Mold Remediation Part 9: The HVAC and Other Heating and Cooling Systems with AJ Callegan

The duct cleaning industry is similar to the H Vac D industry in that many companies are out there to sell you something, not to solve problems. If you get a coupon for a duct cleaning company advertising a $29 duct cleaning, they are not your company. I promise you they will not come in your home and do an effective job. Period.

Thank you to our sponsor, Airmada Drying Solutions. Their generosity helps keep our resources free and available to the public. For more information on our sponsor, please head on over to our Corporate partners page@changetheairfoundation.org As a reminder, this Mini Class series is designed to provide a consumer friendly overview of the mold remediation process. It is not a Do it Yourself series, nor does it cover every detail or scenario that needs to be considered during mold remediation. Before beginning mold remediation, be sure to work with a knowledgeable indoor environmental professional and remediation company. Hello everyone and welcome to our Mold Remediation Mini Class series brought to you by Change the Air Foundation. My name is Kendra Seymour and today is part nine of our series where we'll be discussing microbial growth in your heating and cooling systems and ductwork. Now, there are many types of heating and cooling systems, from standard H Vac systems to mini splits to even things like small swamp goolid, but we're not going to get into all those systems and their unique details. What we will do though, is begin to help you understand how these systems, when not properly maintained, when not properly installed, when not properly sized, can become either the source of physical microbial growth or contribute to spreading cross contamination from one area of your home to another. Today we'll primarily be discussing what happens when mold is growing inside your H Vac system and or ductwork. Should you clean it? Should you replace it? And the answer isn't always as straightforward as you would hope, but we'll provide some key factors to consider for both options. Now, before jumping into cleaning and remediating your system, it's really crucial to identify that root cause of the mold growth. We don't want you spending money on cleaning, only for the problem to return. So if you ever listen to any of our interviews, you've heard me say before that mold remediation is like the Wild west, while the H Vac industry and duct cleaning industries, they're not much better, unfortunately. That's why I'm thrilled today to share with you our presenter, because not only is he a true expert in the field, but he's been impacted by mold and poor indoor air quality himself. So he truly gets what's going on here. So welcome aj. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for Kendra for having me.

Now for those who don't know A.J. callaghan yet, he is a South Louisiana native residing in Covington, Louisiana north of New Orleans, has 25 years of experience in the H Vac industry. He owned a residential H VAC company until 2019 when when his health began to decline and he was forced to sell his business. After a long arduous medical journey, he discovered that he had mold toxicity causing severe neurological problems. With help of his wife, family and functional medicine, he's been seizure free for four years. Because of the health journey he's been on, he has now broadened his focus and passion. He started a new venture in 2022 focusing on building performance and building science and as he continues learning and utilizing his over 20 years of experience in the H VAC industry, his mission is to combat problems in H Vac and construction that caused his and many others health symptoms. He wants to influence change to build better, healthier, safer and more durable and sustainable homes and buildings. I absolutely love that about aj. I love, I love your passion and everything that you do, but they don't really want to hear from me and I know we have a lot to cover today, so why don't you jump right in.

Thank you Kendra and Change the Air foundation for allowing me the opportunity to present today. My name is AJ Calligan. As Kendra mentioned, I own and operate ACC Building Performance. I'm in Covington, Louisiana. There's my QR code if anyone would like to reach out to me directly. I have well over 20 years of experience in the H Vac industry. I have thousands of hours of training and countless certifications which in my opinion mean very little in the practical, really real world. I am now a general contractor building healthy high performance homes. I specialize in the whole home as a system. I want to nail that system down to you guys. Today I developed epilepsy as as Kendra mentioned we do have a video on that if she wants to link that in the comments or notes some kind of way. I'll try to shed some light on the importance of your system and how it more than affects the temperature of the air in your house, but it actually affects you, your health and the health of the home. This can get technical so I'll do my very best to keep it as simple as possible. It is my goal to give you a basic understanding of the H Vac system. Once again I'm going to harp on that system. Everything that I present here is my professional opinion based on my experience and training in the field. To clean or not to clean? That is the question I was asked to give an H VAC perspective here. So here we go. I'll give my thoughts and opinions on this and hopefully at the end of my presentation you can answer that question for yourself. Now pay close attention because there will be a quiz at the end. Kendra. Okay, so H Vac Basics. Heating is the process of adding heat to the air. I'm not going to speak too much on heating because it doesn't really relate too much to moisture and moisture is what we're going to focus on. Moisture is what is causing the issue. So ventilation is the process of exchanging indoor air with fresh outdoor air. Ventilation is critical and it must be controlled. Ventilation. Once again, controlled is the key word there. Air conditioning is the process of removing heat from the air. With AC we deal with two types of heat, which I'll touch on that later. Dehumidification is the process of removing latent heat moisture from the air. So let's add another acronym to that. H VAC plus D. Remember, we don't have a mold problem. We have a moisture problem. And until we deal with the moisture problem, we're not going to solve the problem. The system. Once again, I want you to stop thinking in boxes. Let's, let's think is think of this as a system. The system includes much more than an indoor unit and an outdoor unit. They can get very complex. These can be designed and installed in countless configurations. They are not appliances that can be bought at the big box store, brought home, plugged in and run for years. Trouble free service. These systems require design and an engineering process. These systems come in hundreds, even thousands of parts and pieces that must be sourced, delivered, installed, commissioned, tested and maintained. Most contractors cut corners here to be competitive. Now please understand, I don't need to do a design. I don't need to use best practices. I don't need to follow code. Heck, I don't even need to follow the manufacturer's directions. I can throw these systems together without a care in the world, as many AC contractors do. It will blow cold and warm air just like the other guys. But at what cost? That's the question. Trust me when I tell you there's no such thing as apples to apples in construction. The system is made up of many pieces. Many, many pieces. It starts with a design. Then there's ductwork, air handlers, furnaces, evaporator coils, filters, dehumidifiers refrigerant, piping, electrical controls, airflows, and on and on and on. All these things must be installed and work together as a system, not to mention the countless aspects of the home itself. Keep that in mind. Stop thinking indoor box and outdoor box or indoor unit. Outdoor unit air handlers. They have a blower and evaporator coil built in as one unit. And they can be straight cool or they can be straight cool with primary electric heat or heat pump with backup electric strips.

