Homeowners Be Aware

Breathe Better with Key HVAC Insights from Jessica Wicks

• George Siegal • Season 2 • Episode 133

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April 30, 2024

133.  Breathe Better with Key HVAC Insights from Jessica Wicks

Discover essential home maintenance tips that could save you from costly repairs and ensure your living environment remains safe and efficient.  In this informative episode of Homeowners Be Aware, host George Siegal is joined by Jessica Wicks, brand president of Ductz. From the often-overlooked air ducts to the critical dryer vents, Jessica details the potential dangers of neglect and provides vital tips for keeping these systems in check. She also explores the significance of selecting the right filters for HVAC systems and the risks associated with improper maintenance. Throughout the conversation, Jessica offers expert advice on assessing and maintaining home systems, ensuring homeowners can prevent costly repairs and maintain safe, efficient household operations. She also has great advice on how to hire the right person to come out and do work at your house. Tune in to learn how to keep your home’s air clean and systems running smoothly, ensuring a healthier living environment.

 

Here’s how you can follow Jessica:

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DUCTZInternational/

 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-wicks-b69b4425/  

 

X: https://twitter.com/DUCTZint

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George Siegal:

A question for all you homeowners Are you doing the regular maintenance on your AC system, your dryer, vent the ducts that are running the air through your house? Well, my guest today says it's something that you really need to stay on top of. Jessica Wicks is the brand president of Ductz, a franchise based in Ann Arbor, michigan. She'll tell you what will happen if you neglect taking care of these items and what you should look for when you're hiring someone to come out to your house and do the work. I'm George Siegal, and this is Homeowners Be Aware the podcast that teaches you everything you need to know about being a homeowner. Jessica, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jessica Wicks:

Thank you for having me, george, good to be here.

George Siegal:

Yeah, you're in a little community that I love, ann Arbor, michigan. Such a beautiful place. I appreciate you taking the time Now. We're talking about ducts today and also cleaning a lot of things around the house that people might take for granted and not do so as homeowners as part of our regular maintenance. How much should we really be thinking about this stuff?

Jessica Wicks:

Well, ducts. Core services obviously include duct cleaning, also includes HVAC cleaning, restoration, so there's a lot more to your heating and cooling system, of course. Just you know, aside from the duct work, we also clean dryer vents. We clean the condensing units so the coils on your condensing unit outside and we clean exhausts so huge commercial exhausts down to your bath exhaust, and so all of these items need to be maintained a lot of times because they're out of sight, they're out of mind and they become part of deferred maintenance, which then becomes a problem down the road.

George Siegal:

Oh, absolutely. I think most homeowners don't think about those things until they have to think about them, until there's some kind of problem pops up. So how much can you be ahead of the curve by doing regular maintenance and staying out in front of all these things?

Jessica Wicks:

Well, we'll speak first to your HVAC unit and system. So your HVAC system. Obviously you should be changing your filters, and everyone knows that. Do they? No, they don't, no, they don't. But what's really cool now is you can get on filter programs and you can even just order your filter to arrive every month, every quarter, whatever it is, as a reminder to change your furnace filter, your air handler filter, depending on where you are in the country.

Jessica Wicks:

So that's, honest to goodness, the one biggest maintenance problem that we see every day. The second one is failure to clean and maintain your dryer vent. So your clothes dryer any typical family is doing five to seven loads a week. You, of course, clean the lint trap with every load, but still things get past there. You know how many times have we washed on accident, you know, kleenexes or a paper towel or something like that. It gets past there and it gets clogged and clogs the dryer vent. When you get to a certain point of contamination inside of that dryer exhaust, you now have a potential for a fire. So you don't want that to happen. Most newer dryers will cycle off when they get too hot. So if you ever notice that your dryer is hot to the touch on the outside. Your clothes come out very, very hot, like you're unable to handle them. There's a smell, a hot smell, in your dryer. All of these different things are signs that you should have your dryer vent cleaned, and you should have it cleaned annually, to be honest.

George Siegal:

Now I would encourage people to Google video of that, because if you've ever seen one of those vents blown out, the amount of things that come out of there is pretty overwhelming. But we don't really think about it because you go ah, it's working, so I'm not really worried about it.

Jessica Wicks:

Right, right. No, that's exactly it. When that's cleaned, oftentimes we'll remove at least a five-gallon bucket for a residential dryer, but commercial dryers I mean it's it's huge containment that we have to do for for all that debris removed from a commercial dryer.

