Total Air Care helps with the following problems:
Total Air Care helps by:
Total Air Care will also help you comply with your building warrant of fitness (BWOF), customer and food safety standards, IRHACE, ASNZ3666.2 and any quality statements an overseas customer may have given you.
Being one of New Zealand’s world-class food producers, you will understand why HVAC hygiene is of the utmost importance. In case you would like a refresher, read this article.
Indoor Air Quality control is critical for maintaining a bacteria free zone. We bring a unique ‘hygiene’ approach to filter servicing, not the standard ‘mechanical’ approach common in the industry.
Our Total Air Care HVAC hygiene service is a complete end-to-end clean of your entire HVAC system. All components of your HVAC system – from air intake to factory – will get dirty, harbour pathogens, and corrode. We make it our business to ensure the air entering your factory is clean and carries none of those pathogens or dirt.
Presco Environmental’s Total Air Care package thoroughly considers every aspect of HVAC hygiene.
The initial step in HVAC hygiene where the system’s current state is graded against the standard. To identify issues, technicians use three tests; visual inspections, pressure drop readings across filters and ATP testing for cleanliness. Presco Environmental IAQ technicians then provide a condition report including a list of actions to correct any issues found. This report includes things like broken seals or door clips, floor condition and broken lighting (broken lighting attracts bugs).
For each situation, technicians advise the best filter solution, always meeting ISO16890 standards. Presco Environmental supplies all types of air filters:
HVAC servicing should include not only regular filter changes at the correct intervals, but also a deep clean of all of the internal surfaces of the ventilation system downstream (clean air side) of your filter bank.
Technicians perform a chemical clean of the entire ventilation system, from outside air intake right through to supply air ceiling grilles. Repainting flaky paint, repairing rust damage and replacing leaking or damaged seals can all be done at this step. Any damaged or aging filter holding banks are repaired. The air supply fan should also receive a full clean. This increases air movement efficiency; a dirty fan is less efficient as it requires more power to run and can cause vibration issues. HVAC components to be cleaned and sanitised include:
A deep clean and sanitise should be conducted of the:
Presco Environmental supply and install UV-C lighting systems. These eliminate airborne pathogens and control odour. This is a particularly effective solution for hygiene of heat exchange coils.
Presco Environmental supply and install Ozone generation equipment. This removes airborne pathogens and control odour.
Technicians perform a deep clean to remove Legionella risk. All our technicians have food safety understanding and experience, which is paramount when it comes to this clean – the risk of contracting listeria and other pathogens is high. Compliance cleans are also completed, to meet AS/NZS 3666.
We have a unique standard operating procedure for cooling towers that includes a multi-stakeholder agreement. This is the special requirements of every stakeholder – e.g the government, your factory, the tower manufacturer, the people who treat your water etc. – all put together into one process for our technicians to follow. Our customers have found this extremely helpful and efficient as opposed to every stakeholder caring only about their individual needs that often conflict with those of other stakeholders. Learn more about our water cooling tower cleaning here.
Presco Environmental work with you to create ongoing or annual HVAC hygiene maintenance programs. These include scheduled checks and cleans of both the clean and dirty side of filters to ensure no bypass has occurred. These checks are based on IRHACE best practise guidelines. Technicians provide documented maintenance reports and certificates of completion (COCs) for factory records.
Our building maintenance division aids this Total Air Care service. It allows our technicians to perform small maintenance jobs in your HVAC system, such as fitting a new hatch or popped rivets and repairing rust.
You should use refrigeration engineers as well.
Refrigeration engineers will keep your whole air handling unit (AHU) working really well, and you need that. However, these engineers are mostly focused on mechanical HVAC. To keep your system compliant, you need someone with a hygiene focus as well. This is us.
Your factory workers can fix and clean your HVAC system.
Using your own workers to maintain your HVAC system is an option. We advise you to be careful of the following points:
You could use reactive services rather than programmed work.
Using reactive services will help you put out fires as they arise. However, it is likely this will be far more expensive than a scheduled maintenance program. The cost of downtime and an urgent fix is higher than regular small maintenance.
You can ask your filter supplier to clean your filters.
Often, filter suppliers will offer a cleaning service. In the last 15 years of servicing HVAC systems, some of the worst maintenance we have come across was where the system had supposedly been maintained by the filter suppliers themselves. This is because these companies are often under-resourced; changing filters is their priority, not cleaning – therefore the cleaning often gets neglected. For HVAC hygiene, it is better to choose a service provider with a focus on hygiene.
Factory managers often ask us:
The answer is always: it depends.
It depends on what filters you use, and what environment they are in. Heavily soiled filters are inefficient; it is always better to clean or change them before the last minute.
With screens, the outside environment is a huge factor. Things that can effect screens include nearby earthworks, carbon and exhaust fumes from a tanker bay, prevailing winds and the amount of rain and the direction it comes from – bacteria love damp places.
Insect screens will need to be cleaned more regularly in summer. More insects in this season mean the screens get clogged up faster.
We are always happy to visit your site and give you a recommendation on filter cleaning and changing or perform a parallel audit to give you an indication of how your system measures up for audit compliance.
Generally, the price for our Total Air Care service is based on three things:
Read Matthew’s full break down of the cost of Total Air Care here: How Much Does Total Air Care Cost?
Because of our focus on critical hygiene, we do not provide mechanical HVAC service – things like fan belts or heating and cooling components. We also don’t provide electrical components and sensors. You still need both of these things.
We believe you should let the specialist take care of their specialty. Don’t pay an electrician $100/hour to clean your ducting. Don’t pay an HVAC engineer to change your filters. Pay them for the skills they are an expert in.
We will keep on perfecting our HVAC hygiene skills and you can use our technicians the industrial hygiene side of things.
Lastly, we don’t do complete system replacements. Please remember, new filters cannot fix a broken system.
Here is a checklist of the 12 most common failures of HVAC system. While it is in no means conclusive, these steps help to prevent foreign matter entering your environment.
Download here: 12 Point Checklist for HVAC systems
“We are happy with the standard of work. Communications are good, reporting/feedback is clear and accurate and comes in a timely manner. Presco also has a good understanding around sensitivities regarding confidentiality and uses our own camera to take photos during checks rather than bringing in their own.”
Contact our senior Indoor Air Hygiene advisor, Matthew Prestidge, at matthew@presco.co.nz.