Going to talk about UV and we'll talk about what I know about you, the man, oh man, my computer's, going crazy right now. My screen shows you live on YouTube, that's cool! All right! You know what Caleb! I know this isn't the most riveting ever, but you know we're dealing with what we've got here. It's kind of a last minute thing: the world has gone mad, we're all hiding in our holes and bunkers are our cages from the coronavirus. I happen to be here in my studio: I'm not allowed to leave the office, so I've been here for 72 hours straight living on office, coffee and bottled water.

So this is the world we live in now and you might as well just get used to it. You might as well just get used to it, so man, we've got some good people here. Geez we got Neil here, get your tech tools. I want to check my email, real, quick, so my guest isn't here.

Yet that's what it comes down to. Okay, my guest has not yet made it. He said that 3 p.m. would work good, and I just emailed him back to thing, but I didn't hear back from after an email back the thing - and you know that's always a bad sign, but the plan that I had was was that even if he doesn't Make it man I look red in this lighting jeez, even if he doesn't make it, they were just gon na talk about it anyway without him, based on what we've learned, so I guess I'll ask this question to get started so Ron if you're here.

Let me know if you show up fair enough. The question is: does anybody have really have a problem with yeah he's the same timezone Michael was asking the same timezone? Yes, he is the same time zone as me. He is a Florida man. So does anybody actually have a problem with UV and I guess I'll ask this question to Michael.

Let me see: hey Michael, do you are you by a microphone? Can you come on if you can, if you can come on and actually okay, so let me I'm gon na bring Michael on here cuz. I know Michael has said that he's not a fan of UV in the past. You know Michael, what's up hey, can you hear me, I sure, can i from my discoveries that really depends on the wavelength of the UV? I think there is applications for surface disinfectant or in, but I kind of think that it shouldn't be the first measure of indoor air quality by any means. So I think filtration and humidity.

Control and fresh air should be the first measures, and I imagine in kind of your area and air handlers where mold growth or moisture growth. However, you want to say it would have some some benefit, but you also have to kind of be careful on what what UV we're talking about, because UV k and be misconstrued as other things as well right, right, okay and when you say misconstrued as other things, You mean like PCO, can be misconstrued as UV because it also uses a UV light to act on the catalyst. Is that what you're talking about? Yes, yeah and that's the same thing that I bump into a lot? I was actually talking to my son Alex last night about it, which he just largely ignores most of the stuff that I talked about online because it's dad. But we were talking a little bit about this and I realized that he even had a little confusion about that, so that was that was interesting, but so I've spent a lot of time doing a lot of reading.

As many of you have, I saw Nate here. I don't know if he's still here but Michael Syria, Nate Adams is here Eric's here Caleb's here a lot of you Joel Becker is here I mean there's a ton of you who have done a lot of reading on this, but I want to see if anybody Will dispute this so so mention this in the chat? If you do, is there anybody who disputes that UVC? So that's a really high frequency type of UV or not? It's not really hyper. It's just higher frequency, UV um. That does not normally make it into our atmosphere, but that some Nate says 254 nanometers is UVC that using that in close proximity to metallic surfaces, specifically evaporator coils, I think, would be the primary application to disinfect the surface.

That is. Is there anybody who says that that is a bad idea in and of itself, if we eliminate all the other possibilities there, but just that, if you're using doping, so that way, it's not creating ozone, because I think we would all agree that ozone is ozone equals Bad nowadays, at least for human occupants, but is there anybody who disputes that? Are you still there Michael yeah? The one thing that I have a problem with is that they don't market them as kind of surface disinfecting right, and so they still say that they clean the air and all this stuff, and I feel, like that's, probably misleading, at least because there, you know, really Matters how the dwell time or how long the airs in contact with the surface and I'm no expert in this at all, but ease that would be very tricky to control and most presidential yeah. I would agree all right so Erik Erik Kaiser raised his hand, which that's how, if you have something to say you can raise your hand, so I'm gon na allow Erik in here I'm gon na unmute. You err, Oh I'm here.

Oh you, there they are. I was trying to unmute you and then I kept meeting you accidentally. So what are your thoughts on that? So my thoughts are that surface disinfection is great and from what I've seen you know in microwave was just talking about air cleaning by cleaning the surfaces or the surface, specifically the coil that the air is flowing across. We are indirectly cleaning the air in that way.

Also, with 254 nanometers UVC, you do get some air cleaning a percentage depending on the distance and the dwell time, and I do work with a another youth B company. So I've seen some of the engineering data on it and it has to do with the speed of the air going past and what what it actually is - and you do get quite a bit of kill depending on what it is that you're. Looking at what specific microbes you're looking at as the air is going past the UV - it is not a hundred percent at that point, though yeah, and so I'm looking here at the this is actually the ASHRAE guide from the 2019 ASHRAE handbook, and it does specifically Talk about air treatment using UV, UVC specifically and a couple different technologies, there's actually some that are used to kind of treat the air in an upper strata of a room. But then it talks specifically about surface treatment and then direct air treatment.

