Lunchtime Learning Webinar – Ventilation, Ductwork and Air Quality

Hello and welcome to another lunchtime learning session from Robinson’s Facility Services. We’ve had loads of you register for this session.  Just a little bit of housekeeping before we get going. I can see that my internet is struggling this morning, which is typical   because we’ve tested it all and it’s working  really well. So you’ll see to somewhere like

over here, there’ll be a chat function. So before we get going, can you just,   somebody just say like, how are you finding the,  the quality of this. Can you hear me okay? If

you could just type in where you’re watching from  and is this working well for you? So if it isn’t,

it would be really helpful to understand  that before we get going. So apologies.   I’m just a little bit concerned if that’s going  to be a limiting factor for us. I’m your host,

Kevin Ayres. And this, can you believe that  this is the fifth one of these we’ve run? Okay,   that’s good. Thank you so much, Amanda and Faye. Do let me know during the session. Oh, it’s got a

bit better now. So that’s good. So yeah, do let me  know if you’re having problems during the session,

you know, best laid plans of mice and men  and all of that. uh um you know in the in

the countryside so it’s a little bit uh yeah  it’s kind of uh yeah well you get what you get

um so this as I say this is the fifth webinar  we’ve done we’ve done one on pest control   uh lift maintenance uh legionella control and  fire regulation and compliance So if any of

those topics are relevant to your business and  like most of them will be for most decent sized

facilities, if you find this session helpful,  do go and check those out as well. I’m talking

to other experts and again, a lot of those kind  of questions that you might have, we will attempt

to answer those in those previous sessions. So you can find those by going to robinsonsfs.com.

video okay super easy or there’s a nice like  one of the first links on the top of the web   page on Robinsons’ fs uh web page is video  because we really value video as you can tell

now in today’s session How are you going to be  looking at ventilation, ductwork and air quality?

And we’ve got another expert, Chris Buckingham,  who’s going to be helping us navigate through   all of those events today, understanding what  the issues, how can you stay safe and compliant

on in your facilities. As I said, really  exciting. This is one of the highest registrations

we’ve had. We’ve had over fifty people. We’ve got loads of people watching online,   which is fantastic. So why don’t we welcome Chris  to the stage, as my assistant calls it. Hey,

Chris. Hi, good afternoon, everybody.  Hey, so thanks for joining us.   So where are you joining us from? I love  the backdrop there. So I would like to say,

unfortunately, this is an office wallpaper.  It’s not my window view of my office,

but I am in a very sunny Leicestershire  today. Okay, Leicestershire, great.   So thanks for that. And yeah, it would be a pretty  tall office block to be looking down on that

church behind, wouldn’t it? Maybe one day, maybe  one day. So Chris, as I said, you’re obviously an

expert in this whole area of ventilation. How  long have you been working in that sphere?

So I’ve sort of been working within  ventilation and especially the cleanliness,   the standards for nearly a decade now. Wow. So  you’ve probably literally seen it all, right?

I’ve seen some good and some  not so good. Yes, definitely.   Well, you’ve sent me some of those, so  I know we’re going to be diving into…

It’s always… I’m such a dad joke person.  It’s just been Father’s Day. I’m nearly fifty.   I feel kind of… I’ve paid my dues. I  get to make some dad jokes. So, again,

just watch out for any of those ductwork-related  puns. Just before we get going, I just want to

kind of map out where we’re going in this  session for everybody in this session.   We want to be respectful of your time.  Everybody is watching. So… First,

we’re going to go through some kind of  what are the kind of key questions you   need to be aware of. And Chris is I’m going  to be asking Chris some of those questions.

And then around twelve thirty, we get to a sort  of more of a quickfire, some quickfire questions

that we’ve got lined up. But we’d love to say,  look, feel free to ask questions all the way

through. If they’re really relevant to what  we’re talking about right now, we’ll try and   tackle them at the time. But if it’s slowing  things out, I’ll just say, look, we’ll deal

with those at the end. And if there’s really any  really big questions right at the end, we’re going   to try and finish bang on at twelve forty five. I’m not known for conciseness, so we will try,

though. finish at twelve forty five. And  then if you want to stay on past that,

what we’ll do is we’ll leave the stream open and  Chris and I will be available for another five   or ten minutes if you have any burning questions  that we haven’t managed to cover. But, you know,

everybody else can drop at that point. OK,  so I hope that makes sense. So Chris, look,

without further ado, look at that. We’re bang on time. It’s five past   twelve. So why don’t we dive into this? I can’t  believe how on time we are. This is fantastic.

