousand dollar part”…What do I know?
Lauren Willeford:
Right, you don’t. It’s true.
Charlie McDermott:
And I almost wouldn’t care as long as my car kept running. It was the same thing with the A/C. I don’t care what it is, charge me an arm and a leg. I just want to be able to go to bed at night and know that it’s cooler in the house than it is outside. And that’s what you guys did and certainly at a price point that I was like, wow! Yes, my goodness, I wish I knew this five years ago. So anyway, with that rant, Lauren, let’s get back to the topic at hand here. So back to the drain guard. Tell us about what you’re doing with that and how that’s helping your clients.
Lauren Willeford:
Okay. So drain guard is a new product that we’ve added to our service lineup. Drain Guard is actually the brand itself, and this is a little device, it’s like clear PVC pipe, and on the bottom hangs this little cartridge and there’s a filter inside. This goes into the condensate drain line so that when the water is flowing out of your AC system, because it’s coming off the evaporator coil, that’s the humidity it pulls out of the air, flows through the condensate drain line, outside your home. This product is designed to eliminate those nuisance, no cool calls.
So what we have found is statistically 85% of most no cool calls that come in for us are usually due to a condensate drain line being backed up. And a lot of people are like, “Well, how does it get backed up?”
It’s because you’ve got water flowing through there. We live in a subtropic environment, so over time algae and slime builds up. So if you think about your drains at home, right, when they get clogged, it builds up and it coats the inside of the drain until the point that the water can’t flow through anymore. The same thing happens in your condensate drain. So with this little device, you put it into the condensate drain as the water flows through, it flows in, flows down through the cartridge, back up, and then back out through your drain line. The cartridge itself helps with fungus, slime, bacteria, and algae.
Basically it’s cleaning the water in order to keep your drain line clear. So that way it’s constantly flowing, eliminating the need for you to call us up and say, “Hey, I’ve got no cool, oh my goodness, it’s so hot in my house!” And we come out to find out, yep, your drain line is backed up. We vacuum it out, we flush it out and clean it until it’s flowing properly again. And then your AC kicks back on. Good news is if that happens, that means the float switches inside your system are working properly so that you don’t end up with your situation, Charlie, which is it starts raining through the ceiling in your house or in your garage or wherever the air handler is located.
Charlie McDermott:
Oh boy, yes, brings back memories.
Lauren Willeford:
I’m sure, and they’re probably not good ones. And we just recently started offering this to our customers because before doing so, we wanted to actually test it out for ourselves. So we installed one actually in our Vice President’s house on his AC system and tested it over the last year to ensure that, does this really work? Is this going to be beneficial for the customer? So when you purchase it, initially it comes with one cartridge, and then the cartridges are designed to be replaced every six months in order for it to function properly, to keep your drain line as clear as possible, especially during the warmer summer months. That’s when we get a lot of the backed up condensate drain line issues.
So for customers or anyone listening, if you have regular maintenance done on your AC, which down here, it’s definitely recommended that it be done twice a year, which would be every six months. Every six months, you’d have this filter cartridge replaced, the whole goal being that you don’t have to call us because your drain line got backed up.
Nothing’s 100% guaranteed, but from what we saw when we installed it, it definitely significantly helps. Our VP has not had any drain line issues since we put this into his house. So we highly recommend it. And right now it’s actually a great time to maybe look into it, either get yourself on a maintenance plan or even just have this product installed. And then you can have the cartridges replaced, we can come out and replace them for you every six months.
Coming up in November, starting November 15th through December 15th we are offering a promo on this product because we believe in it that much.
We’re giving any customer who calls in and schedules to have this service done, have us come over and install a drain guard for them, they’re going to get 15% off of the service. So it’s going to save you a little bit of money and also give you some peace of mind and hopefully prevent all of those nuisance, no cool calls because of your drain line. It’s a simple little thing, but it makes a really big impact.