And the conclusion seems to be that yeah. It does a good job of a radiating surfaces so long as it has the intensity and so long as it is in the close proximity, but that it maybe struggles trying to open chat back up, because I just lost some of you, but maybe struggles in some Cases with the air it just depending on, depending on the velocity of the air training, on the intensity of the light, and then also in the test that they did and I'm trying to find this here, because I was just looking at it and some of the Tests that they did, they weren't really doing it on live targets. They were using proxies in order to kind of see what the impacts of the UV was, and essentially they said that we anticipate that it would be similar, but that they don't know for a fact, and so a lot of this testing hasn't been done super thoroughly. In terms of air streams, but it is widely used, though, which is one thing I want to add like in hospital and industrial environments.

Uv is widely used even in air streams, maybe run down the length of a of a ventilation duct or something like that, and so it does seem to be something that is somewhat accepted. But I guess just one of the things with that and in hospitals and stuff I feel like it's a lot more engineered than it is any other times as well, as you tend to see a lot of them in those scenarios you know like. So it's not like throwing a single UV ball bin somewhere, there's like banks of the dam in order to get the intensity on everything, and so that's, I think, there's some like real distinctions and we're. Probably most of us in the HVAC field aren't super qualified to like do that sort of engineering right yeah, I I agree and one thing that I've definitely seen - and this is where I wish I was Ron - was on the call to answer this.

But one thing that's that I've definitely seen and maybe Nate Adams would want to comment on. This is UV being being shined on surfaces like flexible the inner inner liner of flexible docs. Things like that, where it potentially can degrade that material and resulting in VOCs. Now some people have talked a little bit about ozone and I'm trying to remember who it was who was talking about ozone being a factor word actually negatively impacted somebody's health.

Maybe it was Nate Matt Milton that's right, and so that's that's where the so apparently there's two different bulbs, one's a hundred and eighty five nanometers and that's where OSA gets produced the 254. It doesn't but also requires a coating on the UV bulb. My question and where it would have been awesome to have Ron on as well is what happens as the ball degrades as because I know they do. I don't know if that means the intensity, degrades or or what, where maybe it gets down into that hundred and eighty five nanometer wavelength and could whoa fall back into that ozone potential? The wavelength and the intensity of the light are two different things, so the intensity is how bright the light is where the wavelength is, how fast that light is vibrating, so so these are that change over time.

No, the vibration does not change the intensity. If you think of it, like a radio signal right from a radio tower, they broadcast on a specific frequency, so that hundred and eighty five or 254 nanometers, he is a frequency right and the intensity is how much power that is actually putting out over time. The UV of the bulbs does degrade or the UV intensity of the bulb degrades, which is why you have to change the bulbs. Periodically.

Bulbs are typically rated in either nine or 18,000 hours, which is either a one or a two year old, and that is when you look at the engineering ratings at the end of life, where the bulb is forecasted to be at the end of its life. Is eighty percent of its full capacity? So when you look at the engineering ratings on when these UV companies do engineering ratings for the commercial jobs, they rate the disinfection rate, as the air is passing past the bulbs at that eighty percent intensity, yet still some sense. Yeah, it still surprises me that they that they degrade in that way and in from an intensity standpoint, but it just isn't that isn't fully. I don't fully wrap my head around that, but I, but it does seem to be the case because everybody references that as they as they age, because many and many of the manufacturers will say good the reason I know this is because I would often say hey As long as the little bulb is still lit, you're fine and the manufacturers would say no.

You should still replace it at the you know at the periodic levels that they recommend and I always kind of thought that maybe that was a bulb sales technique technique, but apparently there is more to it: hey Brian, it's Nate Nate, so LED bulbs so UV. I don't know nearly as much about as I would like. That was why I asked dr. Shelley Miller to come on Friday, but in the case of LEDs, their end-of-life is considered when they get down to seventy percent full capacity.

So that's actually how it measured its measured. So when you see a twenty or thirty thousand, our rating on an LED bulb. That's technically not when it burns out. That's when it gets below.

Seventy percent sounds like it's similar here, got it okay, and maybe it's in that kind of range, where we wouldn't notice it in the visible light that we are. You know we don't we don't notice that degradation, but but in the case of something where it's kind of mission-critical, for it to do a particular radiation job, then it matters more, obviously something that makes sense, and I guess you know there's this for you guys that We've got kind of a impromptu, impromptu kind of awesome panel here, so thank you guys for joining. I do appreciate that and I haven't I haven't heard from Ron, but I just asked you guys so obviously, we've talked about kind of ad nauseam at this point about the Holy Trinity. You know we want to control humidity, we want to control, we want to filter the air really really well and we want to ventilate, and so we know those three things, but there is a lot of talk about cleaning the equipment itself.

So UV is one way of sort of for lack of a better term on surfaces of cleaning irradiating killing. What's on surfaces based on all of your reading, because you guys have done a lot of reading, how important is that irradiation or cleaning or or sanitizing of the actual equipment itself given kovat 19? Specifically, so, obviously, we know fungus and bacteria they propagate they grow. They thrive in some of these environments, but a virus doesn't really grow outside of its host. You know it requires its host to grow and propagate.