Okay, so, E.J. i have a question. What, what does this do? I'm looking at this and I'm. I think I know what role this plays in our system. These are, these are the coils where the air passes over and tell people what happens here. Because I know this is an area where sometimes we see a lot of microbial growth. But what's going on here? And why does, why in particular, is an air handler something to pay attention to?

So this is a train Hyperion, specifically. This is the evaporator coil. This is the blower, the blower motor. So the air comes up through the return. The fan pulls it through the return air through the filter, it blows it through the coil. The coil itself right here has refrigerant running through it. As the air crosses across that coil, the refrigerant absorbs heat from the air and reduces the temperature of the air going across it. These heat strips get mounted up here on these air handlers. This is the same unit, if you will. This is an air handler unit. It's just reversed the coils at the bottom and the blowers at the top. But it does the same exact thing. It's just kind of backwards, if you will. Actually, this one's backwards.

Okay. So, yeah, this is where the, the cooling actually happens. The dehumidification, if you don't have separate dehumidification also. So this is where you know when you're having your H Vac unit serviced, ask to see this, take a picture of it, have them show you this, and you, you're looking for evidence of microbial growth. How often are you seeing microbial in this area?

So, 24 years in the industry, I tell people constantly, every single unit I've ever opened in 24 years, with the exception of a brand new unit, is going to have some level of microbial growth in it. It's the nature of the beast. These things are cold, dark, wet environments. If there's food there and there's spores, it will settle in and it will start to grow. You have to stay on top of it, you have to. You have to have a tight system. You have to filter the air with no bypass. So everything going through the air actually gets filtered, captured, and removed. And then you have to keep your maintenance up on these, on these systems. But like Kendra said, have the technician open the unit up, snap some pictures of it. Let me see it. I want to see before and afters and confirm that they are actually doing their job.

Yeah, and we'll get into that. I don't want to jump the gun on AJ but we'll talk about, like, do you clean them, do you replace them? And we'll get into that a little later, but thanks for that, AJ So.

Here are a couple of trane air handling units that Hyperion that we just looked at. This is that same exact unit. I want this to sink in. These units are only one part of the system. System. System. Like keep that in mind. System. I get calls all the time to assess houses that people just purchased because they move in and realize, oh my gosh, something wrong. And the house was advertised with new AC systems. I typically find new boxes with the same old leaky, sweaty, moldy, nasty duck word. They replace the box. And they call that a new system. Don't think for one minute just because you replace the box means you have a new system. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. A furnace is a fuel burning unit that produces heat and houses the blower to move the air through the system. The evaporator, or cooling coil is mounted downstream of the furnace. It utilizes the furnace fan and the outdoor unit to remove heat from the home. So, same principle, Kendra. So this is your furnace. This is the blower here at the bottom. This is going to be the gas chamber that where the gas goes in, it goes across this heating chamber, if you will. The air comes across, it absorbs the heat from the furnace, and that's what heats the air. This coil is going to get mounted on top of the furnace here, and once again, it could be melted in countless configurations. So in a cooling situation, the blower is going to kick on. It's going to pull air through the, through the return, through the filter. It's going to blow it across this heat exchanger, but it's not going to absorb heat because it's not calling for heating. It's going to go across the evaporator coil. The coil is going to have refrigerant flowing through, should be below dew point. So it should be condensating, pulling water, pulling moisture and pulling heat at the same time. So the temperature of the air coming out is going to be cooler than the air going in. Remember, these units must be installed and become part of the whole system. I'm going to nail that. I'm going to nail that as deep as I can. I want to see a nice, neat, pretty, professional job. That's one of my pet peeves. A job that inspires confidence and not doubt. As you can see here. We talked about professionalism. A hire professional to come in and do a job in my house and he leaves his trash behind in my attic or my job site, he's in trouble. This is a nice, pretty, neat, professional job. Can you see the difference here?

Yeah. This is why I tell people, AJ when you're having any work done, especially when it's in places like an attic or a cross space, where they don't think you'll check is you need to go in and check after they leave. You may even want to take before and after pictures. But they sometimes think, well, no one's going to go up to the attic, but I want to go up to the attic.

When I do a job, I typically take probably at least 200 pictures throughout the process and I typically share that. I use an app called Company Cam. So I'll take all those pictures and I'll send that to the client when we're done with the job.

Yeah.

So a straight cool unit moves heat from indoors and rejects it outdoors. When you walk up to a unit outside in the summertime when it's, when it's cooling, you feel that warm air coming from that outdoor unit. That is the heat coming from inside your house. It gets absorbed into the refrigerant, it moves outside and it gets rejected outside. The heat pump simply reverses that cycle. It moves heat from outdoors and rejects it indoors. So all it does is reverse and there is heat in 10 degree air, believe it or not. So now the electrification movement. Yes, ma'. Am.

I was gonna say. So now we have that indoor unit you showed us, your outdoor unit and your ductwork. So that's what you're talking about when you say the system, it's all three parts working together.

Yes, ma'. Am. And there's a lot more to it than just, just those three parts as well.

