This episode of the HVAC school podcast is made possible by our great sponsors, first of them being refrigeration. Technologies can find more by going to refridge, techcom and actually that's what this whole episode is. Kind of surrounding is the chemicals that refrigeration technologies makes also air lysis makers of the bipolar and Nano whole home air purification products. You can find out more about air oasis actually by listening to a couple episodes back.

When I talked to John Benner, we have podcasts both about the bipolar and nanotechnologies and good American made company speaking of good American made company, as I also want to mention our sponsors American radionics, the American radionics Corp, also known, as AM rad makers of the turbo 200, you can find out more about american radeon Akande, the turbo 200 universal capacitor that i talked so much about recently. I've made so many videos about by going to american radeon accom or if you want to find how its installed you can go to turbo 200. Install comm also when I mentioned carrier longtime sponsor the podcast, makes this podcast possible the equipment that we stall every day at kalo services. You can find out more at carrier, comm and Mitsubishi Electric cooling and heating at Mitsubishi comfort, comm, finally want to mention uei and the hub smart kit, probes, both the air probes, which is the hub to kit and the refrigerant and temperature line probes.

That's the hub for and the hub six is everything all together, as well as the wrs scales made by uei and arbiter great products. You can find those by going to true tech tools. Comm use the offer code, gets cooled for a great discount at checkout, and now the man who knows the secret formula that caused old capacitors to last forever and the new ones to fail every 10 minutes Brian or why hello? There everyone - i am brian, the host of the hvac school podcast, which happens to be exactly what you listening to right now, and i appreciate you taking the time to listen to this. You have many different podcasts you can listen to and the fact that you chose this one, why it says something about you and your intelligence.

I think may be negative or positive, i'm not sure which, but this is the podcast that helps you remember some things that you might have forgotten along the way and the HVAC our trade as well as helps you remember some things you forgot to know in the First place and today we're talking about chemicals and cleaning, and i couldn't think of anybody who had rather talked to about this topic. John pastor, ello he's the founder of refrigeration technologies. He used to be a technician, then became a contractor business owner and realized that there were some chemicals that just weren't quite good enough, so he started a business to make some really good chemicals here in the US. I really like refrigeration technologies because they're a smaller chemical manufacturer, but they really focus on the HVAC trade.

They really focus their attention on making the best possible products, rather than pandering to maybe the cheapest price or to the requirements of the wholesaler they're looking to make products that work really well in the field. If you've used big blue, if you've used my log if you've used their Viper cleaners, you know what I'm talking about. They make really nice products and John is a really smart guy, and so today, we're gon na specifically talk about oil cleaning and how to use oil cleaners to their greatest effect, as well as some of the different technologies and chemistry's that are out there for oil Cleaning products, so here we go John Pasteur, ello talking about oil cleaning, alright. So today on the podcast, I finally got John Pasteurella one of the heroes of the industry, one of the Giants of the industry.

So thanks for coming on the podcast John, I am five foot, five, not much of a giant yeah, I'm glad to be here and glad to be able to speak to all the service technicians that are tuned in. So you started out in the trade actually working on equipment right yeah. I actually started out as a bench chemist back in the early 70s and I was working toward a degree in and I worked in a lab medical lab at the time. I found myself out of a job one time and looked in the paper and found a company that was hiring installers, no experience necessary and I figured oh well I'll apply for this AC install job and I'll.

Do that make a little income until I could find another lab position, but really I kind of fell into my niche. I really enjoyed the work. The pay was much better than working in a lab. So that's pretty much how I started and I bounced around a couple companies after that got some good training and servicing and started my own contracting business, which I did for 17 years.

Okay, well, yeah! I didn't realize you actually had your own contracting business, oh yeah! So running your own contracting business was that a lot of the motivation that led to you creating your own chemicals? What led me to creating chemicals in my first product was my bubble leak detector, a big blue. I was really frustrated with the performance of the public detectors that were out on the market and I see an oily fitting on a unit. I know it's leaking and I go to apply bubble solution. I rarely if ever get bubbles.

Maybe at that time I was using first generation electronic leak detectors and they were very unreliable, so I decided well, you know what I'm gon na start, making my own leak detector and see if I can get better performance and that's how I came up with big Blue, so up to that point, were you still using like dawn soap and that sort of thing, or were you actually buying them off the shelf? No, what I did is, I actually went to the library in the Patent Office and at that time we're talking life before Google and I just researched leak, detector fluids. I was researching bubble systems and foaming systems and trying to find the best types of bubble, producing fluids that were documented out there. That gave an actual form license and I ordered in a bunch of material - and I worked in my kitchen at night. After doing service calls all day - and I tried different formulations that I had next day - I would bottle it and go out in the field and see which ones were giving me.

