Hello everybody! I Am Roman The Director for Commercial Hbac over here at Kao Services Um and you know the gentleman here to my right we are going to be talking about indoor air quality and coil corrosion. You may also know my other special guest here. uh Brian Or go ahead and introduce yourselves. guys.

say hello to the audience Hi Will Oh which one is Oh, here we go there we go. Oh hey, look there. Oh hey yeah, that's where when you walk in just cold, you know you just walk into the room and uh yeah hi I'm Brian We invited Brian leac School Podcast Generally speaking, we invited Brian a minute before this started. yeah, just walked in like you seem knowledgeable.

Yeah, yeah, so um, you know there's a there's a topic that isn't really. uh, in my opinion, discussed a whole lot among Open Circles Uh, definitely not from a manufacturer standpoint. definitely not from um, you know, an indoor air quality standpoint and from my aspect understanding with experience in the field, coil corrosion is a very large, broad category that is just not really easily digestible by a lot of people. There's nothing really a lot of information out there that that you know people can just readily find and understand exactly what we're talking about and why it matters how much it really affects intoo air quality.

So yeah, and by the way I knew nothing about coil corrosion. By the way, this is Kevin Hart the Canadian not the comedian. The comedian um I knew nothing about coil corrosion and Roman started talking to me about it and shaping how this could be relevant to indoor air quality. Yeah, so you know, Um, my career in the Hvc world Um has been bumpy at times, but a lot of it has stemmed from finding things in the real world right, such as coil failures and wanting to know more about it.

right? That's how I actually found you know Brian in his podcast. Uh, just wanting to know more about just generalized subjects. And so Coil corrosion is one of those things that I kind of uh took a deep dive in early in my career and had a lot of exposure and experience to Uh within homes. And so when we typically talk about coil corrosion, there are actually two different types of coil corrosion there.

There's pitting corrosion and then there's another type that not a lot of people like to talk about, which is formicary corrosion. Um, you know, pitting corrosion actually happens because of. you know, little cavities and pits that happen within the service due to a chemical reaction with, you know, chlorides and fluorides and chemicals within a a home or a space in a commercial space. And then the other formar corrosion has more of a chemical reaction that involves acids on a coil.

Um, and when I say coil I am also talking about copper and aluminum in general. Um, but either or in these kind of aspect with with both of these types of corrosion, they're both. Yeah, Go! Ahad I Looked up these acids. So formic acid is a colorless irritant of volatile acid, and actually ants and insects can emit this.

It's sort of the burning sensation in I think stinging nettles in different plants. And Um, so this acid is one of the primary reasons. Uh, in in terms of this formicary corrosion. It's also acetic acid.

Which a lot of vinegar. A lot of clean agents have this sort of vinegary acetic acid. Um, what's interesting is that there's this analogy to ants and formic acid. But there's also the appearance of an ant nest.

Could also be what the uh, pitting corrosion looks like. Have you seen this corrosion? What? What does it look like? Yeah, So when we when we talk about corrosion, um, you know the first thing that comes to mind when people think corrosion. It's rust, right? Rust is like literally the most common type of corrosion. We see, we see it on everything.

We see it in our homes, We see it on our vehicles outside. Um, so when you think of corrosion, it kind of has that aspect to it. When we when we talk about pitting corrosion or formicary corrosion when involves an acid, um, of that kind or like we said, chloride. What you find is it builds up like a powdery white substance on a coil itself.

You'll see where it kind of looks like an ant mound. In general, everyone knows what an ant mound. looks like. You go outside, especially here in Florida Fire ants.

Um, it looks like this small powdery Mound within a coil on a coil at a Bend Um and that's kind of where you know, especially formicary corrosion gets that nickname of ants nest corrosion that the the correlation is because of the appearance that you actually find on that coil. Well, it's that. But it's also that there's um if you look at it in under an electron microscope or even a regular microscope. In some cases you'll see those little paths.

They kind of work their way through it and some people will call it I Had a uh, a service manager who used to call it shamp pain leaks and uh and and what do you meant by well it was yeah it's that, but it's it's because like yeah, when you make bub, when you actually use a a bubble solution, soapy bubbles on it or as Refrigeration Technologies will correct you, it's actually a leak reactant. Very important, not just soapy bubbles. um specifically designed for that purpose you will see like this, a foam that builds up. but a lot of times that happens because there's not just one exit.

Point Like it's it's not just one single point where it comes out. it's actually a uh, a range of little paths and pits that make it its way into into the into the copper. One thing I Wanted to mention quickly because you were talking about rust. Um, rust is a form of galvanic corrosion.

So you mentioned two types. but galvanic corrosion Um is actually due to an actual electrical reaction where you actually have a transfer of electrons. Um, and usually that happens between the similar metals. And so early on, um, years ago when I used to work at another very large company, we had this absolute um, major issue like a almost a almost every coil that we had over seven years old for a certain brand would fail.

Um, a lot of times guys would look at a coil and they would see that rust that occurs between the steel plating and the copper and the aluminum and they would say well, there's my leak, right? But actually those two things are surprisingly unrelated. You know it's just like, uh, that sort of anode cathode type of relationship. Uh, on a ship you'll have you'll have cathodes, or you'll have um, sacrificial metals that will give the less. Noble Metals will give themselves up and that's a totally different type of corrosion than what we generally see causes leaks in a coil.

So just to kind of differentiate, Um Can galvanic corrosion cause leaks. Yes. But usually when you look at a coil and it looks all rusty, that's because the the steel is actually less noble and it's actually giving itself up due to galvanic corosion sacrificial anode as they call it right? Correct, Correct, Yeah. And and by the way, we're talking about cooling coils.

but we're also. if so, this might be a dumb question. But now with heat pumps, are we also talking about the type of corrosion that could happen in a heat pump as well in the coil? No. I Mean so the only difference between a heat pump and A and a what we call a straight cool system is just the fact that we're you know, switching where our heat exchangers are right.

we're sending hot gas inside. our outsoor unit is now an evaporator, so you know you would be then convincing moisture outside. And so those chemical reactions th those solvents. they're still present outside just as much as you would find them inside.