Right, Right.

So with the elect, with the electrification movement, the industry is moving heavily towards heat pumps. I would almost say that eventually that's all we're going to be able to get are heat pumps. But there's some die hard gas furnace guys like up north that are fighting tooth and nail to keep, to keep the furnaces, which for good reason, they need a lot more heating BTUs than we need in our climate. So filtration. Effective filtration is essential for maintaining good indoor air quality. This particular setup is my preferred setup. The filter cabinet can get designed and integrated into the system close to the indoor unit. The whole system must be designed for good filtration. And this is more difficult than it seems, believe it or not. So this is the filter cabinet here. It's close to the unit. This is my unit here. So if there's any leakage or anything on. On this side of the system, it gets filtered and goes through that. All of my filters are MERV16. In my opinion, every single home needs a dehumidifier. I don't care if you're in Miami, Florida or Phoenix, Arizona, you need a dehumidifier in your home. They are critical for controlling moisture levels. It can be used for fresh air ventilation as well. It has to be designed for that. It could be standalone or integrated into the system. Remember, we don't have a mold problem. We have a moisture problem. Anything that I can do in my power to control moisture, I take full advantage of it. So ductwork. Ductwork is a system of tubes that moves air throughout a building for heating, ventilation, air conditioning, finishing, and dehumidification. The ductwork is integrated into the system. It's not separate from the system. It's integrated into the system. For proper functionality, the ductwork must be designed with the system. Ductwork cannot exist without the rest of the system. They work together. I think we all have a basic understanding what ductwork is. However, I want to. I want everyone to understand you don't hire a duct cleaning company and they come in and clean your ductwork without cleaning or doing anything with your air handler or your return or anything like that. It's a system. It all works together. If you have microbial growth and dirt and dust debris in your ductwork, it's in your air handling furnace as well. So let's take a look at the different types of ductwork. So flex duct is the most common duct used. It is the easiest and least expensive to install. It has a wire helix and a very rough plastic liner. Given its roughness and flexibility, it's tough to clean effectively. I would argue that it's more effective and economical to replace it than clean it. To clean it properly. Should I say hard duct pipe? This is my preferred method. It is rigid and insulated on the outside. Leaving a smooth, bare metal surface on the inside of the Airstream so the air is running through a straight, smooth piece of metal that's not in encased with a porous fiberglass material. Given the smooth metal surface, it would be the easiest and most effective for cleaning fiberglass duct board. This is somewhat rigid. It's a dense foil faced. It comes in sheets and typically fabricated on site. Duck board is extremely porous. It's a very porous material that cannot be cleaned once contaminated with microbial growth. Once the microbial growth roots in, it cannot be cleaned. Duck board is not very durable and it is very susceptible to damage. I see it all the time. Homeowners go stack a bunch of Christmas decorations on the duck board, return and it collapses and you cause all kinds of problems. So square metal duck, it's rigid metal, typically insulated on the inside with a fiberglass duck liner similar to duck board. The fiberglass duck liner inside the square metal is extremely porous. And once again, once it's contaminated with microbial growth, once that microbial growth gets rooted in, it cannot be cleaned. Though less common square metal duct can be wrapped externally just like hard pipe. So the quality of the installation is extremely important. I would argue the most important. A bad install can compromise the entire system. It will cause moisture issues in the home. Nearly every single home I get called out on has a bad install causing major issues. This system that you're looking at here is a Trane XV20i. It is the best of the best. It's the Cadillac, if you will, of train systems, which is a very, very nice piece of equipment. There was only one problem with this. It needed to be installed. I'm not going to mention their name, but this was installed by a well known local train comfort specialist, that is the elite train dealers. They charged this client well over $30,000 for this pile. The elite train dealer did nothing right. They hacked this thing in as fast as possible and moved on. I was called out two to three years later for, you guessed it, mold in the home. This home is now promoting sickness and disease. What constitutes a trained comfort specialist? Sales is the number one driver. Not experience, not talent, not quality sales. If you can sell, you're going to get that, that elite status. And it's not just training. Carrier has their factory authorized dealers, Lennox has their Lennox Premier dealers. Mitsubishi has that has their diamond contractors. Every different manufacturer is going to have their elite status. So don't think, oh, I hired a pro, I hired a trained comfort specialist that it'll get done right. Here's a fine example of that. Just because I hire a company that has a good image, it has a lot of five star reviews and it holds one of these elite dealer titles does not mean you're going to get a proper job. If I call a company out and the guy walks up to my house with a long sleeve white shirt tucked into his khaki pants with no socks on and as penny loafers, this dude is a salesman. He is here to sell me products. He is not here to solve problems. I don't want this guy in my house, period. My whole point here is to educate yourself, question the professionals, be your own advocate. These quote unquote elite dealers may or may not be the right choice for you. All right, so this carrier system installed was installed by a friend of mine, Mark, who does not hold this elite dealer title. However, he is well known in the local EC community as the go to guy when you have an issue. This system was properly designed per ACA manuals. It was installed beautifully, it was tested, it was commissioned and it is maintained. This system is performing and will continue to perform as designed for many years of trouble free service. This home, unlike the other one, has no moisture issues. It has great indoor air quality and it is now promoting health and wellness, not sickness and disease. So our main objective with H Vac D is control. We deal with two types of heat. The heat that we feel is sensible heat. That's what the thermostat senses. Latent heat is the heat removed from the air to condense moisture to a liquid. Moisture is the number one enemy. Controlling moisture is my number one objective as a contractor. Comfort and efficiency are essential. But if my home is not controlled, we will suffer high moisture content and microbial growth period. We must be able to gain and maintain that control of the home. This involves the home as well. I need a tight house to do my job. Come on AJ it's just an AC unit. Years ago I had a client tell me this and needless to say it irritated the hell out of me then and it irritates me still today. What other system in the home can influence your indoor air quality, energy efficiency and comfort? What system can have a structural impact and affect your home's long term costs? What other system can have an emotional or mental impact on you and your family? To quote my father in law, Troy, Troy Mayo, who recruited me into the business 24 years ago, he'd say I'm like a doctor. How do you feel when your AC system breaks? Pretty bad, right? How do you Feel after I fix it, much better, right? Much like a doctor, why does this critical system get the least amount of attention and worst, the least amount of budget? This leads to systems that are not properly designed. They're installed very poorly. They are never properly commissioned. They're poorly, if ever maintained. They're out of sight and out of mind. The cheapest bidder typically gets the job, but at what cost? Energy efficiency, comfort, or most importantly, your health. We focus on the food we eat, we focus on the water we drink. But we rarely ever question the air we breathe. Indoor air is two to five times more polluted than outdoor air. The average life expectancy of an American is 77 years, which 67 of those years are spent indoors. That blew my mind the first time I seen that. And if you think about it and do the math on it, it's pretty accurate.

