Field Controls vice president of sales and marketing Brent Holloway joins Green Builder Media CEO Sara Gutterman to trace the company's 98-year path from combustion dampers to demand-controlled ventilation and air treatment, including the products specified for VISION House Austin.
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Sara Gutterman: Hi, I'm Sarah Gutterman, CEO of Green Builder Media, and I'm here today with Brant Holloway, VP of Sales and marketing from Fuel Controls. Really excited to have this conversation because Fuel Controls has been innovating in air movement and treatment for a long, long time. So can you talk about the guiding mission and priorities of your company, especially with today's focus on IQ, energy efficiency, and health and wellness in homes?
00:00:27:14 - 00:00:50:27
Brent Holloway: Fuel Controls has been around for about 100 years, 98 years, to be precise. And, started, with Mr. Field invented the barometric damper. And that got pulled into code and, we got really good at ventilating bad gases out of the house. And as, the products evolved and codes evolved, our, our company said we're good at getting bad gases out of the house.
00:00:51:02 - 00:01:07:10
Brent Holloway: What do we need to do to bring fresh air back into the house? And that kind of open up a ventilation product line. Then we said, what do we do with the air that's in the house? And that kind of opened up a hair treatment product line. So fuel control is all about moving and treating the air that comes and goes from the house.
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Sara Gutterman: Can you explain how your demand controlled ventilation systems work in practice?
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Brent Holloway: The ventilation is driven by by code and different municipalities and different counties will, will apply different codes. And, and so depending on, where the products are getting installed, we have products that align with, whatever codes are being used. Most new construction is using ventilation products in some capacity. So, so you have the ability to bring fresh air in.
00:01:40:05 - 00:02:07:22
Brent Holloway: You have the ability to push fresh air. And, and you also have the ability to push fresh air and, and exhaust, the, the air that's inside the house back out and, and you use different appliances to do that. So depending on what the codes are using and how they're being applied, we've got a nice, suite of products that can be applied in the most cost effective manner.
00:02:07:24 - 00:02:33:07
Sara Gutterman: Now, I know that we had the privilege of featuring field controls in a recent vision House project. Our vision House Austin. And in fact, Peter Phifer, world renowned sustainable architect, and his team at Bali, Bali Phifer Architecture, insisted he used build controls because they believe, as do we, that you have a just, one of the best, systems in the market available today.
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Sara Gutterman: So can you talk a little bit about the specific products that were used in that project, and then the benefits and the features for the Georgians, the homeowners?
00:02:42:05 - 00:03:05:11
Brent Holloway: Sure. Yeah. We used a couple different products in that house. The first and foremost was, having the pressure damper, as I talked about, our, our product, our company has been around for 98 years, and, that, that barometric damper eventually evolved to a, a fresh air damper. Our our dampers are stainless steel.
00:03:05:13 - 00:03:35:01
Brent Holloway: They're they were designed to be combustion dampers. And if combustion dampers fail, you typically put a combustion damper on a, on a water heater or a boiler, and that's when it's bringing in a natural natural gas or some type of combustible product. And if that, that boiler, or if that damper fails, you have these, carbon monoxide and, you know, bad gases go into the house and, it's, it's not good for the homeowners.
00:03:35:03 - 00:03:56:27
Brent Holloway: They don't feel. And so, because of that, we, we have, our dampers have been tested over 9 million cycles. And, that's actually if you're ventilating, so basically so we've taken our, our combustion damper and we've turned that sideways and we use that for a ventilation damper. If you're ventilating, you're opening closing that 48 times a day.
00:03:57:00 - 00:04:25:04
Brent Holloway: That would be about 500 years. 9 million cycles for about 500 years. So we're very confident that is the best damper in the world. And, you know, we we do not have failures with that, with that product. We also had the, the, the controls, making sure that we're bringing in the fresh air at the right time and, you know, putting the two together, make sure that you're bringing in the make up air and bringing up the, when, when you need it.
00:04:25:04 - 00:04:37:16
Brent Holloway: And also bringing in the, fresh air when you need it at the at the right time, saving, saving money, more efficient products and making sure you had the best fresh air when possible.