 Let's start here. So thank you all so much for the fantastic turnout today for the next HydroTerror webinar series. Today we have a very exciting presentation for you all as we're joined by some special guests from VaporPin in looking at the best practices for VaporData collection. So joining us today, as always for the presentations, we have from HydroTerror, our general manager, Michelle, who will be overseeing the proceedings today and making sure it all runs smoothly. As always, thanks Michelle for making these run as smoothly as possible. My name is Kyle McLaren. I am the sales manager here at HydroTerror and can assist with anything you require locally from VaporPin, from the equipment itself through to installation. We have Lori Chilcott, the director of sales and marketing at Cox Colvin and director and vice president of VaporPin Limited. And Lori is responsible for the managerial and technical oversights for all sales of the VaporPin both within USA and internationally. She's responsible in education to the environmental community on VaporPin technology, implementation and quality control. And we're also joined by Craig Cox, the president and principal scientist at Cox Colvin and the inventor of the patented VaporPin which is used extensively worldwide. Craig's background is in geology, mineralogy and hydrogeology and provides lectures and presentations at numerous regional and international conferences on topics like groundwater consignment and migration, assessment of vapor intrusion and migration pathways. So we're very grateful to have these guests with us today to talk to us. So thank you guys for taking the time all the way from the beautiful state of Ohio. I'll just run you through a quick introduction and a quick bit of housekeeping before I hand over to Lori and Craig to present today. But firstly, as we always do here, you'll see a little Q and A box on your screen which will allow you to type any questions you may have throughout the presentation. And at the end, I'll read these out to be answered by either Craig, Lori or myself if need be. You can let me know at the end of your question if you would like to remain anonymous when I read it if you so choose. But please I encourage you all just to ask whatever questions you may have and we will most certainly answer them. So for those of you who may be joining us for the first time here on this series of webinars, our objectives here at HydroTerror are always to share the valuable sources of knowledge on technologies, not only from ourselves but also directly from our suppliers when we can, such as the case today. As we see, this is one of the most effective ways to knowledge share to a broad number of people in Keatley industry up to date with the latest and greatest and sort of methodologies and technologies. This will also be in the form of training through these webinars or in a more personalized setting to allow for the appropriate adoption of these technologies in the future. We also see this as a good platform as well for you to share with us your industry needs, what you guys are looking for. Chances are we will have a solution or at least an idea to point you in the right direction for your particular monitoring needs. So always encourage to reach out when you need. So as I mentioned earlier, the program for today will be taken by Lauren Craig to run you through some of the tools available and how these should be utilized for best practices of vapor collection. I'll let Lauren and Craig tell you a bit more in detail the things that we're talking about today along with the various sort of vapor pin make up some products which are available outside of just your standard vapor pins which you might be accustomed to such as the vapor pin mini, the insert and the flex. Also a few case studies as well which they'll run through and as I mentioned, they will do our Q&A at the end. So Cox-Colvin patented the vapor pin back in 2011 and since then the products have been utilized in a wide and numerous amount of applications here in Oz including subslab, sampling, stray gas evaluations and source characterization, that sort of thing. And we at Hydrotera have represented vapor pin as the exclusive distributor and have done so for many years now. So without further ado, I'd like to hand this over to Lauren and Craig to begin their presentation and I'll pick it up at the end with any of your questions. So Laurie and Craig, if you want to share your screen and take over, that'd be great. Hi, thanks for joining us for successful air and vapor data collection best practices. My name is Laurie Chilcote. Craig Cox will be joining me periodically. We want to share the most important things you should think about before you even go out into the field. We're going to do a live demonstration of an installation, a shut-in leak test, a helium leak test, as well as some specific active soil gas sampling tools. But first you really need to think about what you're trying to accomplish. So let's start there. So before you even go out to the field you need to think about the goal you're trying to achieve. So you can analyze which tool is going to get you the data that you need to get you the answers that you require. Saving yourself time and money. Hello, I'd like to now show you how to install a vapor pin. And we're going to try and do a couple of things here this morning. One is we're going to install a, this is a flex vapor pin. It's got a little, the barb fitting can come off. This is the silicone sleeve that will form your seal. You'll see you set it not quite to the top, just enough so that you're at about the last barb. Now this may change for each different concrete setting that you're in. Some concrete seem to grip a little bit more than others. So once you put in a few then you'll know how yours is going to react. We've already drilled a 5-8 inch hole through the slab and we've cleaned it with the shop bag. The installation extraction handle you'll get with the kit or you can buy separately has a hole in one end that fits over the barb so that you can not, so you don't damage the barb fitting and it allows you to pound it in. So I'll do that now. You'll be showing us a shut-in leak test as well? Yes, and part of this demonstration will show you how to leak test with a water dam, how to leak test with a water dam and a pressure test, which is probably what you'd like to do in old cases. So you first start the vapor pin in the hole, then you place the installation extraction tool on top and you simply pound it in like a nail. And that's all you need to do. So the seal is immediate and it just goes in. You'll see a little bit of a bulge around the outside. That's normal. If you have too much of that you might want to remove it, start the sleeve a little lower and then pound it in again. So the next thing you would do, you would purge the point after you've let it set for a while, you purge the point to make sure you're getting soil gas and then you can connect up your sampling train. So this would go back to a summa can and you'd be ready to sample. Now what