This episode of the HVAC school podcast is made possible by our great partners carrier Mitsubishi, Electric cooling and heating, which you can find more information about by going to visit, Avicii comfort, comm the Yui. I hubs smart kit with the hub 2 kit, which is the air probes, the hub for kit, which is the refrigerant probes and clamps, and the hub 6 kit, which is all of them together, great new kit, from Yui I mean by arbiter, my friend, Adolfo works, Who was on the podcast a couple? Episodes back, encourage you to listen to that. That is out now find out all the great features and benefits, including the charging key. That's built right into the probes, also want to thank refrigeration technologies.

Refrigeration technologies can be found at refridge tech, comm, refridge tech comm. One product that I was quite surprised by recently was was looking up. The Viper heavy-duty cleaner that can be used for evaporators and condensers. It is a balanced, pH, cleaner, so it's safe to use.

You can actually even dilute it down to twenty to one and use it as a no rinse cleaner. I was shocked to find out how reasonably priced it was. It was actually half the price of the cleaner that we were using and it's a foaming cleaner and my techs love it. I also want to thank Aero Asus for their partnership on the podcast makers of the air, laces bipolar and nano air purification products.

Great products. You can find out more about aryl asus by going to aero, laces comm and, as always, I want to thank true tech tools. Tr you tech tools, comm, you can get a great discount on any of the tools at your tech tools, comm by using the offer code, get schooled, and one of those great tools I would encourage you to look at is retro tech, blower doors. If you are not in the in the blower door business, yet I bet you will be someday, it's a fantastic tool for finding out how tight or loose a space is, which is sort of an important part of doing a good, solid load calculation on an existing Structure as well as properly testing new structures.

All in all, thank you to the people who make HVAC school possible. Most of all you by listening, because that's the reason why people want to partner with me is because, if you listen and - and I appreciate you most of all, when we exhume the 10-second flame free refrigerant, fitting from Parker reduced labor costs by sixty percent with no Brazing no flame had no fire spotter discover how Siouxland can help you be more efficient and productive visit. Zoom want comm for more information. Allow me to introduce the guy who actually says actually after every word, actually Brian.

I don't appreciate that pretend Christopher Walken, I actually say actually a lot more than you actually ever know, because I edit out so many of my actually's, it's funny when you talk a lot, whether it's in front of people or on a podcast or in videos that Just certain words start to come out all the time, and one of mine is actually at least it's not like hey thanks for joining us today on the HVAC school podcast, the podcast that helps you remember some things that you forgot about the HVAC trade as you've Been out there working and maybe helps you remember some things you forgot to know in the first place and today we're talking about air filters. We were talking about air filters with the one of the elder statesmen. I don't actually has, unless a elder statesman accent, make him sound old, but he's not an old guy, but he's just been around forever and they were Lando market. His name's Lee Andrews, the owner of Andrews filters and Lee knows a lot about filters.

He's passionate about filters and it's funny because with so many new indoor air quality products that come out and a lot of them very good products. But we start to forget sometimes about how important just basic air filters are and thinking about air filters and choosing them. Well, and so Lee goes over some things that you probably don't know about air filters and some things that often gets get hidden in the specifications of many air filters, and so here we go Lee Andrews, talking air filters all right. So today, I'm actually off-site and usually I'm recording in the HVAC school kalos offices, but today I'm actually at a kind of a HVAC institution here in Orlando, which is Andrews filters and I'm sitting here with the one the only Lee Andrews.

So thanks for sitting down with me Lee hey, I appreciate you coming in and talking to me. I hope we can help some people today, maybe understand about air filtration and things related a little better yep and it's interesting because right off the bat, it's such a misunderstood thing. It's such a core piece of what we do every day and there's this big push into IAQ. But a lot of us don't back up me included and take the time to think about air filters and air filtration and I came in.

I don't know it's probably been a month ago or so a few weeks ago at least and Lee gave me a master's course on air filtration, and I thought you know this will make a great podcast. So let's sit down and do that, but before we do that, if you wouldn't mind just telling us just a little bit about Andrews filters, a little bit about you, my brother and I Mark Andrews, we were second generation owners. Our father actually started the company 47 years ago and we do a little bit of manufacturing and represent some global companies. I've personally been in the business for about 35 years.

I resume a little bit. I've helped out with like the green lodging program for Florida, for hotels, some sustainability things like that. Some of the things that we do, we do everything from hotels to NASA to hospitals. Anything HVAC related that you can imagine that's what we do so, as I was sitting in the lobby, I was overhearing a conversation and it sounds like you sell to a very famous mouse as well.

