Maintenance Matters: Protecting Your Home's Mechanical Systems

Neglect is the silent killer of home mechanical systems. Michael Church and Stephen Malpass dive deep into a shocking discovery at a beach house where a never-maintained dehumidifier had developed what professionals call "zooglea" - a foul-smelling bacterial growth that resembles "the jelly from a Costco chicken bag, but four times nastier."

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Crawl Space Ninja of Wilmington, NC

Video mentioned - https://youtu.be/MOpv3NKwFW0

This conversation reveals the critical distinction many homeowners miss: the difference between warranty coverage and maintenance requirements. As Stephen explains, "They get the warranty and the maintenance programs kind of mixed up. They kind of just think because there's a warranty I'm supposed to come out and constantly do this for them." This misunderstanding leads to premature equipment failure that warranty won't cover - just as car manufacturers won't replace an engine that never received oil changes.

What makes this particularly dangerous is how these systems often fail. When condensate pumps clog or stop working, dehumidifiers continue running while water overflows, potentially causing significant damage. In crawl spaces where homeowners rarely venture, these problems can persist undetected for months. The experts recommend twice-yearly professional maintenance not just to service equipment but to comprehensively inspect the entire crawl space environment for developing issues.

The most compelling reason to maintain these systems? Longevity and reliability. Well-maintained equipment can last twice as long as neglected systems - potentially extending from 5 years to 10+ years. Many companies, including Crawl Space Ninja, offer maintenance programs that include extended warranty coverage beyond the manufacturer's warranty, providing both professional care and financial protection.

Don't fall into the "set it and forget it" trap. Whether you're comfortable doing maintenance yourself or prefer professional service, regular attention to your home's mechanical systems is an investment that pays dividends through extended equipment life and prevention of costly water damage. Reach out to learn more about protecting your home's foundation and mechanical systems.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Shocking Neglected Beach House Dehu
• 3:32 Warranty vs Maintenance Confusion
• 5:50 Extending Equipment Life Through Maintenance
• 9:22 Understanding Zuglia and Its Dangers
• 12:18 Proper Maintenance Techniques and Frequency

Transcript

Michael Church: 0:00

I did a video a long time ago where we found something similar and I actually took the condensate pump and walked around the office and let the women smell it in the office and was getting their reaction, and it not only looks gross but it stinks too. I mean, it's pretty nasty stuff.

Steven Malpass: 0:16

Yeah, the fellow that I guess is doing the property management. When I opened it up, his face was right there and he went ooh, he goes. Is that why it's not working? Exactly my no. I said no maintenance. Wow.

Michael Church: 0:30

I said warranties are great, but if you don't do maintenance, they void your warranties so today I have steven malpest with me from wilmington, north carolina, and he's with crawl space. Ninja, wilmington and steven, you and I are going to go over the importance of maintenancing the equipment. All right. So whether you do basement waterproofing, crawl space encapsulation, you typically have mechanical devices such as sump pumps and dehumidifiers, and Stephen has a story to tell us about one of the non-maintenanced dehus that he came across. So share that with us today, steve.

Steven Malpass: 1:03

Yes, sir, I was called out and they had a problem with their condensate pump dripping. And, believe it or not, this was in a garage at the beach. No one had ever touched it and it had some of the worst zooglia and smell that I've ever seen on a condensate pump and I would say it was probably three years old. It had never been touched. I think I've sent you a picture of it. I hope you can use this in the video.

Steven Malpass: 1:33

If you don't do maintenances on them, they're going to fail. And when they fail because of no maintenances, you know warranty is going to be voided. It's basically kind of same thing with your car. You get a brand new car, you drive it off the lot and you drive it for 50,000 miles and you don't change the oil and you expect the dealership to give you a new one. Well, no, they're going to avoid it and you're going to have to. You know, kind of like that. I guess you could say but yeah, it was an extraordinary find and the customer was in shock. That stuff like that happens when you don't do maintenances. So we fixed him up and got him a new one on and everything's good to go now and he is part of the maintenance agreements now.

Michael Church: 2:15

So let's talk about that just for a second, because you mentioned this is in a beach house, in a garage on a beach house. I assume that. I assume the beach houses in that area are built up on a stilt right Due to the shore and everything. Obviously the homeowner goes down in that garage. Maintenance is important, no matter where the dehumidifier is located, but for all the crawl spaces that you guys do there, most homeowners don't go in those crawl spaces, so you just can't assume you're going to catch a problem. When it happened, tell us what triggered him to call you, or the homeowner to call you. That got, this was a leak. What exactly caused them to call you?

Steven Malpass: 2:52

Well, basically the condensate pump wore out and the dehu was running. So the dehu is still pumping water into the pump and it's just pouring out, so they have a big wet spot up under on in their garage. When they called, they unplugged it and I went out like a day, two days later and we changed it out. We got it running again and he saw the importance of what his filter looked like. Actually, they've got two of them, one in each garage. They decided to get everything maintenanced and they got on our plan.

