82: HVAC Filtration & Purification Masterclass

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

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Hey, everyone, what's happening today? We're going to be talking about heating and air conditioning systems and the different technology components that you can attach to it to try to help protect it. Disinfect, filtration, purification, like all the fancy words that get thrown out there. I've been getting a bunch of questions through mold phone, through, you know, Instagram, dms, through all, you know, comments just in threads in different places of everybody asking about these different types of systems and units and, like, what they should be putting on their system. And so I wanted to just do an episode where I talk about it so we could, like, talk it through. All right, so there's the big question I've actually been getting a lot is about the Remy halo. I don't know what their marketing department is doing, but they're crushing, apparently, because everyone is asking me about it. So that's kind of what spurred this. And I've literally had this conversation three times just with clients this week. And I was like, you know what? I should just kind of record this.

And have it in a place that we could refer to and get to. So before I talk about, like, specific ones, and I'm only going to call out a couple of them, it's really more about the philosophy of how things. Of what type of unit you're attaching to your system, what the goal of that particular technology is. Right. So the thing is, there's basically two types of technologies that you attach to your heating air conditioning system. You have filters, and then you have purifiers or sanitizers or another word that people use for those. Okay, so filters, Basically what that means is you put a filter in front of the air handler unit. So let me kind of walk through, like, what kind of a typical airflow is. Right? So because a lot of us have never seen our air handler unit, so let me try to explain it to you. Okay, so if you're walking through your house, you basically have two sizes of vents that you see. You have bigger ones and you have smaller ones. The bigger ones are called return vents, and that's actually where air gets sucked in. So. So Those vents are actually sucking air in. And then they go through duct lines and they go to a mechanical unit that can live in your attic or your basement or your garage. Sometimes there's a closet in your house where this unit lives in, and that's the unit that has the fan that kind of creates the suction, and then that's where the heating and the cooling happen. So, so that unit is actually what's doing the heat and the cool that's moving through the house. The bigger vent is the vent that's sucking the air into that unit from your house to then get conditioned. And then all the smaller vents are called supply vents, meaning that they supply out either the heated or the cooled air. Right. So you have return vents which return the air to the unit, and then you have supply vents which supply the air out. And all of those are connected or at least should be connected by duct lines. Quick little tangent there. Older homes, they're not always connected by duct lines. Sometimes they use the. Your actual, like behind your wall. So if you ever opened a wall or look at it, basically there's. There's two by four studs every, you know, 12 or so inches, you know, whatever. I don't know the exact number. 12, 16 inches apart. And they create little bays, basically. If you look at it, sometimes these older systems actually use your wall cavity and. And the space in between. Kind of like the box that's created in between those two studs as the return. If that's happening, that's a big, big. No, no, you don't want that to happen because that means it's pulling all kinds of crap from all these interstitial wall cavities throughout your house into the system. Right. So you don't want that. You want everything to be running through a duct line. I've talked more about that piece of it previously, so I'm not going to go super in depth in on that right now because that's not really the purpose of this one. But when you don't have a duct line, we call that an open system, meaning that you're pulling air just from random places in the house that's getting pulled into your air conditioning system. It's a problem because the whole point of all this technology stuff we're talking about is to protect the system from getting contaminated. That's the point of it. So if you're pulling air from all the crap and buildup and debris and junk and everything that's behind all of your walls and that's going into your system, then you're already starting at a disadvantage. Right. And so that's kind of the point of that. But anyway, so to set it up, so you have the big vents. Those are the return vents. There's a duct line or a run that's going to the air handler unit. That's the mechanical piece. Now, the one clarification. This is not the unit that's outside of your house. Right. That's called the condenser. Airflow doesn't go through that. Okay. So that's not what we're talking about. We're literally talking about the unit where all of your ducts connect to. And. And that's where all of your airflow goes through. Okay. So you have the return line connects to that unit. That unit heats it or cools it, sends it out through other ducts that then supply it throughout the house. Okay? So that's kind of the flow of everything. So if we're trying to prevent mold from getting into our