George Siegal:

Now I want to go back to the air filters, because I had an AC guy tell me one time and I think they told me this in in Home Depot, although I take anything they tell me there with with a grain of salt is when you put your air conditioning vent in or the filter, sometimes people think, well, I'll get the really hypoallergenic one that has the highest rating, and I had an AC guy tell me that's not good because it prevents airflow from going through and actually cooling your house efficiently. So what's the right answer there?

Jessica Wicks:

So the right answer is to use the filter that your system was designed to use, and you should be asking your HVAC installation company what filter is recommended. For most residential units. Your typical filter is a MERV 8. Sometimes you can push it to a 9. Your typical filter is a MERV 8. Sometimes you can push it to a 9. After COVID they were suggesting a MERV 13, which your heating and cooling guy was spot on when he said when you increase the filtration, you're looking at the blower working too hard, you're looking at a possible cracked heat exchanger, things like that. You're putting too much pressure in the system and it can't push the air as it was intended.

George Siegal:

Well, you know, what I think confuses us homeowners is when, especially if it's new construction, the builder usually sticks a filter in there that probably cost them a penny, that has no filtration whatsoever, and then you're upgrading that yourself. So you assume that they're starting you with the right thing. But you really can't assume that.

Jessica Wicks:

No, you can't. You should always ask, or your system always comes with a handbook and a user handbook, so you should look there first, because you don't want to put your house and put your family in danger by increasing the filtration when you think that you're doing what's best for your home Could actually be posing a threat.

George Siegal:

Okay Now when I look up duct cleaning because I've had that looked at and looked into for my house, because we get a lot of dust in here and I was told there's good things and bad things about doing it, that if you don't do it right you can really screw it up. You can tear the the ducts that are running through the house. I mean, what is the? How can you assess whether that's something you need and will even benefit from?

Jessica Wicks:

You should always have an assessment, so an estimate done, where your company that you're hiring is actually looking inside the unit. It's looking inside the air handler and they're looking inside the ductwork too. So they should be taking pictures for you and they'll be able to assess do you really need this or not? And sometimes you don't, and that's fine, and ducts technicians are trained to recognize when it needs to be done. All of our jobs come with before and after pictures, so ensuring that the customer knows that this was done and done well.

Jessica Wicks:

Your duct cleaning should be more than just your air ducts. It should also include your registers. It should include your blower, your coil, your drain pan. The entire unit needs to be cleaned, not just the air ducts, because as soon as you re-engage that system and turn it back on, you've just recontaminated the whole system if you haven't cleaned the entire thing. So in some cases where there's been a system that's been nicely maintained, the house is clean. There are no environmental issues as far as like uh, high traffic volume, living on a dirt road, lots of pollen, anything like that. Uh, some. In some cases, a residential home just doesn't require as many cleanings as one like mine, where I have a golden retriever, and so if you have a golden retriever, you should probably get your dogs cleaned.

George Siegal:

Well, we have a Roomba, and if we run that every day, we have two dogs it gets full every day, which lets me know there's just an incredible amount of dust, and so what are the signs that people could look for where they could go? All right, this is something I need to look into because something's not working efficiently here.

Jessica Wicks:

Right, right, the biggest thing is to look at your returns, wherever your returns are. So you have a supply which is supplying your conditioned air, heated or cooled air, and then you have a return. So in most cases your returns are higher up and older homes your return could be on the floor. So a floor return is always very, very telling of what is being sucked back into the system. So whatever you're seeing at the return register is what your air ducts are going to look like.

George Siegal:

So, like a lot of ours, I'm looking up at one right now. There's a lot of dust on the return. What does that mean?

Jessica Wicks:

Yeah, that's an indicator. You could probably use a good duct cleaning. But you're right, if someone comes in and they're just using a brush system with just the canister and they don't have a negative air machine and they're not using compressed air and agitation tools, they're probably doing they're doing more harm than good to your system.

George Siegal:

How would you know if they tore one of them? I mean because they're all those. They look like aluminum foil vents. If you look up in the attic it looks like something that would tear very easily.

Jessica Wicks:

Flex duct does tear easily. There are special brushes and special air whips for just cleaning flex duct, and so you do have to be very careful and make sure that your contractor is using the appropriate tools for the job. Just like any job, there are certain tools for certain surfaces, and the same is true for air ducts.

George Siegal:

Now sometimes it's frustrating when you call out a professional and you watch what they do. And it's actually something pretty simple. Like we have a Sub-Zero I think it's a Viking or Sub-Zero refrigerator and so we're supposed to get the coils cleaned every they say every six months to a year. So the guy pulls open the vent, goes in there with a little broom vac, cleans it out. $200 later he's done. Took him about 10 minutes. So it looks like that's something I felt comfortable tackling myself. I could go in there and clean those ducts, the ones that are up and running through the entire house. Not so comfortable with that.