So is it really? Is this really where we should be focusing our attention? As far as on coated 19, I or the SARS CoV virus is what it is right. If there's bacteria on the coil that the virus would attach to, I think it would be beneficial to kill that is that that gon na stop the disease from spreading around. In my opinion, in most spaces, if it comes in you're, probably gon na get it off to the surface from everything that I've read now I mean, I think, there's low odds that it actually makes it that far yeah. I think it's low odds that HVAC is going to really stop the virus from spreading.

I think there's a lot better ways of stopping the virus from spreading than relying on an HVAC system. Well, there's the question of stopping it from spreading right, but then there's the question. I think that more people are asking is the AC system potentially acting as a host aura or a? Is it harboring it in some way and based on everything, I've read and again this? This is coming up a lot and I'm having these conversations, and some of them are unpleasant with people, because everybody wants to be able to apply solutions and products to these things that relate to air conditioning equipment. Because that's what we do and everybody wants to take action, which is understandable, but I don't really think an air conditioning system based on what we're.

What we know of this virus is going to act as a petri dish. If you will for this to allow it to grow and and in you'll, be a real source for this, is it possible that, in the presence of fungus and bacteria that the virus could make it into the unit and survive there for a longer period of time, That seems at least plausible, though I've seen those studies to that end, but we also know that, on you know, copper, for example. It actually doesn't live very long. I haven't seen anything on aluminum, but do any of you have anything to add to that so that New England Journal of Medicine article I forget who it was, that was doing the research, but this thing doesn't live that incredibly long on a surface you're talking hours In general, so yeah as far as it propagating inside a system, I'm not that freaked out.

I would prefer to pull it out of the airflow with a little possible, but I don't even know how much is going to be caught by a filter. I've been pinging a bunch of researchers on Twitter and the strongest statement that I've gotten from anyone is it couldn't hurt, that's the strongest statement. So, if that's all the more that they're saying I'm not too worried about it, the thing that seems to be a much bigger deal is keeping your humidity at least up north here on the higher side of where it normally would be as we're. Finally, starting to get a little warm where it's 45 or 50 degrees today, but keeping our humidity above 30 % can be a bit of a challenge when it's cold out.

So it's that the happy range is 40 to 60, but I always get nervous talking about 60 % even temporarily, because then some people will take it as the gospel. I can run as high as 60 %, and you know if they're running 60 % and you know higher temperatures and there's all kinds of funky stuff that can have then so 32. 50S. What I'm comfortable saying personally, people can say whatever they want, but the the 40 to 60 % there's a couple of different factors that it it addresses viruses and I don't fully understand them.

One of them. I understand it's the size of the droplets. They live in or actually aerosols, technically they're, the small when it's dry, the dryer. It is the smaller those droplets get and the harder they are to filter so and the longer they stay in the air.

So there's long yeah and the other piece of it is for some reason, the middle humidities. They just don't propagate as quickly, and I don't understand that I just I've seen that repeatedly yeah. Well, that's what I mean if you go back to the to the old ASHRAE chart where it's got, the you know the wedges wedges right, that's the term I was looking for. I want to say triangles: they are triangles technically, but they're wedges, where it's got.

The wedges and you kind of sit right in that 50 percent relative humidity range, and I think that's it's largely undisputed. I mean like there's, there's cases where, for some reason, I'm literally blocked out of Facebook right now like Facebook will not even let me open, because I was gon na open your that article that you had shared, and I don't know if you can pull it up Because you can probably share it from your, I can probably share from your screen. I don't know you want a phone or you on your computer. I mean me Nate.

Yes, you Nate, sorry, I'm on a computer but yeah. I guess I could share. If you want me to I, just I just made you a panelist, so you should bear with me: can do this I'll keep talking while you, while you mess around with that the what I was gon na say is: is that part of the problem that we're Facing with the whole virus thing specifically, this virus is that we're making some assumptions based on things we've seen in the past, and that's with that ash rage is kind of looking at and you do have that you have that droplet size and then you have how Well, the virus actually survives how long it actually remains active and infectious, and that seems to be more in the middle. That infectiousness factor seems to be reduced around that 50 % range in a lot of and a lot of viruses, but we haven't done so.

You know any significant testing on this virus, but the problem is: is that in this virus, it seems like the higher relative humidities are actually better for what we're trying to do right now in order to keep the droplet size bigger and to get it out of The air more quickly, if somebody sneezes coughs, whatever saliva droplets and the problem that we face is - is that a lot of our preaching has been about reducing humidity in humid climates, getting it around that 50 percent relative humidity range, and in this particular case we may Be in a position where that actually isn't helping so much it's helping with other immune issues. It's helping keep fungus down it's helping with VOCs helping with ozone, but not necessarily helping with the problem at hand, which is specifically this virus and how long it remains airborne. I also felt like I read something recently that was talking like humidity levels, closer to 80 % or better, which is just not reasonable in any scenario other than outside. You know I mean so it seems like we can only do so much on that front and one one thing to keep in mind here too, with all these papers flying out so quickly that none of this is considered scientific fact.