system, there's two ways that this happens. One is that you have mold sources in your house, and they get pulled into the return vent, and. And they get pulled into the system, and then they basically cross contaminate the system. That's one way that it happens. The other way that it happens is that your air conditioning system is just failing in some way. Usually it has something to do with the coil or the condensation line or the pan or something where water is accumulating in the unit and actually creating a mold or bacteria source inside of your unit. So there's bas. So the two ways are one way it gets cross contaminated from your house, meaning that the. Your H vac air handler unit is not actually an initial source, but it becomes contaminated from sources everywhere else in your house. Or the H vac unit becomes a source in its own. Right? Okay. So those are the two ways that it happens. So I want to explain that because we talk about the different technology pieces and how they work and kind of like what their strengths and their weaknesses are. Right. It's the same thing about sampling a house. I've talked about this so many times. Certain samples have better. They're better at doing certain things. Right. Air samples are really good for finding mold that's hiding behind a wall. They're terrible if you stick them up in the middle of the room and think it's going to tell you everything that's going on. Right. There's not one technology piece that is the end all be all of air conditioning systems, because there's different components and there's different places in the flow of air that you want to address things. I'm going to talk through the ideal scenario of how stuff works and then at the end I'll kind of tell you, like, if I was going to have to prioritize one or the other, like which one I would invest in first because I think that that one's more important than the other. Right. So, okay, so let's follow the air. All right, so we have the return line. The air is going through the return line. It gets to the heating, air conditioning, or it gets to the air handler unit, the mechanical unit. Okay. So remember, the first way that a unit becomes contaminated is it's pulling in from other areas of the house. Alright. So the goal is then ideally we're not even letting that get into the unit. Right. We're stopping it as much as we can before it gets there. That's the first thing. Right. So the first thing is always prevention. It's not let's let all the air get in here that might be contaminated and then let's figure out how to purify and sanitize it and get rid of it once it's in there. No, the ideal solution is to prevent it from getting in there in the first place. Right. That's where filtration comes into play, in my opinion. I said I would say this at the end. I'll just jump into it. Filtration is the most important component of everything, in my opinion. At least from the, from this point of view. Right. So like if, if, if we have multiple mold sources in the house and they're releasing toxins and there's, you know, particles that are breaking off of the colonies and there's spores that are flying around and all that gets sucked into a return unit. And then all that runs through this duck line and, and it goes through all these curves and all these things and then it gets to the air handler unit. We want to stop it before it gets into the air handler unit. All right? Now a lot of people think, well, we should put that filter on the very front, like right where the vent is, to prevent anything from getting in there. Right. Like that way it doesn't even get into the duct line. You'd be stopping it directly at the front end. And ideally that would be really good, but I just haven't seen anything that you can put at that point that is super effective. So the filters that you buy at Home Depot, even If you're getting MERV 13 filters, MERV, you know, fill in the blank the highest of the highest filter filters, they don't filter anywhere down to the size of particle that we are trying to protect the system from. Okay. So most mold spores are about 0.3 microns in size and fragment or. And then the mycotoxin range kind of gets in around like the 0.1 area, give or take in size. And then the smaller fragments that break off of colonies which could be carrying mycotoxins potentially can get down way smaller than that. So what we need to do is that we actually need to try to get some sort of filter which think of it just like a wall that's blocking these particles coming in. Right? Like we know what a filter is, right. So that's what it is. It's blocking this stuff from getting in there. We need to find a filtration option that gets ideally as small as possible in order for that to work. Right. And the thing is, when you're to find a system to find something like that, you can't find that at Home Depot or Lowe's. And like your basic filters that you go down aisle 45 and here they are, right? That's not where they are. They're. They're specialized units, right. The same way that, that I talk about air treat or air filters that go in different rooms and how you can't go buy one at, at, you know, Best Buy or Walmart and think that it's going to be super effective, the same thing goes for your air conditioning systems, right? So you can't think that that filter is going to be. Is going to get down to the level that we're talking about, Right. And if you're concerned about it and mold is an issue and this is the thing that you're dealing with, and these are the size particles that we need to be talking about.