So Chris, one of the big ones, right? So if  I’m managing a facility, what are my legal

responsibilities around ventilation? I’m guessing  it’s something that one of those, even more than

some of the other topics we’ve looked at, it’s  kind of one of those hidden things that stays   hidden in the building. And like, oh, yeah, well,  what are those legal responsibilities? Yeah, so

the Workplace Health and Safety Act, which if you  like my office, you’ve got a copy of it somewhere

sticking up on your door or in your area. Part of that is to ensure that your employer

is providing ventilated workspace.  And that’s not just, you know,

it can just be cracking open a window, something  like that. But if you’re really enclosed and,

you know, we don’t always have that sort of bad  weather, for example, especially in this country,   you know, we need to ensure your employer needs  to ensure that you’ve got clean, purified air

within your workspace for your working conditions.  Right. Sorry, yeah, I said these are covered.

You have approved documents out there covering  that for ventilation, COSH as well. It also

builds up to the section of ventilation  under the Act. Right, so fundamentally,

I guess, are we keeping people safe on  probably what is the most fundamental   thing? Can people breathe clearly and they’re  safe to do so, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly.

OK, so and especially having looked at some of the  sort of horror stories of what you’ve shown me,

I guess. You mentioned there about a window,  which is such a kind of, it’s obvious, you know,

like I can just open a window. But I guess, as  you say, in more enclosed buildings or maybe in   the winter where nobody wants to open a window,  that air gets to us through a series of, again,

often hidden pipes or, you know, ductwork,  you typically call it. So why is cleaning

and keeping looking after those so important? And  what, I guess, are the risks if I don’t do that?

So I think we’ll get to some sort of photos  and examples later on, but a buildup of dust

within your ventilation is the perfect breeding  ground for any microbiological contaminants.

Stuff like that is obviously, it’s never great.  It’s never great to have in your ductwork.   If you’re not clean and you haven’t had your  ventilation looked at, there’s always a chance

that dust will fall out the grills. Stuff  like that will affect your air handling unit,

your heater, your air con unit, whatever that is. And anything that can interact with that or

interact with the filter will put strain on the  unit itself, which ultimately then doesn’t provide

you with the clean air that you need to carry out  your day to day. So, and stop me if this is kind

of obvious, but as somebody who’s not an expert on  this, I guess there’s two sides to that equation,

aren’t there? There’s the air that’s already  there that I need to get out and extract away.   And I guess I’m thinking about things like  kitchens, especially, or labs or that sort

of thing. But I mean, that could be true  of any environment that’s to flow through.   And then there’s the fresh air in, in the first  place. So I’m guessing things like, you know,

disease and micro buildup is even more important  in the inflow than the outflow. Because that,

you know, it’s gone. Right. Yes. So is that true? Or, you know,   what are the issues there between the. It  is. So the key bit is the air change. It’s

all about the air changes in the room. So that’s obviously the ratio of what’s   coming into what’s going out. Obviously, it’s  been a good three or so years now since we’ve

had COVID and got out of that, but that’s been  massively highlighted as a result. Unfortunately,

if you’re like myself, I do apologize for my  eyes. I suffer quite heavily from hay fever,   so I could be coughing and sneezing a lot and no  one wants to put up with that in the office. It

is very efficient that that is removed from  your workspace and clean air is then brought

in as a replacement. right yeah great so um  so it would be well tell you look why don’t

we just start with a couple of uh here just  to kind of emphasize the point um on the on

the kind of clean air here so let me just uh oh  I just love this kind of these kind of examples.

So what are we looking at here, Chris? So the  one the one on the left is actually a it’s from

a hotel restaurant kitchen extract book. system so  this is the system that when you’re cooking you’re

cooking under your fryers deep fryers and so on  um it pulls the grease out and then the grease

is then cleaned within the filter and then to  discharge this particular example and it’s stuff

that we will get onto with tr-nit it hasn’t been  cleaned I mean you can see from the photo where

it has been cleaned previous but the build up at  the back is where it’s just not been accessible

and the accessibility of your ventilation systems  are so key for situations like this. This hotel

specifically, it’s in an A-listed building, so  it’s probably never been cleaned. And then the one

on the right, again, that’s how it should look.  You know, your kitchen should be accessible.

You can see the sort of where it’s come up  through the canopy. Obviously the photo has   been taken from an access point. And that’s  the sort of standard you should be keeping

your ventilation to. I mean, the one on the  left there, you know, I don’t know exactly

where that photo was taken in conjunction  to where the food is being made, but it’s   generally very close. And the thought of having  your food prepared in an area like that, it’s not

pleasant. no and so I think the interesting  thing for me was the three meters right

and so I guess if we’re not familiar with you  know, if I think about my kitchen, for example,

I might clean the cooker hood, but I don’t  necessarily think about all of that, you know, air

that’s oil laden or whatever, then goes through  a long pipe to get out of the, to the buildings.