At this point, it is when you talk about scientific fact that needs to be something that is reproducible by multiple people in multiple situations and when you get one paper out there, some of this stuff, that's coming out like I saw some last night or this morning, That we're going around that they're, not even peer-reviewed at this point, they're just getting literally thrown out there for anybody and everybody to read them, and I have to question because of some of that, how accurate the tests are that are being done, yeah, and that makes It so like, and I think what what's incoming I'm honest right now, is to give what it would be universally good advice and then hopefully provide some insights that are very likely to be true, and as it relates to this, I think you know this is this. Is the the a Co wedges and Nate's recommendation of 30 to 50 percent? I think that's still what we have to be suggesting you tell people in cold, cold, climates, cold and dry climates to increase their relative humidity, well above 30 %, even when it's cold outside you run the risk of creating problems in the actual structure on the envelope. If we recommend that people go significantly over 55 percent relative humidity in a hot and humid climate, you run the risk of people growing fungus and all these other things that can potentially you know bacteria again, you can see here even on this chart virus is really You know you can go all the way up to 80 and it's still pretty low, but you have the mites. You have the fungus, you have asthma, you have chemical chemical interactions, all those things.

Well, it keep it in mind. Look at the date on that chart as well. If you see the date on there, it's that chart was built in 1986. It's a good year.

I was four that was a long time ago that doesn't make it irrelevant. In my opinion, I mean not totally, but it may be less relevant to what we're facing today is my point yeah. I think it can be argued that you know saying that HVAC can solve any of this is probably pretty irrelevant. Yeah, in you know, my thing is that, as time has moved along, things have changed.

It's in that's one neat thing about scientific and I'm doing Brian's air quotes here. Facts is that you know facts change as we learn and as we move forward, so even that chart I think, could potentially even be revisited today and and maybe even update it. I don't know yeah I mean I agree especially like what I saw you do earlier. Eric with equating it to dew points, which would you know, be a good update to that chart, but at the same time I think probably the underlying data is still relevant on that chart.

Specifically, I would agree with you in general now one thing to that. I was thinking about here with the SAR Co v1 virus. They found that that would live in sewage systems and I there's a lot of things, obviously in sewage systems that we don't even want to know what's in there, sometimes or really even deal with, and we don't a lot of times in HVAC. But we do have to deal with them.

Sometimes my thought is: is it living in there because of the bacteria that exists in those systems or is it living in there because of the moisture or some combination thereof and thinking about having coils being wet? If you do get the virus in there on a wet coil, would the you know, because we're talking about UV and specifically the the SAR CoV virus here, would that UV light help to to keep anything down on a wet coil? That has bacteria on my answer. I don't know, but I think it's something that maybe ought to be looked at all right. I don't think that it's moisture related, it's bacteria like it has to have a host and the bacteria is the host the moisture. Isn't the host true, but the moisture does promote bacterial growth on coils? Yes, but this is a virus, so I guess the the the way that I look at this is.

This is purely a risk management thing. There are no guarantees, we don't know everything we need to know. Even if we did know everything we need to know, there's no way that we could possibly actually control all of this stuff nearly as tightly as we would like to. So.

What suggestions do we give people HVAC contractors in particular, so that they can talk to their clients about? But what are the science base pieces behind this that are likely to reduce risk right, yeah and that's yeah and that's a and when we say reduce risk? Okay, so the the big factor here that we always have to define is that there's two different sides to this risk equation. You have risk associated with the. How built up the immune system is of the person who has the potential of getting this stuff, and so people who are already having issues with their respiratory tract? Do you know, may be allergies or maybe they're already dealing with fungus and bacteria, and you know their immune system is already dealing with that. Are they at a greater risk of bad outcomes virus? Because of that - and we know that we can significantly affect those areas with the air conditioning equipment.

So again I mean the question: just mostly is: are we going to make a big difference in the virus and how it impacts, people and infects them by controlling these? Other factors that we already know are a good idea, or are we just basically left talking generally about IAQ like we always have and just giving the same suggestions? We always have you know, what's really new here, because a lot of the people who are selling products - and this is why I wanted to get wrong on - are kind of going out there and saying hey, look in response to CO. Vyd, our product has been shown to render kovat non-infectious or you know, like they say, disrupt the DNA, which is always interesting, given that kovat is actually completely RNA, which is just a you know, it's being me being pedantic, but, but is that is that is that Claim, while technically true, is it practically true, as relates to taking a UV light and sticking it in an air conditioner and pointing it at an evaporator coil, and because, if it is technically true, but not practically true, we should really not say it. In those terms, we can talk about it in terms of the broader impacts that it can have on the equipment and that it may not be a bad idea like a lot of other things, but is it something that we should be focusing our attention on? My answer is no: we should go about things and talk about IAQ like we always have and every other way it feels like selling to people's fear. In my opinion, and while I'm happy to put UV lights in for people if they make that choice, it really needs to be clear that I don't think it will help with this code problem at all, yeah, yeah and from and from a research standpoint.