I want to show you right now is how to leak test this with a water dam. And you made that yourself, correct? Yeah, this is some homemade Play-Doh. It's important that you keep as few, or as that you introduce as few VOCs to the site as possible. So we're using a homemade Play-Doh that is made out of baking soda and cornstarch and water. And we'll have that, we have that recipe on our website if you want to try and use that. So you basically make a snake around the bottom of this coupling that comes with our kits, okay? And you place that over your sample train, snug it down, and then fill that void with water. And the idea being that if the water stays within above the connections, then you don't have a leak. So now you can start sampling. Now, the next one I want to show you is a flush mount setting. So here's a vapor pin that's been installed previously and has a secure cover on it. You have this special spanner tool that you can engage the lid with and unscrew the secure cover. And the secure cover has threads on it that allow it to attach right to the vapor pin. So there's no other kind of attachments you need. You take out the little cap because of the little vinyl cap that's on there. It's actually silicone. And then we're going to show you how to pressure test before you sample. So what we have here is a hand pump that goes through a valve. Then we have another pressure gauge in the middle. Then that runs up to a valve at the top and a T-fitting, which goes into your summa can. Now, this summa can, you want to make sure all of these connections are tight. And that's what you're testing, is how tight is this connection. Finally, this part of the T-fitting runs over to a valve at this end that's closed. So you want to close off everything back to this hand pump so you can pump up the pressure. So you pump the pressure up and you can see on this valve or on this gauge we're getting some pressure. And then we'll let that set. And you can see it's slowly dropping a little bit and that's because these hand pumps are notorious for leaking. So that's why we have this other valve here. So you can turn this valve and shut off the hand pump and you'll see now that the pressure is steady. That means that none of this part of the system is leaking. On these alpha summa cans they also have a gauge here that you can turn on and you can monitor the pressure there. It just doesn't show up very well on the video. So once you have it figured out that you're set and you're tight, turn this valve to isolate this portion because you don't want that to be in the sampling. Connect this to the vapor pin. Check your valves again. Then you can open this valve. Now you have a connection between this portion of the, you know, where your sub slab is all the way back through here and this valve is now when you're ready to sample you open that valve. And you have a built-in water dam. Yeah, so now you have a built-in water dam with the flush mount. So if you want to test that, you just fill that with water. And again, you watch that. There's a couple bugs came up. Now you watch that and make sure there isn't any, you know, water leaking through the, around the vapor pin. So the idea being that water won't, you know, the air, indoor air won't go beyond the water. At that point, turn on your valve and you're ready to test. Helium Shroud leak testing. Discussion and demonstration. There are two main types of Helium Shroud leak testing. The first method involves only leak testing the sample point while the second method leak tests the entire sample train at the same time. First, a quick word about Helium. Generally, the two types of Helium that are available for use are lab grade Helium and so-called balloon Helium. Lab grade Helium is extremely pure ensuring that should a leak occur the sample will not be compromised. However, it can be expensive and difficult to obtain. Balloon quality Helium is often found at stores for consumer use and may contain other volatile organic compounds. If a leak occurs, these VOCs can contaminate the sample or affect reporting limits. While it is easier to obtain, it can jeopardize sample integrity. Quantitative Helium leak testing of the sample point. This leak testing method allows for leaks to be corrected prior to sample collection, ensuring sample quality and helping avoid costly resampling. Less cumbersome than the fully enclosed testing we will demonstrate later, this method is often combined with a shut-in test of the sample train. Firstly, the sample point, in this case a vapor pin, is covered by the shroud. This shroud has three ports. One for measuring Helium levels in the shroud. A second for supplying Helium to the shroud. And a third for purging the sample point. Connect the purge tubing to the sample point securely. Connect the Helium detector to the shroud measurement port and fill the shroud with Helium until an adequate concentration is reached. The concentration is often dependent on guidance and or laboratory reporting limits. Once an adequate Helium concentration has been measured in the shroud, connect the Helium detector to the purge port and monitor it. If no Helium is detected, no leak is indicated. If Helium is detected, check connections in the sample point. Although very unlikely to leak, the vapor pin's design allows for easy reinstallation. Following the Helium leak test of the sample point, the shroud can be removed and the tubing disconnected. The point is now ready for sampling. Quantitative Helium leak testing of the entire sample train. This method ensures very high data quality by fully enclosing the sample point and sample train. Due to this method's complexity, however, it can be difficult to collect multiple samples and may increase costs. This shroud is slightly different than the previous shroud. It features the same port configuration, but also a three-way valve with connections to the purge port, sample point, and the sample itself. The sample manifold and configuration used in this demonstration may vary from others that are available, so be sure to check with your equipment provider about the proper usage of the shroud. First, connect the sample tubing to the sample point. Next, connect the sample to its respective tubing. Then, ensure that the shroud is well seated on the ground surface to reduce any helium loss. Connect the helium supply to the shroud and begin adding helium. Next, connect the helium detector to the shroud monitoring port and measure the concentration of helium in the shroud until the target has been met. Alternatively, a standalone helium monitor can be placed fully inside the shroud to measure the concentration instead of using a port. Next, we will begin the process of purging the sample point. Adjust the valve accordingly and connect the helium detector to the purge port. Purge a large enough volume of soil gas to meet your data quality objectives while also monitoring the helium concentration as before. Once the sample train has been demonstrated to be free of leaks, you can begin sampling. Helium shroud leak testing is a tried-and-true