Yeah.

The AC system is the only system in the home that has a direct impact on indoor air quality. So my four pillars of indoor air quality maintain 40 to 50% humidity. We must control the moisture load. Remember, we don't have a mold problem, we have a moisture problem. Source control. We must use common sense. If it's toxic, don't bring it into the house. However, this isn't always possible. We must use range hoods, bathroom vents, use ventilation, so forth and so on. Fresh air ventilation. We must have a controlled means of fresh air ventilation. A house does not need to breathe. We need to breathe. That's a whole nother presentation in itself. Check out Dr. Allison Bale's book. A House Needs to Breathe or does it? Excuse me? Superior filtration. A MERV 16 if possible. In my opinion, a MERV 13 minimum. However, the system must be designed for these. You cannot Simply throw a MERV 13 or MERV 16 filter at a system that was never designed for you will cause more problems than you're solving.

Can I ask a question about that? Because people are wondering, how do they find out what MERV filter, what rating is best for their machine? Like, is that something they can look up online by looking up like the make and model of their unit? Is there, is there an easier way for people to, to check that out?

Not really. You're going to have to call someone that's, that's, that's up to par on design. He's going to have to do some static pressure testing on the system and see what the static pressure is and if it could handle any more pressure.

Okay.

To get into a little the weeds a little bit, if you will. When we do design work, we have to look up the extended performance data and the fan tables on the equipment. The manufacturer will give me a range of pressures that I have to stay within when I'm doing design work. The filters, the MERV 16s particularly, are extremely restrictive. The MERV 16 filter. Let's go through a hypothetical if. If the manufacturer gives me a 0.5 inches of water column to design to, and the filter eats up 0.2 of that. That leaves 0.3 for my coil, my ductwork, my grills, everything else. It's not practical. So you have to have a professional that's well versed in design work. He knows how to pressure map a system and he'll be able to tell you, yes, this system can handle a MERV13 or MERV16 or just the opposite. If you have a MERV16 and he goes out there or she and the system running a 1 inch of static pressure, then no, that system can't. That system can't handle that MERV16 filter.

Yeah, that's good to know.

This quote by Dr. Joseph Allen resonated with me. The people who manage your building have a greater impact on your health than your doctor. I mean, just think about that. So I decided to borrow it and change it up slightly. Your AC contractor has a greater impact on your health than your doctor, but I'll give him credit where credit's due. So this client's home, I was called to do an assessment because they were having some, some issues, some health issues. The owner and her husband are both experiencing neurological issues. Both of them were tested and have high levels of mycotoxins in their system. During my assessment, I found two systems. One was recently replaced, the other one was installed very poorly. The one of them were, was actually cleaned and sanitized the year prior. And if you notice in these two pictures to the right here, that white coating, that is the sanitation coating or the paint coating that most of the duct cleaners spray and claim it doesn't grow any more microbial growth. So throughout my assessment, I keep noticing this pool in the backyard. So I asked about the pool and. And the woman tells me, it's beautiful, isn't it? We had it put in last summer and we just love it. And I asked, if you don't mind sharing, would you pay for that pool? $80,000 for pool. Well, during my assessment, needless to say, I discovered countless issues with the home. And I explained everything with the homeowners like I always do, both impressed and shocked at all the issues that I Found. After discussing all the possible solutions to each problem and a rough cost of around $65,000, they said, AJ we're not wealthy people. We don't have this kind of money. And as a contractor, the misallocation of priorities and budget is mind boggling to me. Pools over indoor air quality when you're suffering severe. I mean, I'm not talking a sniffle here. We're talking neurological problems from a toxic indoor environment. But the money goes to the pool, not the, not the house. Why do we devalue the. The most crucial system in the house so much? It. It blows my mind. So this is a new construction house. I was called to do a. A home leakage test or a blower door test for code compliance. As you can see in the pictures on the left, they did a beautiful job with the marble flooring, the marble shower, the gold fixtures, the solid steel front door that weighs like 1500 pounds and cost about 8000 bucks. The two pictures on the right are the AC system in the attic. The encapsulated attic was very humid with very high dew points. The spray foam insulation and the AC system were both installed very poorly. No accurate designs were done on the home or the AC system. The ductwork was broken loose, insulation pulled off the flex liner, causing condensation. Very little air sealing measures were taken throughout the entire house. It also had severe zonal pressure issues which was causing infiltration of hot, humid air into the house. I could go on and on with this house. It was, it was, it was pretty bad, to say the least. Once again, severe misallocation of budget and priorities. This home already has moisture issues. It already has condensation dripping onto the ceiling below. This home and its occupants are destined for issues, in my opinion. If I'm going to spend a million, two million bucks, I think this house sold for well over a million dollars. I don't want water dripping through my ceiling within the first six months. Nope, it might be just me. I have fairly high standards, but that's our typical new construction. I tell people all the time, the new construct. The construction industry as a whole has digressed to assess pool.