We know at this point that increasing relative humidities above those really low numbers is a good thing, so for people who are in dry winter climates, getting their humidities up is a good idea. We know that ventilation. Air is a good idea and those two concepts can be in direct conflict with each other. We know that filtration is a good idea.

Does filtration really help in this particular case, I'm gon na say it falls in the same category as UV lights and evaporator coil cleaning certainly doesn't hurt, but is it really gon na be valuable? Obviously, UV can hurt in some cases, and I would also put in into that category people who take UV - because I forgot to mention this and they put it on a really dirty of a protocol, and now they kill off everything. That's on that evaporator coil and potentially allow it to re-enter the air stream as it kind of dries out, and that's something that I mean again. I don't have any research there, but that seems like a really really bad idea, and I've heard just strictly in story form nothing, nothing in a study, but that people have gotten sick or had reactions to fungus and things that were dried out and then allowed to Re-Enter the airstream after a coil, a dirty coil had a UV light placed on it again. No, don't don't don't hold that, as fact, but to me it seems, like you kind of take those things and put them in the same category, filtration being always good for lots of reasons, but is it in it same thing with evaporator coil cleaning always good, but Are either of those really pertinent to what we're dealing with right now in any special way? And I don't I just I don't see that they really are.

I'm curious, Brian and your climate. You deal with a lot of high humidity and air handlers that you know have more bacterial growth than other scenarios. If, like what does UV solve that, regular maintenance doesn't and/or. Also, if you're doing coil cleanings on a regular basis, and you know wiping down the surfaces.

Does it actually have that much benefit aside from this whole kovat thing really? Well, there are some. There are a lot of applications where coils are really hard to get. To I mean the same is true of furnaces. No, you know we do have a lot of stuff, that's in the air and our filtration isn't always 100 % efficient.

So when things get through and they make it on to that of Africa coil, it can begin to grow there and we're specifically talking about bacteria and fungus here, not viruses and that's again part of the part of the problem here. If this we were talking about a fungal infection or a bacterial infection, a lot of these conversations would be completely different. This would be a this would be a home run. You know, UV coil cleaning.

Those things would all make a lot of sense, but with the virus doesn't make, doesn't matter as much and so but to answer your question I would definitely put filtration above UV, but it does have some value in cases where you're not going to easily be able To clean that coil completely and in a lot of in the cases of a lot of a coils or accordion coils that can be really tough to get to. I also think there's differences in insulation types. You know like so the shiny, backed insulation. That's in a lot of equipment versus the dull fibrous, that's you know not easy to wipe down or clean same with duct board, you know or whatever, which is common in your area.

I was just curious, since you know you guys deal with a lot of humidity issues and units and attics or whatever, just to kind of get your take on that yeah and that's actually an interesting point because UV also I was reading in the ashtray guide. It was talking about how UV does a lot better in reflective areas. So if you have the inside of an air handler - and it's got all these reflective surfaces you're much more likely to strike the particles from different angles, as that light reflects around the cabinet, and so it's it's. You know you kind of pointed out something there that when you have these reflective kind of smooth surfaces, they don't grow as much stuff on them.

So that's good and then number two there they're also more likely to be effective. Should you use something like UV, whereas using UV on a very porous type of surface, like insulation, like duct board, isn't going to be as effective because it's got to actually strike the it's got to actually strike the molecule in order to impact it. It doesn't work indirectly, so that's you know: methought, I think, can be solved just through a little better engineering and one of them is making the inside surfaces of equipment smooth and maybe shiny, even if you're gon na be working in. If you are going to potentially use UV as a strategy, my whole approach to all of these products and Caleb likes to get angry with me about my lack of passion about these things, I'll throw a PCO in there or you know, hydrogen peroxide, ions or whatever.

I think they all have appropriate applications and an idea in fairness. Caleb has also said that that he believes that there's applications for them as well, so I'm being a little sarcastic there, but I think they all have appropriate applications. The issue isn't so much that they don't have any purpose, it's just that often their Mis applied or they're applied in a way that makes things worse, like I mentioned shining a UV light on the inner liner of a flex duct and I'm sure there are UV Light intensities that are actually safe because that's come up there with some of these new LED strips that are UVC their lower intensity that are designed to be closer in the case of like ductless systems closer to the blower wheels and those sorts of things. I'm sure you can design those in a way that that makes sense, but if a technician miss applies it which can easily be done or a Salesman sells something and a miss applied way.

Then you run the risk of actually making a situation worse and that's. I don't think we always have to be perfect. We don't always have to nail it the first time because a lot of what we're doing is kind of loosey-goosey. But we have to know enough about what we're doing to try to take a good stab at helping people rather than rather than just haphazardly going around.

Throwing products at problems, but we've got Joe Becker with us. So thanks for joining us, Joel, hey Brian yeah buddy, you were just talking about reflective. You know reflective services on the cabinets of these air handlers. Are you guys putting them in the like above the coil cuz? I got shocked.

I've always heard you know it's bad for the wiring. Don't have it shining on the exposed plastic, including insulation, wiring insulation. I actually got shocked last year, changing out a blower motor on a unit that was maybe I don't know a year and a half or two years old. I was just wondering sounded like you were talking about putting him above the coil.