method for leak testing soil gas sampling points. Some advantages include the ability to identify leaks in real-time prior to collecting a sample. Another advantage is the inert characteristics of helium gas, meaning that if a leak does occur, the sample isn't compromised. However, helium leak testing also has a few disadvantages, including increased costs and logistics. It should also be noted that helium leak detectors can provide false positives in the presence of methane, undermine their use at petroleum or chlorinated VOC vapor intrusion sites, where methane may be present in the subsurface. Please note, this video demonstration is meant only to illustrate the helium shroud leak testing process. Always consult all relevant guidance and work with environmental agencies to select and develop quality control objectives. Leak testing requirements can vary drastically between agencies and locations. Now, one of the things we also wanted to show you is how to extract a vapor pin. And so I just have to get rid of the water with a syringe. And you might want to carry a syringe or a turkey baster with you. Here's a syringe. So we'll suck out that water. Now, one of the things that we noticed about this homemade play-doh is it does kind of turn a little bit sloppy on the inside. So once you get that done, you pull that out and you'll see it's kind of a little bit of a mess. So you pull that out. Got some vapor towels to clean that up. Now, to remove the vapor pins, it easily is taken out of wine cork. First pull off your sample train. And then you thread the installation extraction handle down onto the vapor pin. There you go. And you'll feel it engage. At that point, you just keep turning. And the pin eventually works itself up into the handle. It comes out. Don't try and just pull those out because you will hurt your back there and they're really tight. And you can remove the sleeve, clean the pin, put a new sleeve on, and you're ready to go again. Just make sure you need to put a sleeve on each time to make sure you get that seal on initial installation. Thank you. Now we're going to share some information in regards to our product line. Everybody's familiar with the initial pins that they come in brass, stainless, and the Flex VP. A lot of people ask if there's any difference between the brass and the stainless. We initially made the brass just because it's a less expensive material to make. Regulators had requested that we start making them stainless, especially because people were leaving them in longer and longer periods of time. If you have a really corrosive environment, that's when there may be some issues with the brass that it may have a reaction. But we sell about the same number of brass as we do to stainless. They install and work exactly the same way. That being said, our product line has grown with requests from our consumers such as yourself. So please feel free to reach out to us on the contact page. If you have any questions or would like to see some additions to the product line. For example, we'll start with sub-level. People wanted to make additional connections. The Flex VP was born, which allows you to still make that barbed connection, but then you can remove the Flex V, the Flex barb. And you have a top that now allows you to make those connections that we'll discuss here. So you can connect with this wave block fitting on top. As I mentioned, you can connect with a TO-17 to do some sampling with that. We also have a quick connect so that you can connect directly with a bottle vac or pressure field extension monitoring. If you want to do that, we're doing some testing in regards to pressure field extension testing. You can connect directly to the quick connect that way and that can help you do some testing. You can leave that continuous if you want to. One of the ideas about the pressure testing is that eventually you'll want to predict when the time is the sample. So you may put out pressure field extension testing equipment like this that goes up to the web and monitor your building for a while to see how it reacts and then have a better time of going and collecting the correct samples. They're actually also asking for additional lines of evidence and to do that you want to monitor temperature, pressure, barometric pressure. The vapor pin allows you to sample all those different lines of evidence in a multitude of ways. The other thing that came across was people had shorter slabs, especially in the radon industry, even in industrial industries, they're going into homes that have shorter slabs. They still wanted to utilize the vapor pin because of the ceiling properties that it has and the reliability. So the mini-pin was born. The mini-pin is similar to the FlexVP and then it gives you all those variety of connections. The only difference with the mini-pin is one, the silicone sleeve does not go up all the way like it does on the original pin. You also get it as an entire kit with a secure cover, silicone sleeve, and the pin itself all comes as one little mini-kit. And the barf fitting. And the barf fitting. So this all comes as one little mini-kit. It is not reusable. Right now there's not a way to get a hold of it. So as you can see here, the mini-pin is installed. So I'll take off the secure cover. So when you want to come back and do repeat monitoring, you would simply take off the cover and you can reattach your barf or your swage lock or your quick connect. However you wanted to make that connection, you can come back to the mini-pin, install that, and when you're done, remove it and put the secure cover back on. Yeah, and these are meant to go in slabs as thin as two inches, but they can be used in any situation. Yeah, you can use them in any size. And again, one of the important things to remember is this pin has to be perpendicular to the slab. And so we have that drilling guide specifically designed for when you want to use the mini-pin. Now, that being said, if you're using the mini-pin, I don't know that necessarily would suggest that you use it in a dry cleaner site because you may be concerned that your slabs are saturated with chlorinated solvents. If that's the case, we have a sealing extension that you can utilize to make sure you're getting a representative sample from underneath the slab and not the slab itself. Depending on the depth of your slab, you can either use these one and a half inch extensions and you can add on as many as you need. And then you can put on the sealing extension. We also have filters and sieves. So this is a filter. And then we have sieves that you can put on the bottom as well. And those are designed so that if you do encounter the subgrade and it's fine-grained, it doesn't plug up the hole in the bottom of the vapor pin. So the sieve allows the air to enter from the sides. So then you'd install, and not only are you sealing off the slab itself, but you're sealing off the bottom of the slab so you can make sure you get your representative sample from the slab. Now, there's also people that wanted to sample at a specific depth. So we have a barred