The Best Coil Coating for HVAC Techs to Prevent Rust & Equipment Failure with John Pastorello Part 1
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So a bit of a deep dive into the world of chemicals. If you have a product out there that can prevent corrosion of a coil or any sort of metal that's fabricated, that could be in a coastal town or coastal city and that salt in the air just starts eating away at it. There's ways to mitigate stuff like that. So John Pastorello, who is the CEO of refrigeration technologies, chemist and HVAC tech is going to talk to us about coil coating,

and how it's used, what it can be used for, and if there is any efficiency loss. And I'll give you a bit of a hint. There's a tiny, tiny, tiny bit if you use the product correctly. So part two of this will be out in a few days. We're going to talk about coil cleaners. And you know that symbol that's on some condensing units that say only use water? We're going to talk about why that OEM that puts that...

in the wrong for putting that there, especially if it's tap water. But anyway, two-part series, guys, you're going to learn. This is the HVAC Know It All podcast. I'm your host, Gary McCready. As an HVAC contractor, we need to be insured, and it makes a lot of sense to have the same insurance company look after all our needs. Lambert Insurance Services has been protecting HVAC contractors since 2009. From general liability to workers' comp, bonding, commercial auto, and more,

They've got you covered. Call Lambert Insurance Services for a free quote at 801-937-7030. Welcome to the HVAC Know It All podcast, recorded from a basement somewhere in Toronto, Canada. Your host and HVAC tech, Gary McCready, will take you on a deep dive into the industry discussing all things HVAC, from storytelling to technical discussion. Enjoy the show.

All right, audience, we got John with us and I've talked to you guys about refrigeration technologies in the past, how John was for a very long time at HVAC Tech and chemist and decided to start creating chemicals that we could use in the field for our use from refrigeration.

an HVAC tech and a chemist perspective molded into one. And the first product, John, I'd like to talk to you about is coil coating because it's more than just a coating for coils. You can coat any sort of metal with it to prevent it from corroding over time, like maybe like a heat pump stand or something like that. I know people have mentioned to me in the past that they put these heat pump stands in and then over the course of time,

They start to rust a little bit. The paint or the coating, the powder coating that they use on it starts to wear and the metal underneath starts to corrode. So that product, if I'm totally wrong in saying that, correct me, but we can coat all kinds of metal with coil coating, right? Oh, definitely. Yeah. It's basically a metal protectant. We have corrosion inhibitors, especially for aluminum and copper and steel. So I coat a lot of things with it.

I'll quote like if people changing out rotor, roto valves, the rotor connections on suction lines, you know how they always end up rusting out. They do. Yeah. The roto lock fittings. Yeah. It's really good for, you know, when you replace, put on a new roto fitting. What is it called?

The correct term for it is a rotolock fitting. Rotolock, right, correct. Yeah. And you spray that with coating and it's not going to rust out on you. Yeah, perfect. I have metal forms out in my backyard for holding up posts.

They're galvanized, but it only lasts a few hours. I'll coat that too, all kinds of metal with it, especially around the house. In the yard, you put fertilizer down, the fertilizer corrodes all the metal. So let's talk about the name of its coil coating. So this is how I see sort of the thought behind it is because we've got these coastal areas and a lot of it's saltwater. I'm

I mean, when I was, I was in Mexico last February around this time and the resort I was at was only 10 years old, but some of the metal staircases in like the back hallways and stuff, the bases of them, they were starting to corrode away. And it's, it's only 10 years into this resort being around. So was the initial thought to have this product developed and put out there to coat the

condenser coils, evaporator coils in these coastal towns and cities and areas to prevent the corrosion from the high humidity and the salt water in the air? Yeah, definitely. Our customer, we have a very large customer in Australia, a master distributor. And he said, John, you know what we really need here in Australia, basically coastal

We need a good coil coating. And I did not have the expertise really in coatings. It's completely out of my wheelhouse. But I did have a very tight chemist friend of mine. All he does is coatings. And we worked on it together and helped me develop the first coil coating we came out with. And it was called Defender. And we marketed it there in Australia for about five years.