And so it would all depend upon the application of where the unit is installed as as to you know, what it's being exposed to in and it seem like the metal that it's made of when these issues happen is mostly aluminum. Well, it depends. so you actually yeah. So this is actually really interesting.

Uh, interesting question. You will find that you get certain types of corrosion more on copper than you get on aluminum. In fact, with format corrosion. Um, they've actually replaced a lot of uh, coils that were copper aluminum with all aluminum coils which both reduces galvanic corrosion because now you have a single metal.

But it also, um, can reduce format corrosion because you don't get again, aluminum does react with certain types of chemicals. But what they found through studies is that the the most common formic corrosion doesn't react with aluminum as much. Now that doesn't That's not an absolute rule though. Like because because you do, you have certain types of chemicals.

um, for example, um, even coil cleaners that are used more alkaline chemicals actually can react more harshly with aluminum than they do with copper. So it's really it really just depends. But for uh, the majority of Manufacturers went, they kind of. They kind of followed this.

um, this recipe. First they went to they they there was a lot of aluminum coils out there. um, even a lot of copper coils, just copper copper coils and that was actually a solution that we used in certain like Coastal environments. We were trying to reduce galvanic corrosion.

Um, and then they went to all aluminum and then they went to aluminum copper. Yep, uh and they were having all kinds of issues and that was this like major challenge that we were having across. It seemed like every manufacturer had a period. It's like it's like train was first and then Lennox and the carrier had it.

Everybody like had their season where they had all these issues. Um and then they all said okay, we're going to go to Coatings and those initial Coatings were phenolic Coatings different types of um, uh, different types of sprayon uh Coatings and some of them were dipped, some of them were uh, spray applied and there were different levels of quality. uh and then they went back to all aluminum again. uh, well, actually tin plating too.

So tin plating. There was a tin plating phase and then they went back to to all aluminum. but again, like, um, it's It's interesting because it depends on what problem you're trying to solve. when you go to all one type of metal.

it definitely reduces galvanic corrosion, which is rarely the problem. Um, in terms of evapora coil leakage, at least it's it's a problem with other things for sure. Like when you when the whole thing deteriorates and falls apart on you and just becomes a big pile of metal. Yeah, we see that.

Florida Yeah, right and Coastal and that's actually a good example like Coastal Coatings This is something that people will get confused about. Coastal Coatings Often are there to or mostly there to reduce the galvanic? yeah, um, so that your fins don't all fall off your coil if you've ever been out to yeah to Coastal Environment: You'll look outside and'll be like there's no fins on the condenser. Well, that's a serious problem. two around it and that's galvanic because it's the the salt is actually helping to increase the electrolysis.

so you actually get more electrons moving and means it falls apart more quickly. Yeah, um, so understanding the type of corrosion is really important. Um, to answer your specific question though. sorry I'm just going off here.

Came totally unprepared to answer your specific question. Uh, though, about heat pumps. This is a really interesting thing because you do see a higher rate of failure in heat pumps. But the the theory that most of us have and again, it's only a theory.

A lot of this stuff surprisingly has not been proved very well in the real world. Is that um, you actually get more corrosion in the cooling season when you have water present? Um, because that water actually gathers up acids and gathers up things more readily when you're in. In winter seasons, when it's when you're trying to produce heat, you have a dry coil, so it's less likely you're going to build up things. But in heating season you have significantly higher pressures, temperates, higher pressures, and higher temperatures even higher than you have on the high side during cooling season in most cases.

And this is also because of the way that we tend to run heat pumps. which is my one of my current kind of missions is like hey, stop L Ey rolls. Well, sorry. the eye roll was not.

The Ey roll wasn't sorry, the eye roll wasn't Uh, rolling my eyes about that. People are stupid. It was like, uh, me just like thinking through this yeah, um that a lot of people are running lower air flows on heat pumps in heat mode. Um, because they're trying to get warmer air coming out of it.

But the result of that is higher head pressure. And that that head pressure now is present inside the evapor coil. Where or sorry artist formerly known as the evapor coil now the condenser inside the indoor coil. right? And so and so if you have corrosion, so imagine you're in cooling mode.

The thing's kind of corroding. You're getting these ant nests and then you put it under really high pressure. You may not be advancing the corrosion, but you're definitely now testing whatever corrosion has occurred. And and I think that's a lot of what's happening because there's a weak spot, right? And now you're now.

You're applying potentially 400 plus PSI and an R R1 system when you weren't before. Yeah, when on top of that too. when you add when you add heat to it, right when we take something from hot to cold to hot to cold to hot to cold, you've got that expanding and contrasting. And so if you've got like the ants net which you were talking about where you've got those little lines that that work their way through the coil, you've got a bunch of weak spots.

and then you start to add, You know you compress it and then you expand it, You compress it and you expand it and then you start to create micro cracks. You know they've even shown with with most coil corrosion that happens inside. it actually acts as a wedge and so as it corrodes, the way it pushes itself apart opens up new fresh copper. and then it starts to starts all over again in that same exact process.

So yeah, creating those wedges and then then you know, Heat to cold, heat to cold, you might find that Yeah, you just put it under a lot more stress than it normally would be if it was just straight cool. So one one other question: How common or how rare is this? because it's not something I had heard about. But the more we've just talked about this with people around the show, the more people have stories about. you know, entire communities of 2500 homes where? Yeah, it's so it's one of those things, right? So it's it's.

definitely a very touchy subject Subject: Uh, in in regards to our industry just because manufacturers will not talk about it because it's too much viability, because there have been significant suits like this is not. This is not, uh, hypothetical. And like most things, as soon as people see that there's money, you know it's like they're They see red and and then you and everybody gets a black eye. So and then it becomes tough to even solve the problem because everybody just starts finger pointing.

which has been really frustrating. Well, or they don't want to talk about it at all, right? It's sweep it under the rug. Don't talk about it. Don't talk about it.

