Air Filter Cleaning Basics

Tony Shelton

Tony Shelton

BS Detector, Esquire
Here is how we do filters. This is simply cleaning them. There's a learning curve and a person needs to know a lot more information before just going out and doing this.

Like:
What kind of filters can I clean?
Can I use electrostatics in X unit?
How much flow is required?
How many square inches are required by code?
What other filter alternatives do I have?
How do I measure accurately for fit.?
Which level of filter works best in X unit?
How do I keep from blowing out as filter cleaning it?
Do I have to shut off X unit for service or not.?
Does X unit have an alarm?
How do I compare against the competition?
What is the resistance and arrestance of my filters?
What is the R and A of my competition's filters?
Can I even do this without an HVAC license?
How do I upsell?
What do I upsell?
What is the most reliable source for the filters?
What about a secondary source?
Etc, etc.

But once the questions are answered the actual work is profitable

Thank you guys for all your help in answering my questions about flatwork.

I'm only going to leave this up for a few days. Please don't share it outside this board. It takes a while to load.

http://www.sonitx.com/Airfiltercleaning.wmv
 
Thanks Tony
This shows what a great person you are. Not many people will take the time to video the whole job, much less tell everyone the tricks and secrets to making it profitable.
 
Ashley Phillips said:
Thanks Tony
This shows what a great person you are. Not many people will take the time to video the whole job, much less tell everyone the tricks and secrets to making it profitable.
Click to expand...

I'm not a great person. Somebody was great for me.

But anyway, At one time I thought I'd have guys all over the country doing this as a franchise. But I don't want to go through all that. There's plenty of work locally. I would like to be able to refer work to other parts of the country to other guys that have the equipment to do it. Like Ron is doing witht the surface cleaning, like CVS.
 
This really cool of you to do this, everyone obviously can't start off with all of your knowledge but I would really appreciate speaking with you about this for the Nashville area. Thiscould be a huge foot in the door at alot of places.
 
Another Great Video, thanks for sharing Tony.

That is a cool man lift and it maneuvers fast.

I did not know it was self propelled, that is cool.

I did not see you connect to a water source, it looks like you might use less than a couple gallons per filter if that much. I guess you could have a 50 gallon tank in the truck and when it gets low, just add more?
 
I am thinking of rigging up a portable pressure washer onto the free space on my bucket truck and a small buffer tank and a couple hose reels for jobs where I do not need hot water so I can have everything on the bucket truck.

When I start getting PM's interested in this, the truck will be ready.

That sure is nice having an electric hose reel.
 
Christopher said:
Another Great Video, thanks for sharing Tony.

That is a cool man lift and it maneuvers fast.

I did not know it was self propelled, that is cool.

I did not see you connect to a water source, it looks like you might use less than a couple gallons per filter if that much. I guess you could have a 50 gallon tank in the truck and when it gets low, just add more?
Click to expand...

Generally we can go 3-4 hours on a 325 gallon tank.
 
Christopher said:
I am thinking of rigging up a portable pressure washer onto the free space on my bucket truck and a small buffer tank and a couple hose reels for jobs where I do not need hot water so I can have everything on the bucket truck.

When I start getting PM's interested in this, the truck will be ready.

That sure is nice having an electric hose reel.
Click to expand...

You don't need hot water at all for this. But we tried 3gph and it was way too slow.

Electric hose reel :D :D :D :D
 
I was wondering if a guy could do this all by himself and still make decent money. It's been a long time since I've been out doing filters alone.

So this morning I got out early and picked out some random accounts that are due in this 2wk period. (these are rounded to the nearest 5 minutes

First: Volvo Dealership - 6 units (big and small) 30 minutes from start to finish - 5 minutes drive time - $150.00 (My son, Chris, has on the log that this one takes 15 minutes with two guys)
Second: Dentist - 2 units + Doctor 2 units side by side - 20 minutes - 10 minutes drive time - $100.00 (Chris's log says 2 guys - 15 minutes)

Third: Small office - 2 units (small) - 20 minutes - 0 minutes drive time - $75.00 (2 guys - 10 minutes)

Fourth: Office building - 19 units - 50 minutes - 5 minutes drive time - $190.00 (and this was one I had to drop my drawers (price) on to get the business) Then it took me 10 minutes to get back to the office. (Log says two guys takes 20 minutes, I'll have to confirm that with him)

Total time from office door to office door - 2 1/2 hours
Total billed - $515.00
$206/hr

With two guys: (according to the log) - 1 1/2 hours
Total Billed - $515.00
$343/hr minus $30.00/hr Chris + $13.00/hr helper = $310.00/hr

Either way it's still good money. Keep in mind the first year the hourly is reduced by up to 3/4 to pay for the initial investment for the filters. (That's still over $50.00/hr alone or $77/hr with employees the first year) All these accounts are over 2 years old and the filters have already been paid for.

I just think this a market that has previously been untapped.
 
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Apache/1.3.39 Server at www.sonitx.com Port 80
 
Grant said:
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The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
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Apache/1.3.39 Server at www.sonitx.com Port 80
Click to expand...

It shut my website down. I've really got to find a new host. This is ridiculous.

It's fixed now but I had to take the video down.
 
Last edited:
OK, I found a way to host the video without making it so available to everyone. On Google it will show, but it won't show up in searches. Here it is.

<embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-1364514591162759351&hl=en&fs=true" style="width:400px;height:326px" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed>
 
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