And so the. If nothing really exists that I know of that you could put on the front of the, of the vents at the return. Okay? So we can't do it there. That means we have to let it run through the return line and then it's going to get to the air handler unit. We want to stop it before it gets to the air handler unit because once it's in the air handler unit, that's where it kind of gets brought in. It gets heated and cooled and sent out everywhere else. So we're trying to stop it before it gets there. So the place that you could put it is basically right in between where the end of the return line is and the start of the air handler unit is. Okay. So again, just to visualize this, because I'm using my hands, I don't know if you can see this. You have a return vent in your house. You're looking at it in the wall or in the ceiling. That vent has a duct line attached to it, hopefully, like we talked about. Okay. That duct line runs through wherever it runs, and it gets to wherever your air handler unit is located. Again, this could be attic, garage, basement, you know, wherever it's located. Okay. So that duct connects directly to that air handler unit, and it feeds the air into the unit, and then that's where the heating and cooling starts happening. So right between where the duct connects to the air handler unit, you can put a filter right there. Okay. So the air is coming in through the duct, and then you stick a filter right in there, right in between. Right before it gets to the air handler unit, then it hits this filter. Then the air would then come through the filter and it would block the stuff that needs to be blocked, or a big majority of it, hopefully. And then it gets into the unit. So we're trying to protect the unit in the first place from the stuff even getting in there. That's what we're trying to do. Okay. So that's the goal. Now, you know, what are you looking for in these types of filters? There's so many of these things that are out there. You know, for those of us that are mold sensitive and understand, like the fragmentation piece, we know that you can't just go out and get a HEPA filter. A HEPA filter just filters to, you know, mold spore size. Right. But I just described. Things get a lot smaller than that. If that's your filter and that's the size you're filtering down to, you're going to be missing all the bad stuff, basically. So we can't just go and get like a basic filter, a HEPA filter with a. With an electrostatic thing or whatever. Like. Like that's not enough. And so there's two that I like. The first one that I like the most is the intellipure Whole House Cleaner. I think that's what it's called. Let me. Let me try to look real quick while we're talking, but that one, yeah. Whole House Air Cleaner. That's what it's called. It's the intellipur Ultrafine Whole House Air Cleaner. The same guys that make the Intellipur Ultrafine 468, which is the standalone unit that you could put in your room. It's like the same technology they just built It a little bigger. It goes in front of your air conditioning system. This filters down to 0.007 microns. So again, we said 0.3 was about the size of a mold spore. That's what HEPA filtration is. We said mycotoxins generally around 0.1. And then the fragments that break off of colonies, which could also be carrying toxins, could get way lower than that. It could get into the 0.00 ranges of things, right? And so this filtration is going to allow us to basically close the net on the filter really, really tight to block out a lot of these tiny, tiny particles, okay? And again, the goal of this is if we could stop it from getting in there as much as we can in the first place. That's the primary goal. The primary goal is to not let it all get in there and then hope that we can now get rid of it. Like, it's almost too late at that point. You know what I mean? So the goal is to stop as much as we can initially coming in the same way that in your house, the goal is to stop the water before it causes the problem. The goal is to stop the drainage problems before they leak under your house. It's the same concept, right? You need to. You need to try to stop the cause of why something is happening versus waiting for it to happen and, and then trying to like, clean it or fix it or sanitize it or whatever, right? Because at that point, like, the damage has already been done. So that's kind of the goal of this technology piece, is to try to stop as much as you can. Is it going to stop everything? No, it's not going to stop everything. Nothing is going to stop everything because air has to flow through your system, right? And things can get smaller and pierce off, right? I mean, this can happen. So is it going to stop everything that can possibly get in there? The answer is no. But honestly, nothing is going to. If that's the goal, then you should just not have a heating and air conditioning system, honestly. So, because air has to go through there, and if air is moving through, then it could pull things with it. And that's just, that's just what's going to happen. But having a filter that can block out 99/% of these things that are at 0.007 micron in size, that's big time, right? And so that's, that's the purpose of that filter. On the front end, there's another one that's really good. It's IQ Air. They have one that's called IQ Air Perfect 16 that filters down to 0.003. You might be saying, Brian. Well, why didn't you say that you like that one better? I like the Intellipure one better because they also have a. It's a D. It's called dfs. It's a disinfecting filtration system. So they also have kind of a disinfecting component on their filters that actually requires power to run that. That helps prevent mold from growing on them. Bacteria from growing on them, Right? So that's like another little added bonus because if your filters start growing stuff on them, which happens, guys, I. I've opened up air conditioning units and seen and returned vents and seen mold growing on the filters. Then now the filters is basically a source that's pushing stuff right into the unit. Right? So I'm not saying that happens with the IQR ones. I don't know if it does. But I know that this, this particular one has a disinfecting system in it that helps to prevent that. So that's kind of why I lean that way on that one. So that's the one I like. So the, the whole. The Intellipure ultrafine whole home air cleaner is the one I like the most when it comes time for me to actually buy a place versus renting and deal with my air conditioning system. That is the one I'm going to be putting on my unit. So just so you know. All right, so there's that piece of it. Okay, now the second thing that we see a lot is these things that are called purifiers. Okay? So you have filtration and then you have purifying and sanitizing. So filtration is about pulling, filtering particle, pulling particle out, not even allowing it to get through. Okay, and the actual. Wait, real quick, before I get into purifiers, sanitizers, one more thing on the filter stuff, I want to say that.