Don't talk about it. Um, when really? You know we should be thinking about these things when we Design Homes when we do installations. When we're doing, you know, heat L calculations and stuff like that. Because all of those things go into that giant equation of you know, how is this equipment actually being applied to your home to your environment? And then this also applies to commercial applications where you see more intense chemicals, where you see it in a higher concentration, Where you where you see that you know that that dilution is no longer there.

Especially when we're introducing it with other systems that have nothing to do with that one, Where it's not just a a fresh air duck that's coming into the unit, and then it's just passive. It's just bringing air in the time right when you're actually relying on another system to actually bring fresh air in for those systems and that may not be maintained properly or be set up correctly. And then you've got just a compounding effect across an entire building. Um, you know.

Or Wing section of a building where you have these these premature Co coil failures after a year to two years, or even five years. Um, you know everyone's heard the horror stories in the Hpac industry where you have a house or a customer or even a client on a commercial building, Where they've been through one to two to three to four coils, Um, in a specific area and you know everybody likes to blame the manufacturer. But really, this just comes down to chemistry and science, right? Yeah, it's a mixture and a recipe for disaster. and so it's kind of peeling back that onion and the layers in a specific application.

We don't just sit here and say that no, every coil failure out there is. you know, formicary corosion or pitting corrosion, or even galvanic corrosion, right? It's it's how does it apply and and what does your actual failure look like? Does it look like any of these things? Have you done any homework research? Have you done any indoor air quality measurements right? That's what we have. You know Kevin har here, right? Do you even know anything about indoor air quality? right? Are you measuring any of it Th this was something you brought to my attention. which is, well, first of all, a lot of the homes that have this problem are spray Foams and so that seems to be part of the equation here.

So maybe you like, why would that be part of the equation? So with spray Foams and now I'm no expert in you know, building materials. Um, I'm I'm not a a chemist by Nature Uh, you know, just an HVAC nerd and Enthusiast much like Brian here. Um, but you know with Spray Foam homes Uh, we find that that certain spray Foams and manufacturers at our at our early age when we started adopting this this type of application. and Technology Um, there was a lot of unforeseen consequences with the off gasing that took place with when those chemicals actually cured.

So when people think of concrete right, concrete is a chemical reaction. You take a powder, you mix it with water, and the chemical reaction actually creates heat. right? If anyone's gotten concrete, wet concrete on their hands or their feet and you let it to sit there for a while, you'll actually find it actually burn your skin because it's it's It's actually a chemical reaction. and so the same type of chemical reaction, not exactly the same, but but similar takes place.

When you actually spray foam on the wall, it comes out as a liquid, it expands to a foam, and then it hardens in that foam mixture. And so that process is off gassing, right? It's there's byproduct chemicals that are that are being created and emitted from it in that process of going from a liquid to a solid and curing. And unfortunately, in a lot of these homes when they they're doing spray foam, they have the idea let's make it tight, right? But there's no second. There's no thought about indoor air quality or bringing fresh air in, or the consequences of having those large concentrations of off gasing within the building.

And what do we do with it right? Are we measuring it? Are we doing anything with it? Um, and so you get those high concentrations of TV's or off gasing chemicals that then are just being circulated over and over and over again across an evaporator coil and and you know the rest is history, right? We've all seen it. Yeah, I would add um and kind of as for a not to try to give an early conclusion here, but one big takeaway is that when you're having these situations that it's recurring like because you will, you will get oneoff situ ation. I mean I've had cases with duckass Heads where I you know pulled the fins off the coil to find where the leak is and it's a it's a pit but it even even then it's like looks like a manufacturing issue. like like it looks like scoring on the tubing right? and you can tell.

like you can tell when it was a machining challenge at times. And it's interesting because as I've toured more more factories and you actually see how copper tubing is expanded into aluminum fins, it's pretty interesting. like like if there's any sort of contaminant present when they shoot those pigs through that actually expands that tubing. Yeah, um, it can very easily create a weak spot in that copper.

And I've been places where it's like there's not a lot of quality control here like this. just a dude just shooting these suckers through and this is like a Dusty environment like this is by no means a clean room. So I I don't give um because one of the one of the comments was it's hard to blame the homeowner when the previous coil lasted 25 to 30 years. Yeah, I I Don't give the manufacturers a complete pass on this.

But one thing that we definitely need to be doing in the field is doing some IQ testing looking at um Tvoc and one thing that even got brought up to me recently and I have no idea how valid this is but but Corbett Lunsford brought it up and it was very interesting was um when you have CO2 present um he made the statement that uh, it can lead to carbonic acid on the evapor coil which again first time I'd ever heard it so I I I'm not saying that that's necessarily true or not true, but it is definitely something to look at because even even if you're just looking at, CO2 CO2 is a leading indicator of ventilation problems. and so if you have poor ventilation, you have stagnant indoor air that's not mix without air. That also is a leading indicator of of Vocc buildup as well. I mean you can obviously use a T Vocc sensor, but sometimes there's weird chemicals that we're not really sure if we're testing for or not.

I mean the you know, the the home Cem study showed a lot of that. Where it's like, man, it's it's really hard to know everything about a house. We can look at some indicators, but CO2 is one of those indicators. Um, that we you know again when if you have a if you have a recurring problem, it would be very wise of you to look at CO2 Tvoc and even Pm2.5 Um, just see where you're at.

Well, and some of the Voccs have a lower sensor response and so if we knew the exact chemical of Interest we could build a sensor that's specifically looked at that right just for that. Yeah, but you're G to have this conflation of all these voccs and you might have a lot of unrelated Voc's that are high and so it's not going to help you isolate the one that's actually of interest for coil corrosion. Um, but if you're measuring CO2 and you're keeping control of your ventilation and then you're lowering your Vocc is that's probably going to be a step in the right direction of avoiding this coil corrosion happening. And one of the other things that was interesting is that chlorine gas.

So if you have bleach and you're using cleaning agents in the home, um, there is an ability when water vapor interacts with chlorine gas that creates these chloride ions and those chloride ions. Um, have an impact on coil corrosion. Um, once they're airborne and land on the coil. Yeah, and so maybe maybe if we can speak to also, humidity? could that be a factor? Um, because it introduces that water vapor to create these reactions? Yeah, know.

