ActivTek Induct 2000 - Brother in law wants to sell us one for "health problems".

[PaysonHVAC]

Long time no talk guys.
Anyway I haven't done residential HVAC for a while. The last Air Purifers I saw were the Trane Clean Effects, which netted a crap load of warranty call backs!

So anyway we've been sick alot lately and I now have a premee 1 year old who has been sick.
My brother in law works for ChainSaw Charlie, oops sorry, Chas Roberts.
So he can sell us this thing cheap and they swear by it. (I've heard THAT before). The photo is the actual unit that he has.

Doing a search about this product either comes up with positive info (from people selling it) or some info here on this website. Gotta love the HVAC-TALK. :-)

I'm reading info about an Ozone problem with this unit that could actually cause health problems.

So I gotta figure out if I should let him bring it over and try it or if it isn't worth it.

Hopefully he wont be offended if I say no thanks.

Oh yeah. He works for the company that installed all those units I used to post for my thread "Goodman Country" in the Wall Of Shame picture section.

[PaysonHVAC]

Although, these things do sort of look like a minature version of the systems I've seen on medical HVAC rooftop units. (I would service the HVAC, a seperate company would service the special air filters and UV system).

[genesis]

Long time no talk guys.
Anyway I haven't done residential HVAC for a while. The last Air Purifers I saw were the Trane Clean Effects, which netted a crap load of warranty call backs!

So anyway we've been sick alot lately and I now have a premee 1 year old who has been sick.
My brother in law works for ChainSaw Charlie, oops sorry, Chas Roberts.
So he can sell us this thing cheap and they swear by it. (I've heard THAT before). The photo is the actual unit that he has.

Doing a search about this product either comes up with positive info (from people selling it) or some info here on this website. Gotta love the HVAC-TALK. :-)

I'm reading info about an Ozone problem with this unit that could actually cause health problems.

So I gotta figure out if I should let him bring it over and try it or if it isn't worth it.

Hopefully he wont be offended if I say no thanks.

Oh yeah. He works for the company that installed all those units I used to post for my thread "Goodman Country" in the Wall Of Shame picture section.

You notice with all of the certificates listed there is no UL Listing.

[breathe easy]

And even if it had UL approval that would be for the electronics - not for the safety of the device in "purifying" indoor air.

This product produces "Reactive Oxygen Species" (ROS) of various types. If they are produced in sufficient quantities to neautralize or kill anything, these ROS molecules can also react with human cells and human tissue. The delicate lungs of a premmie one year old would be the most susceptible.

My advice would be to pass on the advice of your well-meaning, but mis-informed brother-in-law and not use the product.

[meBNme]

I have been selling these for the company I work for for over a year now.
We have installed hundreds of the Induct 2000 model units and dozens of the induct 750s.

We have installed the ozone producing models and the ozone free.
In a few cases the customer requested we return to replace the ozone model with the ozone free model.

I have customer testamonials and have spoken directly with customers who are very satisfied with the product, and have noticed remarkable differences since its installation.

They are exceptionaly effective at removing odors, especially the ozone models.
the ozone free units remove odors quite well too, they just seem to take a little longer to do so, and some heavily imbedded odors "come back" if the unit is not in operation for a while. (several days to weeks)

I would recomend installing the ozone free model in your situation.

You can always replace the bulb later with the ozone producing bulb if you like.

I'm not going to get into the arguments here that usually follow IAQ products like this.
According to some it's the greatest thing since God invented oxegen.
According to others its a useless gimmick by evil capitalists that will kill old folks and babies in their sleep.

I'm not going down that road here.

I do know this, it works.

I'have a customer who tried everything from replacing carpet, painting, replacing drywall, hiring mold specialists, water specialists, replacing the roof, etc all to get rid of a bad smell. Finally they called me, I sold them the induct 2000, and followed up a month later.

I now have their testimonial in my folder witha glowing report on their happiness with our company and the product.

I have testiminials from customers who no longer have odor issues, no longer have spreading bactarial growth, no longer have breathing problems, no longer have allergie flare ups, no longer have dirty sock syndrome......

I have never received one complaint requesting a refund because the system is not resolving the issue it was purchased for. Not One.

2 or 3 wondered if it was working because they purchased it as a prevention instead of treatment of existing problem.
A few didnt like the "odor" or lack thereof. most of those went with the ozone free model and have been happy.
A few mechanical or bulb failures have resulted in refund requests.
In the begginning a few installer errors resulted in same.