If you're talking about the reflective insulation in the air handler cabinet yeah, I mean I, there are cases that we do put them above the coil and the thinking is always just you know, wrap the any wires or any exposed anything electrical or plastic with metal tape. In order to prevent it from being affected by the UV, have you found that to be insufficient, or I don't like the idea of putting metal tape on wiring that is terminated with, obviously you know exposed terminals or nearly exposed terminals at the ends. I I mean. I'm sure I could manage to do it safely every time, but we're talking about something.

That's gon na got a scale to work with three or four install crews, with guys with different levels of skill and experience, so I'm kind of leery of having those guys out there throwing metal tape all over electrical wiring yeah. I mean the ideal place. To put it is kind of in that a metal section in the evaporator coil. If you have access to that, and not all do that, that's your ideal location, but then you also run the risk of exposing it exposing your filter to it.

Like Neil just said, and a lot of filters don't hold up well being exposed to to UV either. So I mean this is the issue to me. The issue with UV is not the UV itself and it's not the job that it does with radiating the coil. You know killing the stuff occurs on the coil and it's not even the issue of.

Does it purify the air because to some degree it does maybe not to a significant degree but to some degree it does it's more to me. If I was gon na say what is my objection to UV, my objection to UV is what you're saying the other stuff that it's shining on and in thinking through that and controlling for all those factors, which is a difficult thing to do. Besides the fact that I've looked at the UV bulb before and been out of service for a day not being able to see which is also no fun, I did that when I was probably 18 years old, so you're saying because I did it when I was 24, that I'm a little dumber than you are likely likely yeah so and that and that kind of sums up my take on UV. Obviously, if you're talking about UV that produces ozone well, then that's a whole nother layer and a lot of times.

People mix this all in into one big bucket: UV and PCO. Aren't the same thing UV and you know other oxidizers will say you know. Hydrogen peroxide is one that that a particular manufacturer talks about regardless you're shining, a UV light on a catalyst in order to create oxidizing ions, whether that is hydroxyls, h, o or whether it's hydrogen peroxide or even whether it's ozone. Because i mean that's, that's traditionally the way that Ozone's even created all of those things or oxidizers and there's concerns about oxidizers, which are you know, rightfully so incomplete degradation and actually breathing in the oxidizer itself can be a problem.

The Ron his company makes a fresh-air UV makes a PCO device, but they do use carbon in conjunction with it, which i think is interesting. It's similar to what air Oasis does in their self-contained air purifier there's just still a lot of factors that are hard to control for and but but even that, even that, I'm not somebody who says do not ever put a PCO in a house. I think there are cases where it might make sense. In fact, Burt has one in his house, and his issue was is that his kids were getting sick all the time and who knows viral bacterial, whatever the case may be, he did the before-and-after agar petri dish and showed a big reduction in stuff growing in the Petri dish and his kids don't get sick as much anymore now.

Does that mean that it was there's a scientific proof that it's an amazing product? No, but I think in his particular case he wasn't so concerned about you know, maybe some of the effects of incomplete degradation and VOCs and all that he's more concerned about getting some of the living stuff out of the air. And I think it does serve to do that. I don't fully understand all of that, but I'm not somebody who says absolutely don't do that, but I think it's over applied in comparison with the other things that we know that we can do that are better and make more sense across the or humidity control ventilation. Filtration is there anybody who would dispute that, because I'm open to that I'm open to dispute a ssin all right Eric says he doesn't dispute it.

Joel doesn't dispute it. You don't want. You don't feel like joining. Do you Caleb Caleb never wants to join.

Does he? I don't know, I don't know michael says that he's curious about the sorban type products charcoal carbon - I think you know clays and activated carbon, which is charcoal charcoal, is just sort of the natural version of activated carbon. Those are pretty ironclad. The problem just is, is that you know they only have so much capacity, so it's more like a filter or that you can't they don't just last forever and so, like the fresh air UV product, it uses an activated carbon cell over top of the PCO and Order so the PCO, the hydroxyls react, and then it reabsorbs any o3 or potentially incomplete degradation products like the form aldehydes are aldehydes. That's the idea and and they've tested for that and all that, but in the way that a lot of them test, which is there's not a whole lot of Industry, independent testing and that's not CSA in fairness.

I think this is something that has to be said about a lot of these products in fairness, independent testing is a really hard thing to get, because I mean you can pay for testing, but then is it really independent on? So you have to have researchers who are really interested in doing this research now. The good news is, is that now I think the appetite for this sort of research is going to be much higher as people test products to deal with these problems, and so I think, that's a good, a good thing, moving forward that, hopefully we'll get some better Real-World testing versus testing - that's maybe not at real-world airflows or at real-world scale, but anyway, that's that's pretty much that can I can I throw one more thing at you, Brian yeah, sure so kind of my way of thinking about this, even though we're talking about specifically The covet 19 or Sarge CoV to my way of thinking is we got a whole bunch of people all of a sudden spending a whole lot more time in their houses and to me that is the bigger IAQ problem here with regards to the people being in Their houses almost continuously with this and going outside for very short periods of time does that I mean we should go, sell a whole bunch of products. No, I don't, I don't think so, but I think it brings up the opportunity for us to talk about. I a Q with and more and gives people a better understanding of what indoor air quality really is and what they can have and what's available to them did I lose you now you're back sorry about that.