And so when we think about corrosion, there's three things that have to be present, right? You've got to have oxygen, You got to have humidity moisture right? And then you have to have your acid and that could be chloride? That could be You know any type of acid really like you were talking about with even with CO2 right the way that it creates that. Um, so when you have those three things present, it's kind of The Perfect Storm And so also depends upon how much of a concentration you have of each three of those things, right? Oxygen it's going to be. You know it depends on the home too, right? Because you can have high CO2 and low oxygen content within the A inside the home. Um, but you know if you have a high concentration of of of acids and a high concentration high humidity within the home, um, you're going to find that that that that corrosion actually takes place in a lot of different parts of that coil, not just at one specific band or one specific area.

You'll find coils where they're just completely deteriorated in a bunch of different areas and that was just happen to be the the very first part that actually failed um in that system. And so that could also you know, tie back into tie into a bunch of things. Really, We could sit here and say it's because you know systems are oversized or no one's doing heat L calculations correctly right? and and then systems are short cycling because they're they're oversized, you have high humidity or um, you know we could go off on a tangent about all these different things. but um but those three things Yeah, high humidity is a big factor in um, you know the the process of corrosion itself and how severe it could be within a home in general.

Yeah, I would add that um, there's a there's a wide range of things that can lead to this problem. So for example when we talk about some of these like epidemics that we faced in the past with certain manufacturers like that that's not a like when you have one manufacturer that all of a sudden like after seven years every coil is failing leaking like like okay like I mean come on you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna blame the consumer for that. um but I will say that um it's only one piece of the puzzle and as we use different Technologies to try to solve issue we always end up finding other things I mean like a really good example this it's not corrosion. but when we go to all aluminum coils now we find um that you get bacterial zuga.

You know this this uh gummy substance that builds up in drain pans and and all of this is like it's a it's chemistry. It's biology too. Yeah, but it's chemistry and so I I would be lying if I pretended like I was a chemist and understood all of the sources of of these problems. But we do know a few things we can look at and one of the things is what is the coil made of You know, like and then and then how is it manufactured? Are you know because we do know that we've end out the walls of coils? Um, we do know that that is part of the thing.

You may have had older coils that had formic corrosion, but you just didn't know it because it was thicker tubing and so that reduced it. Everybody's trying to make the coils lighter because they're making them bigger and it's for good reasons. You know you want bigger coils, you want to be lighter. Guys can handle them.

He transfers a little better through the walls. You know that kind of stuff. Um, there's manufacturing processes which is like I talked about when you're expanding that tubing. Um I think manufacturers need to look very carefully at that now.

and and they have and when a lot of times what they do find is it is actually formic. So it is that ant nest that they see and so when they see that it's like all right, well there's a chemical that's attacking generally from the outside, although sometimes it can also be the inside, which is another thing. So so, making sure that we're pulling good vacuums, making sure that we're having really good practices so we're not getting contaminants in there in the first place. Um, and then you have.

All right, In some cases you are going to need Specialty Coatings If you're in a coastal environment and galvanic is likely to be a significant problem, then you need to look at that. Um, and then finally Indo A quality Like, um, an Indor A quality is all of the things we always talk about, right? So ventilation, uh, filtration and humidity control. Those are the that's the you know. the Holy Trinity of uh of indoor air quality.

Did I miss something else there? No, No, no, that's Um. I I Think it seems like if you have all these new homes where there's a lot of new materials in these new homes, there you go. Yeah. And then also on top of that, it's a spray foamed home and they don't have a source of ventilation so it's a tight home, but it's not ventilated right? And then on top of that, there's no dehumidifier.

So now you got a home with a lot of humidity with a lot of off gasing with nowhere for that humidity or Tvcs to to go or CO2 Yeah, to corbit's point. Um, that seems like a home that you know potentially is a victim of this Quil corrosion and I would also add that like the best and and I don't know if this is true or not, but I'm going to say it like it's true and then you guys can dispute it if you want. um but I feel strongly that it is true that the best broad range Tvoc sensor on Earth is the human nose. especially the well-calibrated human nose.

So in that case in my house, that would be like my wife's knows, like you know she can just notice things and when you walk into a house when I walked into my brother's house after you built it, I'm going to pick on Nathan He used open cell spray foam everywhere and when you walked in, it was like whoa, this smells like chemicals. You know, like and and when you walk into a place and it smells like chemicals, that's a pretty good indication that there's probably chemicals, right? And it's very likely that you're going to get weird corrosion and all kinds of weird things. where I used cloes cell foone and a day after it was done, you really couldn't smell anything. um which to me is an indicator that probably it was applied or mixed.

um more safely. Um, and so because they'll tell you that all the time, the foam industry will always say likey, it's all how you do it I Don't have the the research to back that but what I've seen consistently is open cell foam smells like a chemical Factory afterwards and Clow cell foam doesn't seem to. um why I don't know I'm not an expert on the chemistry but um I think because they they do cure, they don't get that kind of hard shell on them so like always sort of curing and soft from the inside out I don't know but anyway that not none of that is all that is circumstantial. But just to say that like Source control is huge and so when you're choosing paints, when you're choosing materials in your house, when you're storing chemicals, um thinking through like do do I need to bring these V's in in the first place.

You know when carpet smells like carpet, that means you have Voc's and that's what always cracks me up I Talked to a guy the other day at Ahr and he was selling some product. He's like you smell that it has a Fresh Linen scent and I said okay so that's Voc's you know you're concerned about. He's like no, it's it's no, it's zero voccs I'm like sir, maybe you are misinformed, but a volatile organic compound is the very nature of odor like so if you're smelling something that was put there, it's an OD it's it's it's a V right? It's because even the most pleasant smell like the pine smell you know from pine trees or Christmas trees peppermint lemon I Mean you just you? No lemon's a bad one. Lemon Lemons a very naughty I mean you talked about that right? Yeah, well.

lemon interacts. Lemon reacts um and creates from Alide when it interacts with ozone. Yeah, you know there's natural levels of ozone. but also people like to put ozone generation products in into their systems for in indoor air quality and so that just creates Right Cleaning Cleaning that has unintended you know, third derivative type chemical reactions.