And so if my filter hasn’t worked very well,  and even then, you know, it’s no filters like   a hundred percent, right. Or, you know, I  haven’t changed a filter recently. Then the

idea that like, of course like three meters away  like how would I don’t even know how I would get

the you know obviously my I’m just talking about  my home here but yeah you know the problem might

be quite a long way away from where I’m thinking  and that that is still a problem right so that

was the thing that really struck me that is  kind of out of sight out of mind and yes And

that’s why the inspection process of keeping  up to date with the state of ventilation is so

important. The picture on the left there, that  full system probably runs about close to fifty,

sixty meters throughout that building. And  that was three meters from the canopy.   So it’s not a very nice thought what the rest  of it would look like once you get to it. And

I guess to your point of, you know, that  the air flow through, I guess in theory,

whilst it’s extracting, at least the air is  going the other way. Right. But I guess as   soon as you turn it off, then, you know, those  microbes that are growing there and so on are

free to kind of wander back into the kitchen,  as it were, back through the air. And also,

I guess, is this a fire risk as well? You know, all of that grease and build   up there? Yeah, massively. So this is specifically  a kitchen extract system that will just run on an

extract purpose. And yeah, like you said, before  the fire risk, as soon as that goes off, the

smell of that grease and all that sort of burnt on  carbon will come back through the kitchen area and

it won’t be very pleasant. And if your ventilation  has a loose joint or a loose access door, don’t

forget this runs through a hotel. there’s every  good chance you get a whiff of that, you know,   and that’s not the sort of thing we want, is it? But yes, back to the fire risk, massively,

massively. I think we may have another  photo, which I think you might bring   up. The main issue with this here is  obviously the large… Do you want

another? I’ll just whiz through to an extract. Yeah, I think, yeah, so… I do apologize. This

is not the best time to be sure. I was going  to say, this should have covered the health   warning. I hope you’ve finished your lunch. This is lunch and learn. But hopefully by now,

if you’ve watched these, you know what you’re  signing up for, right? So the one on the left,   obviously, there’s clear pooling in there.  And obviously, that is a massive fire risk.

Should any sort of high sort of volume of heat or  flame connect that, there is a very good chance.

That itself would create a fire. And in  this unit specifically, and in general,

this ductwork’s not fire rated. So should the  fire start within that ventilation, it will

burn out and it will spread. And that’s why it’s  so important, especially pooling grease like that.

That’s the worst kind you could get, really. well  and of course as soon as it leaks out it’s going   to be burning you know oil that’s coming out right  yeah exactly right yeah I mean it’s a there’s a

whole list of problems should you get a fire  within that um and there’s just no need for it   there’s no need for it the build up on the left  there is from months and months and potentially

years of not having it cleaned and this picture on  the right you know that that’s how it should look

yeah I can imagine so You mentioned TR-Nineteen. So what is TR-Nineteen and how does it apply

for whether people are landlords  watching this or property managers?   Why do they need to pay attention to that?  So the piece of TR-Nineteen, in my industry,

it’s like our Bible. It’s everything we go to  for the information. It’s what we work to.

It’s the recognised industry practice  for ventilation. More than recently,

it’s been split into two different sections. We  have air, which we call it air, but that would

be your clean air, your supply air and your  extracting air. And then there’s a separate   section for grease, which mainly is specifically  for kitchen extract systems. So within that,

there’s plenty of guidance on Inspection,  how to inspect, methods of inspection,

guidelines on when and how it should be done. And there’s a rough idea of when they should

be inspected and what sort of timelines you really  should be keeping up to date with your ventilation

within your building. Brilliant. Well, that’s  super, super helpful. And so in your experience,

are facilities managers aware of that? Or,  you know, how do they keep on top of that?

Well, or is they? They do sometimes. A  lot of the times I mentioned to them.   And they sort of look at me with a bit of  a blank expression. It’s probably a lot of

people seem to forget ventilation because I’ve  worked on a lot of building sites and on them

building sites, it’s the first thing to go up. All your other services go below and you never   really see it. It’s not a lot of the time. Exactly  right. So it does get forgotten a lot of the time.

Generally, it will be another service. someone has  to or a grill or some dust has fallen on somebody

in a grill in a room and they’ll look and go well  that’s actually ventilation follow it through and   go wow you know we’ve not had this looked at  for years so unfortunately it’s not as it’s

not as sort of um it’s not as prioritized as  I think it should be and I assume that you’ve

got to be meeting those guidelines to for your  insurance you know we talked about fire risk yes

the kitchen specifically a lot of kitchen a lot  of insurers won’t uh insure you if your kitchen

extract system is not cleaned at least yearly but  that can depend on um the type of food you cook

the premises and how busy you are but again you  know those levels are risk assessed to an agreed,

you know, six monthly or quarterly. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of insurers,   they won’t they won’t touch you if you if  you don’t have evidence that you comply

with the T.R. in Greece. Yeah, I presume they  split that out because obviously it’s such,