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard for sure.

Okay, so remember, these systems must be designed. ACA writes all the manuals that we follow to design. They have a crapload of manuals. They have manual J manual, S manual D manual T manual, ZR manual N manual llh, and on and on. In residential construction, we focus on four of those manuals. Manual J, also called a J load or load calc. It calculates the BTU heat loss and heat gain of the home. And that's it. It tells me nothing about the AC system. Manual S calculates and ensures the system's capacity can handle the home's heat loss and heat gain, both sensible and latent. Latent being the most important one. Manual D calculates the size of each duck run to ensure it can deliver the air the capacity needed to a particular room to handle the load. Manual T calculates the register size and position in the room to ensure you get good air mixing, throw and spread and whatnot of the air. These are some examples of simple ACCA reports. These reports can get pretty extensive. Some of them can be hundreds of pages long. It is required by code to perform these ECHA manuals and should be submitted for permitting. The inspector may not always ask for it, but it is required pretty much across the country. As far as I know. Your H Vac contractor should be performing these and if they don't find a new contractor, you should be asking for and willing to pay for these or be prepared to hire a third party designer to do them for you. That way you can be prepared and just hand that over to the contractor and say do this. Do not. Do not rely on your general contractor or your building inspector. Do not assume a hired, professional licensed contractor that it will be done properly. I assure you it very rarely does. Here's a couple of examples of the typical quality I see in the field. Very sloppy, unprofessionally done, unskilled labor and I don't care attitude and they leave their trash behind in your home. It is highly likely the cheapest bidder got the job here. They cut every corner possible and who suffers? You do. Completely unacceptable. I'm paying for a professional job. I expect to get what I pay for. Hold these guys accountable. If you pay a contractor 10, 15, $20,000 to come and do a job, follow up if it looks like this, hold them accountable for it. This is unacceptable. So looks can tell us a lot about a system. If a system looks sloppy, trash is left on site. Flex duct thrown about, nothing strapped up. There's a spaghetti mess of wires. It's just a super sloppy unprofessional job. What does that tell me about everything I can't see? I can make a reasonable assumption that this system was not done properly. Did they do a design? Did they flow nitrogen while brazing copper? Did they pressure test the system? Did they pull a proper vacuum? Did they set proper airflow? Was the system charged properly? Was the System balanced properly. It's highly likely the system is oversized. The ductwork is in size properly. To deliver the air where it's needed, the system is leaking air to the outside of the home. There's condensation on the unit, the ductwork, and the drain lines. The filter is likely too small and too restrictive. The system's likely overcharged, and they didn't pull a vacuum to remove all the moisture from the system. I know that's a lot, but my whole point here is if it looks bad, it's probably bad.

Yeah. I'm a lay person, and I can tell the one on the right looked a lot. A lot cleaner. A lot.

Yeah.

More.

Yeah. It's just a quick little video that's actually the same exact job. I moved the unit from the closet and actually put it into the attic. That's why it's kind of a little. A little different. But it's a pretty good example of how not to do it and how it should be done. So what's in the air you're breathing? My number one priority, once again, is moisture control. It is my job to gain and maintain that control of the home. If I cannot control the moisture, once again, nothing else matters. All of these pictures show issues mainly caused from moisture. So just take them. Take. Take this stuff in.

Oh, my God. This is horrifying.

They're. They're pretty bad. And this is all actual jobs. Houses that I've been on personally and snapped every one of these pictures, which is probably why I was exposed to microbial growth. Yeah. And had mycotoxins through the roof. And once again, this is common. This is. This is every. Every day. When I was. Before I went through the whole epilepsy ordeal, I would open up a unit and say, okay, there's some mold in here. It's common. Cover it back up and move on, you know, which, looking back, is unacceptable now that I've lived it and I've experienced the. The severe health implications of it. It's. It's a different. Different. Different ball game now. But wait, there's more. Pop quiz. Kendra. What's the biggest duct in the house?

Oh, I don't know. The actual, like, unit.

No, sorry. Wrong. It's the house.

Yeah.