Yeah and what? What cracks me up is and this is true of so many things. It's it's true with carbon oxide. It's true with carbon dioxide. It's true.

With all this stuff, it's like anybody remember Chinese Drywall the So everybody's like oh my gosh, it's terrible. You know, like everything's falling apart and it's a major problem. Well the reason it was such a major problem is because it was so bad and it happened so fast. Okay, so you're telling me that there's nothing that's like Chinese drywall that's going on right now, but it just takes so much longer and it's so much slower.

or it's a compounding with different things. I Mean that's a ridiculous idea. Like there is stuff that we're bringing into our houses. and it's not just it's not just a China problem, it's A it's a What are the materials? What? What's the manufacturing process? What's the environment that it's being manufactured in.

If you walk into some I've walked into some um, factories where it's like it smells like toxic in there, it's like, yeah, and you're making all this stuff in here and it's absorbing all those chemicals and when you bring it to the house, it is now absorbing or or sorry, desorbing all of that. Um, all of that those chemicals and so they don't just disappear, right? So it's just like when it's not just like, sorry, this is a maybe not a great metaphor. um, but or simile. Um, when Tech say like I've been doing this 30 years and I've never had a problem.

It's like by that, you mean that you put that compressor in. it doesn't explode in your face while you're there. right? That's what you mean. But that compressor fails in five years when it could have lasted 20, right? And I think it's the same thing with chemicals, it's like we're like, oh, it's fine.

The levels are fine. Well, okay, but compared to what Yeah, you know, like how long is it going to last and also when you're compounding. So like, all right, well you bring in okay. Well, the carpet by itself is that's not too many Voc's But and then the dry, and then the paint, and then the and then the uh, and then the cabinets.

and then the appliances. and then and you stack that all up Furniture Yeah, and now oh yeah. I mean you talk about yeah fabrics and Foams I mean Foams are I Listen to this terrifying presentation. This isn't aside, but this terrifying presentation by this uh by this professor and really brilliant guy doctorate on the topic and he's like have you ever thought like you buy a new pillow uh and it comes from who you know God knows where? Yeah and you literally bury your face in that sucker all night long.

Yeah, he's like you want to talk about, you want to talk about like causes of asthma and um different allergies and all that. It's like man you are overloading your system potentially with I mean you smelled a new pillow sometimes like especially the like the fo the really foamy ones. they just that's definitely true. and I so I have a buckwheat pillow so it's filled with buckwheat hus I had one yeah, I had and and it's covered in a silk uh uh sheet on the outside.

um but if you have so you're breathing so there's moisture or you're drooling in your pillow, whatever and then you got dustmites that are coming and eating the skin flakes off of your face and then they sleep ever again after. Then then they poop on the pillow right? and then they eat all the feathers and stuff inside of most pillows. what they're made out of I mean those things are nasty and you're spending eight hours a night breathing just sticking your face in it. Yeah yeah, can't get enough.

That's gross. Yumy yummy yummy. No one's going to sleep on pillows anymore. Yeah yeah.

One one of my K one of my kids told me the other night he's like, you know you eat one bug every night on average I'm like like I'm pretty sure that's not true. Well I mean I guess depends on what you mean by bug I mean if it's you mean like microscopic then Sta Millions something like for spider or something like that. like like four spiders a year. call your mouth or something like that.

Yeah, don't say that to Danielle my assistant. She will just stop sleeping forever. She hates spiders so much. Yeah.

but I have a quick question. So a lot of this. we're talking about residential. but I Heard that this is maybe even more common in commercial.

So I'm wondering is that because of commercial coils are built differently? Or is it because like we were in a brewery last night? Is it that you've got more of an abundance of, let's say, acetic acid in the air? that because of the concentration of chemicals? maybe in a industrial commercial site? Is that, uh, creating the coil corrosion more frequently? What is what is the difference between residential and Commercial Um, so residential commercial. Sometimes it comes down to to price point, right? Every piece of equipment even in residential Market Uh, they're all made manufactured to a specific price point and so it all depends on what their designing the project for or what they're willing to spend on the type of product that they have. You know, a lot of things come into play too. Where you know if a space is just a uh, structural buildout, right? and it's just a couple package units on the roof, but then they turn that that structural buildout into a brewery, um, or or or place where they're going to actually start manufacturing.

You know, Kucha Like you know those things matter. Uh, that was never taken into account with the actual design of the building. And so yes, of course that's going to have a huge negative impact on what you have there. They would have done it differently, they would have actually got a dedicated system that's designed to be in environments like that just for that space, and then ventilated it properly to where they're actually getting more air changes than you naturally need just to account for the buildup of those chemicals.

Yeah, um, and it happens all the time, especially in the commercial industry because there's a lot of companies out there who are buying land Dirt Cheap or or or at a reasonable price and just building shells like crazy and then selling each tenant space to individual clients not taking into account or aspect or even informing the customer if they even know about it, that that the way they're going to be using the space goes against what theal initial design was for that piece of equipment and that happens all the time with commercial equipment. That's why commercial equipment carries such a small warranty. right? one year commercial warranty because you know you use and abuse it and and don't use it properly, it's gonna fail. Well, even even simple things like not changing the filters like the filter's like you think it's bad in houses I mean commercial? It's terrible.

Oh, it's awful. Um, but we've seen cases where like, you'll go into certain nail salons or um, or in places that do hair. you know, maybe they're doing Brazilian Blowouts in there or something. really? No.

I'm serious. like because it's from Mahide a lot of this Cas and um, and you'll go in and it's just like holy Moly and um and you know codes have started to catch on. but you still have a lot of Legacy um properties. Um where.