So I'm sure that's a good size account hey yeah. We do a lot of course here in Orlando, we have a lot of theme parks, probably one of the most visited places on earth. That's one thing that back to the green lodging thing that was really big is Florida's very tourist oriented, so they wanted to make sure that our hotels were clean and things like that. So we actually wrote specifications for green lodging program for the filter side, which required a much better filter, Merv, eight or a filter that would actually even go into the guest rooms so we're trying to keep even that guest a little bit happier than that and trust Me they look when they go into rooms, a lot of people go and they look at filters and they look in the grill, I'm sure they do.

I do. I know I do. I've actually said this a couple times in the podcast. I'm not good about changing the filter in my house, but it's the first thing I do when I go into a hotel or a vacation house, we're staying check the filter how's the maintenance on this thing.

So of course, that's probably just my judgmental AC technician side. As well just wanting to make sure everybody else is doing their job, so let's start with a really common thing that I'm sure a lot of people don't have any reference for. So when you say Merv what is Merv in the first place? Well, we're not talking about Merv Griffin people who are old enough to remember him. Merv is basically a standard that ASHRAE the American society, heating, refrigeration, air conditioning engineers, long acronym Knuffle, yeah that actually they write all the standards for anything HVAC related that needs to be testing, and things like that and air filtration is one of those and so to Start out a little bit in that originally there was the what we called the 52.1 dust spot tests.

So remember that one yeah way back in the day, if you remember say a pleated filter - might be a 30 % efficient filter and then you might have bag or box filters final filters that might be 65 percent, 85 percent or 95 percent. So now to go back the way that was tested was they actually put paper targets in front of I guess this filter or behind the filter, whatever got through the filter. They basically shined light on this little paper target to tell you how much particulate got through it was a little bit rudimentary and Merv was a step up in the 90s when they started using particle counters error, measuring devices different things and it's a way to test Filters where we can look at certain micron levels, so basically, what we do is there's a parameter where they look at small, medium large particles. They basically put those together and then give you a rating on those sized particles.

So that is basically going to give you your efficiency. Basically, as you go up in number, say, mer, six, more seven or eight. The filter is more efficient and stop smaller finer particles. This is sort of like when people ask what all goes into doing a seer rating on a piece of equipment.

It's like to calculate eer, it's a basic, but once you go into sere now it's not just a matter of how they come up with it. It's all the different conditions, and so are they sort of averaging the different sizes. When they're doing this calculation, they're saying here's the capture rate, add larger particle sizes, here's the capture rate at medium and here's, the capture rate at small, most of the particles in the range are 20 micron, size particles and lasts. Most of the particles in the air are less than one micron and a cubic meter of air typically and typical atmospheric conditions even indoors.

It could be average about a billion particles, 1 billion particles. You know so that can freak you out a little bit because you think, oh, my gosh, all the stuff we're breathing. Well, if you see the sun shining in your family room, you see the light reflecting off the dust particles and all everything you're looking at is about 10 micron and larger, because that's what the human eye can see down to you in that billion cubic meter of Air, typically, that's one billion particles, 99 % of them are going to be less than one micron in size. The majority of those are going to be between 0.2 and point 6 micron in size, so the average is around point 4 micron, most of the particulate in there.

The problem with a lot of filters, even pleated filters and things that were looking at at point 4. Micron, typically, they stop about anywhere from about 5 to 15 % of the particulate, so the rest of us left in the air things like asbestos fibers. One reason why they're so dangerous well, there's two ranges: one is the size of the particle. Is 0.3 micron in size, okay, the size of a lot of the pores in your lungs are that size, so they get lodged in the pores of your lungs and therefore they are a carcinogen, and that's why they're cancer-causing right.

So there are some things like that or a big effect. The filter industry is going that way, we'll probably talk about that a little bit later in the cast, but we're looking at smaller and smaller stuff and effects and the health effects filters originally were. Oh, we want to keep this cool clean. We want to keep the blowers clean.

That's great! All! That's evolved into it's leaning, more and more more now towards human, so that's sort of our goal. What we're starting to get to you, especially more people on earth, the more polluted that the earth becomes and indoors people from spending time indoors. So so the two sort of objectives of air filtration are one like you mentioned, protect the equipment. So it's got to do a good enough job that it's gon na keep stuff from running on your evaporator coil and getting in your ductwork there's that which sometimes we'll even struggle with that and then number two is, is that you want to catch the particles that Could potentially cause health problems and, as we get into this sort of indoor air quality, conscious health, conscious environment and, like you mentioned as you increase pollutants in the air and maybe increase the number of people who are living in cities and the more time they're spending Inside their homes, all these different factors that play into that and there's also the awareness of it, but then there's the concern that most technicians have, which is okay.

