A different animal

Tony Shelton

BS Detector, Esquire
I know most of you guys are bored with this stuff, but you can't be as bored as I am with KEC and roof cleaning talk! :smile2:

We are in the midst of coil cleaning season. This week we are doing approx 54 cooling coils on a large casino.

It is entirely different from most work that is discussed on these boards.

We will be using two truck skids and a trailer skid for backup.

It will take 895 ft of hose to reach the farthest one. The hose will be snaked up over roofs and in through wall vent panels that we will have to disassemble for access.

Almost half of them will be inside the building. The others will be on the roof.

It will take four different types of custom made wands on each coil.

For the first time we will be using a vac custom setup for us from Jerry at Sirocco.

We will also be using two other task specific vacs, a handheld pressure washer, custom battery sprayers and pumpups on hand for backup along with a 120 psi compressor also with custom wands.

We will be using a custom made 20-30 ft vacuum extension wand while cleaning intakes from a 3 ft wide catwalk over the casino floor. Tech will be in a harness.....just in case. :)

All the equipment was brought up on the roof today and setup so we can start tomorrow morning and hopefully finish by Friday.

I'll try to post some pics along the way.

Here is an example of what we are up against:

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What beat up the bottom of those coil? Do you comb those out to straighten?

I don't know. Maybe a worker's tool belt?

It's one of those mysteries like why some condenser coils have pockmarks all over them but only on the North side. It's understandable that it has to be a wind issue, but what in the world is light enough to be blown by the wind, but heavy enough to bend fins?

We buy cases of combs at a time. This one coil will probably eat up 3 or 4 combs at the speed we go at.
 
There are a lot of challenges to a job like that, Tony, and you seem to have it all together. Coil cleaning may seem boring, but I bet it can be very lucrative. With the volume of work, I can imagine why HVAC people would not want to do that type/volume of work since they might not feel like HVAC people anymore half way through the job.

Is there much competition? Are you the first of your kind?
 
I can't get 300 degrees with the portable!

Most jobs, including this one, have multiple roof levels. I'd still have to have 300-500 ft of hose even with the portable and would have to get it up to the roof to boot.

I did order a handheld portable from Jerry and it should be here later this week. It will be used only for spraying chems and rinsing in tight situations with low volume.

No portable could do this - at least not with any speed:

 
There are a lot of challenges to a job like that, Tony, and you seem to have it all together. Coil cleaning may seem boring, but I bet it can be very lucrative. With the volume of work, I can imagine why HVAC people would not want to do that type/volume of work since they might not feel like HVAC people anymore half way through the job.

Is there much competition? Are you the first of your kind?

George, there are a quite a few coil cleaners out there. There are some really good professional companies that do a superb job.

Cleaning condenser coils is fairly easy. There aren't so many things to worry about. These units are right over the casino floor. Waste water control is the most important thing you have to worry about with jobs like these.

Here is our newest waste water control system from Jerry:

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Those are some thick coils.

Like Always, you are doing a great job Tony!
 
Tony. Will you post more pictures when you get it done? I would like to see what it looks like from down on the casino floor. One thing I am curious about is... How you will contain the waste water from inside the casino? That will be nice to see.
 
Ancient chinese secret. hahahahahaha j/k could not resist that one. hahahahaha
 
Tony. Will you post more pictures when you get it done? I would like to see what it looks like from down on the casino floor. One thing I am curious about is... How you will contain the waste water from inside the casino? That will be nice to see.

The goal is to never get any wastewater inside. We finished all of these today and didn't lose a drop of water thanks to Jerry's setup.

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Once we get inside the majority of the units are on a dedicated floor sitting on concrete slabs where we don't even have to worry at all about runoff. We still have to vacuum the water, but there are condensate drains located next to each unit. We will filter the runoff as needed.

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These roof drains come out at the base of the building onto the walkways where they are sloped into drains built into the walkways that go into the building's own system.

A guy came up at the end of the day today and informed us that a large amount was running across and area people are walking on. He wanted to know if there was anything in it that would make the walkway slippery.

On this unit we were blasting with hot water only and weren't even using soap at that point. But the gunk that was coming out was filthy as you can see from the pics.

I asked him if the water was dirty looking when it came out. He said "no dirtier than what usually comes off the roof when it rains"

So I'd say the filter is working fine.
 
Great job on your filter system Tony.

Are you going to start selling filter systems to contractors?
 
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