These types of filters, they will restrict airflow little bit because they're not allowing as much air to come in. Which means that your air conditioning system has to basically be compatible with this unit. Right? You might need. If, if it's restricting airflow too much, it might over tax your system because your system is trying to get air from somewhere and it's not allowing it to come in. And that can cause mechanical problems within the H VAC system, which is why, you know, these types of units, you're going to have an H VAC contractor be the one that's installing them anyway. So they're going to have to make sure that they're looking at your system compared to the specs of this unit and make sure that they can be compatible. So, like, I've had clients that wanted to get this. And so beforehand, they actually hired or contacted their H vac contractor, sent them the specifications on the unit, and made sure that this unit would be compatible with their system. And if not, we. What were the things that they might have to do in order to make it compatible with the system? Okay, so that's one thing. Anytime that you put a filter in front, you're restricting airflow. Now, the reason that you can go to Home Depot and buy all these filters and they don't really do anything is because they're not really restricting airflow that much. So they're not really. You don't have to do this type of analysis when you go buy a filter from Lowe's, because they're not really doing enough to restrict airflow. And when you think of it, if you're not restricting airflow too much and you're not really filtering down to really small sizes, and it all kind of makes sense. Sense, right? So. So that's kind of the difference. So that was just one thing I wanted to throw out on that piece of it. Okay, so let's get into the next type of item. So you have. You basically have filtration, like I talked about, and then you have purification and sanitizing. There's kind of two things here. All right? Now, the idea on purifying and sanitizing, and there's different ways that this gets executed. Some of it is UV light, some the. Of. Some of it are units that create ions that float around. Some of it are units that create bipolar ions that float around. But they're also kind of magnetized stuff. There's kind of different ways of it happening. Some is called PCO technology.

So, yeah, there's just different ways of saying it. But the idea is that they're kind of creating. They're using.

This type of, like, purifying sanitizing technology typically involves some sort of UV light and a surface that it kind of reacts off of and it creates ions or something like that. Or you could just have a UV light specifically if you're only focusing on a certain area. And it's using basically kind of this chemical chemistry sort of thing to kind of break down contaminants once they're there. So that's the difference. The difference is filters are trying to stop it from getting there in the first place. Purifiers and sanitizers are trying to break them down and destroy them once they're already there. That's the big difference. So if you're asking me, like, what's the highest priority, like I said, I would rather stop it from getting in there in the first place at all than wait for it to get in there and then start relying on chemistry and all this other stuff to try to break things down that are already there. Like, why not just stop it in the first place? Right? And so that's why I think filtration is. If I had to pick and, like, I couldn't afford to do both, I would be doing filtration, and that would be the primary thing I'd be doing. Okay. So getting a. Purifying and sanitizing. There's. There's kind of like two pieces of this. The purifying piece is about ions that basically attach to other, you know, attach to. To mold or bacteria and break them down and kind of you end with a byproduct that's basically, you know, water, you know, carbon dioxide, something like that. So they're kind of like deactivating whatever the, you know, whatever the organism is. It's kind of the general idea around it. Different products do a different way. So I can't talk specifically because they're all, like, a little bit different, but that's the general idea. Right.

And so let's stick on that piece for a second. So those are typically working on biological contaminants. Mold, bacteria. Okay.

If they're seeing that in there and they can connect to them and break them down, then that's kind of what they're doing. The problem is that mycotoxins are not a biological contaminant. Endotoxins are not a biological contaminant. They're a toxin. They're a chemical. Right. They're a chemical toxin that's created. And specifically mycotoxins. And so these don't work on those like that. Right. So I just want to be clear. Like, whenever, you know, when you read this stuff and it's like, yeah, you know, you know, biological breakdown and this and that. It's just really important to understand that mycotoxins are not a biological thing. It's a chemical. And so, you know, these types of things, that's not their forte. That's not what they're meant to do. They're. They're mold focused, they're bacteria focused. So that's. That's one piece. And so again, when I'm talking about if I could stop mycotoxins from getting in in the first place, that's the primary goal. Right. Again, filtration, in my opinion, is the most important part. Okay, so these types of purifiers.