Building science comes in. It gets a little deeper than just AC we have to take the house into consideration. The home is part of the system and must be considered when we're addressing H VAC D. They must work hand in hand to promote the health in the indoor built environment. Think about the AC system The way it works, all the air volume gets sucked up into the return. It goes through the filter, goes through the unit, gets distributed throughout the house. It comes out the supply air grill where into the house? It goes through the house, back into the system. The house is a huge part of that system. You cannot overlook it. So AJ's takeaways. What is the root cause of the mold in the system to begin with? We don't want to spend money for mold to simply reoccur. If you're starting with a bad system, don't throw good money at it expecting good results. What's the age and condition of the system? If the system's 15 to 20 years old, it's poorly installed and it's in bad shape, it's not worth cleaning. You should invest that money in a new system. Was the system designed and engineered properly where the ACA manuals followed? Is the system too large for the house? Does it have the latent capacity to handle the moisture load of the house? Is the ductwork size properly to deliver the capacity where it's needed? Does the system have porous, open fiberglass insulation that would need to be removed? If it does, in my opinion, it's not worth cleaning. Was the tightness and performance tested and confirmed? Not doing these things could be what's causing the mold in the first place. Can you be honest with me and tell me the system in your home is worth the investment in cleaning? If you can honestly answer yes, let's talk about it. At this point, I would assume you're experiencing some negative health effects or you're concerned about the air you and your family are breathing. This part is critical and must be done professionally and effectively. I stress effectively here. The duct cleaning industry is similar to the H Vac plus D industry in that many companies are out there to sell you something, not to solve problems. If you get a coupon for a duct cleaning company advertising a 29 duct cleaning, they are not your company. I promise you they will not come in your home and do an effective job. Period. Most of these duct cleaning companies employ very low paid, unskilled laborers who receive minimal training. And then all of a sudden they're considered a certified duct cleaning expert. Excuse me. The inside of these systems are extremely intricate and complex. Proper and effective cleaning involves much more than running a roto brush and a vacuum through the ducts, coating the insulation with an antimicrobial coating, and spraying a sanitation fog throughout the system. Properly and effectively cleaning these systems requires a highly professional skill set and experience in H vac D. These units must be completely disassembled. To remove the coil will require fully recovering refrigerant from the system. That's a pretty involved process. The entire system must be meticulously cleaned, manually agitated, scrubbed and wiped out with the proper cleaners. Each surface, wire connector, control board, motor, heat strip, evaporator, coil bracket, condensate pan. Every single piece of this thing has to be cleaned. The insulation inside these units, they're fiberglass porous insulation. They cannot be cleaned. It must be pulled and replaced. Even with a highly skilled technician, this proves to be challenging, especially given the harsh conditions these units are typically installed in. We're usually in very tight locations with little to no access around them, extremely hot attics and nasty crawl spaces. If I open up a unit in an attempt to clean it or repair it in a crawl space that's full of microbial growth itself, guess where all that microbial growth's getting sucked up into.

Yeah.

This process, done with any effectiveness whatsoever, takes days, not hours. If a company comes in and cleans your duct system in four hours, you didn't get a clean system. Doing this properly and professionally would be extremely expensive. Professionals demand a professional price. Is it worth it? I don't think it is. When it comes to my health or the health of my family, it's not a chance I'm willing to take.

Yeah. Can I. Can I ask you a couple questions about these pictures? I want to add a couple things when we talk about this. You know, if you have to remediate your H vac, you usually have to work in conjunction with a knowledgeable H vac company and your remediation company because you're building containment. There's a lot of coordination here because it's no different than remediating, you know, mold on, you know, wood that's in the bathroom you just tore out. So it usually involves both parties. A remediation company may not be doing the actual removal, but they're doing some of the containment and the pressure because it's going to be important part. And was that a UV light I saw there? AJ And I think it's coming up.

I think it was.

So one of the questions we get all the time is, oh, I'll just put a UV light in there and I will tell a quick antidote is when we had to replace our system last year and I mentioned microbial growth. Three out of the three companies. There it is.

There you go.

Yep. Yeah. Three out of three companies. Like, oh, I have a solution. If you're worried about mold. We'll just sell you this thousand dollars UV light. And I started to push back. And I've seen the data and the science and ASHRAE documents, and, you know, folks, there's not enough dwell time. The sport is moving too fast through the air. It only works where there's direct, uninterrupted contact. And when I started bringing up some of these things, they. Their eyes glazed over like they were clearly salespeople. And if I felt pressure, and I know a little bit more than the average person, I can only imagine how consumers feel. And that picture right there, that was the other one I wanted to ask you about. That looks like they try to maybe encapsulate or paint, but it looks like some sort of unidentified microbial growth growth growing on top of that. Is that what I'm seeing?

So what we're looking at right here is the supply air plenum of a system. This supply air plenum is sheet metal. It's insulated on the inside with a porous fiberglass liner. And as you can see, it was coated at some point with the antimicrobial coating. And it clearly has microbial growth growing on it.

Yeah. So those coatings, folks, that is not the solution to your problem. Your solution is they don't work, control the moisture and remove the physical growth. And in this. Yeah, like so many things here in these pictures, AJ and these are all jobs you've been on personally. These aren't like he went on the Internet and Google and was fun. These are all things he sees day in and day out.

Yeah, I tried to use all my own pictures from my own personal jobs. There were some, like, generic pictures of them that obviously I couldn't. Let's. Let's move on. All right, so in the practical, really real world that I have lived and served over the past two decades, I'd say it can't be done effectively, period. I will argue that performing this work at the level of excellence required for the health of the people living in the home is too difficult, too expensive, and nearly impossible. Now, I know there are contractors out there that may do this to a high level of excellence, and I commend you for it. I'm sure there are rare instances when cleaning makes sense, but in those cases, I wish you the very best. I pray that it has a positive impact on you and the health of you in your home. So let us focus our efforts on solving problems, not just treating symptoms. The microbial growth is a symptom. Remember, we don't have a microbial growth problem. We have a moisture problem. We need to assemble a team of professionals who understand the home as a system. Everything works together in the home. It's a system. Stop thinking boxes. Stop thinking units. A team that can properly troubleshoot the root cause of the issues and deliver the excellence required to repair or build a home that will promote health and wellness. As a survivor of mold toxicity myself, I understand the critical importance of these principles probably more than anyone. I pray you find some value in our time spent together. With that, I conclude my simple, basic, fundamental overview of H Vac D and how it impacts your health and your home.