The best performance eventually settled on some bubble solutions and formulations that really liked. I handed it out to some of my other service tech buddies and they came back to me and said: hey Jon, this stuff is really good and they telling me that they were finding leaks now that they had never seen before. They said: hey you're, gon na start selling, with all the wholesalers around here I didn't have any desire to go out and start producing this on a large scale. I just wanted it for my own personal use, but my service tech buddy said yeah.

We'll help you sell it, we'll go door-to-door to all the supply houses and see if they'll buy it. So that's pretty much how it started out. So how did you get into the cleaner business Ben? You can't build a company around one product really because wholesalers they want to buy a line of product. They don't wan na just buy one product from the small little company when they can go to a larger company and buy complete line of products, and wholesalers are not out there trying to find leaks so they're not particular about quality they're, just only interested in stocking Their shells I had to expand after that and my next product was a foaming alkalyn qual, cleaner.

It was the first of its type. It was basically an oven cleaning formulation that, when you sprayed it on the coil after a few minutes, the foam would start evolving. It had this wow factor and you'd, see all the dirt coming out and did an excellent job of decreasing coils, and it's something I actually developed out in the field. I was using easy-off because a lot of my customers were Chinese restaurants and burger stands and people that don't only call me out for service when their condensers were we plugged with oil or in grease.

So I basically developed that product by just going to the grocery store and seeing where the best products out there and easy awfulest check it and later I added it to the line, was back in 89, went to market with it, and I found this coil gun This foam gun that worked really nice with it and I started marking being the solution. It was called the Carbon X Club cleaning system, a high farming, alkaline core cleaner with a foam gun, started, doing trade shows and showing how it goes on and how all the secondary foam evolved, how nice and clean and bright it got the coils that was quickly Copied by a company on the East Coast called Stuart Hall, they came out with their own version, called renews and then Virginia copied. It came out with their Alka foam and then several years later, Calgon came out with their new Brite. That's how I got involved in cleaners, like quote cleaning products, is the mainstay of any chemical line and the reason for that is bubble leak, detector, okay, that's gon na stay on a service truck for six months before you need another bottle.

Coil cleaner gallon of that may be the only one service call so the turn rate on coil cleaner. That's where all the meat and gravy was. What have you learned cuz? This is coming to mind right away. Cuz you had something that was a very alkaline foaming cleaner.

Have you learned anything since that time about chemicals now that you've been doing it for all these years? I was happy with the performance of the Outland. I had that nice wow factor, but I really knew that this is dangerous stuff to handle. I kind of wanted to get into researching and developing safer chemicals that could get the same cleaning response, get the same cleaning efficiency without any hazardous odors or smells or you don't have to worry. If you get it on you, it's gon na burn and scar yeah by shifting all my research into the green chemist, three been doing that ever since I don't want to be producing or putting out there on the market quo cleaners that it's potentially going to hurt.

Someone we're starting to see the trend in the industry to go to the more aluminum, safe products, environmentally responsible products. But then again we demand performance and that's the whole trick is getting them perform as good as an acid as good or better than an alkaline. And that's what makes up the majority of work all cleaning chemical line now all right. So let's talk about that because I think a lot of technicians are confused when they think of alkaline product or acid product.

I think they kind of lump it all into one category, but obviously there's a significant difference there so go over briefly like what are the differences. What are the advantage and disadvantages of acid versus alkaline versus neutral, and I think it was the early 80s. The pink acid pool cleaners hit the market and they were really really popular because they would you scrub a coil down to the bare metal. But people realized that the fumes coming off that were really gnarly and not safe to breathe and, of course you get that acid on yeah, it's gon na burn and it's gon na burn.

You need to get some water on it. Real quick! You need to be close to a water source whenever you use that acid and we evolved everyone in our industry kind of evolved and got away from that and got into the alkaline now. The difference is, the acid is on one side of the scale and the Appling is, on the extreme end of the other side of the scale and they're both dangerous to handle not safe to handle, especially if the concentrations that a lot of the chemical companies are Putting out there there's this over-the-top with how much sodium hydroxide or how much hydrofluoric acid and said put in their cleaners, they both born here they're, both not safe to use. I say the outcome may be a little bit easier to you, Jews, because it's slower to react.