Jessica Wicks:

Right, it's not a do-it-yourself job, absolutely not.

George Siegal:

Yeah, but some of them are. I mean, if you know you can actually do something. Coils on a refrigerator, I mean they do say to shut it off so you don't electrocute yourself. There are certain things that I think homeowners should be less likely to dive into than others. Like I don't think unless you really know what you're doing, I don't think anybody should mess with electrical. But if it's a cleaning thing sometimes that's based on we're too lazy we probably won't be as thorough as you. You have people that are trained to know exactly what to do. I mean, you know there's no getting around. It's better if a professional does some things, but there's some stuff we can do ourselves.

Jessica Wicks:

Absolutely. We get hundreds of calls each year that they bought a kit at one of the box stores for 40 bucks and they were using the, the rods and the brush to clean their system and it. It works really well if you're doing it well. Um, if you reverse the drill because it attaches your drill, if you reverse the drill cause it attaches your drill. If you reverse the drill, all of the all of the, the actual rods come apart. So we get calls to come and retrieve, uh, actual rods and brushes. Uh, we get several of those calls each year. Um, read the instructions, never reverse the drill.

Jessica Wicks:

And it's always good to use compressed air of some sort. We have special tools to actually reverse the air back toward you so you can pull the debris toward you rather than pushing it back into the dryer. If you have a flex hose from your dryer vent or as your dryer vent, you can just, to be honest, you can go and pull that off and just replace it, replace it with a new one, get a new clamp, new foil tape, a new transition outside. You could certainly want to. You know, if you're able, you could tackle that yourself, but you're much better off to just call someone who knows exactly what they're doing and exactly what your needs are.

George Siegal:

Now, maybe you already do this, but if not, I'm giving you a great idea you should really have two types of pricing One for calling us the first time, and the second one is calling us to fix something you tried to do yourself.

Jessica Wicks:

Yes, yes, you're right, I like this idea, yeah.

George Siegal:

There's a lot of merit to that. It's like, hey, if you're going to really screw something up and make our job more difficult, you're going to pay for for it. I know plumbers who do that. Yeah, no plumbers, that's a. I interviewed a guy in your building who was great Matt O'Rourke. But yeah, some plumbers I they come out there and they're doing something that looks really simple because they have the right tools to do it. But what you don't realize as a homeowner is if you take on a project like that and mess it up especially if it involves water shooting through your house or a toilet backing up or things there's things you can really mess up that then just make the problem worse.

Jessica Wicks:

Right, right, exactly.

George Siegal:

Yeah, no, I try to avoid doing that Now. Women in your profession it was interesting to see that originally there weren't a lot, but now you see that changing. Are there a lot more women that are getting involved in doing what you do?

Jessica Wicks:

Absolutely. It's a great field. It's a great industry. I really enjoy it. But I grew up in this. I worked for my dad's heating and cooling company here in Ann Arbor, michigan, and so with that we're seeing more and more women. It's a great industry because there's a lot of movement, a lot of potential for growth, so you can move into new roles fairly quickly. You can relocate should your family needs to relocate. The heating and cooling industry is booming and we'd like to see that especially.

Jessica Wicks:

We were seeing a pattern about four or five years ago where, similar to electricians and plumbers, the trades were aging out faster than they were being replaced and they're retiring and we didn't have the replacements for those journeymen and HVAC technicians. So it's definitely switched. We're seeing a different mindset for trade schools. Rather than just assuming a new graduate, high school graduate is going to university and to college, trade school is an option and it's an acceptable option and we love to see it. The industry is growing, it pays well, there's a lot of room for growth, a lot of education available and so it's amazing For women, same thing and we were seeing too here just within our company.

Jessica Wicks:

There's definitely been a shift. And just to have other women, kind of you know, beside me and behind me, and it's been incredible. It's been a lot of fun and we all have each other's backs and lots of business coaches, women business coaches. We see that the women are really. They're really capable of juggling a lot, being organized, they're reading through financials very quickly. They also are very empathetic when they're speaking to a franchisee. We coach franchisees after they come through training and on everything from sales to finances to HR, to I need. Where where's my growth at? So when do I add more equipment? When do I add more equipment? When do I add a salesperson or another truck? And just seeing all of those different milestones where we could consider that as a growth point is huge. So we support each other, support one another and it's a great industry to be in.

George Siegal:

Y'all just seem a lot more trustworthy than us guys?

Jessica Wicks:

I don't know about that.