AJ that was really wonderful. And I know somebody watching, you know, they might feel overwhelmed after seeing something like this because they have this system. And for the purposes of this talk, we're talking about systems that have actual microbial growth. You showed us pictures of ductwork, of the actual units and different parts, and, you know, I love that you framed it for us in the sense of, before we jump into cleaning here, let's look at the root cause. Why was this happening? Is it a bigger problem with the system in and of itself? Is it not sized right? Was it poorly installed? Because if we spend money to clean, which to the point you are making, you feel is very costly to do, not always successful, and we spend all that money, but then the problem comes back. Like, we haven't. We haven't really moved the needle forward in our. In our home and in our health. And so part of this is requiring the homeowner to take a step back and say, before I think about cleaning, let's see what's going on in my system. What. What is causing this to happen? So, you know, I. I struggle with this. As a homeowner. I feel very overwhelmed. When we came to replace our system last year, even for what I know about indoor air quality and building science, it was one of the areas where I wasn't as knowledgeable. And even now, I still am, like, oh, man, I don't know if the unit did. If it's. I think we might have some problems. And it's. It's hard to know where to start. So one of my questions then for you is. And I think people struggle with this, because if I am a homeowner or a renter, and I'm like, all right, I want to my duct work cleaned. This is typically what I think people see. They'll pick up the phone, they'll call someone, they'll be like, oh, it's $20 a duck, whatever it is. And they come in and they will just clean the duck. And your message was, it's not just your duck work, it's your duct work. It's the, the main system, it's the unit outside, it's the whole system. But one of the challenges I think, that people face, and I'll be curious, I think I know your take on it, is sometimes companies will say, we're going to fog your ductwork with this magic solution, and it'll take care of any mold problem. What are your thoughts on that?

I think, I think personally, it's laughable if I'm suffering health implications because of microbial growth or indoor air quality or whatever, why would I want a company to come in and spray a chemical that's going to. It's not going to magically disappear. It's not going to make the microbial growth just magically disappear. So you have to ask the question, what is it doing? Okay, so you spray this chemical, you fog this chemical, this sanitizer through the system. What does it do to the microbial growth that's there? Does it just kill it? Okay, so now we have dead microbial growth. Is the dead microbial growth better or worse than the living microbial growth? Which one's worse?

Yeah, it's still a health hazard, right? Mycotoxins aren't living. They can't be killed. Dead mold, health hazard.

Yeah, exactly. So in my opinion, it must be removed.

Yeah, yeah. And I think. And I think that's what's hard. And I like that you talked about the different type of ductwork, because that's one of the questions that I always ask people. Do you know what type of ductwork you have? Because, yeah, more and more in the last several decades, it's that flex ductwork, which, to your point, and if you see it, it's harder to clean if a new, in your point of view, impossible to clean. I know you're not alone in sharing that. That sentiment with people. Okay. So when it comes to microbial growth, I think the takeaway here is that homeowners and renters, you need to work with your knowledgeable iep, which we talked about, how to find that in part one. Not all are knowledgeable alongside a knowledgeable H Vac technician to kind of get to the bottom of what might be going on. So this is not necessarily going to be like an in and out diagnosis. So how would someone go about finding a knowledgeable H Vac company in your opinion? What is. What questions can they ask? What does that look like how can we help them find someone in their area who might be able to better serve their needs?

So start with yourself. Educate yourself as much as possible. I would, I would almost jokingly say if you watch this program, you know more than 90% of the H vac contractors out there. Sadly, the ignorance is staggering. The incompetence is staggering. Do your own research, educate yourself. And when you, like I said in the presentation, don't go off of five star reviews. Don't go off of these elite dealer classifications. I would almost say go to your local supply houses and ask some of the counter guys, some people that's actually there, hey, who's the best in the business in the area? Who do you recommend? Be open and honest with them. A lot of them might lead you in the right direction. When you do get a potential prospect, question them, see how they answer. If they start to stutter at some of the questions. He's not your guy. A professional that knows his stuff, that knows the building science side of things as well. He's going to, he's going to give you answers fairly quickly. He's going to know it very, very well. Good luck.

Yeah. Because the answers aren't going to involve. Let me sell you a UV light. Let me fog this into your doctor and, and I've heard those from the companies I've, I've, you know, when I was getting quotes and things like that. Oh. So one of the things I want to mention too about fogging is that sometimes people who, you know, are looking into that as a solution, they don't realize that the EPA doesn't have a single registered product to sanitize your ductwork. There is literally no product at the time of this filming on the market that they can legally spray or fog into your ductwork. Using a product like that in an off label use such as spraying or fogging into your ductwork is actually illegal. So NACA's got a position paper and they actually pulled a law, I'll try to link to that in the show notes so people can reference that. So that's a red flag when the company you're hiring or thinking about hiring has basically, you know, suggested you do something illegal. So that's a red flag too. And so am I listening then for things like when I'm talking with them and we're maybe I'm going to get a new system. Maybe when a replace, replace part of the system. I'm listening for that manual J and S and D. And I'm asking are you, are you Running those. Are you doing that? And the answer needs to be yes and they need to be yeah.

So one thing that you want to once you do find a prospect, you kind of question them and you feel comfortable with them coming into the house. You want them to start with testing. Do you want them to do a blower door test on the house, A house leakage test? Do you want them to do a duck leakage test? You want them to do a basic? Not a basic, but you want them to do an AA manual J to start. You can do manual S and a manual D on an existing system, but you're kind of like reverse engineering. Doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. If you do your manual J and you get a BTU heat gain and heat loss, an experienced technician should be able to say the house is calling for 37,000 BTUs and we have a five ton system that's nominally 60,000. So this system is way too big. It needs to come out.

Yeah. And briefly tell people because I don't think they realize this. And I've seen people, well, bigger is better. You know, here in the US we tend to think that and they think, I'm going to put in the bigger system. Give us the short like explanation of why a bigger system actually creates problems in your home.