Like you said, people just move in and they don't have proper makeup. Erir they don't have proper because it's a totally different animal, right? You can't Just you can't just go in and put oh hey, this used to be a, you know, a thrift store and now I'm G to make it a nail salon that doesn't work or a restaurant or um, yeah, there's just there's lots of different things that we've seen. A print A Print shop. There's print shops that you know, a lot of chemicals going on in those processes and it all has to be accounted for.

especially in the ventilation and dehumidification. Well, and so a huge point to that too, is. Um, what something? That's a big thing right now in our Market Um, is we're turning a lot of uh, green houses. We're turning a lot of storage facilities into grow houses.

Right for for for for marijuana. Um, and there's a lot of chemicals that go along with that process too. And so we're actually as an industry just figuring out how we're supposed to be doing this. Is it? Chilled water is? Is it? Drf? Is it? Is it? You know specific Doas systems with charcoal filter and coconut shells right? that we're throwing everything at it just to try to get some kind of solution to where we can do what we want to do in the building space, but also control the environment that it's not going to have some kind of negative effect towards.

Um, you know, the equipment that we have that's supposed to be conditioning these spaces in the first place. So yeah, there's nothing worse than a than an air conditioner that has the munchies. You don't give it a sandwich, it gets really cranky. It's a it's It's a whole thing.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. No. and and kind of so to your point. Um, do we see more of it in commercial than residential? I Don't necessarily see more of it but you get.

you get these repeat patterns and so like We see it. We office with a duckass in and um, and there's a lot of chemicals in a dentist office, you know, and it just keeps recurring and it's like Floride, one of those things. It is right. Fl's on the list.

It's one of those things that we need to be looking at. And do they put different systems in dentist offices? The answer is no, not in the design I Mean a lot of that even comes down to design Engineers Because like, for example, with this particular space, it was engineered I Mean it was there was a design made and they weren't really thinking of the ventilation in a different way. they weren't thinking of hey, you know, like not only is A is it A, is it a um, something to be concerned about for the occupant's health which is clearly the most important thing, but also for the longevity of the equipment. And in some cases you may say hey, let's go ahead and folic coat these, let's let's dip these coils.

you know, Because then that really does help prevent a lot of those issues. That was the solution that we ended up coming up with a lot in the past. Um, and it affects the performance a little bit. it does.

but um, but sometimes that's the only only solution. Permanent solution Yeah Because sometimes applications. And for the instance that you mentioned like the the dentist office, right, it's in a room, so you're not going to dump a bunch of fresh air into there, right? You're not going to just flood it with fresh air. You? You can't do that.

You've got electrical equipment in there and stuff like that. So um, for for specific scenarios where you can't just ventilate and bring in fresh air. Yeah, you do have to come up with a creative solution and and then that, that is a coding. Yeah, yeah, so well.

yeah, it seems complicated. Like who's who's responsible, who's holding the bag you've got. You know, could the manufacturer have done something different? Did the person who engineered or designed what system was supposed to be in there where they responsible If a tenant changes out Like are you supposed to catch that? Yeah, this, you know. jewelry.

Um, retail store changed into a nail salon? You know. Is it the tenant that's responsible? Is it the indoor air quality that caused it? If so, who's responsible for that? Was it the HVAC Uh, you know. company. Was it.

The designer Was it. Was it the tenant. So seem seems like a complicated thing to it is. but I Think like, what? what? Um, the way this stuff actually gets done in the real world is you take you start with best practices which is kind of like what we're talking about right now.

We made a list of things here. If we were to write it down, there would be this whole list of check boxes. Yeah, and then those become standards. right? At some point somebody interprets that into okay.

here's what this looks like for a dentist office and and a lot of that stuff does already exist. I'm not. but, but but some of it is a little too vague and what it also always lacks. Here's a plug for you Kevin I'm gonna tee this up for you is it lacks testing, right? testing.

So you may say hey, here's here's how much air you need to bring in. Here's the air changes you need for this type type of a structure, but it doesn't also say yeah, but you also should have a testing. You know, some sort of sensor pack that proves that it's not exceeding certain acceptable levels and what those acceptable levels are, and what the chemicals you're looking for are by, uh, industry like? That's where we're headed. Um, that's sort of.

um, real life demand? Uh ventilation? Real life, Demand Sensor technologies That you can actually say hey, now now we've got a problem. And then you can troubleshoot what the source is. Is the source the fluoride? Uh, as part of the the Dentistry Or is it the carpet or is it the ceiling tiles or what is it? You know what's actually causing it. But until you have a standard, um that again that stems from real best practices.

not just somebody just making it up. And that's the problem with some standards is it's just you have people in an ivory Tower Which is what I'm just about to talk about next here. Uh, people from an ivory Tower making these standards. Um, from a position of not really having direct experience, you have to have this like um, sequence and I think the reason why it's getting worse and worse is it's just like like when you engineer when you over engineer things.

Yeah, I Listen to this great podcast that talked about slide rules. Okay, I know this sounds like a crazy diversion, but um, but like back in the day when you did not have accurate computing power, you had to over engineer everything just to be safe. just cause because you didn't even have even using the slide rule, you had these like fudge factoring. so you had to over engineer.

As we begin to get like we think we're smarter and we are in a lot of ways like we, we're better at math. We get closer and closer to the line. It's like it's like optimizing. It's like putting a chip in your in your engine, your car.

Where you like get closer to like just you're just blowing the head gasket on the sucker. Like two more miles per gon. Yeah yeah like I did on my diesel truck that I had for a while just blew the head gasket on the sucker because I chipped it and just went overboard. Um, and like.

so so the more you do that, the the riskier it gets. And that's what everybody's done and they've done it for the sake of efficiency is largely a big one, and that's both in the the ceiling of the structures. and it's in the just the kind of really fine-tuning the equipment for certain things. We've talked about that like with deification, but it's also because of expense and that's a big one.

And when you look at, you know Outsourcing is a big challenge that we face. And it's not because there's anything wrong with things being made in other countries necessarily, but it's when you don't have control. like when it's being made by someone else and they're shipping it to you and saying hey, here's what this is and you never actually inspected that factory. you never had any standards in place and you then just foed on the populace and you really don't know what's in it.