And then we started getting calls for it to be distributed here in the United States. This goes way, way back, but we eventually called it Viper Coil Coating. Now, I mean, it's clear, so you can't really tell that it's been sprayed onto a coil or a piece of metal, right? Because of the clear coating aspect of it? See, the clear is, we're in California, based in California. We have these air quality restrictions, right?

And if you put color into the coating, it comes into a more stricter category of coatings. But if you leave it clear for some reason, it's not based on any science or any fact, but they allow more VOC content.

And it's really the higher the VOC content, the better stick, the better adhesion you get with the coil coating onto the metal. So we decided, hey, we're not going to add any type of dye or cover it to our formulation because, you know, we want the best stick, the best coating, the longest lasting we can use. And that was VVT.

The only way to achieve that was to use a flat clear coating. And you can, once you coat a coil, you see it has a bit of a gloss to it. So you can distinguish it from parts of like a coil maybe that you didn't coat. Yeah. All right. So as far as

Cause I, I could see the arguments online, uh, with, with some people. Yeah. If you spray that on there, cause these people come out of nowhere, out of left field. They've usually, they've got crystal balls in their van, John, and they're able to tell the future of what's going to happen with something they've never touched. They've never seen, they've never talked about to anybody else before, but they, they know, they know how it's going to work beforehand. So some of the comments I could see,

is, hey, that's going to prevent heat transfer and all that kind of stuff. But I'm sure that you've tested all of that. You're not going to tell people to spray it on a coil if it's going to prevent heat transfer. So take us down that road for a minute, if you don't mind. Yeah, so if you want to minimize the loss of heat transfer, you have to minimize the amount of coating that you apply because anything you apply to a coil is going to diminish heat.

the heat transfer. The polymers we're using can be used at very thin levels, very small micron rating, and that is going to keep your efficiency. You're going to lose some

because it's just a matter of physics. You can't overcome the laws of physics. We instruct on our can to use a single coat, apply it on the front of the coil, and then apply it on the back of the coil to kind of lock it all in. And of course, everyone paints in a different technique. Some people will start to use two coats, three coats,

Use one heavy coat.

But if they follow our instructions, it really doesn't take a heavy coat. They'll see that it's really got a lot of substances in this to it, and it'll maintain a good, thick, protective layer with just one coat. All right. Now, I guess the follow-up to that would be if you do it correctly and it's a thin layer, the heat transfer loss is negligible. It's not going to really count for much. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, put it in layman terms, all the testing we did

if you put like say a medium coat on it, it raise your head pressure about, this is done on 410A, it raise your head pressure about 3 PSI. And if you used a double coat,

you can get five to seven PSI increase in your head pressure. I think that's the best way for everyone to kind of get a picture of what's going on. Okay, so medium code, about three PSI, you're saying. So what about a light coding? A light coding would be... Light coding, you know, you can get under three. Under three. Okay, so that's really negligible. Yeah, and it's always natural for people to go over the same spot because...

We use a flat fan spray that kind of gets in between the fins as you go across the coil.

So, we want good penetration and even coating and we use that flat fan spray to get that nice application, nice and smooth. Now, I mean, some coils actually in the manufacturing process get dipped in something like that. Do you guys do stuff like that off-site where you send it to a manufacturer potentially to get coils get dipped into the product? No.

No, no. Okay. No, this is, you know, basically a field applied. All right. Right. It's not going to have the longevity of a factory applied because there you can use heat, you can use electrocoating, you can even use anodizing, which is probably the best coating for aluminum.

You can go into a more detailed process of making sure that that coating is locked in and adhered to every millimeter of the surface. And it'll have greater longevity. We're just talking here about a field apply that any surface technician in the field could use. And we're getting longevities from our studies in Australia of about five years.