fitting that you can thread into the bottom of the vapor pin, put in stainless steel tube as long as you need. Again, there's a small piece of tubing here that you can put the filter or the sieve at the bottom of that. But it's another way just to obtain if you don't need to get to a specific depth. You can put that up to other kinds of tubing like Nilaflow or Tygon. But we find that stainless steel is a little bit better because it doesn't tend to curl up on you when you kind of fit it down inside the hole. We currently are testing because we came across a client that went into a paint factory for painting automobiles and they were not allowed to bring any type of silicone into the building. It didn't matter if it was on clothing, gloves, no silicone whatsoever. So this is a new kind of sleeve that were in testing mode to test out because then it can be used in those places where silicone is just not allowed. So because there is no issues with the silicone those have been tested actually by Chevron and other companies and they'll test it fine. Another thing that's currently in testing is high volume. Yeah, so to help with high volume sampling we wanted to have a couple of things happen. One is we wanted to stick with the same tooling we had before. So a one and a half inch bit that you were drilling for your flush mount. Now you can drill all the way through the slab and use it for this large diameter sample. It's basically a cam lock fitting on the top and a vapor pin look to the sides. Pound that in, you'll be able to use that for your high volume sampling that you connect up then to a shop bag. And so we have the cam fittings that you can buy and the connections back to the shop bag. At the end of this tubing, at the end of this tube you'll have to make your own connect to mate up to your shop bag because they're all a little bit different and you can get those kind of complex. And Roger Brew from Hawaii is the customer that requested that. And then you saw our, this is our vapor pin insert. It can be utilized pre-construction or post-construction. It's used to sample underneath vapor barriers. So the threaded rod goes to the soil where you want your point to be. Then this can go threaded up and down till you get to your specific depth. You're gonna marry it up to the vapor barrier and the liner following the manufacturer's recommendations just like any other plumbing insert. And then you're gonna pour the concrete. And once you get the concrete poured and it sets you can pull the top off and now you have a point for your vapor pin. And with the vapor pin installed you can pick whether you want whatever type of pin regular or a flex VP. But the secure cover does engage with that vapor pin too so it keeps it nice and secure in between sampling events. This is our contractors kit. This is where everybody generally starts. It has 10 pins, 10 covers, 20 sleeves. Enough to get you two sampling before you need to because these are your only consumables or the silicone sleeves in a bag of 20 and the caps in a bag of 20 as well. Hi everybody. I hope the video was informative. We look forward to answering your questions and now we're gonna share some case studies that we have as well for best data practices. So we're gonna go through some source characterization. This first case study takes you from the source characterization where we actually invented the vapor pin all the way through mitigation of the system and now the long-term monitoring of the building. Then we have a couple of ones on conceptual site model, how you can use vapor pins to help you refine that. And then there's some pre-demolition site characterization that turned out to be very handy. We do a lot of that kind of stuff for large buildings for clients and then we'll talk a little bit about due diligence. So let's start at the beginning. So as Craig mentioned, this is where the actual vapor pin was invented and this site went straight from source characterization and screening all the way through long-term monitoring. So let's talk about the site itself. So the issues we had, it was a chlorinated groundwater plume that exited beneath the building and we took a lot of time to try and figure out where the source was. But then in the end, the client wanted us to go in and actually just know everything about the building because they were gonna leave or tear it down or do something or if the source was in a place they could get at it, they'd stay there. So it had been an active site, industrial site since 1938 and it had a very long history of solvent use, lots of solvents back then and they used them liberally. The assessment was restricted to evening hours and we could only go in once. We couldn't leave anything in place which brought to light why we couldn't use anything that was already in the market. And this was back in 2010 because we started selling the vapor vent in mid-2011. So we were testing it and refining it at this site because we couldn't leave anything in or use what was already available. So the pre-assessment, we talked to the environmental people at the site and they indicated that there was a degreaser, a couple of degreasers and some above-ground storage tanks that had been used in the past. They weren't using solvents at the time. So they sort of pointed us in the direction of where we should go. Depth-to-ground water was 20 to 30 feet depending on the floor heights changed quite a bit in the building. And then it was in a clay setting with sand and gravel beneath. The assessment turned out to be 156 pins in a week. But remember, we could only go in at night and we had a specific amount of time. So we generally would do 20 to 30 in the evening. But that included drilling, installation, sampling, extraction, and filling in the holes. So, and again, this wanted to know everything about the building, which is why we did so many so that we could understand in case they were going to either tear it down or shut down the facility. We used a multi-gas meter to purge with and what we saw is when we purged, oxygen content tended to go down and the VOC content came up. And so we knew there was time to sample and it only took about 30 seconds per point. We were a little confused about some of the oxygen content because we thought we were having leaks and yet we got pretty good VOC return. So as we plotted that out, what we realized is that the oxygen content was showing us preferential pathways. So sewer lines coming in the building, water lines, communication lines, gas lines, those kind of things. You're able to sort of map them out a little bit just by looking at the oxygen content. Yeah, and keep in mind as vapor intrusion has expanded throughout the years, preferential pathways has become really something you should pay attention to, especially sewer lines and sewer gas because sometimes, especially in homes and buildings, those can be most primary sources of your vapor intrusion issue. So these were our PID readings and they indicated that the contamination was not in the areas that they had originally suspected and was pointing us