Um, and we see that time and time again. I mean all you got to do is just buy something from Wish.com and see. Uh, you know, see what you end up getting with that? You know we all know this now that like there's a lot of stuff that's being sold because of price and it ends up having a lot of toxic chemicals in it and I think that creates this, um, this toxic, uh, soup that results in again what we're talking about which is specifically coil corrosion. But it's not just coil corrosion.

it's a lot of different things that affect human health and and longevity of equipment. No, yeah, and coil corrosion. I mean we're talking about a small little portion of of everything that could go wrong within a space right there. There's so many negative health effects that could happen.

Um, you know, within that space, not just coil corrosion, right? Because if it's in, if it's on the coil and it's eating metal, you know how great is it for us, right? right? in general. So it's a fascinating conversation because it the relationship between IQ and coil corrosion had never been brought to my attention. And but it's just another reason why. it's a chicken and egg problem.

which is that nobody's monitoring IQ right now, like barely anybody. So how do you create a standard around something that nobody's doing? You need somebody to start and collect some data, right? Which is what I was saying. Like, until you know that IQ monitoring should be part of solving these. uh, these corrosion problems.

You're not going to do that Once you know that that is, then you're going to start doing it and you're going to start learning things. Yeah, and like I'm not. This is this is fairly new to me too. I'm I'm I always talk like I'm a like this expert like I No, these are just.

these are like thought experiments. Um, and somebody should do a talk on humility. They should. And that way you actually that way you actually test your assertions rather than just blathering on about them on a live stream that you just happen to sit down at and and just just pulling stuff out of your rear end.

Um, but yeah, that's the I think this is the direct. this is the path we're on. and I think products like Haven uh and others are going to be really helpful with us saying okay now we can start to see this corelation. Now let's see if we can prove causation.

You know that's that's the scientific method applied. and uh, and I think we're getting closer and closer. The challenge with the scientific method is that everybody wants to distill it to a lab and then you lose a lot of the veracity of the testing, right? And so we really have to get to a place where we're applying. Um, we're not applying 100% of the rigor that you can give in a lab, but we're doing a pretty darn good job where we we can as close to prove as we can that this correlation that we're seeing is causation.

And we've got a couple things here: Carbon Carbon dioxide. Is that actually true? We can test that. Um, Spray foam. Is that actually true? We can test that.

t Uh and we can test it sometimes in a lab. But really, it's best tested in the field. because in a lab you best believe they're going to when they apply the foam, they're going to apply it right. you know? And and and really I think a lot of the challenges that we Face are when things aren't right.

You like when things aren't the way they're supposed to be. That's when you start to see these these issues. Well, I'm thinking about the homecome study and how many you know, millions of dollars of equipment they needed. like looking at all the chemicals and all the interactions of the chemicals in a real home.

so you'd probably have to do that. plus have an electron microscope looking at the coil I me you're talking about yeah. many millions of dollars of equipment that has to sit there for potentially years to see this effect happen if you do it that way. But I think what you do instead is um similar to what April air did in their deification study that I that I was lucky to have been a part in of um years ago.

when you look at some early deification studies that show Lake Mary Florida I was the the nerd 20-year-old Tech who was there um and and actually what's funny is is I remember a lady being there with me and I'm pretty sure at this point that it was Nikki Krueger I just didn't know that I never put the I never put the so just. it was just a funny thing. Anyway, that was. that was a totally weird Flex The point was the point that I'm making is that um, that that study has been really helpful and it was a fairly small study? Um, it was something like five houses.

Something like that or maybe even less. Um, but it still showed Problem y Problem solved right? Sometimes that's all we really have to show is like um, we maybe don't know everything all the way down to the exact chemical. always because we do have limitations. Science always has Li a And then you you have a technological breakthrough and now all of a sudden you can really prove your assumptions or you learn something new.

But I think with this partic in particular, let's just look at some places that you have recurring coil problems. Let's go in with some sensors like Haven Let's just see what we get, see if we can solve these issues with ventilation and then see if you know it was failing every two years and now does it fail again in two years. You know that's not super scientific, but if you do that same sort of thing 10 times and 10 times you get a positive result I Don't know I Think that's still science I Think it's still science because I mean if you really dig deep into science I mean there's almost never 100% correlation or sorry causation because you can't really know why something does what it does. Yeah, you know you know what I mean Like you can't know why it does it.

You can't talk to the Creator and be like, well and why did you make that decision right? Did you make that choice? right? It You can. You can really nail it down to like. we think it's this mechanism. like we can see.

We can come up with a really good story why it's this mechanism, but you you just can 100% know I don't know my mother-in-law does. she talks to the Creator a lot and I think she might be right I mean she's right an awful lot. So I don't know, maybe um, but no. Like that's what's funny and my dad and I always talk about this.

the more you drill down and you just keep asking why you end up hitting a point where you don't have an answer to the why anymore. Yeah, and that's and that's still science, right? That's still, that's still fine. And I think the more we do that. That's what frustrates me.

Like for example, that um that um I forget what's it was University of Minnesota or something like that. Did the study that that proved that um, dirty coils, Dirty condenser coils don't don't cause um, high energy consumption Because in a lab they replicated all these things. and when you actually broke down how the test was done, it was absolutely crazy like and it wasn't like I don't think the guy's a bad guy or anything I think he's a very bright scientist think anything but like. The conclusion was totally wrong and you can prove it with measurequick and any dirty condenser that you then wash right.

You don't need all of this test gear to prove that. hey, the wattage now is lower than the bage was before, right? I mean the the Um, the cop, the erer is all better than it was before. That's not rocket science trash bag removed from the coil and so sometimes sometimes it's like we overdo it. Um, in order to prove something where I think we can just start to see similar to somebody um was bringing this up before but just like different chemicals and all that.

similar to the Um to the Chinese drywall situation. Like you didn't have to know everything that was going on to know that the houses that had this drywall were absolutely falling to shambles, right? and once you replaced it, it stopped. You get what I'm saying we just need to. We just need to get ahead of it so it doesn't have to be that bad because I would contend that there's probably a hundred different iterations of that with different products that just aren't as extreme and so it never gets pointed at and said well, that's the that's the source of the ISS.