George Siegal:

You're not going to touch that one. Yeah well, you know, I just always feel like somebody's trying to take me, so it's nice to see that that's really changing. And then when you set up franchises for businesses around the country, to me the biggest challenge is those companies finding good people and I know I can speak for where I live in Tampa. There's a lot of knuckleheads that show up at your door when you call different trades. And to me that's the biggest challenge in running a business is the people. If you're good as an organized leader of people, you still got to have good people as an organized leader of people, you still got to have good people, absolutely, absolutely.

Jessica Wicks:

So lots of training, obviously, lots of mentoring across the franchise brands. We see, when we get a really, really good location, who's just kind of hitting all the marks with their technicians and with their sales teams, and we, we go in there and kind of make an example, a shining example, of them and then we share, and we're able to share those, uh, those success stories and what's working with one another. It that's the glorious thing. In my mind, the most glorious thing about being part of a franchise network is that camaraderie, the ability to support one another. Because if you go and start Bob's ducts cleaning, that's great. Well, it's Bob and his technicians. And in a franchise you have the ability to reach out to one another, ask questions, see what's working for others, implement it and try it in your own location. They borrow technicians and trucks and equipment from one another. Locally. We like to ensure that the neighbors play well together, everyone works well together, and so it works out really nicely.

George Siegal:

Yeah, no, I would think so. I would think that if businesses just realize just being honest with the customer, doing what you say you're going to do, showing up on time, proper follow up, just there's so many things that I think get lost because everybody right now automatically thinks they're too good for what they're doing and they should should be the boss, and they don't focus on learning the job and being a good worker first and then working your way up.

Jessica Wicks:

Right, right. I absolutely agree with you.

George Siegal:

A lost art.

Jessica Wicks:

We're constantly speaking to it. We're constantly trying to teach new things, explore new avenues, new vendors, whatever that takes to improve the hiring process, to improve the sales experience, the customer experience. It's an ongoing training, to be honest.

George Siegal:

All right. Well, let's bring this back around then to the homeowner. So what advice do you have for homeowners about how they should focus on the different things that you do and how they should prioritize what should become part of regular maintenance for them?

Jessica Wicks:

recommend homeowners in all cases. We always have our new year's resolution right. You're going to lose weight, I'm going to drink more water, and I really feel it's important to take the home into consideration. What improvement am I going to make this year? What do I need to? What are my goals? We're always concerned with healthy food, healthy water, where things are being sourced. We need to be a little more concerned with healthy air and what we're breathing in keeping the home safe, keeping the air filtered. You know I have conversations with people all the time.

Jessica Wicks:

I live in Michigan. We don't use the air conditioning very often, but when we do it's because we have to right, and you understand, you live in Michigan, so I always keep it kind of cooler or not cooler, but not as cold as some people would. You know wood like 78 and I keep the fan on. That's mostly to filter the air. I'm just trying to get the air moving and it's just for sake of of just that filtering the air and keeping the pollen and dander down. To be honest, I have allergies, my children have allergies, so that's the goal there. But I would just say to just be considerate of all those things Like you were talking about. We maintain the appliances in the kitchen because they're in front of us and we're using them daily. Well, your heating and cooling system is being used well more often than your stove or your oven, so those need to be maintained too. So it just becomes part of your regular frequency of maintenance and cleaning would be my recommendation.

George Siegal:

Yeah, and I think a lot of it's seasonal too and understanding the part of the country that you're in. So, for example, in Florida my air conditioning may be running most of the year, but there's those certain months where it doesn't quite get warm enough or cool enough for heat, and that's where flipping that fan on can really make a difference, because the system's not running if you don't activate it, if it doesn't hit the high or low temperature setting, does it?

Jessica Wicks:

No, it won't. It'll turn off completely.

George Siegal:

So if you want to keep that circulation going, you can just turn your fan on and it'll filter your air and it'll keep it, keep the air circulating in the home, and then the other thing would be no pets or kids and that, and then everything would be perfect.

Jessica Wicks:

And that'd be quiet.

George Siegal:

Oh, what a world that would be. But I don't think it's going to happen.

Jessica Wicks:

Yeah, no luck.

George Siegal:

Jessica, thank you so much for coming on and talking about this. I'll have links in there for people to get in touch with you, but I appreciate your time.

Jessica Wicks:

Thank you so much, George. Thanks for having me.

George Siegal:

Almost everyone I meet has a story about something that has happened to them as a homeowner, and I'd love for you to share yours. There's a contact form in the show notes. Fill it out, tell me your story. You could be a guest on an upcoming podcast. Thank you for listening today. I'll see you next time.

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