towards, which is why it was very beneficial that we were using that PID to do screenings and as you'll see... And that we looked at all the sites. We looked at the whole building. We just didn't go to where they told us to look for things because we wouldn't have found anything. Yes, no. If we would have went to where they directed us, it would have been way off kilter. But the PID, you'll show you how well it correlates with the soil gas readings. So sub-slab soil gas from each pin were collected using a syringe. We used a field lab... A field lab method. We could have had kind of a mobile lab on site, but when we finally talked to them, we said, well, why don't you just give us the bottles and we'll ship them to you overnight and it saved a lot of cost. So it really worked out well. So this was TCE and this was TCE. And we were a little confused because they'd never used TCE. So we figured it was possibly degradation. And then this was actually... After we got back to soil gas results, we were able to do a focused soil sampling campaign and we utilized those soil gas samples to locate that. So we started digging and at first, the lower depths, we weren't finding anything. But we located Dean Apple at 15 feet just screaming. So just taking that little sip of air at the top, we were one saved time instead of drilling all over the place. It was an active facility. So it really wasn't an effort to get in and drill next to people's desks and things like that. So it was a little tough. Now, it turned out that most of the... If you look at the red dots are TCE and the blue dots are PCE, it turned out that the Dean Apple was mostly TCE and they had no record they ever used TCE at all. So it was obvious that they used it at some point and so we tried to look... How could we figure out when they used it? We looked back at aerial photography. Well, before we go to aerial photography, this is another best practice. Don't limit your DOC list. Don't just do for the constituents a concern because again, if we would have done that where they said, well, we never used TCE, then we would have been quite perplexed at that point as well. So expand your list because you may find something that you didn't know where to begin with. So when we looked at the relationship to what the building looked like in 1950, it just mirrored where loading docks were, the back door, the north edge of the facility, that kind of stuff. And what they were doing back then was what was recommended by ASTM and other standards was to take the... You solve it outside and just dump it on the ground and so that's what they did. So then we went into a vapor intrusion assessment where we completed an inventory of indoor air sources. We identified and sealed all the sub slab soil gas entry points. Yeah, and we collected an indoor air screening data using a HAP site, which is a field GC. It's not easy to use. It's kind of temperamental, but it provided us with information so that we could move forward with indoor air sampling. Did the typical indoor air and sub slab paired samples? We used individually clean certified summa cans for the indoor air samples. We had replicates. We took ambient air samples. Important to do that outside, upwind and downwind if you can. And one of the things we learned that we have now found very useful all the other chlorinated sites we work on is if you detect cis-1,2 dichloroethene in the indoor air, that means you have vapor intrusion. And the reason we're so confident about that is because that compound is not in any commercial products. It only occurs from the degradation of TCE in the subsurface. So knowing that if you have cis, both indoor air and in sub slab, you can use that to calculate what your attenuation factor is. And it's very, very useful. One thing you take away from this is to look for that compound. So then we went into remediate the site. We used the soil vapor extraction and emulsified zero valent iron. Some of those same pins that we used for screening and for vapor intrusion we used for the assessment to understand the VI potential. And then we used it in mitigation and testing for the sub slab depressurization system. So those pins have been in since 2010. They're still in, still being used to monitor the system, and they still don't leak. So that's the same pin that's been in there for 10 years. So next, this is Lori's favorite site. I like this site because it was quick. And the client was very happy and it was very cost effective. It was a source of a vapor intrusion in a 60,000 square foot building. The previous consultant had evaluated it for two years and they could not locate the source. So they couldn't provide them with a conceptual site model that they could move forward with mitigation. It was ready for redevelopment. And all they had to do was find the source so they could mitigate it. And they just worked on it for two years. The owner was not happy because he couldn't finish it out and it was ready to go. So the yellow triangles are the soil boring and the red circles are monitor wells where the previous consultant had taken their samples. So we wanted to show you that so you knew where they were taking their samples. We came in and we installed screened, sampled and abandoned 90 vapor pin sampling points in two days. And again, the owner wanted to say, look, I want you to tell me everything about the site. They can't locate it. And 90 pins didn't take as much. So again, we used the PID to screen the site. This is PCE. They had no issues with PCE and this was TCA. So within a week, we were able to tell them where the source was, provide them with a conceptual site model, allowing those mitigation efforts to proceed. And just to remind you, this is where the source was. They took one soil boring sample because it was a receptionist desk at the time. But it used to be a machine shop, but that's not even the issue. The issue is they didn't take a soil gas sample. They were trying to understand what the issue was without taking a soil gas sample. If you're going to do a vapor intrusion assessment, make sure you collect some vapor sets. That's basically the takeaway from that one. This was a pre-demolition site. This was a site that goes back to the 1800s and manufactured all kinds of neat stuff, had a great history. But its history had run its course and they were ready to demolish it to put up an apartment complex or something like that. And so we were hired by the client to see if they had any surprises underneath this lab that they could avoid. It had a long history of petroleum storage and sort of an unknown history of solvent use since we got there and it was abandoned and there wasn't a lot of people around that knew kind of what went on. But we had some historical data about petroleum. And so this is where the petroleum sources sat and that blue kind of line going through there is a canal from the old canal systems that ran through Ohio in the late 1800s. And so some of those actually dated back that far, where they had petroleum, big tanks sitting next to the canal. So we went in and guess