So when it comes to H vac plus D, bigger is not better by any stretch of the imagination. Once again, moisture is our number one enemy. The best dehumidifier in the house is going to be the H VAC system. However, if it's not running, it is not pulling moisture. So the problem with a bigger unit, the thermostat on the wall is sensing sensible heat. Okay. So the unit kicks on, it satisfies that sensible load and it shuts off and it short cycles, it'll run for a minute, it'll shut off. I have, I have a client in Bush which is north of me here. When I'm working on his house, I can time his units. They run for about three minutes and then shut off. The time it takes for that coil to get below dew point is probably more than three minutes. So it's not removing any moisture from the home. So do not think bigger is better. You want the unit to run, you want it to get, the coil needs to get cold below dew point and the, it needs to start pulling moisture. And if it's not running, it's not pulling moisture.

So basically is it fair to say then it cools the house so quickly that it doesn't have time to dehumidify the air properly.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So. So bigger is not better. There is a lot of science to this and I think that's what's hard for people because they're like, oh, Kendra, you just spent like nine episodes talking to me about how hard it is to find the right remediation people. And now we're doing the same thing with the H VAC industry. But this is figureoutable. The first step in all of this is you as the homeowner and renter, being aware, being knowledgeable, starting to ask the right questions and digging into those resources. So you'd mentioned acca, that's their acronym would. And I always say this, and I'm going to say it again because it's worth repeating. There are two things to know about certifications, and this is true in the mold remediation side and inspection side. And I'm, I'm assuming the H VAC side, that they are kind of minimum starting points and that the second thing is not all certifications are created equally. So if I, if I was maybe looking for a starting point, would an ACA certified individual or company be a starting point and I need to ask more questions or.

So the way I feel about it in my introduction, I made that clear. These certifications and whatnot doesn't hold any weight in my world. In my opinion, you can go take a, a two day class and become AKA Design certified. You could take a two week class and become a home inspector. It literally takes more hours of training to become a barber than it does a contractor. So the certifications don't hold any weight. Once again, educate yourself, learn to ask the questions. And how they respond to those questions is going to dictate, yes, this is my guy or no, this is not.

And, and for everyone listening this, this is a mini class. It's one little episode on what is a complex topic. And we do plan on developing more resources and things that help you become that knowledgeable homeowner and renter. So this was just today kind of an introduction to get you thinking about the questions to ask. So, so this whole talk has been about, you know, systems that have microbial growth on them. Let's just shift for just a moment when it comes to just regular maintenance. Let's say I have this properly sized machine. It's installed well, it's beautiful, it's functioning well. I want to keep it that way.

It's.

Can you give us a couple tidbits like how often should it be serviced what should that look like just in terms of maintaining the integrity of this unit? Then once, once we have a nice, healthy, properly chosen unit.

So a couple of things that I recommend to my homeowners every three months or so, just 20 ounces of vinegar down the drain line, down the main drain line. That'll keep the drain from building a biofilm. Biannual maintenance. Typically we do one in the spring to get the system ready for summer and we do one in fall to get the heater ready for winter. Clean and service everything. Clean and service your outdoor unit. Clean and service the indoor unit. Clean Any, any kind of visible microbial growth. Replace your filters. Depending on the system, depending on the filter, you can have a filter that'll last a month. You have a filter that'll last a year. Just depends on the filter in the system. Just go through it and make sure it's clean. Keep, keep it that way.

Yeah.

The H vac system is a cold, dark, wet environment. So the key to it is to keep it clean. If we have food there, microbial growth will set in and grow. And then if it, if it can, if it's left untreated or unclean, it will just continue and continue to manifest and grow and grow and grow. And then you have a nightmare on your hands.

Yeah. And, and just to kind of tie it up. You said it. This is an out of sight, out of mind thing. People don't want to know and so they tend to like not think and they don't want to look and they let the problem linger and linger and linger. And the number of people I've talked to, and this is not a criticism, like they didn't know that they were supposed to change like the, the filter in their H Vac system. You know, they didn't know they were supposed to get it serviced. They only get it service when there's a problem. So years go by and no one has set eyes on, on the unit.

So this is a complex system. It's, it's mechanical, it needs to be cleaned, it needs to be serviced once again by a reputable someone that you trust. I know some, some guys that, that do maintenance. They'll come out and walk around your backyard for three minutes and run a water hose on your outdoor unit. And, and I mean they're really doing nothing and charge you a service. You know, just once again do your homework. Vet the contractor.

Yeah, yeah. And we're going to, like I said, we'll be releasing some, some more resources, hopefully coming months in year on this to Help you navigate. But at the very least start thinking about your system, how it relates to your health. Start thinking about if there is a problem. Root cause. Please don't spray anything into your duct work. The goal is always Kendra that I.

Wanted to throw in there like a lot of people. For some reason I get a lot of clients saying, well, if I have microbial growth in the, in the unit, am I okay in my master bedroom? No. The air in the AC unit gets distributed through the entire house. If it's in the unit, it's in the house. If it's in the house, it's in the unit. Things are going to get cross contaminated. It's the nature of the beast. You cannot, you can't, you cannot have microbial growth in your, in your bathroom and just stay out of there and think, I'm, I'm safe in the rest of the house.

Yeah. Yeah. And people like the house is interconnected. The air in your crawl space or basement impacts the upper levels. The air in your attic can impact the lower levels. The, the air behind the walls and those interstitial spaces can impact your indoor air. So starting to think about the home like as a system that needs to work together to keep you healthy or, or unfortunately, it can make you sick. So, aj, thank you so much for being here. I. I really appreciate it and I'm sure we're going to get some follow up questions and when I do, I'm gonna reach out to you for some answers because you are an expert and we truly appreciate your time today.

Well, thank you, Kendra. I appreciate you being here and for.

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