I mean, as we saw from that photo,  I guess it’s such a common problem.   And obviously there’s so many restaurants and  cooking facilities. It’s sort of such a sort

of important special case. I presume that’s  why they split it out. Yeah, so I think it’s   just a bit of simplicity for everybody that  sort of works with it as well. It used to be

a very large document that covered both. Having them in two separate ones makes it

more manageable. but and obviously they don’t  both sections don’t always apply for if you

haven’t got any cookies you don’t want to be going  through not relevant or relevant or whatever yeah   exactly I think it’s trying to make it easier  to consume for the person that’s reading it

Who’d have thought some paperwork that’s actually  made simpler? That’s brilliant. So we’ve talked a   little bit there, Chris, about we’ve certainly  we’ve even seen there about the grease build up

in that special case of kitchens. We’ve touched  on this, but could you give us a little bit more,

why is it important to clean duck work?  And I’m thinking, you mentioned a little   bit about biological contaminants and so on. What are some of the health risks and why is

that important? And again, I’ve got a couple  of other pictures there if you want to refer   to those. Yeah, so again, like myself, I suffer  quite heavily from hay fever. I also have asthma,

and asthma is another big one as well, because  you need that dust removing from your workspace,

carpets, people in and out, traipsing in  and out from outdoors. everything like that,

if your ventilation is not clean or it’s not  adequate, you’re not removing that. And whether

that’s bringing in fresh air or taking out  the bad air, if your system’s under pressure

because it’s not been cleaned or your filters  are dirty and it’s not providing that suction,   you’re just keeping the dust within the room  and you’re not getting those air changes.

You know, and things like that. Yeah. Asthma.  It could be that back in your car that when you   go past the smelly thing that you press like  to circulate in the room, it’s kind of like

doing that all the time. Depends where I am. We’re a bit of the countryside here. When the

farmers get out there and sort the fields out,  it can be a bit whiffy. But if you’re working   in busy sort of built up areas or areas like  London, especially, that air that you bring in,

it’s not the cleanest. Yeah, exactly right.  So ensuring that you’ve got sufficient

ventilation to your area really is key. Sorry, sorry, go on. No, no, no,

it’s okay. It’s fine. It’s fine. Now, I’ve  got a note here about sick building syndrome,   and I’ve heard of that, but in the context  of this, what is sick building syndrome?

So sick building syndrome, if you create an  environment that is sort of out there generating

unsafe working conditions, there’s every chance  that that building itself is providing you with

the sickness. That’s where you’re getting it  from. That’s where your staff are getting it   from, et cetera. You see high levels of  absences, sometimes even worse issues,

long-term leave, everything like that. So  you need to ensure that the place, like

all of us, we spend most of our time at work. In the office, you spend all your time there. And

if you’re in a place there that’s not as healthy  as it could be for you, know having your workplace

the place it generates out your illnesses is not  ideal it’s not ideal for the people working and   it’s not ideal for the employer either yeah no I  can imagine and yeah once it starts to when nobody

wants to work in a place like that right do they  just like it’s just a bit grim or whatever and no   exactly no employer wants to have the kind of  impact on absence and so on um Just thinking,

you mentioned about insurers won’t even insure  catering facilities if they don’t clean once a

year. So, you know, you talk about TR-Nineteen,  what does that specify in terms of how often,

you know, never mind the insurance, but from a  sort of legal or at least a guideline perspective,   how often should commercial ventilation systems  be cleaned? And is there, does it matter what

type of premises it is and so on? yeah so  commercial ventilation if we are we putting

the kitchens aside for this discussion so we put  them aside yeah so maybe we’re the winner with

that so I’m not sure again by the way just a  little reminder we haven’t had any questions

yet so you’re a little bit shyer audience that  we had last time with loads of questions last   time this time we haven’t any questions so feel  free to be thinking about your questions feel

free to post them while we’re uh we’re talking  so Chris sorry go over to you yeah maybe think   of this with or without the kitchens So we  look at them, we look at them separately. And