If you get it on you, it doesn't attack the copper tubing like the acid. The acid coal cleaners will attack both the copper and the aluminum and it kind of breaks that bond on your coil and, of course, you end up with loose fins and poor heat transfer where the Outland it just eats the aluminum, and it doesn't touch the copper. So you can preserve your coil integrity, some extent because you're not attacking both the copper and the aluminum. So that's pretty much the difference and we see the trend away now from the alkaline coil cleaners too many people out there had some bad experiences with burns and scarring, and we see a trend away from that.

We see technicians more concerned about preserving the integrity of the coil and not aluminum up and then you've got your OEMs they're pumping out more aluminum coils, and we see this evolution away from the Outlands and the acids of course have faded out pretty much over the Last 10 years down to nothing, not too many people use that at all, it's a matter of sticking with the trend and if you have to create a new trend, that's pretty much underlines what we do over here. We have to create a trend if there is a one, so the majority of your cleaners are neutral cleaners, then they're, neither acidic or alkaline right. No, they would be slightly alkaline, but not to a degree where it's gon na burn you and maybe slight irritation to the skin and some sense of people, but nothing I wouldn't use on my own skin. I could wash my hands with it.

I've told this story. A couple times, but when I was an early on technician I was really hot and heavy with the coil cleaner. I really liked to really clean those coils and make a good show of it. So I was working on the Lenox unit and Lenox condenser and I was using my whatever I had.

I don't know Triple D or new Calgon. I don't know what it was, but it was definitely an alkaline heavy alkaline cleaner and I mix it heavy. I think at probably 50/50 and I was spraying down that condenser coil. No one follows the directions, I don't know hi Pettis and I was just as dumb as the rest when I think I was 18 years old.

I was spraying down this coil and I started rinsing and man there was all kinds of black stuff coming off this coil and man. It didn't look that dirty and I just keep putting more on and I just keep spraying through it and all this black stuff is coming off, and then I start to notice that this black stuff is coming off in sheets and it turned out. It was a coded coil, so it had some sort of. I don't know exactly what the coating is that they had on those condensers for a while, but I had this big bare patch in this condenser and my heart just sunk from that moment on.

I realized boy. I've really got to be a lot more careful with how I think about cleaners and then one time I spilled some triple deed. In my sock, when I was young too and I tried to work the rest of the day without rinsing it properly and boy, let me tell you: I had quite a situation later on, so the alkaloids are sneaky, you dilute it and you may get it on. You and not notice, and you go to bed at night and you maybe your arm is itchy or your leg is itchy and you start scratching and by the time you wake up in the morning, you've scratched all the skin off.

Wherever that coil cleaner got onion and look and leave a permanent scar, it sneaks up on you. We all know that slippery feeling that you get when that alkaline starts to work on your skin. Yes, it starts dissolving the protein on your skin, gets to the fat layer underneath your skin and yeah. That's where you can get permanent scarring you're cleaner, like your HD, it's a foaming.

Cleaner talked a little bit about the impact of foaming, because I've heard some people say reps for other products or ever who'll say that foaming is just smoke and mirrors. It doesn't do any good talk a little bit about that. Well then, they need to go back to school. I like the foam gun.

I introduced it back in 89 and of course it was sourced and then copied by other companies. Foam cleaning is the most efficient way to do any type of cleaning. This is because soil bonds to surfaces at different angles and these angles, and then the soil bills, these bridges and so keeps building on different areas of the bridges and other areas, and these are called contact angles. You need to hit all these contact angles in order to knock out the bridges and hit all the angles that the soil actually bonds to the metal.

Now, with foam cleaning all these billions of fine bubbles, you spray that into the coil you're, hitting all the angles and you're taking out the bridges. When you can look it up on the internet. If you want to phone cleaning versus flat liquid cleaning or whatever and you'll say the foaming is superior because it hits all these contact angles, so you get better percentage of soil removal. We've done that here in the lab and it's superior.

Let's go through an actual process of cleaning here, thinking about using Viper HD as an example, that's probably one of the most popular products that you sell. I imagine because it's a great product, yes, that the aerosol version, the aerosol version, is more popular yeah. At this point in time, a lot of little coils a lot under counter refrigeration, because it's just really good for removing grease and it takes very little water to rinse off in kitchens you're, not flood in the areas, but with the HD, the heavy-duty. It's sold as a concentrate, so we can let the user decide how strong or how weak he wants to make the solution.