Let'S just start with UV light before we get into some of these other ones. So UV light.

Can be used as like a. Is a, you know, to break down bacteria, to, you know, you know, prevent bacteria growth, prevent, you know, things like biological growth like that. I went through and was studying for the, well, AP certification a while ago. One of the big things they talk about is pure is like purifying surfaces and how you could use UV light on surfaces. Here's the thing, though, is that UV light itself is only effective. So this is like sometimes H Vac contractors will try to sell you like, like a stick that's like a UV light and say, just put this UV light in here and it's going to kill everything. Right? That's what. That's what they'll say. So the strength and weakness of UV light, it can be effective in breaking down bacteria, mold and biological things like that.

But in order to be effective, it has to have a long, what's called contact time. So, meaning that if you stuck the UV light, let's say, in a spot, you know, kind of where the return came in and air is just moving by it really fast, it's not going to do anything because it's not enough time for the UV light to actually break this stuff down. Right. The place that a UV light, the only place a UV light should really be put, where the coil and kind of the drip area exists, because that's where moisture collects in there. And there's always dripping from the cooling process because condensation happens. There's no way to get around that. So every coil in your heating and air conditioning system, basically what happens, the air comes through the return. There's a blower fan compartment. Usually that's first, although not all the time, but usually the blower fan compartment is first. The fan is what's creating the suction that's pulling the air through the unit. Then it goes into a compartment that has the coil, and the coil is what does the cooling. Right? And so if you're bringing in air and you're trying to cool it, then you're creating condensation is going to occur because you're going to have a difference in temperature of the surfaces. And so naturally, water condensation is going to happen. That's why there's a drip pan under every single H VAC system. That's why there's a drip line, which is like a PVC pipe that runs out, and it usually goes outside of the house, and it drips somewhere outside. And you'll have drips just coming out of it because the condensation line is doing that. Right? So if you were going to put a UV light somewhere, you want to put it in a place where water is going to be basically dripping and collecting, right. As a disinfectant piece for that, to help prevent that. Okay? So that's where that would go. But it can't go anywhere else, because the purpose of it in that point is to be right where the moisture is and just always be on it and just try to not allow mold and bacteria to grow in the first place. That's what it's doing. So contact time. Meaning. Meaning where. What is its purpose? What is it trying to disinfect? And then is it able to just focus on that and work on that? That happens there? Because it's actually not trying to disinfect airflow at that point. It's trying to disinfect the surfaces within the coil compartment from mold growing on the surfaces. That's why a UV light in that compartment is really where it should go. But if you stick it, like in the blower fan compartment, or you stick it in the supply supply area before the air gets sent out of the system, then basically you just have air flying by this light really fast. It doesn't give it enough time to do anything. And so they're kind of useless. Like I've done. I've opened up air conditioning systems where they have UV lights sitting basically where the return duct connects to the air handler unit. And they have a return or they have a UV light there. And I open the unit, it's like, glowing blue, you know, And I'm sure they show their clients, like, look, you got this thing, all this magic blue light in here. The problem is all the air is just flying through that compartment super fast. So all that magic blue light's literally not doing anything. Okay? So it needs to be in the coil compartment, because, again, we're not concerned about the air moving through. The purpose of that UV light is really to focus on the area where moisture will build up because of the drips and just make sure that the surface is in there. You're doing your best, you know, to keep this stuff from growing in there. So that's where UV light would be placed. If you're going to place one of those. Okay. So that's a purification piece. Now there's other executions of purification which are more of like an ion creation. Right. So they basically use, like, a light, and then it. It. It hits a catalyst which is like a metal plate of some kind, and that catalyst creates an ion, and then that ion can, like, float in the air and move around. Right. And then if it hits a biological contaminant, it could break it down there. So it's kind of a way of mobilizing like this. This UV light type of idea, right? So you put in these little. These little ions that float around. Now you're able to move it around versus it being in one single place. Okay, so there's a couple different versions of this. Remy Halo is one that gets sold a lot. Like I said, their marketing team, kudos to them. They're crushing. Air Oasis has one called the Air Oasis Bipolar. And the Air Oasis, or actually it's the Air Oasis, nanoinduct is the one that theirs is called. They both get installed in the same place. So if you're putting one of these in your system, you're putting them in what's called the supply plenum. So again, let's think through. I want you to kind of visualize the layout of how all this goes. So imagine kind of like a rectangle sitting on its side. Okay. On the left is your return duct coming into the rectangle. The rectangle is your air handler unit. This is where the, you know, the components and stuff are. Okay. So your return duct line comes in the left and it hits the left side of the rectangle. Okay. The first thing we talked about putting a filter right before the duct hits the rectangle. So now, like, stick another, like, larger vertical rectangle next to it. That's your filter. Okay. So the return line goes into, like, this long, vertical, you know, thin rectangle. That'll be your filter piece. Then it goes into your air handler unit. Okay. In your air handler unit, the first thing it's going to hit is this blower fan area, which we talked about. That's the fan that creates the suction that moves the air through. Then it's going to go a little further, and it's going to hit the coil area. The coil area is where the cooling happens. Right. And that's where the condensation happens. Let's say that happens on the left side of the. Of the rectangle. Or, excuse me, on the right side of the rectangle. And on the left side of the rectangle is where the air comes in. So again, for visualizing, because I know you guys aren't seeing this, you have. You have a rectangle laying on its side, long ways right on its side, and you have air coming in and hits a filter. After the filter comes into the rectangle, okay. The first compartment it's in is the. Is the blower fan. The second compartment it gets into is where the, you know, the heating and cooling happens. So your furnace will be over there, but also your coil is over there. Okay. In that. In that area is where condensation dripping is going to happen. So it's going to happen after the blower fan. In most cases, sometimes they're flipped, but in most cases, that's what I've seen.

