Viruses, Bacteria, and Fungus #LIVE
HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs
Bryan Orr
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2020
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this live podcast episode, we discuss viruses, bacteria, and fungi. We also explain how they interact with HVAC equipment, their effects on indoor air quality, and how businesses can protect their customers and employees.
Since we work with the public, we can minimize the risk of viral transmission by keeping our distance between others and avoid handshakes and other forms of contact. However, we also have to respect the feelings of the customers we're serving.
Many people confuse viruses, bacteria, and fungi (mold). All particles are small and would typically pass right through a MERV-8 filter; you typically need MERV-11 or better to catch all three. While our equipment can harbor those particles, the equipment can't create them. While bacteria and fungi can propagate on their own, viruses need a host to propagate. Viruses can go airborne, but they only grow and propagate inside our bodies. So, we don't need to worry about minimizing growth on surfaces or inside HVAC equipment.
We make it harder for bacteria, fungi, and viruses to survive by keeping the relative humidity between 30% and 55%. That is part of the reason why certain viruses become prominent seasonally, though our own immune systems are also a factor.
Probiotic cleaners also exist to attack biofilm on surfaces. To achieve that goal, probiotic cleaners promote good bacterial growth to fight the bad growth we want to eliminate. We may expect probiotic technologies to improve even more in the future. However, those won't affect viruses strongly because viruses don't GROW in equipment.
We also discuss:
- Virus transmission
- Masks and gloves
- Mobile air scrubbers
- HVAC technicians as essential workers
- Microns
- Legionella
- COVID-19 vs. influenza
- HEPA and activated-carbon filtration
- Photocatalytic oxidation (PCO), bi-polar ionization, and UV lighting
- Is oxidization effective?
- Good vs. bad bacteria and probiotic cleaning
Learn more about Refrigeration Technologies HERE.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, so today we're going to be talking about something that is not fun for me to talk about. |
| 0:05.5 | This is not fun because it is not technical and it is not about business really. |
| 0:10.5 | It is sort of a round about business, I guess guess but it's just not one of my favorite |
| 0:14.1 | topics because it's very ambiguous there are a lot of feelings and emotions surrounding |
| 0:19.3 | it's also a current event topic which you get people fired up but here's what I want to do. |
| 0:25.4 | I got a whole list stuff right here, my sheet which I can talk through but I would much |
| 0:32.1 | rather y'all talk. which I can talk through, but I would much rather |
| 0:33.1 | y'all talk, ask questions, make comments. |
| 0:36.7 | You can do it in chat if you're more comfortable there, |
| 0:38.3 | but if you want to call in, then please do call in |
| 0:42.4 | about what you're thinking. Because I want to cover a lot of different |
| 0:44.7 | stuff here. I don't want to just share opinions because opinions expressed on this |
| 0:49.6 | podcast are only those of the hosts and the contributors and may not express actual facts. |
| 0:54.8 | That's the problem with opinions, right? |
| 0:56.6 | Difference between facts and opinions and there's a lot of opinions around all this stuff. |
| 1:01.1 | And of course, emotions are high right right now obviously. There's a lot of |
| 1:04.2 | places that are locked down. A lot of people who are not feeling good at all, a lot of |
| 1:07.9 | people who have already died of this thing. So speaking specifically of coronavirus |
| 1:12.0 | of course you all know what I'm speaking of. |
| 1:14.8 | And that makes it a touchy subject. |
| 1:16.4 | On one side, there are people who feel like others are being too cavalier, too dismissive of the risk. |
| 1:25.0 | And on the other side, there are those who feel that the world has gone mad |
... |
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