We recommend, like a 5, a 5 to 1 dilution ratio and that's optimal for heavy soils and a lot of people get away with 20. 30 to 1 pollution, if they're just doing a coil, it's just dusty with some light grease, so dilution ratio, people think that the stronger they make it it's, the more cleaner the coil is going to get or the faster it's going to clean and attack the soil. But that's not true, if there's a bell curve as to we're using too much cleaner, it's just as bad as using too little cleaner, there's an optimum top of that curve, where the ratio of water to cleaner is optimized, and that's where you get your higher percentage Of soil removal, when you're using undiluted coil cleaner, we say five to one, if you use it 50/50, all you're doing is wasting a lot of detergent because that excess detergent does not attach to or make contact with soil. It just makes contact with other detergent molecules and it takes a longer rinse process to get it all out.

Got it all right, so you take a condenser coil, for example, with Viper cleaner, and we want to do a good job of cleaning this. It may be not the dirtiest convinced you've ever seen, but it definitely is in need of cleaning. What's the process start to finish, what should a technician do? I would put the heavy duty into a foam gun. I've used the strongest setting, which i think is about a 10 to 1 dilution more than enough to get about 93 % soil removal because we've tested it I'd start at the bottom of the coil.

I know people say start at the top and let it just run down now. You want to start at the bottom of the coil and you want to get the foam gun as close to the coil fins as possible. So you get maximum penetration start at the bottom work upwards and make sure your cleaner is punching through the coil all the way. If not, then you have to hit it on both sides, of course, but I start at the bottom and I build the foam up and let it stand for a good 5.

10 minutes is what we call dwell time. It is time for the detergent to penetrate through the soil, down hopefully to the metal to where the soil can be carried off and your rinse. So that's it. You need to pre rinse or anything or no, you just start with the phone line yeah.

I know always pre rinse, I usually pre rinse, with just a regular trigger sprayer, not using enough pressure to bend the fins, but just enough pressure. So I could punch through the coil get to the outfeed outlet side. You know pre rinse, that real good and then I would go and do my initial injection of foam and then, after that, it the one little secret that quote: cleaner manufacturers won't tell you. It really takes to wash cycles to really remove the dirt to a maximum effect.

It's because first time you rinse or the first time you slip up a coil. A lot of that dirt doesn't come off because it hasn't completely broken the bond between the soil and the metal, but the second time all those weak bonds start to loosen up and your soil will release from the coil and in my second wash I would double The dilution or on a phone gun, I would just turn up the dilution to maybe thirty to one, and I would hit it again and believe it or not. Using a maximum dilution, don't say a strongest setting first and then hitting it and rinsing that off and then hitting it with a much more higher dilution ratio. We've seen where the soil removal is much better than using two completely concentrated washes believe it or not.

When you're rinsing does it matter, if you go top to bottom to bottom to top when you're rinsing, no, no, that doesn't matter, I usually go top to bottom and then what is the thinking behind the bottom to top, because I'm sure I'm going to get a Lot of questions about that in foam, you're building the foam up, instead of letting it run down, you want to build the foam, the foam blanket and that way it holds in the vertical position. The next best thing about foam is that it stays in contact with the metal longer than if you were use a flat bit, because it just doesn't hit all those angles and it just gravitates off, but the foam can hold in place and what we're going for Is maximum contact time of detergent to metal, so it can penetrate through the soils and break those bonds all right, so I want to just take. You know memento here, and I want to talk to you specifically about a couple friends of mine people who I'd would definitely consider to be friends - and I say this a lot, but really the sponsors who work with HVAC school. I really try to find companies that I have a some personal relationship to companies that we use in my business.

People who I trust and that's really important so there's even some companies that make really great products, and I kind of name any names, there's some companies that make really great products that I just don't quite trust their business model. I don't trust that they have their customers best interest at heart, and so I don't want them as part of this podcast, but these companies are companies that I really do trust that I really do believe that, and so we've talked a lot about air Oasis in The past, but I'm going to talk about them quickly again and just give you the quick testimonial that you've probably already heard. We've done some testing before and after using some petri dishes and even some hair testing, through an air sampling unit to see before and after how the air, Oasis, bi-polar and nano work separately and in conjunction with one another. And we've been really impressed by the change that it makes in the indoor air quality and we talked about Burt in his home.

My technician Burt. Now his children were previously coughing every night who knows exactly what was causing it, but when he put in these products those fits stopped circumstantial evidence most. Certainly, is it enough for him to believe in the product absolutely and the testing that we've done before and after makes me believe in the product? I think it's a good thing. I think they make really good products here in the USA, John and Jeff Benner.