And that'll happen over there. So if we're talking about where things are being installed right now, Right. We talked about the filter coming before the rectangle starts. We talked about a UV light being put in the coil compartment. Right? Okay. So that's where we are now. So now if we imagine that rectangle at the end, it ends on the right side. And then after that is what's called a supply plenum. This is where all the air now goes into. And from this box is all the different duct lines that are connected through your to that system. So, like, if you're in the upstairs of your house, and you see that you have, you know, seven or eight different air conditioning supply vents. They all attach to the same unit, and they kind of like splinter off. So, like, if you were in an attic and you looked at this, it would almost look like, like octopus arms coming off of the supply plenum. So all the air that gets pushed through the system gets into the supply plenum, and then from there, there's multiple openings that all the air goes out of, and then they have duck lines that run to all the different places of your house, and that's how it moves everywhere, right? So the supply plenum is kind of the home base of all of the air before it gets distributed throughout the house. That's where kind of all of it meets before it gets sent everywhere. So things like the Remy Halo and the Air Oasis nanoinduct, they want you to install them there at the supply plenum. Okay. Because what's happening is that they're releasing these ions that I was just talking about. And then as the air comes through, it pushes those ions throughout all the different duct lines. So that's the idea. So they put it right at the Beginning, source of where all the airflow starts pushing. And then it pushes it through all the different duct lines, and then it will go through all those lines, and then they start telling you that then it comes out all of the vents, and then it sanitizes your whole entire house, which I, you know, I'll get into that, I guess, at the end.