But out of litterally hundreds of units over the last year, a mere handfull have been anything other than very happy customers.

I got the countertop model in for experimenting here at the office and wherever else I could use it "in the real world", barns, under houses, trashed rental homes etc.

I can't see air, but I can smell the crap in it.

I cant see viruses, but I can see bacterial growth.

I have witnessed first hand how this thing removes imbedded odors, and turns pet feces and moldy smelling rentals into some of the freshest smelling homes youve ever walked in. I've witnessed the crawlspace of my home going from a typical crawlspace smell to an absolutely odorless area.

I've seen spreading mold or "bacterial growth" stop in its tracks and begin to actually recede after weeks of exposure.


Now i'm sure you can find opponents of the technology to claim anything to say it isnt so. It's all just coincidence or misenterpretation they claim.

Whatever....

Lets be real here OK?
The dang thing works.
I've got one in my house. Overwhelming customer satisfaction and first hand experience are telling me that it works as claimed.
I have mild asthma myself on rare occasion and this thing has certainly not increased the number of "flare ups". If anything it has decreased those numbers.

[pmeunier]

Not talking to meBNme here, as he stated he "wasn't going down that road" -- Anyone intrigued by this product would do well to ponder if they want to gamble with their own health. If testimonials made good health science, then we'd still be visiting witch doctors. Ozone deadens the sense of smell. So, maybe it "works" in part by making people unable to smell the bothersome odors. I see great claims but no equally great objective data or measurement methods and no reproduction possible. No distinction between placebo effect and real effect. That means no science, just salesman-like conviction, subjective claims, prose and money flowing... It sounds like modern snake oil to me.

[daninsalemor]

greetings...

i'm trying to figure out why my wife is having upper respiratory problems and headaches after we just installed a Coleman Heat Pump (Eschelon 13 SEER 2.5 ton). I don't notice anything amiss, no smells, nothing.
Has anybody heard of certain people reacting to the HVAC systems installed when there's no obvious reason for it?
I can't seem to find any info on the internet about this issue.
The wife reacted to the system almost immediately (like the day we turned it on)...she claims she more 'tastes' something metallic and feels that there are particles in the air... she's definitely having some symptoms... just can't figure from what.
HELP!

[meBNme]

Do you have low humidity levels in the home?

[beachtech]

ozone in certain amounts of levels is good. "all things in moderation"

the only reason ozone has such a bad rap, is because of the way it is used on the six o'clock news when the weatherman steps in to tell you how awful the smog is. . .

and just what part of the atmosphere do you think takes care of all that smog??? hmn.... it couldn't be ozone, that's the bad stuff. . .

we've sold a few PCO duct products, and have had great success with them. usually the ozone complaints come from units being conatantly powered. we cycle ours with the indoor fan.

[pmeunier]

beachtech, here's what people at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say about the subject:

"Ozone (O3) is a highly reactive gaseous pollutant associated with adverse respiratory health effects. The US EPA has identified ozone as criteria pollutant for which the National Ambient Air Quality Standard is 80 ppb (8-hr average). An extensive national air pollution control effort has been undertaken in the U.S. to reduce the emissions of pollutants that react photo-chemically in outdoor air to produce ozone. Despite this
effort, outdoor ozone concentrations exceed EPA’s standards in many U.S. cities. The ozone in outdoor air is the dominant source of indoor ozone within most buildings. Although indoor ozone concentrations tend to be 20% to 70% of outdoor concentrations
(Weschler et al., 1989; Weschler et al., 1992; Weschler, 2000) most people’s exposure to
ozone occurs predominately indoors because people are inside buildings 90% of the time.

In addition to directly affecting health, ozone can react with a class of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in indoor air, producing new pollutants that are highly irritating (Weschler and Shields, 1999; Clausen et al., 2001). Reactions of ozone with
some types of indoor materials, for example carpets (Weschler et al., 1992; Morrison et al., 1998; Morrison and Nazaroff, 2002) may also produce new irritating air pollutants."

I think you're lucky not to get sued by any of your customers to whom you said "ozone in certain amounts of levels is good" to sell them things.