what we put in? We went 90. That was just a coincidence. We did 90 locations in two days again. It's something that we like to do, I guess. And this is what the PID readings look like. Now by this time we've gotten used to the idea that the PID is pretty predictive. It's very accurate. I mean, it's a great screening tool and it's really, as you had seen, they correlate really well. So we could really pinpoint and we only took five samples here. That's the only sense of the lab. And the results came back favorable. So they could move along with demolition. They demolished the site. They saved a ton of money because they didn't have to do extensive drilling program or anything. That's because the roof was completely filled with asbestos. They didn't ask us to look through asbestos. We couldn't do anything about that. When it was sold, the developer came in and actually completed some soil borings. But again, they failed to locate any additional sources. So really that screening tool was a great way to do that. And the owner was so happy that he asked us to go out to Oklahoma and do another site that he had. Now this was a big building. This was a half million square feet. And it had been heavy manufacturing for its entire life. I mean, they made airplanes and all kinds of things there. But they didn't understand their VOC issues. So this one took a little bit more time. So we had to send out a four-man team, four-person team, and put in 275 vapor pins in four days. If you'll notice on the grid spacing, because the pins go in so easily and you can utilize that PID for a screening tool, you can start your grid pretty wide, especially if you're trying to screen your site. And as you can see on the left of that site map, we started to pull it in a little bit tighter because we saw some high readings that we thought we might want to really keen in on. So we started making our grid spacing tighter. So that's just something to think about. But after using the GIS and whatnot... Right, so we had... the LEL readings and then the next map, if you want to go to that, yeah, that's the PID readings. And so there was some areas of interest, and so we collected some samples and sent those to the lab and identified a few places beneath the slab that they needed to be careful of when they started to tear the building down. So, again, that worked out very well for them. Essentially, it was in pretty good shape. Yeah, so we saved them time and money and uncertainty knowing... it's a great way to fully understand what's underneath the building. I think the building slab may still be there because a lot of people tend to leave them in place, but at least they know there's nothing underneath there to scare them if somebody comes along and wants to do that. But to buy it or develop it, yep. Let's talk about some due diligence. Yeah, this was a site that... and this one really goes fast because this isn't a whole lot to talk about. Well, not only did it go fast, but the project went fast literally in half a day. Yeah, and what happened was a company bought a portfolio of sites that were apartment complexes across the United States, and a few of them happened to be within the footprint of where a dry cleaner used to be. And this was one of them. And so they were very reluctant on letting us collect any samples during the phase one, which you typically don't do. Inside, too. They didn't want us to go inside. But we convinced them that, can we go in the asphalt parking areas around the outside of the building because we want to just get a quick grab sample. So we got there at the site maybe 10 o'clock, and by noon, we already understood that there was a PCE issue from the dry cleaner, and that it probably was a vapor intrusion issue at the site. And so we went back to the client and discussed it with them, and they convinced the owner to let us in and take one indoor air and sub-slab paired samples. So we did that, and we found that it was just screaming high underneath the slab. It was in the indoor air, but not quite at the level of concern, but it could easily go over that level in a different season or anything like that. So what we did was we convinced them, this is only a few days of work, but we convinced them to put in escrow enough money for a vapor mitigation system. It turned out they had a lot of radon issues too, so they solved both problems at the same time, but they had to do the whole building. And this brings up another point is the vapor pen does install in any hard surface. So you can install it in asphalt. We have a lot of customers that install them on the top of landfills to test for methane. They put them on the size of buildings to test in the basement. Anywhere there's a hard surface, you can install a pen. We've been pretty surprised at the thoughts on what people have gone to use the vapor pens, but they are very effective. So that was the areas, just a few samples that we took, but with just the PID. So give us some information. So with that, we're ready for questions. Thank you for your time and your attention. Excellent. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much for the video. So we can say hi to everybody. I'll set up straight. I'm going to be on TV. I'll turn on my video as well. Scary site. I know, but we'll we'll start filtering to any questions you guys might have. I guess I had just a question to kick things off. But just a question I get asked a bit is how do you guys go about sort of planning from the beginning where to grid your VPs and sort of the quantity needed for a site? What's the typical sort of spacing that you guys typically use and that sort of thing? That's a great question. When we first started, those first samples were every 15 feet. That's how we ended up with 156 points in that one building. But if you go to a 450,000 square foot building, it's just not practical to do that. You sort of judge it on the initial grid being a little bit wider and start with a PID and then fill in places. In big buildings, that's about the only way you can do it. Most buildings that you're going to be normal size buildings, 15 to 20 feet or what's that, 3 to 10 meters. You're asking me. It should be sufficient to get you going. And again, you can always fill it back in when you start to get results. You can start wide and as you use the PID you can condense your grid as needed. That's the beauty of the pins going in so quickly. One of the things you have to be careful though is you do want to make sure you're not drilling through any conduit and water lines and all that kind of stuff. If you can have somebody come in with a GPR and kind of they have some little units that are pretty good for thin concrete you can actually see the V bar and everything within the right below you so you can avoid any issues but you should clear all the locations. You don't want to hit anything. Yeah, that's something we definitely recommend prior to doing to that. We sort of have a rule of thumb that we need a screen prior to what's going on underneath before we start drilling through. Good question. Giuseppe's