They run a good company, they run a good us-based company that makes good quality well engineered indoor air quality products. They do a lot of testing and I believe in what they're doing, I'm not gon na say any company's perfect or any company has all of the best of everything. But all I know is I've tried their products and they work well. For us, that's air Oasis with the bipolar and nano whole-home air purification systems.

All right here we go back to John Pasteurella, all right, so the next application that I wanted to ask about - and I just did this recently, so I wonder if I did it right or not, did it a John Pasteurella way or not, but I did an Evap cool clean in place with the Viper aerosol can, and I thought it went really well, but it was reasonably dirty, so it wasn't like a total blank at a cat hair, but it was definitely dirty and it was a slant coil. So I could get to the underside fairly easily without having to remove the whole coil was only a four year old you. So what would be your thoughts on that? What sort of process would you follow there? If you can get to the intake side? That's the best place to start career instead, of course, with some water and, of course, in a vApp color sheet. You got to be a little liberal with the water because you don't want to overflow the drain pan and then with the aerosol Viper spray.

It's got a pin spray and then again I would use that pin spray, and I would make sure that I get right in between the fins and work from the bottom up. Even if it's just one fin at a time and let it just pin spray through penetrate as far as possible and that foam is gon na expand and it's gon na hold, it's gon na hold for a good 10 minutes and that's good contact time. And when the foam breaks it liquefies, then you can go ahead and rinse it if you'd like, or we use a rinsing aid inside all our Viper coil cleaners, and that rinsing aid will help with the condensate rinse cycle, such as in a non rinsing application. I just throw your unit on and let it sweat and rinse the remaining detergent off.

Basically, what I did and so tell me if I made any mistakes here, I did essentially what you said. I foamed it so I should probably rinse it first right with the pump sprayer and then foam it in which I didn't. I didn't rinse it first, but then foam it and then once the foam broke, I took just a rag and I kind of worked up and down the fins a little bit just to get some of that surface soil off and it was kind of just sitting There on the bottom edge of the coil, and then I did it once again, so I went over it again with the cleaner and then I just used a shop vac on it and then to a pump sprayer. I kind of have the shop back there.

Just so that way in case there's anything slopping around, I can catch it right away and then just the pump sprayer and rinsed it does that work. Yeah brushy. I would advocate that 100 %, but 99 % of the service guys out there aren't gon na brush. Even if you had a coil they're, just dusty and you say hi, you know this coil isn't that dirty I'll, just rinse it down with water.

Hey, that's great too! If that's all, it needs, but if you just that plain water and just brushed it and it doesn't take long to brush that brush is gon na help break the bond between the soil and the metal. So brushing is an added advantage to getting really super coil cleaning yeah. Obviously, when you brush for those of you newer guys out there, you want to make sure that you're going with the coil, obviously because you don't want to bend anything and then you're only using a very soft brush, you don't want to use anything. That's gon na damage that surface I've got a brush and you get him for like less than ten bucks.

It's got a two-foot handle on it and it's got a four inch head about two inch. Long soft nylon, bristles works really great and that 2 foot handle saves the back from the bending and agonizing getting on your knees in order to promote, wear and tear on your body. When I was a technician, it was all about. What do I have to lift? How much bending over do I have to do and the less of that I did the better I felt the next day.

So it sounds to me like a big part of this, though, is allowing, for that dwell time exactly there's two types of we do soil removal testing here to see how much soil - and this is how we optimize our formulation if a new detergent material comes in We'll try and plug it into our existing formulation and will do so removal testing to see if it improves our soil, remove it improves our product altogether and we do these tests over and over and over again we do what is known as a soak and rinse. That's basically what you're gon na do out there in the field and then there's a soak, scrub and rinse. We will do it both ways to see which one is most effective. Of course, the scrub and rinse is going to be the most effective way to remove soil, but that's the way we approach it and that's the way we keep our formulations up to date and try and improve on our cleaning efficiency all right.

So let me ask the question that a lot of technicians are arguing about right now, which is with the advent of micro channel coils. There have been several manufacturers who print right on their coils use water only, and so some technicians swear by that and cuss out. Anybody who does otherwise and others swear that it's not a problem and cuss out anybody else. You know this is big.