Steven Malpass: 3:21

A lot of people don't have time to pay attention to those things. Believe it or not, that's a garage. You can stand right there and do it yourself. Of course, you know 99% of our stuff is under crawl spaces. Here in Wilmington A lot of people can't physically get under crawl spaces, but I just found it that how you could just let something like that happen and not assume that it was just going to fix itself. I think you had a video one time where you said consumers have the mentality of set it and leave it. A couple years ago I think you had it. That's always stuck with me and they do. They forget about it and the few that call us and stay on our maintenance programs. Everything is running fine with them.

Steven Malpass: 4:03

I had a lady up in New Bern. I've been with us for about three years. She had an HVAC company go under to do some HVAC work for her and said her DEHE wasn't working, couldn't tell you how long it wasn't working. She hadn't been on a maintenance program in two years and she had the F4 on her E70, which I call the circle of death. Got that fixed for her. But because she let the maintenance elapse and she wasn't a person that would go under their crawl space, she had no idea. I've discovered over the last couple months a lot of people here in the area and I'm not sure it's all over. They get the warranty and the maintenance programs kind of mixed up. They kind of just think because there's a warranty I'm supposed to come out and constantly do this for them and I'm having to educate previous customers and the new existing customers the effect of not doing maintenance on their mechanical devices.

Steven Malpass: 4:58

What can happen. That's a difference of preserving the life of a dehu, a condensate pump, or not. If you don't take care of it it's not going to last the five years. If you maintain it could last, you know, six, seven, eight, nine years down the way. It just depends on the person themselves how they value the investment they did under the crawl space and trying to get people to understand. It's part of your home. It's the foundation of your home. You've invested money into it. Let's keep it running, you know. Just keep that house healthy.

Michael Church: 5:29

Well, I want to talk about something you mentioned. You know people hear about a dehumidifier having a warranty, right? I like to compare the dehumidifier a lot to the HVAC system. Most people are familiar with the central heating and air system. So the HVAC system, whether it comes from train or whoever you buy it from, it also has a warranty. All right, that doesn't mean maintenance is included. Okay, it's up to the individual or the company that installed it to do the maintenance. And that's similar to a dehumidifier.

Michael Church: 6:00

Just because it has a warranty doesn't mean maintenance is included. Just like with your vehicle, just like you said, you can have a three-year bumper-to-bumper warranty and some dealerships will include the warranty when you buy the vehicle. But I guarantee you they're charging you for that maintenance. It's just built into the price, right? What we have to realize as consumers, and I'm just as guilty as letting time go by and forget as anybody else. So I go ahead and sign up for HVAC maintenance. I do it twice a year to make sure that the condensate pump, because the morons that installed my HVAC system put it in my attic. If, for some reason, my HVAC system leaks, I got a big problem that I got to deal with. I got drywall to replace, insulation to replace and all that. So for me it's even more top of mind. But even my dehumidifier in my garage I have Crawl Space Ninja, believe it or not, come out and maintenance my dehumidifier twice a year.

Michael Church: 7:02

You just bring up a good point. It's not a set it and forget it kind of program and the maintenance is not included. But talk about the maintenance for just a second. Whenever someone buys that product from you and has it installed and they sign up on your maintenance program, they're getting more than just the maintenance. Can you talk about the warranty that's included with that maintenance as well?

Steven Malpass: 7:23

Right. Well, like I said, all the mechanical devices we get have five years. When they stay with our maintenance agreement and they're with us over the 10 years, I mean the five years they can still. If something happens to that dehu, we can replace it. Like a lot of times, like I said, people think I don't want to have to go out to a customer's house and go hey, you know, it's five years. One day your dehu's dead, we got to sell you a new one. What I'm trying to work with is preserving the life expectancy of these mechanical devices. If I can come out twice a year, you know, maybe we can get the longevity to 10 years on these things.

Michael Church: 8:00

So you all include warranty in addition to the manufacturer's warranty with people on your maintenance program. We here in Knoxville call it a lifetime warranty when you're on our maintenance program. Is that similar to what you?

Steven Malpass: 8:10

all offer? Yes, exactly, if you stay on it, if you, you know, if you stay on it, each year renew, and, like I said, it could be 10 years well, the manufacturer warranty is gone. But if that dehu decides just to stop, you know, in year nine and you're on the maintenance program, well, guess what? We come in and put a new one in there for you. There you go and you get a new five-year warranty on your new d and it just the process keeps going over and over. There's a lot of other things that go on in the crawl space other than just your dehumidifier, your condensate pump, your sump pump or your fan. I mean, that gives me access to check your moisture readings, make sure that our product is doing what it's supposed to do Well and you bring up a good point about a water management system.

Michael Church: 8:51

It's not just the dehumidifier that requires maintenance. A sump pump also requires maintenance. It builds up bacteria, which is Zugli. That's what Zugli is. I know Steven keeps mentioning Zugli. It's a type of bacteria that builds up in water and for some reason we find it a lot in our industry and in the HVAC industry as well. It's usually what clogs up the condensate lines and it almost looks like snot and I don't know. I think it smells worse than snot.