asked what's the most common outdoor applications that you guys see for the VaporPins? Outdoors definitely they use them a lot at gas stations to sample for petroleum and asphalt. We've installed pins in asphalt in Italy to locate chlorinated solvents as well and for example the due diligence that we did when you're not allowed in the site and you can install the VaporPins on the concrete aprons around the building. So it's a great way to understand if you've got some problems if you're not allowed in at the moment. We've done some on sidewalks and on driveway aprons and those kind of things. I mean if you look back at the sort of flux chamber kind of approach, a lot of flux chambers are kind of coming back a little bit because the instrumentation's a little bit easier to use now and stuff but there's VOCs coming out of the ground everywhere and so they just put a little flux chamber over that and can detect them. So if you have any bit of hard surface like a sidewalk or a driveway or anything like that, it's surprising the amount of information you can get just by sampling the gas underneath that. Okay. There is some other questions here that I'm unable to say but Michelle's going to send them through. You mentioned before. I can see one of them Kyle. There's one, I don't know if this is the one your large number of gridded locations did you sample all those or was it screened via PID to choose sampling locations or individual pins used for each locations or pins extracted and reused the same assessment. Ah yes. In the large gridded ones we did remove them, clean them and reuse them again. So we didn't go out there with 275 pins. Actually we might have in Oklahoma because we didn't have a way to clean them because we were way out on site from Ohio. But here when we were here on Ohio we would only use the 30, we'd come back, we'd clean them and we'd take them and reuse them. So you have both options available. Yes. And the PID and that Oklahoma large space was used to help us choose the sampling locations. Yep. So that's a good question. Thanks. Yeah. I don't know if there's a couple of others here sort of how do you do you have a concrete like flush mount lead for heritage listed sites where visual impacts of sampling have to be considered. It's interesting. Ah, that's a new one. That's a new one, a concrete but you know we can add that to our line. Yeah. I mentioned you know our line has grown based on the needs of our customers so that is definitely something we can think about. Yeah. Yeah, great. Okay. So another one here is it's very interesting to hear that the PIC readings correlated well with the SVP results for TCE and daughter products as I would have thought PIDs won't be as sensitive to TCE and it's daughter products. Talk to me about that. Yeah, the they don't give you actual readings. The PID at that site you know if you noticed we could go back through there but the TCE that we saw at first was a little bit diminished I guess the returns we got from the well that was from the analytical. No that was Yeah, I don't know. We've been using PIDs for so long that I mean that's what they do. It's the total VLC content a little bit you know it might be you know if you just had a TCE site you might have a little bit of a lowered sensitivity but that just hasn't happened. It's not happened with us it worked. Yeah. And we do a lot of sites. Yeah, we do it. We do a lot of sites. Okay. Another question here from Chen what's advantages of screening using subslab SVP PIDs versus shallow drilling soil bores? I think the main advantage is that you can collect a high-resolution sample set within hours and so if you're trying to do this with soil bores and put in a maybe put something in and let bentonite you know swell up or actually cement them into the concrete into the slab you know and you've got another day you've got to wait for that to set up and so it's just the advantage of speed. Well it's not only speed but also less chances of leaks. We have white papers that demonstrate side-by-side testing with soil bores and the vapor pins and I mean we have correlation graphs that we'll actually show you and you can find those on our website that show you that side-by-side testing and we did a side-by-side testing with Michigan's DEQ and a lot of their points broke and they actually just used our data with the vapor pins because they couldn't use theirs. Yeah that was the you know when we first came out there was a lot of questions about you know is this really work you know it seemed too easy and so we did the side-by-side tests with implants and with stainless steel AMS kind of approach and found that the data is the data it's just you're able to collect more of it so you get a better site characterization in the end. More data and more efficient data and reliable data. Grant Marshall has just asked what if the site is currently undeveloped so no hard stand but a development is proposed so the methods that can be deployed to screen for vapors when a subslab is not established? With the vapor pin? No. That's the only requirement. We have something being tested that might have a solution for that. But you know there are things like flux chambers that are like I said earlier they're kind of making a comeback. In Italy they're using them quite a bit with some good results and you know originally the whole passive sampling ideas came along because people were trying to track petroleum plumes from gas stations using those and they worked very well in the 80s and stuff they were doing that. So the passive in the outdoor setting is probably still one of the better ways to do it. I've had a client here and we use sort of the custom long sort of one meter of stainless steel extension with a filter on the end for sort of soil analysis by still using the vapor pin which has been a nifty little idea. So that was an interesting one. I think the the thing that's always been a frustration for us is that when you're beneath the slab you have a very good chance of getting the granular material right beneath the slab so you can get air flow and where we live it's all glaciated and it's a lot of clay and stuff and so if you get down to five feet you're lucky and then when you get down there it's probably so tight you can't get any air out of it anyways. So that's kind of why it really depends on what the geology is like. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I have a couple of people asking what's the best practice cleaning method between uses of the pins? Yeah, we actually that's in our SOPs. We clean them in a cleaning solution in a sonic cleaner but then again we're cleaning them straight from the manufacturer so we clean them and we dry them off and then we put them in an oven and we cook them for so many minutes different for the brass and the stainless but you can find those in the SOPs for those pins. It's the same as most other things. I mean you can use Alkenox and just heat them up under a heat lamp if you want it to. You just want to burn off any VOCs and they don't really stick they're not that sticky so that's nothing. But you need to use a new sleeve every time that's the most important thing you have to use a new sleeve every time even if you pull the sleeve out and it looks pretty good don't do it because it's a little bit of a structural integrity if you put them in the same sleeve a couple of times as well it'll get really rubbery instead of stiff. Chris Ford's asked in what situation would you use the flex vapor pin over one of your standard brass or stainless ones? If you wanted to make a different type of connection like there's some people that want to use a swage lock connection then you'd have to use the flex because you can't connect the swage lock or if you wanted to test for mercury and you wanted to connect the TO17 you didn't use the flex vapor pin for that also because again you can't make that connection or if you wanted to connect the bottle vac we sell this quick connect separately and that again connects to the flex VP. There's also an advantage if you're going to do continuous monitoring and you want to make sure your port doesn't kind of come loose because you're not there to watch it all the time you could use the swage lock fitting in there because it's a little bit more secure especially if you're going to leave it for weeks and weeks and monitor pressure or chemicals or whatever. I've also just had people that have a really secure connection where they prefer the flex with say the swage lock fitting rather than the tubing in between the barb and their sample tubing as well so personal preference as well. A lot of times that's kind of dictated by the agency in the states we have 50 states and probably 60 regular 60 different ways to do things because it's just everybody came up with their own regular, you know, their own sort of guidance and so really kind of depends on what the regulator wants, wants you to use. Some of them really want to use swage lock. I think that's filtering the majority of the questions there. I'll just also mention as well a bit more locally that we also at Hage Terra obviously we stock quite a few of the contracted kits and the standard kits both in brass and stainless as well as the flex pins pretty much over the majority of the products you've seen in the video presentation that Lori and Craig did that. We stock all of that at Hage Terra as well as well as a bit of a rental fleet for all of the methods on how to collect your samples so PIDs, the helium shrouds that sort of thing in our rental fleet so we sort of have that full suite as well if anybody needed to reach out so we always make sure we have plenty of stock of the vapor pins in all forms so I think that has filtered the majority of the questions there for Hage Terra provides leak testing equipment like helium shrouds they do you answered it just as they were asking the question there you go, preemptive so any other equipment used to collect your samples from the pins we definitely have in our rental fleet so feel free to reach out to I think the biggest thing that's happening here in the states now is that people are putting in barriers and the agencies have gone back later and said well I want to know what's going on beneath the barrier and so that's why we invented that insert and if it hasn't come to Australia yet it probably will probably, I don't know if it has but so we've worked with GeoSeal and Regenesis Land Science to come up with this product that allows you to do that it's best done preconstruction but it can be done post it's just a little more cumbersome and the idea is that when you're doing your mitigation it's just that it's just mitigation and so the agency wants to know when can we tell you it's able to be turned off and so that's why they want you to be able to sample underneath there and is it still being effective at getting a pressure differential out far enough for your site because sometimes the soils dry out underneath and the pressure regime changes a little bit you might have to adjust a fan or something but so expect that to keep going down the pipe at you someday we're interested in deeper TC impacts at two depths uh well like we mentioned even taking that sip of air at the top we located the source deep down so and we didn't use any extensions when we located that D-Net Apple 15 feet down um it was just a vapor pin there was nothing underneath of it but yes you can with those other extensions that we have you know and putting the stainless steel rod underneath the pin with the sieves and the filters if you go back to just the original days of doing soil gas prospecting it was actually invented in Pittsburgh to locate petroleum like raw crude petroleum sources so that they could predict where to drill for oil wells and then it went from there turned into tracking plumes of L-Naple so you know many many feet down and then vapor intrusion kind of came along and so you know it is vapor intrusion it's coming from a deeper source coming through the soil and getting you know beneath the building and then eventually getting in the building so if you're you know if you just believe that's really happening which it does then you don't need to really get too deep and I think there was the original guidance that US EPA put out you know you sort of started at groundwater then you had a deep sample and then it's kind of a shallower sample and then you know below the slab but you never went indoors because you didn't want to go in and mess with people's you know personal spaces and things I think that that's kind of evolved to the point now where it's just sub slab if you do sub slab that's the last point before it gets in the building and if you got an issue there then you probably do have an issue in the building so that's that's kind of how it's evolving yeah absolutely so yeah I think with that we filtered all the questions here so I'll just quickly mention too that if there's a project that you guys have that has a large number of vapor bins I just wanted to flag that the the turn around time for us to procure the vapor bins is really is quite quick sort of a weak turn around time for any sort of larger ores that you may have so that's something that's really handy and really really efficient from from the guys that they pin so thanks Lauren Craig for having that really quick turn around time that's great but with that I think we might wrap it up here I really do appreciate your time today Lauren Craig and everybody who has attended and of course my details are on the screen there if you have any other questions or anything to reach out for it's been a great presentation today and I really do appreciate everyone attending so thank you all very much and enjoy the rest of your night Lauren Craig I know it's late so we always like hearing from we always like to hear from people living in the future we're stuck there in the past we don't even know what's going on you can tell us what's going on tomorrow yeah absolutely yeah I don't think we even know ourselves what's going to happen tomorrow so yeah thanks everyone thank you very much for having us take care everybody bye thank you bye