If you've been around the field long enough, you remember the ages. If I'm not going to name any specific brands, but when I was in the field that we called him, the Cherry Bomb filters nothing gets through, including air, and so we're also concerned that we have filters that don't have too much resistance to air flow as well. So can you speak to that a little bit in sort of the relationship between those factors? Filter technology has really changed a lot over the years and at one time that was a big issue. One thing that you really want to look at is surface area, so naturally the more surface area you have you're going to have more room to blow air through think of sipping, something through a coffee straw versus a big gulp straw.

You're going to have a lot more airflow when you have more media in the filter, some of the filters that we have now that are available in high efficiency products. So this would be like box filters and things a 24 by 24 inch by 12 inch. Deep filter has 200 square feet of media in it. This is a filter will actually last two to four years in typical applications and the nice thing about it is so much media.

In there the initial pressure drop is lower than a standard, merv 8 pleat, and this is AA number fourteen. Ninety five percent type filter. Okay, well so we can take really good filtration now and apply and even have a lower pressure drop and do twice as good and when we're talking about Merv 14 filters. We're talking about filters that take out 60 to 75 % of the point.

Four microns, as opposed to regular pleat, is anywhere from about five to twelve again fifteen summer in there right and so a regular pleat that most of us are probably used to. I mean there's still a lot of the old hog hair filters out there and metal mesh filters and all kinds of total garbage that we know really doesn't catch anything I mean those of us in the field recognize that, but you take a typical pleated air filter That you buy from your local carrier, distributor or whatever it's gon na say Merv eight on it and that's what we're used to seeing, and so I'm teeing it up. Forty of course, but isn't that the way to go just by a typical merv 8 air filter and slap it in there what's wrong with that and the 90s when Merv came along and it was useful, some things that we were noticing in the field were some Filters actually dropping it efficiency over time, so filters that were purchased, as let's say, our merv 8 filter. We would go back and test this filter a few weeks or whatever month or two later, and it had dropped to a mere five or six.

Our industry started doing some looking at this and found out that some of the things that happens is a lot of what we call coarse, fiber media's or large diameter fiber media's. In other words, the thickness of the fiber is a little larger in size. Right and typically, these are synthetic polyester type medias. What was happening is these filters come because it's a plastic fiber, either with a little bit of an inherent electrostatic charge on them, or they would have a charge imposed on them, say, for instance, they take a corona charger at the factory and put it what we Call super charge on it.

The problem we have that we found with that, especially here in Florida. It's even more prevalent is there's three basic ways that you lose your charge on a filter. So three different ways is: we have humidity in the air moisture in the air we're bringing in outside air. Well, we have that so you're discharging the filter.

That way, also when your to load, particulate onto the filter, fiber you're, starting to insulate that fiber so think of a plug in the lamp cord, and it has nothing around it, but bare wire and you grab it you're gon na get shocked right now. If we insulate it with rubber or plastic, there's no transfer, so basic same thing happens to a charged fiber when it starts to get insulated by particles. And the third way is in the air is certain amounts of alcohol and things produce from kerosene from planes, trains and buses use diesel, and especially, if you're, in more of a downtown type area or a crowded area lots of cars. An airport is probably a great example where a filter would get discharged, probably in a couple of minutes, with plane sitting out there.

What happens is when you lose that charge you're losing your efficiency. We really promote what we call fine fiber media's, which the fibers are a lot smaller in diameter and there's more of them put together in this filter matrix and another important thing is the amount of loft or thickness of the media. You can take a lot of really good quality, pleats and tear them apart and look at the side of the filter, and you can see how much loft is in the media, and you can look at some cheap ones and you'll see it's about as thin as A piece of paper or two: so it's not going to hold any d'oeuvres, it might even stop some dirt, but it's gon na have a shorter life that way, I'm defining some terms here. So when we say efficiency, we're talking in terms of Merv and that's how well it captures particles when we talk about the size of the fiber you're, talking about how thick or thin the fibers are themselves and when you're talking about loft you're talking about the thickness.

If you were to look at the cross-section of the meeting that you were to take a piece out and look at it and those are all big factors, and then you also mention surface area itself and something interesting that you pointed out to me that I had Never thought of before you had showed me two different two-inch filters and that one had a significantly increased number of pleats in it based on the other. So you can you talk about that. You'll see out there. Eight pleats per foot, ten pleats per foot 15 pleats per foot, I've seen twelve pleats per foot.