I say again, it goes back to TR-Nineteen  splitting into two different sections.   Your kitchen extract system. Yes, there’s  an idea to have it done at least annually,

but it needs to be looked at to more of a site  specific of how you use it. If you are constantly

running and you’re constantly using your fryer  and you cook generally fat foods at the premises,

you would probably be looking at it twice a year  or sometimes even quarterly. The best thing to   that, and TR-Nineteen, this applies for both,  it provides you with methods um and sort of

guidelines and acceptance levels to determine  and carry out that risk assessment to give you

the best idea of how and when how frequently your  system should be looked at right so it’s a risk I

was wondering whether it was going to come down  at this ultimately you’ve got to apply some   common sense to a risk assessment so I guess  if you’re an establishment offering all day

breakfast you’re going to be cleaning a little bit  more than if you’re a you’re catering for lunches

and you maybe provide salads. Exactly, yeah. And that’s why it’s so important that they are

risk assessed. It’s very easy to look at it  and go, I’ve looked at it and it says I need   to be getting this done once a year. But if your  ventilation looks like some of the photos we’ve

seen after four months it needs to be like that  you know and it applies the same for standard   ventilation as well generally your office and  workspaces they should be looked at annually

but obviously there’s so many different types of  environments where ventilation is, your hospitals,

lab areas, production facilities. Again, depending  on how they’re used, the risk level and the usage

level, it all sort of comes together to give  you an idea of how it’s best for you to manage   that. So that’s quite a helpful example. So you mentioned about hospital. We got a

hospital one. So I guess there’s two sides to  that, isn’t there? There’s the risk and the

likelihood of it happening. So you could have a  hospital that’s in a really clean environment,

or you could have a kind of normal office  block that’s in a really dirty environment.   You know, it’s next to a busy main road.  So although the consequences, perhaps you

haven’t necessarily got vulnerable  people, you’ve still got, you know,   the input is still pretty bad. So there’s kind  of two sides to that equation, I guess. Yeah,

no, no, definitely. I mean, looking at the  example here, this is a hospital ward itself.

Now, although it was the extract that work, you  can clearly see that from the photo on the left,   how much it has been taking out of the room.  Yeah, the ward area itself in general. And now,

you know, it is clearly there’s clearly a build  up there. So there’s a couple of things really

that that that sort of points back to the fresh  air that’s going in there. Is it sufficient?

Is that clean air sufficient enough? Is it going  in dirty potentially, which is obviously speeding

up the process of the contamination? And then  ultimately, it’s the fact that all those all   that in there is nasty is one way or another.  And, you know, they’re effectively, you know,

we’ve all been in hospitals and whatnot.  If you look up, the ventilation grill will   probably be sort of above somebody in a bed. And having that build up just above their head,

you know, it’s not very nice. Well,  I’ve got a personal story on that,   actually. My… second daughter ended up  in NICU. And they said, Oh, she’s getting

really cold. And they put her, you know, under  the air vents, of course, she’s getting cold.

So literally, the air is blowing straight down  on her. So if that looks like that, you know,

I’m thinking great, you know, that is not what  you want. You know, like, no two day old baby,

right? You know, no exactly and I say the main  issue where you get things like this is when

you’re using the ventilation for something else  so in this the industry that we’re in as well

we your fire your fire safe works would be um  things called fire dampers I won’t move into

them too much because it’s a little bit off from  what we do but fire dampers are located within   the ventilation network when you drop that damper  down it it’s very loud and it can be uh quite a

shock you drop some of those anywhere near this  And there’s every good chance. And it happens.

It’s when we get, you know, we get called in  for this reason. They’ll drop a damper and   the ventilation grill that’s sort of,  you know, two, three meters away just

coughs out dust. And it’s just where all  this buildup has been knocked out. Lovely,

lovely. So I guess that’s quite interesting. So what you were saying about the in and the out,

I guess, once you’ve had a clean both on the in  and the out, then you get kind of a baseline,

which you know, you may not have had this  thing for a while, you know, because it’s   been outside. And I guess once you’ve had that  first clean, then you can start to see You know,

like, is it building up? Because we don’t know  here. Look at this. This is not one week.   Is this ten years? Is it never been clean? And so  I guess after you look at it a year, you can see,

well, what’s coming in what’s going out and we  kind of get a sense of you know are we doing the

right things here because you’re if you’re getting  a load of build up on the way in then you know you

might need some more filtration or something like  that to stop even getting into the duck presumably   yeah definitely and you know if you can get if you  can get them in if you can get everything when it

starts out and when your building goes up your  ductwork should look how it looks on the right   And if you are ensuring that you’re inspecting  it yearly or six monthly, you can give yourself

a rough idea of when that contamination  level might hit again, whether that’s two,   three, four years and so on. Right. Yeah. That’s, you know, a lot of these systems,

they are research. They can be research units as  well. So effectively, all that means is that the

bad air is the extract air is coming in. It’s  being cleaned and then they’ll use a bit of   it. or they’ll use, you know, a bit of it with  the fresh intake and then they’ll provide it

back round. If that’s coming in dirty and your  filter is under a lot of pressure or it’s not in

a suitable condition, you’re effectively putting  some of that bad air back into the system.