And that's a

pretty salty environment down there. Okay. So I'm going to ask a question and I'll follow up with my thought. What sort of heat can the coating withstand like temperature wise? Like how high can we get before it's no longer going to be or work or start to break down or something like that? Is that even a thing or is there a temperature limit? Oh, sure. You know, all organics start to break down right around 300 degrees. Fair enough. There's no way you can overcome that.

And so I would try and keep that temperature below 350 at least. 300 temporarily, prolonged at 350, you're going to start breaking it down. Okay. I'm just thinking of things that I see in my travels for the last...

25 to 30 years that are corroded because of moisture in the air. Cause I I'm in an area where we don't really have, I'm not coastal there's, there's no salt water, but we do have high humidity in the winter or sorry, in the summer because of we're surrounded kind of pocketed by the great lakes. And I'm thinking of different ways we can utilize the,

this type of chemical in, in different things that corrode. I've already mentioned heat pump brackets, but like brackets that hold up ACs as well, like wall brackets that are mounted to the wall. I'm thinking just on some rooftops,

The paneling, like where the induced draft motor sort of gets mounted up against certain plates and stuff. There's a lot of moisture buildup that can happen because of the products of combustion and all that. And some of them, they corrode out really, really quickly. I'm just wondering if like a quick spray of coil coating on like an inducer motor that's going in a rooftop will prevent that.

the thing from having a hole in it five years down the road because that sometimes is what happens. Would it be able to go on like an induced draft motor on a rooftop type thing in that application? Do you think that would work? Not a problem. Not a problem. I've had people actually coat condenser fan motors with it that are exposed to high humidity, especially in Florida. The motor housing tends to rust out on them.

And we can put it on the blades. Would a blade be a good application or could we potentially put a blade out of balance if we don't spray it correctly? Yeah. You know, just the weight of the coating is not going to affect the balance because it's such a thin layer there. Okay. All right. There's so many applications that I could actually see this being used for.

outside of coils is do you have a customer base that's come back to you and said they've used it in X place or

And they've benefited from it. Like, is there some other things that you can tell us that this product has been used successfully on when it comes to preventing the corrosion of metal? Well, only from, you know, we get good, good feedback from Australia because they've been on top of it for the longest period of time. And all I can say is they keep buying the product.

So, I mean, if it didn't work, they wouldn't return to buy more product. Oh, for sure. Yeah. For sure.

So you're seeing good results in Australia and this is mainly in the coastal areas of Australia. Yes. Perfect. Okay. All right. So basically it's just follow the instructions. You get minimal loss and heat transfer if you do it right. You're saying less than three PSI and that in temperature is very minimal. It's very negligible. So is there anything we can say about the product from a deeper dive process that we can learn from before we move on to the next topic?

No, other than the chemist that I communicate with, very good friend that developed the product. He's always keeping up with new technology. And since we developed the product maybe 20, 23 years ago,

He's always saying, "Hey, John, we need to put an additive in here, this new additive. It'll make it work better. It'll give you a little bit more longevity." Or, "Hey, you know what? It's time. There's a new polymer out.

that's similar to what you're using, but has better longevity. Let's switch over to that. Let's use these new additives that will help make a better long lasting product and a stronger coating.

So yeah, the world of science is always- That's the whole thing about any industry, any chemical, any product that you put out there. You can't go keeping using the same product you developed 20 years ago and think that it's going to be viable in the future. I agree. The world of science and technology is ever changing and evolving. So I get that for sure. Yeah. All right. So I'd like to tackle coil cleaning.

Sure. And coil cleaners. So when you see a major manufacturer that has a stamp or a sticker right beside the condenser coil that says use water only,

What do you think about that, first of all? I think they didn't do, like an OEM says, use water only. Yeah. They didn't do any testing. First of all, water is chlorinated. Assuming they're going to use tap water and there's going to be residue from the dissolved salts in the water. You're going to get calcium deposits. And the more you rinse it, the more deposits you lay on.

So, I mean, a layman would say, yeah, just use water. It's harmless. But really, it's not. You know, water is corrosive.