When we take media out of the media, I call them delito pleats. Basically, it makes the filters initial cost cheaper, but really when you're purchasing filters, you do not want to look at initial cost. You want to look at annual cost and you want to look at your TCO or your total cost of ownership. In other words, if we're using a cheaper filter - let's say a five dollar plea and we're having to change it every three months because of the cheaper media and a cheaper configuration and so on and so forth.

So you're changing four times here. So if you look at that total and then you look at a filter - let's say that's eight dollars, but is a lot better quality and you only have to change twice a year, you're, actually gon na save on material costs for a better filter annually. If you look at the annual cost and the associated so when we have a filter with more media and so on and so forth, more surface area again remember going back to the straw thing, so we're gon na last long, we're gon na have a lower resistance Or lower pressure drop over time for the six months and then the year, so we basically just cut the labor in half, we just cut the disposal costs in half it's a much greener option when you're changing twice a year than four times a year with. Basically, the same amount of cardboard, some one and so forth, so it's a much better option.

That way. Couple quick things I want to talk to you about. One of them is the uei hub, smart kit that was designed by my friend Adolfo Wirtz. You can hear more about that and the podcast probes versus manifolds, but about this about this about this probe set it's it's a really well designed set and among the things that I really like about it is the quarter inch air probe.

You know a lot of the other air probes, the temperature and humidity probes. They go into the air stream, they're, they're, larger, and so that makes making the holes a little bigger, especially where I am in a duct board market. If you ever have to work with duct board, it's much easier to deal with a smaller penetration that it is a large one. You start getting out a bigger drill bit and it makes a big mess of the duct board and that's been a real problem.

For me, over the years, and so the hub 2 kit is the two air probes, and I really really like that feature, and another thing that I really like is how well the Bluetooth works just how easily it connects and disconnects, and you know you just turn Them on, in fact, even with the air probes, you just open them up and they lock at 90 degrees and boom. It's it's just. It just works, and it's good they've got nice strong magnets on the base, just a just a well-designed instrument. So, if you're in the market, I would encourage you to take a look at the ue.

I knew i probe kit the hub probe kit. You can find out more by going to uei test comm and another thing when we're talking about really well-designed products. I'm going to talk to you more about refrigeration technologies. I've enjoyed refrigeration technologies products for many years.

I've been using my log for many years and I was always impressed by that product. I remember I can actually. I can actually go right now to the first job that I use my log on. It was a grocery store and it was we had to do a major compressor replacement assembly, hermetic, compressor replacement.

We had all these threaded connections that we had to make and and I'd picked up my log and used it, and I just thought it was great - really worked great for that job and I've used it ever since and that's been many years ago, and so obviously A lot of you've used night ania log, a lot of you liked it, but I would also encourage you to look at their wet rag product, which is a product that you can wrap around valve as an expansion valve service valves in from place in front of Dryers so that way, you simultaneously don't damage the internal components of them, because it helps pull the heat away. But then it also helps prevent from burning the paint, because you don't want to burn the paint on say an accumulator or a compressor or a line dryer, because then that later on, that can lead to corrosion rust and then leaking. So I think it's a really great product. A lot of you still like to use old-school, wet rags, and that's fine, but typical, wet rag is not going to have the heat absorbing capacity of this wet rag product made by refrigeration technologies and it's real easy product to use.

You can reuse it. You can add a few drops of water to it and it rehydrates it just a very, very nice product and everything that refrigeration technologies makes. In my experience, everything I've touched is just really good, really good products and you can find out more about refrigeration technologies by going to refridge tech. Comm, that's for fridge tech, comm rref are i-g tech comm.

You can find all the products made by refrigeration technologies at true tech tools. Tr you, tech tools, comm and you can get a great discount by using the offer code get school to checkout. I had someone tell me the other day, and this is the first time I ever heard this they said are electrostatic and they're talking about a disposable type filter. Our electrostatic regenerates itself, based on the air flowing over the air filter, is that's something that you've ever heard of or you're familiar with.

I've heard a few things relating to that, and I don't know how that could actually even happen, especially being here in Florida. It's gon na be even more prevalent to where, when you're bringing outside air you're, bringing in humid air and you're gon na be hitting that filter with that again, when you're loading particulate onto the filter. Now, if that filter stays clean and you're cleaning that all the time and that's hugely labor-intensive, if it's, what we call a permanent electrostatic filter, which basically those were popular in the 60s and 70s, I couldn't even sit here and tell you of an account. That's used any of that kind of technology for many many years right.