Yeah, no, it makes sense. Yeah,  the sort of recycle. Yeah, so yeah,

I like that idea that it gives you a chance  to really be more proactive and you can say,   look, we know from experience that in about you  know, we’re going to check in a year’s time,

but probably we’re going to have a  proper clean in two years’ time, say,   something like that. Or do you have to clean it  just to be clear? You have to clean every year.

No, so there is no law that says you have to  clean your ductwork. Right. It’s guidance, and

TRN is seen as the guidance for it. Although it’s  not a law, though, obviously there is, you know,

there’s… we have acts in place to ensure that  you are providing this sort of suitable workspace

for hospitals or just general workplaces. And  it’s sort of down to the landlord or the tenant,

whoever it is, it’s responsibility to look  after this to ensure that it is suitable.

And in TR-Nineteen, you have acceptance  levels. There are different acceptance   levels depending on where you are, what  building you’re in, are you in hospitals,

et cetera. And a part of that is then ensuring  your compliance recording you know these photos

are great once you get a load of those photos it  looks really good if you’re a if you’re a tenant   or you’re a facilities company that’s been looking  after the building you don’t want those photos on

the left and you give back to your client and go  well we’ve looked after your building but this is   what your ventilation looks like you know you’d  much rather hand it over on the right um and you

know for the tenant themselves or the landlord  they are responsible for this And I guess the

bigger the, especially if you’re a landlord with  multiple businesses and so on, this is one of

those things that touches everybody. So it’s kind  of like a single point of failure. So if you get   it wrong once, you’ve affected a lot of different  people as we’re obviously a small business,

open the windows, the risk is much, much lower. But the bigger, the more complex the single source

system, yeah, you’ve got that single point of  failure. No, definitely. And I say, unfortunately,

it can also go back to situations of insurance  or insurance claims investigations. We’ve worked

on… We’ve worked in hospital areas where there’s  been an outbreak and as part of the outbreak,

the investigation has been, you know, have you  been maintaining your ventilation network?   If you say, you know, if they investigate you and  you show them the photo on the left, it doesn’t

look great for yourself. So it’s ensuring that  you’ve covered yourself and you’re obviously   covering the people because unfortunately when  there are bad cases like that, insurance claims

start sort of getting thrown around. You know,  being able to show that you are compliant for

that, it really does help your business. that’s  come up a number of times as we’ve looked at you

know I mentioned at the start we’ve looked a  number of other topics that it isn’t always   just how you know do I am I ticking a legal box  it’s more like well if this gets investigated or

it does lead to you know say there’s a outbreak  of disease or a fire it just doesn’t look very

good if you go well when was it last cleaned oh  it’s never been cleaned you look like well that’s   not going to look great and it just makes even  if that wasn’t the cause, it’s going to be very

hard to prove it wasn’t the cause because you  haven’t done anything about it, so. No, exactly   right. And if we go back to the kitchen extract,  for example, A lot of the buildings out there,

the tenant that’s using the kitchen wouldn’t  necessarily be responsible for the whole system.

There’s potentially that they’re responsible for  some of the system. If some of your system creates   a fire and you burn down the building and put a  load of other companies out of business and you’ve

got no evidence to say you’ve ever cleaned your  kitchen extract up work, it’s… Yeah. And I guess

even that and again, we’ve had this issue as well,  because in multiple occupancy type situations with

a landlord, I guess if I’m the kitchen owner, I’m  probably thinking, well, I’ve got to clean that   hood and that’s going to be on my checklist,  but I don’t feel particularly responsible for

the kind of where that goes next because that’s  part of the building infrastructure. Exactly.

Who is responsible for what? I guess it’s really  important. So then in that sort of situation,   it would be the landlord’s responsibility still  to ensure that the tenants of the building are

still keeping in line and maintaining their  ventilation system. Because ultimately,   if you don’t, it would fall onto the landlord  should there ever be an issue. Absolutely.

Well, we are just over the half hour. So feel  free to ask any questions if you are watching. I’m

looking down our quickfire questions. Do you know  what? We’ve already covered quite a lot of these.   So I’m going to try. We might have taken a few  out. Yes. I was thinking, oh, we’ve just we’ve

just answered that. So we were just saying who’s  responsible for cleaning and lease buildings.   Well, we’ve just kind of. Yeah, it’s kind of  typically the landlord. Right. But. you know

you’ve got to have that clarity and check your  lease we’ve checked we’ve said that in the past   like the one of the actions after this call  is like go and check your lease you know or

if you’re leasing like you know check that at  least you kind of got people to sign um uh one

thing I guess some quick uh tips like how can I  tell like right now other than like a thorough

inspection like what are the telltale signs that  my building’s ventilation system might need a

clean So it could be multiple things. Heat. Heat is a good one. Sometimes you can sort of

walk into a room and there’s a, you know, if you  have a room that’s a lot hotter than another room,

for example, if you, you know, if we’re working  in a, let’s say we’re in a large office block,