But the, the idea is that, that you have that component there. Okay. So if the only thing you did. And so here's the thing. The reason I want to break all this down is because I've been getting questions about, about people wanting to just put in the Remi halo, and that's all they want to put in. It's like, okay, you could think about that, right? But think about this whole flow that we just talked about. Again, the rectangle's laying on its side. You put the filter before the rectangle. If you want, you could put a UV light in where the coil is. The filter before the rectangle is trying to prevent as much coming in from the first place. The UV light in the coil area is trying to prevent mold and bacteria from growing inside of the unit. So remember I mentioned earlier, there's two reasons an air conditioning unit gets impacted. One is that it pulls air contaminated air from inside of the house, and it just contaminates the system. That's what the filter is for. Okay. The second reason is that mechanically something is wrong with the system. Usually that's happening in the coil area and it's not dripping properly or there's a backup or something more water gets in there, you start getting mold and bacteria growing in your system. So the UV light in that area is really meant to hopefully try to prevent that from happening. Right. So for each reason something happens, there's kind of like a different tool that you can use to address that. Okay, so we got the filter on the front. You could do UV light in, in the coil area. And then after both of those things happen, then the, the Remy halo or the nano or the Air Oasis nanoinduct gets put in the supply, which is after all that stuff. Okay? So if we didn't have either of those two things going on, then what's going to happen is if there are other areas of mold in the house and it's getting pulled in the system, you're getting cross contamination that's happening that's coming into the system. So now imagine, you know, contamination coming up through the duck line that's running up on the left side. And then it gets into the mechanical unit, which is Remember that sideways rectangle that we're visualizing? Right. So this duck line connects to that. There's no filter there. So the contamination coming through the duck line now gets into the unit. So now the floating particles and maybe toxins and stuff in the house are now in the unit. Okay? And then that goes through the coil area. And let's say there's no UV light there, right? So now, you know, hopefully the coil is working properly. But let's say something's not. It's not draining as effectively as it needs to. There's more of a water buildup in there than there should be. Now maybe you start having a bacterial growth problem or a mold growth problem inside of the air handler unit. So now you might have two different reasons of contamination coming and happening, and only after all of that do you get to where the REMI halo and the nanoinduct actually get installed into the system. Okay? So again, if we're talking about prevention and trying to stop things before they start, that unit, the purifier unit, the sanitizer unit, that's happening all the way after all this stuff would have happened already. So while there is benefit for that, for the rest of the supply duct lines coming out, there's no benefit going into the air handler unit or any of the areas before that. And so that's the problem. Okay? So if you're only looking to do that, you're not doing anything about what could be happening before it gets to that point in the flow. And if you do have contamination in the house that's coming unfiltered into the system, it's going to get in there. If you do have, you know, a malfunctioning, you know, coil area that might end up with a mold or bacteria problem, then that's already going to be in there. And now you're sending all of that through the supply duct lines and then hoping that the ions that are created from the halo or from the nanoinduct are going to destroy all of that. And you're crossing your fingers and hoping that's going to happen, whereas I would rather stop all that from happening in the first place. Right. And that's kind of like the big thing. So it's not that I don't like these other units, these purifier and sanitizer units like those two. I actually think they're a good piece of the overall system. So the third component of this, of this H vac filtration purification system is something like that. Right? Because what that does Is it helps to continuously kind of clean and sanitize the duct lines that are going through all the way till they get to the supplies. Because remember, most times in air conditioning systems, it's not that visible. Mold is growing in the ducts and in the air handler unit. That's usually not what's happening. Usually it's small fine particles, it's maybe toxins that you can't see that are moving through these systems. And how do they move around? They get carried by dust particles that move around. Right. So when you have really long duct runs, like flex duct, which most of us have in some extent somewhere in our run of duck lining, flex duct is like an accordion. Like if you squeeze an accordion together, you know how like all those grooves and crevices get created and then you pull it apart and then all of a sudden it's like kind of open and then you push it back together and squishes together. Well, a flex duct is like a squished together accordion line. Like that's what it is. So what happens is that these particles, these little tiny particles and things are moving around, they wedge into the grooves and crevices created by the duck line.

And so the idea of having something that continuously sends purifying ions throughout the ducts to basically try to get anything else that may have gotten there to that point. That's why I like it. Right. I think it's good for that component, but it's more of like the last ditch effort. So it's like you have all of these fail safes up front, and whatever happens to get through all that stuff, and it happens to work its way through those other two areas, and it gets into the supply push that's going to get out to the house. Then you could have.