I really don't know how that could happen, but but who knows right things happen? It makes sense what you said, though, that if you have a higher relative humidity air, it's much less likely that there would be a static electrical charge generated, because you would have more conductance in the air. The same reason why you have electrostatic charges. You shock yourself on the door and when it's very very dry out, maybe there may be more to that in a really dry environment. But of course, if that's in Florida well again when you're loading particulate on to the surface of the filter, you're going to insulate any charge, that's on that yeah good point.

So let's talk about that merv 8, a because merv 8 is what we're all used to you go to down here. We have Publix, that's our grocery store, all the homeowners go to Publix or they go to Walmart and they buy a merv 8 filter by who and if they read the fine print it'll, say merv 8 and not Merv 8 a so. What is the difference earlier? We talked a little bit about what's happening to filters right, we're finding merv 8 pleated filters that are dropping tumor, 5 or 6 right. So after some investigation - and we are finding that well, these filters were charged and they're losing their static charge.

We started looking at and the National restarted got a hold of it and ran with it started, looking at it and did a lot of, I guess, testing and so on. They ended up coming up with a new test, so the Merv test is called. The standard. Is actually ASHRAE standard 52.1 and that's the old dust bot test.

Then you have the Merv test was 52.2 and then you have the 52.2 J, which is the Merv, a or addendum part of the test, and basically what that does is kind of pulls. The pants down a little bit on charge filters and what happens to charge filters and even ASHRAE, saw that there was issues with charge filters, dropping inefficiency. Basically, what they do is they run the Merv test and then they run another Merv test using potassium chloride. It's like an alcohol tight product that will remove a charge off of a surface, so they're, basically in the lab, showing you kind of what happens to charge filters when they lose their charge.

The interesting thing is is even in the addendum and all that they tell you that in the field is probably even going to be a worse charge loss than they get with lab results. You naturally tells you that the problem that we have is you're purchasing a merv, 8 filter and it's a merv 8 when you put it in and as time goes on, sometimes it's days or week or two you're losing that charge and now you're down number five. So you didn't really get the filtration that you paid for, and that might be specified like if you're a hospital or anything health care and that's places where you really can't afford to mess up. We talked about merv, 8 and Merv a day.

Do you also see the same effect in the higher Merv ratings like myrrh for teens, that sort of thing, so a lot of them are getting a myrrh 14 by applying electrostatic charge, then we actually look a little more when we get into the higher end filters. We put a lot more emphasis on the 0.4 micron size particles, because, when we're getting to, let's say healthcare - we're getting into places that are a little more critical with Murr 14 filtration. We want to make sure that that's what we have okay, so we can't afford to mess up there right can't afford to be wrong right, the biggest issues that we have and that drops that I've seen or Merv 10 merv 11 that Murph or teens turn into When we're looking at point four micron, typically, we should be around 60 to 70 ish percent and catching those and a lot of the electro statically enhanced media's that I've seen the course large fiber media's are around 35 40 percent at point four, which is a critical. I guess sighs, so that's issues with us and that's why we won't even sell that type of product to healthcare or nasa or things like that, because we don't want to be responsible for things happening that are bad.

You know won't have that cup or product not doing what it's supposed to do, and that's why you really need fine fibers to do that right to stop smaller stuff. The technology may change and it is changing and something may happen with the lecture, static, media's or what-have-you, where they're better, so on and so forth. At this point I haven't seen it yet. At this point, I'm sticking by my guns, with my fiber has fine fiber, and essentially I mean when it comes down to is just good, solid, well manufactured filter.

I mean it's kind of an old school ethos, make it well make sure that the fibers themselves are well designed and that you have plenty of surface area. Because when you talk about the number of pleats, I mean that's. Essentially, what you're saying, if you're deleting pleats a delete, a pleat as you called it? If you're deleting pleats out of a filter, then you have less surface area and if you have less surface area, then you don't have as much capture media and you are gon na - have more issues with increased static pressure because you don't have as much surface area. It's gon na load more quickly.

Another thing you had mentioned to me was the idea that some of the less quality air filters when you do testing, because - and this is the first time we've mentioned this - but cam phil - was a that you do a lot of work with. They do very thorough testing and you were saying that on some of the less expensive media you'll actually see that the static pressure stops increasing because what's happening is particles are just going in one side and just pulling right out the other side. Could you go into that a little bit? There was actually a college in Florida. We did some testing and we didn't even really do the test.