My my zoom meeting decided to crash on me. That was interesting, yeah I agree completely and that can that plays into like thinking about not just not just the virus, and it's easy. It's easy for us to do that. You know it's like: let's kill the virus.

Well, so many people, we don't even understand, really what viruses are. Frankly, when we say things like kill the virus, because a virus isn't really even alive in the sense that we think of things being alive. So we have to think beyond that which a lot of this is more about supporting human immune function and the kind of really broad sense. And then human respiratory function and the more specific sense.

And when we can maintain human respiratory function, where we don't have as much inflammation we're not dealing with allergies, we're not dealing with fungus, we're not dealing with bacteria. Oh three is in line. We have fewer VOCs, which I think VOCs are a huge kind of new area that we need to really be thinking about. Richard Corsi, which I talked about him a lot because he did.

He was part of the home chem study, some of the he was in some of Corbett's videos. He talked about how we buy. You know pillows, foam pillows that come in from China and then we bury our face in them and we breathe in those VOCs. Every night and we wonder why we're having issues and so there's a lots of things like that that are all contributing factors and as far as we're concerned and the air conditioning profession, we know the three main ones that we need to be controlling.

And I do think we can get closer to HEPA level filtration moving forward by thinking more about oversizing filter media using larger returns, increasing our face area and the and the depth and thickness of our filters will allow us to use better media and media. Maybe that's impregnated with activated carbon, so it can deal with VOCs and and all that sort of thing. That's what I was thinking. For example, when we designed the AC at my dad's house, where it has essentially a measurable return static, is that now we can use much denser filters, because we have so much return, grill, surface area, and you know on the filter, backside which that's that's Neil Caporetto And and John's whole mindset about those things I didn't, I didn't make that up.

I learned that from him. Alright, so Caleb just raised his hand, so let's bring Caleb in hey, Caleb how's it going what's up. Can you hear me, I sure, can I don't know what Eric's talking about? I don't ever want to come on, but up until now I didn't have anything new to say so I was agreeing with the majority of what you guys were saying, but Michael did bring up a good point here in the jet says that his understanding that there Are standards in place for some of the technologies that we're talking about, but on? No one actually tests to them, which is is pretty interesting. But if I've got the EPA third edition technical summary of residential air cleaners up right now and they inside to actually have a table, I believe it's called Table one here and it lists all of the air cleaning technologies that this summary covers, and then it states The test stand in rating metrics that are used that are applied for each technology and, I think, specifically, the ones that are flying off the shelves right now, like the ionisers and the allylic oxidation technologies, the plasma intentional ozone generation technologies.

These are these - are flying off. The shelves right now, maybe not so much the ozone but um for each one of those. It's it says, none specific to this technology, no snow test standards or rating metrics are specific to this technology, and I think now, more than ever we are as an industry. We have a responsibility to at least call call to this call that to attention and ask for more third-party, your reviewed studies and standards to be made for these yeah and I'm looking.

I've got it pulled up now for everybody to look at so we've got catalytic oxidation and it does. It says none specific to P Co, no specific test standards, plasma that would be also known as bipolar ionization, none specific to plasma, and it gives advantages and disadvantages of each the disadvantages of catalytic oxidation, for example. And again, I want to clarify when people say P Co, you - and I had this conversation the other day they're talking specifically about hydroxyls but but hydro. Peroxides are also created in a catalytic oxidation, so you're using a catalyst and you're creating oxidizers and whether the oxidizer is a hydroxyl, radical, h, o or whether it's i'm hydrogen peroxide, either way.

You're sending out this oxidizer in order to bond with potentially things that are in the air that you're trying to negate, and I don't see why one would create incomplete degradation, specifically hydroxyls and the other couldn't um that that would be very surprising to me. I I think it's more about the fact hydroxyls. We know that if you breathe hydroxyls directly that that's not good for you, but that's the odds of that happening are next to none because they're so reactive, that's the problem with hydroxyls, actually as air purification technology is that they react so quickly that they generally don't Make it out of that? You know the zone that the purifier is installed in, where some of these other ions oxidizing ions can make it further. Oh three, being a great example where oh three can really make it out into the air stream that actually makes it worse, because now it's more likely that you're, actually gon na breathe it in, and it's going to act as a respiratory irritant and that's the challenge Right is that we can test, and we can say it's effective, meaning that, for example, it reduces it kills certain things, but is it safe still because that's a totally different question whether or not it kills? Certain things is one part of the equation.