[beachtech]

they make a non ozone generating model.

is easy to copy and paste the information you want to believe. i can do the same from the opposite side of the table too. . . but i could care less to have the "who's **** is bigger contest" with some random "regular" member on the internet.

also i contacted ativtek today, and they say their product is UL listed.

it's also made in the USA

[breathe easy]

bt
I am not interested in another ozone argument either. But I would say that there have been many studies conducted over the last 10 years showing that ozone reacts with many Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's) to create some nasty byproducts including formaldehyde and ultrafine particles. As it turns out virtually any double bond organic molecule will react with ozone to create these ultrafine particles (less than one micron). Particles this size penetrate deep into the lungs and have been shown to create cell damage and inflammation.

Double bond organic molecules include most scented products and environmental tobacco smoke. The scented products are generally in a class called terpenes. Terpenes include things like pine, lemon, orange, lime and other common smells that tend to make people think of "clean." Unfortunately, the indoor air chemistry that takes place produces "dirty."

These reactions are not debateable. They happen everytime. All you need is a source of ozone, a terpene and a particle counter. I have done them many times with the same results. Here is an article I wrote several years ago on experiments done with terpenes and a popular ionizer called the Ionic Breeze.

http://www.texairfilters.com/article...ngintheair.htm

The interesting thing about the experiments was that they did not require high levels of ozone to create massive levels of ultrafine particles. Most of the ozone levels in the room did not exceed 30 ppb. The FDA says that 50ppb is permissable for medical devices. So the question would be: at what level does one say that ozone is being used in moderation?

But this ozone discussion is old hat. We have had it many times before. Here is the really interesting part.

Ozone is one of a group of unstable, highly reactive molecules called "Reactive Oxygen Species" ROS. If you want a sobering mass of information go to Google and type in: "Reactive oxygen species health effects." You will get thousands of hits and find that ROS are responsible for a host of diseases including cancer, heart attacks, asthma attacks and much more. In any event, the AktivTek product and all of these other in-duct "air cleaners" work on the principle of Photocatalytic Oxidation (PCO). They expose UV light to a catalyst and produce another ROS called a Hydroxyl Radical (OH). Hydroxyl Radicals differ from ozone in that they are difficult to measure.

So last week I decided to do another experiment. This time I used one of the most popular in-duct PCO devices that I purchased on the open market. I "mounted" it on a box, plugged it in and placed it in a 120 sq. ft. room. I also placed a 100 ml bowl of Pine Sol (a terpene) in the room. The starting particle count in the room was 1,600,000 particles of 0.3 microns and above per cubic foot. The ozone level in the room was 10ppb. Within two hours the particle count had risen to 9,999,999 particles of 0.3 microns and above per cubic foot. To put this in some perspective the worst outdoor particle count that I ever recorded is 6,600,000. This was on a Red Alert smog day just 600 feet from a major 6-lane highway.

But here is the really interesting part. The ozone level did not exceed 10ppb. In other words, this massive increase in particles was the result of a terpene/hydroxyl radical reaction.

What this shows is that it is not just ozone that is the culprit in the indoor air chemistry problem, it is also the Hydroxyl Radical and, most probably, other ROS's as well.

This brings me back to what I have been saying for years. Indoor chemical reactions do not happen in a consistent, predictable manner. They happen randomly and often produce byproducts that are more harmful than the things they are being used to eliminate.

[nchvac]

greetings...

i'm trying to figure out why my wife is having upper respiratory problems and headaches after we just installed a Coleman Heat Pump (Eschelon 13 SEER 2.5 ton). I don't notice anything amiss, no smells, nothing.
Has anybody heard of certain people reacting to the HVAC systems installed when there's no obvious reason for it?
I can't seem to find any info on the internet about this issue.
The wife reacted to the system almost immediately (like the day we turned it on)...she claims she more 'tastes' something metallic and feels that there are particles in the air... she's definitely having some symptoms... just can't figure from what.
HELP!

Headaches and metallic taste in the mouth. You need to take her to get her blood checked for a magnesium deficency or something like that. Type in the metallic taste on the internet and see what you come up with.

[Twilly]

Twilly glad to see Payson back.....

[PaysonHVAC]

Twilly glad to see Payson back.....

Thanks bro. I just got your "invite" in my email. Thought I'd check in.

I literally lost that RUN CAP BANDIT and basically have no one to work behind except for myself these days now that I work "in house".

I do get to play with all sorts of different things tho. Since I'm a geek I also even mess with the mag lock, wiring Ethernet stuff, electrical, whatever when I'm not doing HVAC.


Where is that RUN CAP BANDIT these days, anyway?