The electrostatic, I guess filter company - ran the test. Okay, I kind of found out about it later, but then I was brought in to look at the test and basically we had fine fibertite medias. It was a brand new building had two identical air handlers, so it was a good place to test or servicing the same area. One had our filtration in it.

It's fine fiber and the other one had electrostatically enhanced, filter the electrostatically, enhanced filter kinda to get down on the nuts and bolts. When I went in it had been in there about a year and a half, it was a two inch. What we call a mini pleat, it was basically black on both sides front and back. If you looked at, you would say, there's no way this could get any blacker.

Okay, right and the pressure drop on the filter was reading that it was still about half done and they had already had to change our product after a year and basically, what happened was I used this little example. If you take a glass, eight ounce glass, you got a gallon of water. You start filling that glass when it gets to the top it's gon na overflow, and that's it it's all I can hold. That was basically our filter.

What we discovered was what was happening with the electrostatic filter is so I saw a pressure, drop readings and they're reading like half an inch of pressure, drop or resistance, and then it would drop the next week to 0.35 and then it would go up to 5/8 And it would go to four or five, so what was happening is this filter was just loading and then could only hold so much dirt because it had coarse large fibers. It would just let a lot of product particles through right, and so it was basically loading unloading, the selling factor to those people that customer was actually he took me up and we looked at both units and downstream of the coil. They had lights and they turned on the light and there was a poor window. She showed me, my unity says, look nice and clean windows, nice and clean.

We went to the other unit with electrostatic filter and there was all those dust all over the window. He was like this was one of the factors that and that this filter seemed like it was gon na last ten years and it was just unloading and loading. My buddy not a lot at night. That's the efficiency of the filter as it loads does that filter keep catching as it's loaded or does it just start unloading and he said that's proof positive by the fact that the static pressure didn't keep increasing.

I guess it's sort of like every filter. That's doing its job, the static pressure should continue. If you would look at that curve, it should just keep going up and up and up as the life of that filter goes because that means that it's not releasing particles back into the yes and it may vary a little bit a little bit, but over time It should continue to go up up up up up right to a certain point right office. Manufacture is gon na.

Tell you what your changed out point for be most more of eight plates and that two-inch pleated filters and such are typically about point nine. Oh two. One-Inch of static pressure drop if you looked at an air pressure gauge on the unit. So your final filters, a lot of those will go to about 1.5 or one and a half inches of pressure drop before they have to be changed right and obviously just a quick disclaimer here cuz some of you are listening.

You are thinking like residential and residential. If we have one inch of pressure drop just across the air filter, we're in big trouble yeah, so we're not talking about residential were talking about generally systems that can handle much more than that or designed to Vav systems. That sort of thing, but the point is, is that these filters can handle that meaning that they're actually physically designed to handle it. Unlike another factor - and you showed me this - is that there's a huge difference also between the structural integrity of a good quality filter.

Unlike a lot of the cam fills that you were showing me versus the less expensive options as well yeah. So when you're looking at a filter, it's going to have less median things so already right off the bat the thought is well. How can we make this cheaper right? Okay, initial cost? Well, guess what else we're gon na do the cardboard grades going to be cheaper, so a lot of the cardboard grades out there are anywhere from 18 to 22. Gauge cardboard might see some 24 gauge cardboard sprinkle.

Then so the higher you go and the gauge of the cardboard that's the thickness of the board. The heavier is going to be, and so those were also made out of recycled materials, which we feel is a good thing, but in air filtration, it's not really too good of a thing. When we look at like handful. Take me cardboards they're gon na be using virgin cardboard and 28 gauge board, so we've got a heavier board and the difference between recycled board and let's say virgin cardboard is: if you know it OSB is you don't want your roof really made out of that, because It's particle board, you want your roof made out of plywood, so the same thing applies with the filter, cardboard grades and what they're made out of when you start adding moisture and the units we have that so you're gon na start swelling that cardboard and weakening that Cardboard because it has a lot of glue in it.

The other thing you want to be concerned about is what type of backing is in the filter. Basically, there's three types of backings: there's what we call self supported, pleat that doesn't even have a backing. They make the media, they add some rigidity to the media. I always see those sucked in okay and then you will have what we call expanded metal looks like the little diamond things that's applied to the back of the media and it's basically made out of tin and you can kind of take your pinky finger.

Just pushed Anolon little claps, a good test is, if you say, set a cheap filter down on a table flat table just take the palm of your hand and kind of press down on it. Put a little pressure on it. You'll find that you're gon na crush those expanded metal plates pretty easily so like in the canfil product. We use welded wire and it's 100,000 pound tensile strength.