Cuss paddle, that's happening online right now about this sort of a reason. What is your take on this? Okay? This is something those coil manufacturers didn't think out fully because they're telling you to rinse with tap water right and tap water is heavily chlorinated and what does aluminum hate more than chlorine? Nothing like chlorine, you're, gon na spray, tap water on and you're gon na leave. Chlorine residue and chlorine degrades aluminum. They thought they got the easy way out by saying just rinse them with water, but that chlorine residue can eat a coil over time, just as bad as a NAPLAN.

With our cleaners, we put an actual corrosion inhibitor for aluminum in the product so after they use our product and they go through the rinse cycle. There is a corrosion protection in the product, that's going to prevent that chlorine from attacking the coil. So this is something the OEMs never thought out fully and I don't know how badly chlorinated you are they're in Florida, but in California it's not only heavily chlorinated, but it's hard. Water and people end up here after rinsing a coil with this white powdery residue and they think the residue is because there's detergent still left on the coil and, of course they keep rinsing and rinsing, and that white powdery residue only gets thicker and thicker.

Because all the minerals in the water are now staining the coil, we use the corrosion inhibitors to protect the aluminum. We also put a rinse aid in the coil cleaner. So when they go to rinse with tap water or hard water, they don't get that white. Powdery residue and they do get that nice corrosion protection, which is temporary.

It's a temporary protective coating to get you through the rinse cycle, but it keeps that chlorine from the tap water from causing any pitting or any further corrosion yeah. It's interesting. One of my friends is into really high-end detailing and he has a website and all this about it and those guys they will never just use regular tap water to rinse their cars. For that very reason, they run it through special filters and the ionisers or whatever.

I forget exactly what it's called, but special water filtration. For that very reason: yeah you'll get that white, powdery, residue and you'll think it's detergent. But it's not it's from your tap water and the more tap water. You use the cloudier that aluminum looks so the kind of finest we've talked about evap coil cleaning.

We've talked about condenser coil cleaning, I imagine cleaning a blower wheel out in the driveway is about the same. Let's go back to that coil cleaning just a second, because we don't have too much of a problem of smelly of AB coils here in California, but I'm sure in Florida or any other high humid area. You're gon na get that biofilm form on the coil and that biofilm is gon na produce sulfates because from the organisms growing there and most detergents don't go after the biofilm. Your coil will be clean, but there's this residual biofilm best way to describe it would be if you ever picked up a snail.

This snail has this coating and even if you went and wash your hands after touching the snail, your fingers would still be slimy and that's a biofilm, and this is what's also on your coil. So we have a coil cleaner, called the VAT plus, and it contains an enzyme that enzyme, of course, an anonymity application for evaporators. We want you to spray that on there it's not gon na foam, but you spray it on there as a flat liquid. Maybe through a pump, sprayer or a trigger sprayer, and that enzyme is going to digest that biofilm and remove it over time, maybe three or four hours, maybe overnight, and you won't have that odor anymore.

I know a lot of people will say they use a sanitizer or some type of a bleach mixture to try and sanitize. The coil now kill the organism, but you still have this protein biofilm, the sticking to the coil and even though the organism is killed and temporarily, you won't have any smell that biofilm now becomes the food source for the next infestation of slime sludge algae. Whatever it's growing on your call, usually it's a black mole here in California. We get that a lot black mole, some people back east get more gelatinous.

Looking organisms that grow yeah. It was very interested in that enzyme thing. I'm glad you brought that up, because when I first saw that I thought okay, this is interesting. I've heard people talk about, for example, there's a company out there who's making a what they call a probiotic coil cleaner now, and so they talked about it.

Dealing with biofilm in that way and they have to keep it at a certain temperature. Otherwise it doesn't blast over time. So you have you, found it to be effective, even with it being stored under the typical temperatures that we store coil cleaners, what their property do is they're using an actual bacteria or strains of bacteria, and the bacteria produces an enzyme that attacks the biofilm and, of Course it's an organism. If you get it too hot, you kill the organism.

If you get it too cold, it goes dormant and it's without food source for a while and it kind of doesn't work as well, but the more expensive route is to actually use the raw enzyme and put that in the detergent and the raw enzyme. It's good up well over 180 degrees, so they won't break down in your service truck. Normally, it's not the actual bacteria, but it's the actual enzyme, the chemical that the bacteria produces to digest that biofilm yeah very interesting. So that's similar! You also have the enzyme in pan and drain cleaner right, yeah, there's actually four different enzymes that go in there and it's in a nice silicone type, detergent, enzyme, drain cleaners - you can get those at Home Depot very effective, take longer to work.