Steven Malpass: 9:22

I've had people ask me what is it, and I try to give them a good example. If I don't have my phone on me, I always use the go to Costco food line. Get a roast chicken and you know the juice in the bag.

Michael Church: 9:40

And then when you set it in the refrigerator, refrigerator you bring it back and it's that jelly I said just imagine that four times nastier.

Steven Malpass: 9:44

Oh, that's a great analogy.

Michael Church: 9:45

Yeah, it's that same, the best way I can do it with them until I actually get one.

Steven Malpass: 9:46

So now I got a really good picture to give people now yeah, that's what zuglia.

Steven Malpass: 9:51

What can zuglia do to your mechanical devices? It can absolutely kill them, cause a lot of massive problems. So because if one device stops working and one's still working well, next thing you know you've got this small patch of water that keeps growing and, yeah, you don't go in your crawl space, you don't have crawl space ninja coming out. You just hope that one day that you have someone else going to your crawl space and catches it. But it could be a week, a month, you know a year. But then someone catches it and you know the damage has grown.

Michael Church: 10:24

That's right. It's not just you're going in there to maintenance the product. You guys and us were doing a corner to corner inspection of the crawl space. Now this homeowner, like you said, it was in a garage so they were probably getting in their vehicle every day. The dehu was there every day so they saw, I would think, when it started leaking immediately. Right, but those of us with crawl spaces, we don't have that option. We don't go down there every day. So, speaking of that, how often do you recommend? You know people do the maintenance. Let's say somebody wants to do it themselves, right, they have crawl space engine install it. How often would a maintenance program be on a dehumidifier?

Steven Malpass: 11:00

Twice a year. Yeah, it's every six months. I've got a few customers that do it and they're like, yeah, I can do that. It's like they didn't understand when they checked their own sump pump I was like you bring your garden hose in here and they were like what? I was like I just put my hand in there and lift it up and I go well, you need to actually let the water push your float up and then you know if it's working. I mean anyone can pull a float up and it'll work. I've had to educate a few people on that.

Steven Malpass: 11:23

When I do my condensate pump, you know I got a little water, a little Cl, clorox. I kind of mix it in and let that pump run the first time and then I pull it apart and then take it out and clean it. Sometimes I have to actually change the drain lines. They've, over time they've just gotten stuff inside of them and the Clorox don't help me get it out and I was like you know what I got extra? I just replace a line. But I kind of I get a little, I get really involved when I do these maintenances. I mean I treat it like the way I treat my home. I'm under crawl space quite a bit, at least 45 minutes before I crawl back out after a maintenance call.

Michael Church: 11:58

That's a good point about the sump pump, because you want to put that sump pump under real-world conditions and you going in and grabbing that float, you know, even if it's a little stuck, you're going to be like, all right, I'll just get it unstuck, it's just naturally what you're going to want to do, but it's nice to have that water activate that pump because that way you know that it's actually working properly.

Steven Malpass: 12:21

In my house. I have a lot of water issues in my yard. So even after a good three, four hour rain I'll notice my sump pump, you know, my discharge off in the distance popping up. So I still go in and check and look at it, because when it doesn't get used for a while it also gets almost a zoogly. Look to it and you want to clean that. Throw a little Clorox in there, fill it up with water, you know, let it run its system.

Michael Church: 12:41

There's another cool product out there that works really well if you don't want to use Clorox. It's called Bacazap and for those of you watching this video I'll put a link to that down below. But it's more like an enzyme-based product that kind of eats away at that zooglia. And then also you can use those hand treat pads. You know that the HVAC folks use. The only problem with those is they only last about a month or two. So you know it does prolong the zooglia but you still want to maintenance it every six months because it just helps you as a maintenance technician. You probably see cleaner condensate pumps when you use the pantry tabs or something similar, because it does kind of hold off the zuglia a little longer. But it's still not a replacement for no maintenance. Right, you still got to get down to maintenance for no maintenance right.

Steven Malpass: 13:31

You still got to get down to maintenance Right and you just can't plop it in there and go. I did my job Because, like you said, it's only going to last for a month and a half, two months maybe. But if you do that and you don't pull it apart and wipe it out and everything and you just keep throwing pan tablets but eventually Zulia is going to override the system and it's going to burn up your condensate pump. That's right, or better yet just not working. Your DEHU, like the customer out in the garage, started pouring out because the DEHU was doing its job. I don't have a problem going out to anybody's house and even if you didn't get your Aprilaire from us, I could sure come out. I can do your maintenance on them.

Michael Church: 14:06

That's a good point too, that we're not just looking to do the maintenance for our own customers. If you happen to, even if you installed the Aprilaire yourself, you could still have us do the maintenance, or if you had a competitor install it, so that's a great point. Yeah well, stephen, I appreciate you getting on this call with me today and listen, I'm going to have you back and we'll do a maintenance video and we'll do a walkthrough on that too. Okay, so I'm Michael Church with Crawl Space Ninja here, with Stephen Malpass of Crawl Space Ninja of Wilmington, and we hope you guys make it a happy and blessed day and we'll see you later.