So it's really strong. You can do that same palm test, but that cancel filter, you're gon na see a difference. When you pick up the filter, you're gon na feel the difference. It's gon na feel a lot heavier and a lot more robust, so it can hold up to the moisture and high pressure drops that we might have so structure is really important, because if you have a filter sucked in right, it's not doing its job yeah.

How many of us have seen that right now? I guess the challenge that a lot of people may be thinking and it's a challenge that I face too it's kind of. But how do you get a customer's head around the benefits of improved filtration? How do you have that conversation? Do you have any tips for that? Basically doing a TCO or total cost of ownership is your best way, because if you show them that you can provide them with a superior built filter, so structure is better. It's got fine fiber in it and all the aspects of the filter versus a cheap initial cost, filter or first cost filter. Again, when you do the math and then you add the energy savings to it, because we're gon na have a lower overall pressure drop for the year.

The energy savings is probably about as big as any of it. I mean just alone that so we're all thinking about light bulbs and all that kind of thing right LED and how do we save water and things, but the air filtration is hidden off in some air handler room behind closed doors inside a locked up air handler. So a lot of people aren't really thinking about that light bulbs and we're looking at those every day go wow. I want how much energy they use, but your HVAC systems using 40 50 percent of your building's electrical cost and then, depending on the filter, design and how it's built.

How efficient is that can be another? Thirty five: forty percent savings, a really good filter over a poor filter. We taught five dollars for a cheap, palete and eight dollars for a good plate, or whatever I mean the better pleat alone and energy savings can be thirteen fourteen fifteen dollars a year just for one hole. So you think, if you have 100 holes, that's a lot of money just in the energy savings and then all the sustainability aspects of it too. So people who are concerned with the environment and you're feeling less landfills.

If you actually go to a significantly better filter than what they had before in some cases on the high end facility side, you can actually reduce the number of trips and to get the same job done with fewer filter changes, and so there's other things. You can look at as well there, but I think you make a good point, because you look at the efficiency based on the reduced pressure drop, but then also think about the efficiency of the equipment over time, because it's not getting as dirty. You don't have as many problems with that add in the fact that, with a better filter, better capture, better efficiency over the entire life of that filter, you're also gon na have better indoor air quality, which that's the one thing. I've been thinking a lot about even for those of us who do residential, I think that's, probably the easiest sell in the residential market is at this point.

This is the filter rack you have, and so would you rather go with an inexpensive filter that risks collapsing? It's going to have more bypass because of that isn't gon na do the job over its lifecycle, or would you rather go with a merv 8a filter, we're talking in this case about one inch residential that is going to do a much better job of both maintaining The equipment but then also keeping your air clean, so look on the side of your filter that you're purchasing and see if it lists the Merv rating and also the Merv a rating. That's important thing, because a lot of electrostatically charged or cheaper grade filters. A lot of times they're, not gon na, have the Merv AAA or what have you or the a rated on the side of it. So it's a good thing to look for when you're purchasing filters is that number and on some filters I know they'll actually have like a piece of paper.

That's stuck to it. You know the consumer grade. Some of them will actually even kind of tell you that it's an initial efficiency and that the efficiency does drop. There's.

Actually I don't know where I saw that at it was from a popular filter manufacturer. They had a little piece on that that basically described just that thing that their efficiency can drop. After that initial use, it was something they use very ambiguous language like at some point. The electrostatic charge can be depleted and it will be a merge six now, instead of a Merv eight yeah, and they will do that.

Especially some of the large companies have lawyers, so it might be a little bit of a disclaimer right on we're telling you. Yes, it's a merv 11, but it really corresponds to remove eight as a removal letter or merv 8. Yes, that depends on when you measure right, yeah. Another kind of just general encouragement that I kind of came away with from my first meeting with Lee was that filtration is still one of the most overlooked elements of the HVAC technicians and the HVAC sales cycle and ownership they're.

One of the things that's the least considered, which is kind of ironic, given that it's one of the more critical pieces that we deal with him and how many bogus service calls do we get we show up, and somebody just has a dirty air filter. So it's always top of mind, yet we don't think carefully about the products that were choosing even thinking not only about choosing one type of one inch filter over another, for example, or two inch filter, but thinking about going up in size and in surface area. In order to do a better job, what encouragement see you have to the average AC contractor out there who's going about his merry way, and maybe not hasn't, been thinking much about filtration in the past? How would you encourage them to think about this? I've been in industry for 30-something years, and I know on the HVAC side how they make their money and so on and so forth, and you can, I believe, provide a better service to your customers and build that trust and an honesty that maybe your customers looking For to say, hey, you can go to this better quality filter. It's gon na save you money annually.