Then, let's say if I was a used Drano, but then again the Drano isn't going to remove any of the biofilms that form in your piping or in your pan. That biofilm actually grows into the metal. It's like little suction feet on the bacteria and the fungi and mold, and you can kill it, but it's still rooted into the piping, especially PVC, and it becomes then again the food source for the nest in Finnick station of organisms. You end up in this endless cycle and if you just hit it with enzymes in the first place that digests that biofilm and removes it releases it from the surface.

Now we also put a silicone detergent in with the enzyme and that silicone detergent coats the pan and it coats all the internal piping, so any dirt debris or organisms that come in to the system which is constantly being sucked into the system. It allows the condensate water to flow quicker with less surface energy, and so you got a faster draining system and it keeps soil and bacteria from getting that foothold back into the pan and into the PVC piping very unique, and you can't buy it at Home Depot That was really interesting, because I've actually thought about this in the past, when you think about a drain pan and the amount of water that a drain pan holds just stagnant water, why don't they create drain pans that hold less water and in fact that has been A big move over the last 10 years manufacturers thinking about that, but this is sort of takes that to the next level, where even in the drain line, where it exits by adding a little bit less surface area there. I guess so. Is it almost like a hydrophobic coating a little bit? It is actually based out of silicone, imagining thinking like water and silicone, don't sound like they would mix.

So how does that work, they're, water-soluble silicones and they are attracted to metal and surfaces there? There are different charge kind of like you know if you've ever seen any anti-static sprays out there that static clean. Yet with certain fabrics you spray your polyester pants with it and you won't get that static cling. Well, the silicones got an opposite charge of the surface. So it sticks to the surface.

It's only temporary needs about 60 90 days worth, but it helps keep the soil from building up and, of course, we know the real main reason why a lot of these training systems don't work well is because I think we're installed level or they weren't pitched properly. This guy, before you didn't level the furnace or, and he didn't pitch his PVC line like you, should you wouldn't have too much of a backup problem, but a lot of these technicians out there won't give you that little ounce of prevention - that is certainly true, actually Is dealt with that a couple days ago. It smells great, that's actually one thing: he doesn't have a strong odor or anything, but it does have a nice smell to it. I really like it.

It stays where you spray it, which is nice, and it definitely for us, we're using it in place of hand taps and we use pan tabs for years. But you put pan tabs and you go back three days later and they're completely gone and then a lot of times, techs put it in the wrong place and then they float in front of the drain outlet and fill up the drain pan and fill up. The float switch and obviously that's a callback. You don't want so for my junior texts, it seems like a superior product as well.

Just so, you can put in their hands and say here sprayed out a drain pan and the first couple rows of coil and be done with it yeah with our products. I tried to put some types of features that the tech has never seen before. Like you said what tablets you throw them in the pan, they don't cover the whole pan and by spray coating the pan, you can hit all the little you can hit the corners and you can hit all the crevices and you can get a more thorough coating On the pan and a more effective clean-out, it's great to hear when technician comes back T and says we didn't know about this feature and they can understand why we did what we did and why we put that into the product, because it's real easy for me To go out and have tablets, algaecide tablets pressed up put them in a jar and sell them, but then it's I'm just like the other guy. I want to come out with something this new.

That's fresh, this more effective something you haven't seen before, of course, as soon as it starts selling really well, I'm sure my competitors will be coming out with their own versions, but that's the way the game is played, that's how it goes, especially in the chemical game. Man there's so many different players and they're all big corporations that want to make a quick buck, and that's actually why. I told you back when we had talked at the HR conference that I wanted to have a chance to work with refrigeration technologies, because it's the company that I believe in refrigeration technology stands for the same things. I stand for quality products, good workmanship for text by Tex, USA, business people who actually care about the trade.

I think the first time I met you was at the educators conference. I think yeah. I love that show yeah, it's a great thing, because there's very few companies show up at the educators conference. That's not as popular because that's much more about supporting the industry in the next generation of the industry.

You're not gon na make a whole bunch sales at the educators conference, but that says a lot about your business. Your business model playing the long game taking care of people treating people right, I'm also thrilled to see how much support you've been giving multiple, different, podcasters and just being active in the industry. That's really important, so I applaud you for that and everything I've been using. Lately I mean I've used refrigeration technologies products for a really long time.