You could come to something like oh, every home with an Erv where Vocc levels are kept below 200 ppb. never experiences this problem like we might get to that point where there's some formula. Yeah, But we're also always changing building materials, right? Like you said, with coils back and forth back and forth. And so by the time maybe we narrow something down right, it changes again.

Now it's this ever evolving, nonstop. correct? Now all of a sudden you have a problem. And that's what we've seen. It's like, oh, hey, we didn't have a problem.

Oh hey. Tin plating solved it. Oh no more problems. It's like, oh no, those are leaking.

Okay, aluminum. All aluminum. That solves it. Okay, well now we've got bacterial zuga.

And oh, by the way, they're leaking now too. And by the way, when they leak, you can never fix them because nobody knows how to fix aluminum. And oh, by the way, their Micr Channel condensers now or Micr Channel coils. And now they're leaking just by being touched.

Because because the you know, Refriger Always something you know and uh, and hey, that's the fun, right? You know we just get to be endless problem solvers. But definitely. Um, I Feel like you should? Because like you haven't said a single salesy thing this whole time, so you should like end it with something inter. Yeah, so like so everyone buy a Haven now that will solve all of your problems.

That's the message. We took 46 minutes to get to this point, but no I mean an interesting thing about Haven is we're in the return duck so we are measuring the chemicals going through the duck, whereas if you put a monitor in the kitchen okay, great. you're monitoring what's happening in the kitchen. but you know certain gases are heavier than others what's actually getting into the duct? So I think monitoring voccs for example, in the return duct that's heading towards the coil, right? Um, and so that and then introducing ventilation and being able to automate.

uh, through our controller the ability to get rid of that buildup of high vocc. You know, we see a lot of homes where chemical levels are getting really high because there's spray foam, because it's a tight home where they have a lot of off gasing. they bring in some carpets with some awful glue and you can smell the carpet smell. So I mean as long as you can measure that and control it, which is exactly what Haven does.

I Think you know not only is it going to improve human health um, but it's also going to potentially avoid coil corrosion. We don't know that for sure, but seems like a good use case. Yeah, it's a step in the right direction. well certainly and and kind of to to your point on that like it doesn't hurt.

Yeah to measure that. And and and if you see a space where you clearly have elevated levels of Tboc Co Pm2.5 Well, it's worth solving those problems anyway, right? for other reasons. So solve them. Uh, and then maybe you've also Sol solved a good part of your coil corrosion problem right? Avoid avoided other issues in the in the same process.

Yeah, it does seem like whether it's you know, mold growing in the home, the actual structure of the home, the health of the people in the home, or whether it's you know the efficiency and performance of the system um, coil corrosion. All of this I mean IQ it. It's typically the thing that's thought of last and typically need a good foundation for IQ to sit on top of. like if you have restrictive static pressure air air velocity you probably can't do IQ very well.

You probably can't build in a better filter unless you kind of have a good foundation and good static pressure to begin with. So IQ is kind of the last thing that people think about. but it has so many benefits if people could get there. Yeah, no.

and and it has lasting long-term you know benefits to it. It's not just like a a patch right? it's a Band-Aid No, this is permanent fix. I Mean when you're always monitoring and you you propose the solutions and you make the the fix or repair whatever it may be if it's ventilating, Uh, removing those chemicals from your space. Um, you know that has a positive, long-term effect on you and your health so well things change.

Things change right? Like you can set a standard for ventilation, But then you could be over ventilating, right? You could set a standard. But then you change the sort of ventilation, the the chemical load in the home, and then you need more ventilation. Like we see, a lot of hospitals are over ventilating to the tune of many millions of dollars a year. So having a live performance analysis yeah is something that's important.

Yeah, yeah. and that's yeah. and yeah to kind of to to summarize because somebody in the in the chat is asking like all right So like how do you reply like how how do you you know, how do you land this all right couple things. Use best practices when you are like all the stuff we talk about flow, nitrogen, and bracing.

Pull a really good vacuum. Make sure you're not getting crap inside the unit whether it's dirt or water or whatever you know like hey, don't open system when it's like raining outside. You know all that stuff. And because I'm serious.

that stuff, it's like I pull a really good vacuum. Yeah, but you also are doing pipe work in the rain. Probably not the best idea. Yeah, um, those things can all cause internal issues with corrosion on the external side.

It's all the basic stuff that we talk about all the time. Make sure that you have good filtration, make sure that you have some sort of ventilation strategy. all that kind of stuff. Um, if you're going to use things like Foams or other products, um, make sure you're using professionals um, who really do have a great reputation and do a good job and try to use as many low VOC products as you possibly Poss can think about that.

um For Heaven's Sake especially if you're doing like a kids. Nursery I mean uh, for Pete's sake, like do not take build your kids nursery and paint it with all new paint and buy a brand new crib with you know, foam padding and all that stuff. It just drives me crazy because I really do think there is a correlation between that movement and how many, um, different conditions we're starting to see with children. Um, and drink raw milk, Drink raw milk, Drink water.

Oh no we always talk about I I do this every time. I do this every time with Kevin where it's like no, but it's like your grandma's advice right? like get fresh air, drink clean water, eat, eat fresh food. you know, get exercise. It's all that stuff.

But but we're talking about coils here so sorry I'll Focus Um, and and then use some monitoring. Like when in doubt, um, use some monitoring and and also know the conditions. like if you're in a coastal environment, if there is some sort of if it's commercial situation, um look at things like doas look at things um, that are going to specifically address that and then in a worst case scenario, consider codings. consider um, other coil Technologies don't just keep going in with that same coil every time because it's It's going to be really embarrassing for you and very upsetting for your client.

Um, and and ultimately, if you see certain manufacturers that are really spitting out rough issues I would encourage you pull that coil apart, figure out where that leak really is. Yeah, and you will often be able to kind of figure out. Is it where is it occurring? Is it occurring at a joint? Is it is it some sort of Machining that you can see or is it potentially just foric. Um, we've done that many times.

Yeah, no, it's good. It's really good. Yeah. All right.

All right. well I think that will that will do us for today, So appreciate it. Brian Thank you Kev