Charlie McDermott:
Love it, love it. And yes, to your point, one of these days I’m going to do an experiment and put a popsicle stick in the ground and just add water. And probably before I know it there’ll be a tree there. It doesn’t take long, wherever water is. It doesn’t take long. I’ve learned that something’s going to grow there. And if it grows in our condensation piping or tubing, that’s not a good thing.
So that’s great. Well I love the fact that you guys continue to be on the forefront, finding more and more ways to keep us guys in Southwest Florida cool. And you know, for me and I know a lot of our listeners, it’s all about just staying cool and you know, hey, whatever, if I have a problem and I need help, great, get someone out here. But I’d rather, again, cruise along and have you guys show up a couple of times a year, take care of things, know that I have that peace of mind.
I’ve even thought about that time when we had the rain. Occasionally we’ll go over to Boca to visit our daughter. So we’re gone a couple of days, and what if that had happened right when we left? And you have now, not only the air conditioning not working, but then the water and the moisture and the mold. So anything we can do to protect our home from that calamity, sign me up.
Lauren Willeford:
Yes, it’s a big deal! Our whole goal is to provide Comfort on Porpoise, that’s the podcast name. And so we’re always looking at what products are out there to benefit the customer, to try and ensure that you have as few AC inconveniences as possible. Not that we don’t want to come see our customers. We love to see you guys, but we’d rather see you under good terms, like your systems running, and we’re there to do your maintenance and keep it that way, versus you call us out because you’re uncomfortable. So this is just another product we’ve added, and so far we’ve had really great luck with it.
We’ve had customers have them installed as well. So we’re excited now to be able to offer this promotion we have going on, because we really we believe in it that much, we feel like it’s really that important for people.
Charlie McDermott:
Yes, yes, that’s great. One last, just to give your listeners the experience that I’ve received on a regular basis. What I love is when your tech comes, does the maintenance, we get, I don’t know, a report card or check, you know. We know where our system is because as we all know, if we’ve been here long enough in Southwest Florida, our heat and AC system in Westchester, Pennsylvania lasted us over 20 years. I mean, it’s a whole different ball game down here.
Lauren Willeford:
Yes, it’s very different down here with the AC. Really, we’ve had people who have significantly older systems. If you can get 15 years out of your AC, that’s really good. Typically as they start creeping in age, if you haven’t done regular maintenance, you experience a whole lot more problems. We actually just had a customer of ours, we installed two new AC systems at their residence. They were both older, but we have been providing them service, I think for the last about a decade. And I actually went out to the job site and spoke with the customer the day we were there installing, and the customer said to me, his direct feedback was, “You know, I tell everybody about you guys, ‘cause I really feel that the fact that we had you come every six months to do maintenance, allowed us to get nearly 20 years out of both systems.”
So it was time, but they really got that extra time because of that preventative maintenance, trying to stay on top of things. It doesn’t mean repairs don’t pop up, but major repairs are delayed and the overall system function is still there for a longer period of time.
Charlie McDermott:
And that’s what I love, that report card gives me an idea of, I know at some point I’m going to need to replace my systems, but no one likes surprises. To be able to know, hey, the system’s in good shape or you might have to keep an eye out for this or that is awesome. You know, I sleep better and I can go away for long weekends knowing that the system’s in good shape and when the time comes, hey, it’ll be even better because you’ll be on top of the latest, greatest A/C systems, and we’ll be having a podcast about that one of these days.
Lauren Willeford:
Yes we will. So yes, the report card you’re referencing is, just so our listeners know, it’s our maintenance checklist. So it’s all the components that the techs go through and check to let you know and make you aware of anything if they have any recommendations, anything they noticed. So yes, it does try and help to eliminate surprises as much as possible because nobody likes to be surprised with a big AC repair.
Charlie McDermott:
Yes, that’s terrific. Well, Lauren really appreciate you filling us in on the latest, greatest drain guard and look forward to the next episode.
Lauren Willeford:
Thank you so much, Charlie. Thank you to everybody for listening. Look forward to talking with everyone again soon.
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.