We can take the petri dish and we can show before and after - and we have we've shown that in real-life applications, wherever you do before test you and after test and of course we're not controlling for every factor - that's impossible to do. But when you do it enough, you see that there is. There is some impact and is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing on the face of it? It seems like a good thing, but on the other side, if you have incomplete degradation, is it possible that that's resulting in other other issues, right, absolutely um for clarification? I think you said asthma as ionization, when I think that they actually, they specify what ionisers, because that's that they're trying to attack particles by just clumping them together, plasma, I think, is actually they're actually attacking the bonds of gases yeah. I don't know I mean they call bi-polar ionization, cold plasma, that's a common term.

That's used for bipolar ionization, which is actually just free electrons in a plasma and that's what a plasma is. Is you essentially just have free electrons? It's not just it's, not a chemical compound, like others are where you're actually or an actual substance, and I & I substance it's actually just free electrons, at least that's my understanding of what, when we say, cold plasma, that's that's what bipolar ionization is talking about, but Again, you know so much of this is learned from reading people's literature and trying to kind of parse it as best you can. I have Arturo here. Do you have a question or something to add Arturo I've seen a post by Nate Adams? Probably I want to say, maybe two or three days ago about the we're talking about the probiotics and really having its.

It sounds like a gray area. There's been little research done about it as far as it you know, killing the bad bacteria and leaving around the good bacteria. Have we actually done some reading up on that stuff? Yet, or is it still a gray area because you know there's the better air, better air products that some some guys are out there trying to offer to the market? So to me, I have one of those products. I have not really used it to say: hey it works wonders, I'm just wondering what y'all thought about the probiotics I'll tell you what I think off the top of it, which is completely.

I have not tested it, but first off, let's just say what we know about it, which it's a probiotic. So what are you adding you're, adding good bacteria to the Airstream right? What is good bacteria gon na do is good bacteria, you're gon na kill a virus. Maybe they say it does I don't know how that would work? Does it? Does it potentially kill other bacteria yeah, I I imagine it potentially could. But again, my understand of good bacteria is that it's primarily is going to act within us within our gut biome.

Whatever that's what I'm used to right, we have good bacteria that lives in our gut biome. It helps to digest things. There's bacterial cleaners that are being used. Probiotic cleaners.

There was a great podcast titled architectural yogurt, done on the building science podcast, which is done by the positive, the guys, positive energy down in Austin and talked about you know using probiotic cleaners, and that that seems to make a lot of sense to me to eat Away, biofilm, in the same way that enzyme based cleaners, we use same same basic concept but taking and throwing it in the air, I'm if it's good bacteria that is okay on our gut and you know it's okay in our lungs, I guess probably fine. The question isn't so much: is it dangerous, as is it actually effective? And I don't I don't know the answer to that and if you'd listen to them, they'll say that it is the only people I've interacted with who talked about probiotic, air purification or just salespeople. Just just sales people - and I don't I don't - I - don't necessarily have a problem with sales people. Okay - let's be honest, I do have a problem sales people, but I want to talk to scientists, researchers, people who have done real Studies on this stuff and and yeah and Michael says, I think, the guy who sells them I'll just read it.

He says I think, the guy who sells them as a weasel does that count as valid opinion. I don't know I've had some of the same feelings and they're not on they're, not without basis put it that way. I've done some research, but that doesn't mean that the technology is bad, so technology could be great. I just don't know yet I don't know what type of research has been done and and I'm not quick to throw things in my customers hair streams.

Because, again, you have to establish that it is both safe and effective. You can't just do there's lots of stuff, that's safe, that doesn't do anything, and I'm not gon na sell that to my customer and there's a lots of stuff. That does something that may not be safe, and I'm not gon na sell that to my customer unless they understand the risks like, for example, ozone is a good example. If I had a space that had a you know, a crime done it, and it was all this.

You know there was all this bacteria and odors and all this stuff, and I was trying to sanitize it with no one present. Would I have a problem putting an ozone generator in there, along with regular dissing, you know disinfectants in order to help treat that space and then ventilate it and then go in and do my cleanup sure, absolutely that's a good technology there's nothing wrong with ozone, intrinsically The problem with ozone is breathing it into your lungs, and so I think, that's true of a lot of things that we have to it's all about matching the application. I keep saying this over and over again, but in order to match the application, you have to know something about it first off and you have to have some data that tells you something more than just sales stuff and that's the problem I have with IAQ that Doesn't apply to other parts of our industry? It's why I really dislike our ia Q as a part of our industry, because it just has so many things that are just guesswork versus if I install a compressor properly and - and I can take all the measurements when I'm done - I I know that it's done Properly, you know, I don't have ambiguity, because even in sensors - and you know kaleb's kind of my go-to right now doing a lot of this research and testing the sensors and talking to manufacturers and coming up with these answers to things, because there is just so much Of that, and even for me III, have a lot of, I have more questions than I have answers. Frankly, I think a lot of us do, and so it's easier just to stick with what we definitely know which is filtration dehumidification in ventilation.

Yeah absolutely. I agree. Just having a product out there claiming that it does wonders, and it kills this, and it does this without having an actual fact sheet in actual going through a process. I mean this product just came out about what probably two three months ago and they're just pushing that so hard without knowing natural facts, and I I do stand behind what you say about knowing what you're selling and your fakes of it and not just going out There and selling it because you wan na make money and then that's the end of the story.