I've used nylon since, as far as long as I can remember, I've used the big blue for as long as I can remember, but I'm just now starting to use all these other products, and I haven't used one yet that I didn't like so kudos to you To building such a great business, we pretty much share the same tag lines for text by text and we're all about educating. I think when you put out a product you have to have education along with it, takes me back to the early 70s, when I bought the first electronic leak. Detector, Robin arrow, Robin air, was really big back then, and everything I owned was Robin air because they not only supplied you with a good quality product. They gave you education with that product, but when it came to their electronic leak detector, all I got was an instruction booklet that told you how to turn it on, and I was expecting education as to how to perform leak checks with their instrument, not just here's.

Where you turn it on here's, where you calibrated good luck, I wanted to learn more about more efficient method of leak, detecting we like to hit the schools we like to hit the young trade tech guys coming up, educate them on the proper way of doing things, Because we're all about doing things the right way and not try and sell them on some type of hairbrained chemical cure in a bottle. Yep. Absolutely there's a lot of snake oil out there nowadays and it's kind of hard to wade through it for a lot of technicians. So it's good to have companies that you know you can trust.

So I appreciate that. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for being a part of what we do. Thank you for supporting the podcast.

I haven't had a chance to tell you that that was very meaningful to finally be able to partner with you. That's been really great. You've been really great to work with and we got a whole box full of t-shirts that we've been given away to listeners. So thank you for that.

I know everybody appreciates it and hopefully we can get you back on again sometime I'd love to come back. Any time share any knowledge. I have chemistry system, chemistry, something that's never taught in the trade there's a lot of weak areas in our trade and whenever I know I could search the knowledge to helps a guy out there improve his sport quality out there, I'm here to help - and I really Appreciate teaming up with you guys, because you're out there every day with a daily podcast and lots of good videos, lots of good information. You can ask me any question and except electrical codes.

I'll leave that up to you. I was never never good any type of code whatsoever. Yeah boy, the National Electrical Code is the Beast of itself, so I try to tackle it in small pieces when applicable, alright yeah, I think, next time. I want to get you on and talk about your acid test kit, because we talked about that for probably half an hour at ahr and you blew my mind with some information there.

So maybe I'll get you on the next couple months and we'll talk more about that sure. Dialog leak, detection leak prevention system, chemistry, acid, moisture, testing, anything dealing with the snake oil stuff out there, I'm willing to divulge just certain extent without tripping over and having some company for a lawyer down my face, but I'll get into that on a generic way. Any time all right sounds good. I appreciated John and we'll talk again soon.

Thank you appreciate it. Thank You Bryan. Thank you for your help. Hey thanks for listening to the hvac school podcast, as always, thanks for being a part of the story that we're developing here, the story of technicians who are engaged with their job technicians who want to do better every day and who care about their customers, we're building An industry that thinks about details that maybe we didn't think about in the past and who wants to keep moving.

The bar forward wants to increase professionalism of the trade and by golly if we can attract some young people into this business and show them that this is a great livelihood and it's a lot of gosh-darn fun. Then we're gon na keep doing it, and I honestly believe that, like I'm a cheerleader for this trade, I think it's a great job. I think it's a great business. I would love to see my son's follow me into this business, because I think it's got a great future, for those of you have been beat up.

Your whole life welcome to a little bit of rest, because I think the future is where you're gon na be able to use your minds. You're gon na be able to use your expertise and hopefully not have to break your backs as much as maybe you used to anyway. That's a whole other side note, but thanks for listening through to this podcast, at least, if you haven't been to our website HVAC our school comm, I'm gon na ask you a request that you go take a look at that website and see if there's anything there, That you would like to share with anybody everything there is free. You can share it freely.

You can use it in your own social media accounts. If you want to share it with your customers with your technicians who want to use it in a training meeting, you can print it out, you can use any diagrams. I make you can use my calculators, my quizzes anything you like it's all for you to use all free for you to use so feel free to take advantage of that. That's all at HVAC, our school comm, there's a really easy search bar right there for you to use.

I want to do just a quick public service announcement. I don't know if you heard, but there is a guy up in Long Island who he robbed an underwear factory of all things. Good news is, I found out it's gon na, be a brief trial have to give credit to a Brian Mahoney for sending me that one. I love it when you send me when you think enough of my podcasts to send me a stupid, dad joke to the end of my podcast.

So there you have it thanks for listening. We will talk to you next time on the HVAC school podcast. Thanks for listening to the HVAC school podcast, you can find more great HVAC our education material and subscribe to our short daily tech tips by going to HVAC our school comm. If you enjoy the podcast, would you mind hopping on iTunes or the podcast app and leave us a review? We would really appreciate it.

See you next week on the HVAC school podcast, you.