I might not be here as much I'm probably gon na be here doing my quarter leaves and everything anyways, but we can skip that filter change and we can actually run a little bit longer and save you money in other ways like the energy side and so On and so forth, all cancel distributors, like myself, actually have total cost of ownership software. It's called LCC where we can actually take the building or all the units or we'll have you plug in the filters that they use even competitive filters wherever and compare filters which is kind of interesting, because it gives the end-user a total cost of ownership. When you present that - and they see all the advantages and everything they say, wow, that really makes an impact, and we really didn't think of the energy side and things like that. We're probably selling filtration almost more on energy now than almost anything else, because so many people are so into that.

I also wanted to mention to you real quick, so we're also looking a lot more at the health side of it more than ever. Europe just adopted a new, I guess the Merv and all that is kind of gon na go away. Europe was in seven, seven nine was there Merv, they just adopted the ISO one six eight-nine Oh standard. The u.s.

is looking at it very hard you're trying to make it one test globally. It's basically gon na look at particle sizes and particles that are related to human health, so they're actually going by the World Health Organization standards. So the new test. I believe it's going to happen is going to be even more stringent than the Merve Merve a, and it's going to be a good thing, because this can be easier for you all to be able to pick out what filter you need for what situation.

Also. So we're actually going to be looking at cities. Are you in the country? There's all kinds of things are gon na add to it's. Gon na be a really neat test.

I think it's really gon na be updated, so kind of film at 11:00 on that it's in the pipe right now with ASHRAE, so we'll see what happens very cool, so you function in the state of Florida right so Andrew so throughout the state of Florida. So for people who might be in say Florida who are thinking gosh I'd rather maybe work with somebody who actually knows filters. What would be a good way for them to find out more about your business and then maybe a little bit more about cam Phil as well? Well, our website is good. It's WWE Andrews, filter, comm on there is all our contact information and there's some cool links and study things, and you can find out a little bit more about us and maybe a little better quality filtration that you might not have heard of and some things that Might interest you and say: get you thinking about other things than what you're used to thinking about a filtration like energy and things like that and sustainability.

Anything I'm missing here anything that everybody needs to know about that I've forgotten to mention. I think we covered some good things, there's a lot and air filtration and we could go on for hours and hours hours and maybe we'll do it again on come up with some other good things. But I enjoyed my time and I hope that we might have helped some people and we can always help answer some questions or whatever. If you have those two I'll share, Lee's personal cell phone number with all of you later well he's not here sitting here and then you could just call him up at all hours of the night like you do me so that'd be great, alright appreciatively.

Thank you. Thank you, hey big thanks to Lee Andrews coming on the podcast very nice guy I enjoyed enjoyed sitting down with him at his office here in Orlando and talking air filters. So thanks to Lee and another thing, I want to mention real, quick, I'm gon na talk about this in some future episodes as well, but one of the biggest questions I get from business owners or managers of businesses is how we find employees at kalos and the Fact is: is that generally we train our own people. Usually we don't hire a lot of experienced people because generally the market isn't in my and my experience isn't real great for experienced people.

But I talked to Patrick long and you may see Patrick in the groups and he has a new, a new service for recruiting where he leverages social media specifically and it's called biz pal. So if you go to Bismol dot, org biz, pal org, you can look up Patrick and what he's doing - and it's pretty innovative he's got a really nice system. It's very smooth and go through answer a bunch of questions. You have to have a Facebook page for your business.

Give him access to that. There's there's a couple little steps, but he makes it really easy and we've gotten a lot of a lot of good applicants and I've gotten, I think, twelve qualified applicants. You know we've gone through them, but we actually just made an offer to someone today and he accepted so we are going to have a technician who works at kalos because of what Patrick did with biz pal, and I would encourage you to check it out. Look that is pal org also.

I want to mention right. Soft write, soft load calculation, software duct design software. All that, if you listen back to my Jack Rhys episodes, Jack's a huge fan of write soft, I'm a big fan of write soft, if you're in the market, for anything like that anything in the design side of the business, then I would encourage you to look At write, soft, so the other day I went to the doctor, and I was having some - I was having some abdominal pain. You'll have a lot of kidney stones, and doctor said you know.

Brian I've got bad news for you and I said what he said. Well, you're color blind and I said doc - don't hit me with something like that right out of the Orange alright thanks for listening, we will talk to you next time on the HVAC school podcast.