[PaysonHVAC]

Oh yeah.
My brother in law may have been a little butt hurt that we said NAY to that teck2000 or whatever it was called. :-p

[beachtech]

bt
I am not interested in another ozone argument either. But I would say that there have been many studies conducted over the last 10 years showing that ozone reacts with many Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's) to create some nasty byproducts including formaldehyde and ultrafine particles. As it turns out virtually any double bond organic molecule will react with ozone to create these ultrafine particles (less than one micron). Particles this size penetrate deep into the lungs and have been shown to create cell damage and inflammation.

Double bond organic molecules include most scented products and environmental tobacco smoke. The scented products are generally in a class called terpenes. Terpenes include things like pine, lemon, orange, lime and other common smells that tend to make people think of "clean." Unfortunately, the indoor air chemistry that takes place produces "dirty."

These reactions are not debateable. They happen everytime. All you need is a source of ozone, a terpene and a particle counter. I have done them many times with the same results. Here is an article I wrote several years ago on experiments done with terpenes and a popular ionizer called the Ionic Breeze.

http://www.texairfilters.com/article...ngintheair.htm

The interesting thing about the experiments was that they did not require high levels of ozone to create massive levels of ultrafine particles. Most of the ozone levels in the room did not exceed 30 ppb. The FDA says that 50ppb is permissable for medical devices. So the question would be: at what level does one say that ozone is being used in moderation?

But this ozone discussion is old hat. We have had it many times before. Here is the really interesting part.

Ozone is one of a group of unstable, highly reactive molecules called "Reactive Oxygen Species" ROS. If you want a sobering mass of information go to Google and type in: "Reactive oxygen species health effects." You will get thousands of hits and find that ROS are responsible for a host of diseases including cancer, heart attacks, asthma attacks and much more. In any event, the AktivTek product and all of these other in-duct "air cleaners" work on the principle of Photocatalytic Oxidation (PCO). They expose UV light to a catalyst and produce another ROS called a Hydroxyl Radical (OH). Hydroxyl Radicals differ from ozone in that they are difficult to measure.

So last week I decided to do another experiment. This time I used one of the most popular in-duct PCO devices that I purchased on the open market. I "mounted" it on a box, plugged it in and placed it in a 120 sq. ft. room. I also placed a 100 ml bowl of Pine Sol (a terpene) in the room. The starting particle count in the room was 1,600,000 particles of 0.3 microns and above per cubic foot. The ozone level in the room was 10ppb. Within two hours the particle count had risen to 9,999,999 particles of 0.3 microns and above per cubic foot. To put this in some perspective the worst outdoor particle count that I ever recorded is 6,600,000. This was on a Red Alert smog day just 600 feet from a major 6-lane highway.

But here is the really interesting part. The ozone level did not exceed 10ppb. In other words, this massive increase in particles was the result of a terpene/hydroxyl radical reaction.

What this shows is that it is not just ozone that is the culprit in the indoor air chemistry problem, it is also the Hydroxyl Radical and, most probably, other ROS's as well.

This brings me back to what I have been saying for years. Indoor chemical reactions do not happen in a consistent, predictable manner. They happen randomly and often produce byproducts that are more harmful than the things they are being used to eliminate.

so PCO technology is dumb

[beachtech]

Where is that RUN CAP BANDIT these days, anyway?

in charlotte nc

[breathe easy]

bt
I am not sure what you mean.

The idea of PCO technology probably is not dumb. It has potential.

But if you are saying PCO technology is "dumb" in that it produces unintended reactions and byproducts, I would agree. Indoor air is a complex mixture of gases and particles. To assume that you could add highly reactive molecules to all indoor air and know the outcome of all of the chemical reactions is naive and misguided. Surely, some of the reactions create harmless byproducts. Likewise some of the reactions produce undesireable and potentially harmful byproducts. It is somewhat of a crap shoot. The question is: are the odds worth it?

[beachtech]

bt
I am not sure what you mean.

The idea of PCO technology probably is not dumb. It has potential.

But if you are saying PCO technology is "dumb" in that it produces unintended reactions and byproducts, I would agree. Indoor air is a complex mixture of gases and particles. To assume that you could add highly reactive molecules to all indoor air and know the outcome of all of the chemical reactions is naive and misguided. Surely, some of the reactions create harmless byproducts. Likewise some of the reactions produce undesireable and potentially harmful byproducts. It is somewhat of a crap shoot. The question is: are the odds worth it?

yeah... no, by reading the presented material, it is quit leading that PCO is being bashed.

also i see a lot of the reference material supplied by posters on this subject are old. . . 10yrs old, and older.