The ionizer machine, which is like a halo or nanoinduct that can have these ions that could try to break down whatever else might be there. But I would rather be doing that and basically trying to get like the stragglers that have made their way through and they've just been resilient, figure out how to get through. Then everything that's coming through and there's nothing filtering it out and there's nothing trying to prevent it from happening. And then putting all of the weight and onus on that on one of these ionizer things with these ions that are moving through, when the reality is they don't filter stuff. Right. And again, mycotoxins are a chemical, they're not biological product, which means that the ions are not really effective against mycotoxins. So I want to prevent as much of that as I can. So in the front end, I don't even want to let them in as much as I can. And then I want to have a component in the coil area, which is typically where a lot of the water problems happen in a system, to try to prevent any internal growth from happening as best as I can. And then if after I've done those things, then I basically have one of these ionizer pieces that push through all the ductwork as kind of my last line of defense. And that's really how I look at those things. All right, so I wanted to kind of outline all of that stuff because I just get the question a lot. I end up like giving this explanation all the time. And I just thought it'd be good to have a reference point for everybody to go check it out. So the last thing I said I'll talk about in a second is the idea that, you know, that, that these ions will purify your whole house. Alright, so listen, some of the ions are going to come out, but just like anything, the further away from the source that you get, the less concentrated it's going to be. That's why if I do an air sample behind a wall where I think there's a mole problem, I'm going to get a much more accurate read than if I go into the middle of the bedroom and try to do an air sample in the middle of the bedroom. It's because I'm further away from the source and it becomes less and less potent and concentrated in that area. And that's why I get false negatives. Okay, so same thing's gonna happen with your air conditioning system. If the source of the ions are in the, or in the supply plenum, that is maybe in your attic or in your basement or garage or wherever it is, and you have hundreds of feet of duct line between where that lives to even a supply vent that you see, you're already, you know, 100ft, couple hundred feet away from the source that's originating in it in the first place. And then it gets into your house and you're expecting that to move all over your house and magically purify everything. You know that in my opinion, that's not what these technologies are for. The technologies are for the air conditioning system. They are for protecting the air conditioning system. And any extra effect that gets into the living spaces. I kind of see as like, you know, the. Was it like, like frosting on top? I don't know, I completely forgot what the word is. Like, the cream on top, the frosting on top. I don't know. It's like the extra benefit that if it happens, that you're really excited about happening, right? But building an effective air treatment solution in your house is not only about your air conditioning system. It's then about understanding the areas in your home that you spend the most time and supplementing what you've done in your air conditioning system with filtration or pure or, you know, purification components in those areas of the house. So room number one, your bedroom. This should be the first place that you supplement that you put a separate standalone unit in your bedroom to create a, you know, kind of a zone within your bedroom that's getting a more direct effect. Okay. The other thing is, if your air conditioning unit isn't running all the time, then it's not going to be doing this. So that's the other thing on this. It only works if you're running it. If you don't run it all the time, then you're getting no filtration in your house. You're getting no ions getting produced. None of that's happening, Right? So it's like, under the assumption if you rely on your air conditioning system to do all this for you, that means you literally have to run it 247 all the time. And even then, like I said, the further from the source, you know, kind of the less effective it gets. So what I like to do is supplement that with, you know, kind of targeted areas of standalone, portable filters that you could put in other places for the areas spending most time. So number one, bedroom. Bedroom is the first place that you do it. You sleep there. That's where a lot of your restoration happens. That's where a lot of your, like, brain detoxification happens in your sleep. When you get into your deep sleep, there's different things that happen. You want to be in a room that's kind of supporting that restorative process while you're sleeping. After that, just kind of think of the different rooms that you spend the most time in, and then you prioritize them. For most people, the next room is some sort of like, kitchen, living area. That's usually kind of the next room for people. And then after that, you know, I mean, maybe you have a couple bedrooms, you know, obviously, so those kind of get prioritized first. Then you kind of go down the road from there.

And for those rooms, same type of technology, right? There's filtration, there's purifying, the same exact thing is available. Again, if you're just getting an ionizer in a room, you're doing nothing for what you're potentially breathing in, right? You're not filtering out the air. You're just trying to kind of kill everything that you can. So if I'm prioritizing, again, filter is more important. Filtration is most important. And then secondarily, if you want to get a purifying or sanitizing piece, then you can do that, too, right? So. So that's how I would kind of set up the whole solution. You just kind of have to figure out, like, what areas of, you know, your house are high, are the highest sort of occupied thing. And like I said, it's mostly. It's going to start with bedrooms, and then you kind of. You kind of taper off from there. However, you know, however much more you want, you don't have to have one in every single room. You have them in the areas that you spend the most time, and it gives you kind of an extra layer of protection in those spaces, and that's kind of the setup for all that. So I hope that this was helpful for you guys. This is literally the same conversation I have with all of my clients. So you guys, now it's as if you're working with me when we're talking about technology. All right? So I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Listen, one quick thing. If you guys have enjoyed this or any of the other other episodes, I would really, really, really appreciate it if you could leave a review for the podcast. Even if you just do a rating, that's cool. But, like, reviews are great, too. It just helps the podcast get more visible so we can reach more people. And that's ultimately what my selfish goal is, trying to reach more people and help more people, as selfish as that can be. So if you could. If you literally could take like, two minutes, like right now, and just flip over your phone to the home screen of the. Of the podcast and put in a rating and put in a little review. If it's about this episode, that's cool. You can say, man, Brian just basically gave me everything he talks to his clients about, and he gave it to me for free. If that's what you want to write, that'd be cool. I'm not telling you what to write, but that's something that you could write. It's an example. So, anyway, guys, thank you all so much for listening. We will talk to you next time.

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