heat could be a good sign that the ventilation  is not working correctly. smell, it could be an

odour, sort of a dust odour, at any point, any  moisture gets in that dust, you get that sort of

sludginess, you’ll sort of get a bit of a smell  from that. Just dust itself, if you, you know,

next time you’re out and about, if you look up  and look at an extract grill, you would generally,   and unfortunately in most places, you will see  dust going around the edges there, and sometimes

you can sort of see into it. Everything  like that is sort of a good indicator. the

ventilation itself is not in the best condition.  Yeah, so I’m guessing for that, because my sense

of smell isn’t amazing, I guess find that person  in your office who’s good with wine, right?   Yeah. And that’s the other thing. That’s it. And  then sort of bigger picture, if you are the sort

of facilities company or you are the landlord,  check your fans. Check the filters on the fans.

If they’re so blocked you can’t even see through  them, there’s probably an issue somewhere along   the line. Yeah, yeah. I’m just seeing Richard  O’Brien. I don’t know if you remember the

Crystal Maze. Start the fans, please. You mentioned the sort of mad scientist

going around checking. Sorry. Back  in the room. Come on. Let me just.

We talked about grease potentially causing  fire. Can dust cause? Is that a fire risk? Yeah,

it is. So within your normal ventilation,  generally you will have blade dampers.

There could be a volume control damper,  which is there to adjust the volume going   in or out. And also fire dampers, like we were  speaking before. But within those, they are

assets within the ductwork. And anytime you get  something within the ductwork, it’s the perfect   surface for dust to build up on. And with large  sort of quantities of dust with the buildup,

dust itself, a slight spark, anything  like that will cause it to ignite.

Now, it may not generally start a fire, but if  you had a whole sort of ductwork system on your

left there, one sort of spark within that,  you know, you definitely, you know, there’s

a very good chance that you will have an issue  with a fire. But yeah, dust definitely, it is

flammable. Right. So I guess it’s similar. I know  you have to be very careful in things like grain

silos because you can get this kind of potent  mix of fuels surrounded by lots of air, right?

Yeah. So if you’ve ever seen one of those  fall over, sometimes the impact of it sort of   falling over and hitting things will cause the  grain to ignite. And it can be the same within

ductwork. Should you be using something in  there that, you know, obviously this ductwork   is stainless steel. or galvanized steel and  any sort of surface to surface contact that

could potentially ignite a spark. And you  wouldn’t want to fancy being in there when

you’re igniting all that dust on your left there. It’s surprising how dust, you wouldn’t think dust,

but dust explosions can be quite. I don’t want  to be too dramatic. Is that something that does

happen or is that quite rare? Yeah, I mean, it’s  a fairly rare, but I think any good officer,

when we go around to these areas  and we say, look, there’s a high   buildup of dust in there. We need to clean it. They will say there is a good chance that that

will ignite. And we’ll say, yeah, you’re right.  The cleaning methods for that would be using

nylon brush tips. And if they go around too  fast, and at such a high velocity, there’s every

chance that you will ignite that. So yeah, dust  is becoming a big thing now on building sites.

I don’t know if you’re not allowed to sweep  anymore. can’t sweep your dust it’s got to be

hoovered up now because you sweep that dust around  and you just you know you’re bringing it into the   air everything like that if you’re cutting slabs  you know you have to spray it with water to reduce

the dust coming out so dust is a massive issue  dust is a massive issue not just for the fire   risk but just in general a lot of people now are  looking at it as being a quite a concern um back

in the day you would probably clean this ductwork  here and you wouldn’t even wear a mask now there’s   every chance you’ll have to wear filtered masks  over the head pressurized hoods everything like

that because it’s really becoming a thing now  yeah and I guess at this time of year as well I

guess is there do you see that uh with things like  vermin or birds you know that you’ve got a nicer

warm uh sort of chimney you know is that that’s  becoming a problem with nests or yeah definitely

I have a real horror story which I didn’t actually  send you the photo from because we went to have a

look at a ventilation system once upon a time  and a bird had actually got in through the top

and it got down to the bottom trying to get out  and it was it was effectively about a meter away   from the cooking area at the time and it had  just been up there with a sort of warm air so

it’s not very pleasant and yes it’s a massive  issue if you go up onto sort of rooftop plant   rooms pigeons everywhere. And as much as building  owners It doesn’t always work. They always find a

way in. And if they get in through your fresh air  intakes, it’s feathers, it’s leaves, it’s sticks,

anything like that on your fresh air intake.  That’s why it’s so important to ensure that   your filters are proper, working properly. I know they’re in the first place, really,

because any nasties coming in from outside is  the one bit that you can’t really control too   much. But that’s why you need to ensure that  your filters are there. Yeah. And by the way,

if that’s an issue for anyone and you know,  if you’ve got ventilation, it sounds like it   probably should be, as I said, at the start, go  and check out the very first one of these we did,

which was on pest control and those kind of issues  came up a lot. So check that video out as well.

Yeah. So just jumping onto the kitchen, the  smell of that grease, it’s the perfect thing to,

to sort of entice rats. Unfortunately, a lot of  the time, if you, you know, if you look at the

duct work where you go up to the duct work, And  there are, you know, there is the rat droppings   and all sorts around the ceiling tiles because  they’re just drawn to the smell. Yeah. Yeah.

And I guess the thing that made me think of  that actually is I’ve just been clearing out our

workshop and there are bats sometimes in the  area and there’s bat droppings and so on. I   was looking up about that and saying, well, if  you’re going to clean that up, you’ve got to,

be wearing really good, it’s quite serious. And  when you start adding vermin droppings and this

sort of thing, it’s really quite a potential  health issue. Yeah. So a lot of companies,   even if the company is going to look at your  kitchenette, if they go above the ceiling tiles

and they see rat droppings, they’ll walk away.  because they’re not trained to deal with it.   So you’d have to get a specialist in to get them  removed. And ultimately, on top of all of that,

what we all look at here really is the cost, the  cost of all of this. I can tell you from working

in the industry, the cost to have somebody survey  your ventilation network to the cost of having   somebody clean it, is massive so yeah you know to  spend a small amount to have someone to look at it

every six months or so then to have somebody come  at the end of ten years and give you a bill to   clean it is um it’s quite it’s a classic stitch in  time thing as with so many of these issues right

it’s better to have a quick look and you know  you can solve it much more easily than having to   kind of retro Massively. Yeah, massively. So the  amount of times we’ve gone to customers and said,

you’re looking at about this much and they can’t  believe that it’s going to cost them that much.   And if it was installed correctly in the first  place and it was maintained, it wouldn’t be

an issue. But it’s out of sight, out of mind,  unfortunately, until it becomes a problem. Yeah, I

can imagine. So two more quick questions, I think.  So these are just really short answers for these.

So how often should I, this is a  bit of a piece of string question,   but how often should I change my filters in my  ventilation? Again, it depends. It depends what

system you’re looking at. It depends what filters  you have in place. It depends where you are.   It depends what the areas are serving. If it’s  a very sensitive area, if it’s lab areas, they

probably need looking at every sort of three  to six months. um if you’re a general sort of

commercial building you could be looking at twelve  months hospitals again htm is a different guidance

for hospitals as well it all depends um that that  information is available htm is available ti-I

does provide some assistance um but ultimately  unless you’re sort of working in those sensitive

areas they need to be risk assessed yeah Okay,  no, thank you. That’s great. And then finally, how

can I stay up to date with all of these compliance  requirements? So there’s loads of different ways.

Visa send out a lot of information on ventilation.  TR-Nineteen, the HSE, they’ve always like to keep

people updated with ventilation. Your  contractor, if you have a contractor,   whether you have a ventilation contractor or you  use a cleaning company or a maintenance company.

um they’re always good to go and ultimately um  you know you Kevin you can pass me the money in

the brown bag for this one but attending webinars  um like this are great because um exactly right

that’s it and so not a lot of people know about  it And, you know, you come along to one of these

and you sort of, you know, it just takes that one  time. You know, you’ll look next time. Next time   you’re out and about, you’ll look at that work. All I do is look at that work when I go out now.

It’s really sad. I’ll say to my wife, clean  that. We’ve been to that. We’ve done that one.   You know what I mean? So you’ll notice it.  It’s like your reticular activating system. So,

in other words, you notice. Once you see the  program of your brain, you’ll see it everywhere.   So we’ve ruined you for going to that. Yeah,  the amount of times I look at it and go,

you can’t clean that. It’s not accessible. You  know, it’s really bad. yeah she’s like just Chris

just don’t guess what’s going on in the kitchen  I just want to eat my meal you know I’ll tell you   that’s that that is the other thing as well I’ve  been in some kitchens and I wouldn’t recommend

them I can imagine I can imagine well Chris look  that has been super helpful we haven’t had any

questions actually this is a quiet audience uh but  I hope you found it uh really helpful um thank you

so much uh for watching and stay tuned for our  next uh webinar uh next quarter and Chris thank

you for being a good sport uh and we finished  bang on time so there are no more questions um

so I won’t stick around and unanswer them but  um it’s your last chance any quick questions

do type them in uh we’d love your feedback as  well um if you know let us know uh if there’s

any more topics you’d like us to cover uh or you  thought we could do uh you know either any nice   comments or things we could do better for next  time do let us know we do listen to your feedback

and as I say check out those videos online and  thank you all for watching thank you very much