 Hey, and good afternoon. This is Angela Brown and I'm here today with James Copeland and I am super excited about today's show because we've got so many interesting things happening today. James is the director of technical services at Prism Specialties and he's going to help us unpack appliances and how to keep them clean and how to make sure that they're in working order. Now, this is a really, really interesting niche and I cannot tell you how excited I am today to hear from a specialist about appliances because I get a lot of questions and we do it the best we can as cleaners but from somebody who has the technical know-how that's a whole different ballgame. So please help me welcome James Copeland. Yay, I'm so glad you're here today. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Well, thank you and I want to say hi to our friends. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. We have MCF here who says what is the best way to clean cast iron stove grates? So we'll answer that question. We have Natalie Jones says, yay, I made it for a live stream. Yay, Natalie. I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for joining us especially on a holiday weekend. We've got Rachel Rose. Rachel is from England. So Rachel, hello, and thank you for joining us again. We've got Pease Lehman that says same and you guys I'm so excited. We have Padmini Mayor who says how often should I clean my fridge and Prudence says, yay, thank you so much for all you do. And Miserman says, great to see you. You guys, this is just so awesome. I'm so glad you guys are joining me. All right, well, let's jump in and before we answer your questions because I want to make sure that we we do a little bit of background and you guys get to know James and so I'm gonna have him explain to us real quick what he does and the role of his company and and how he got started in there. Yeah, well, thank you, Angela. It's great to be here. So after I received an honorable discharge from the United States Navy, I came back to the States and around the age of 19, I received employment from local dry cleaners and they had about 25 to 28 stores and I was responsible for maintaining and cleaning all their equipment from steam presses to dry cleaning machines, chillers, boilers, washers, dryers, the list just goes on and on. So that's where I started to really learn that commercial side of this equipment and some of the techniques in cleaning different stainless steel. A lot of steam presses had really thick stainless steel and there are certain ways to clean and wax those different ways to clean boilers. So I was there for about eight years and then I moved into the commercial market segment where I was then into coin operated equipment. I was installing coin equipment, dryers, washers, getting into nursing homes and hospitals and cleaning, installing and repairing those and it just kept advancing. It kept moving through the years. I was in that market for about 20 plus years and I got into the industrial market segment as well where they're ironing millions and pounds, washing tunnel washers that are 60 feet long to 14 feet high, washing 650 pounds of mats and clothes at one time. So I started to get into that really heavy industry into the commercial market segment and it just kept moving right through the nursing home so sanitation was important. I've seen chemicals go right through stainless steel on some of the commercial, the chemicals that are injected would eat right through stainless. And I thought stainless was like the toughest of the toughest but corrosive materials can absolutely eat through it including a bleach and ammonia over a prolonged time. It was about 2013 after having that experience in the commercial laundry world that I was on the children's, I was a chairman of fundraising for a children's dyslexia center and one of the board members says, hey, I got a job opportunity. You want a new job? I'm like, hey, I'm ready for growth. I have been. I've done all this. I'm ready to see something different. And he goes, well, I work with a disaster restoration company and we need a technical trainer and we need somebody to train our franchises to clean electronics and appliances in removing the byproducts from fire and water damage. So I received my training and I became a technical trainer teaching people how to clean the various electronics, computers, TVs and appliances in removing those byproducts from those type of events. Through there I've been here now like about 10 years I've been with prism specialties and I'm still in the training. I moved from a technical trainer to an application engineer where I started to look at more like commercial losses, medical facilities that had fires. What happens to those substrates from different materials burning into restaurants that obviously have a lot of stainless steel and the things we're going to talk about today. So I was exposed to that for the last 10 years and I still do that role. And as I went from those roles into a business consultant, I got to see the business side a little bit and I moved into my current role, which is director of technical services, which I look at additional service lines. I do research and development. So I got to dive into, I got certified in tablet and device repairs. I was repairing cell phones and understood how intricate those surfaces are and the different things that can damage that if you clean it inappropriately. So that's where I'm at today. So for 2024, I hope to continue to move forward with different research and development and looking at best practices for cleaning all the new devices, cleaning the new consumer electronics and appliances that come out with different finishes, you know, you got manufacturer recommendations and how much do you deviate from that to get rid of some of those neglected, built up grease and grime that we can get because humans can tend to be distracted. And when you're distracted and ovens get dirtier and your refrigerator, your dryer gets dirtier, it gets harder to clean. So you want to think about what materials and products that you use to clean that so you don't damage the surfaces and void any type of warranties. So that's a little bit of my background where I come from. And I would say I'm heavily on the repair side, but I've been a lot more in the last 10 years heavy on the cleaning side. Well, that is a wealth of information. And you just gave me about 50 questions that I want to ask. And I'm really curious because I didn't ever think about chemicals eating through stainless steel and through all those commercial machines. And I wonder, are there things that we're doing as homeowners that are damaging our own machines as far as cleaning chemicals that we're using or applying them the wrong ways? Or what are some of the mistakes that you see homeowners making with just the appliances that they have? And we'll take washing machines as an example, because that's a good place to start. Absolutely. First off, it's going to the owner's manual, okay? Understanding when appliances are built, there's different grades of different metals. Stainless steel on an appliance in your home is a different grade stainless steel in a restaurant. It's a lot thicker. It can take a lot more abuse. So reading that manual is incredibly important to understand it. But I will tell you, in my research and experience, it's using the least abrasive, most minimal approach you can to any type of appliance. Stainless steel in particular, we have so many different types of stainless steel in your normal consumer appliances, you got different type of finishes, you've got black stainless, you have slate and black slate, and all those require different cleaning. But there's a commonality between them all. And it boils down to a microfiber cloth in warm water. The best measure you can take is clean up spills immediately and wipe it down. I'm compulsive with it. I'll be honest. I'm OCD when I'm cooking and I do all the cooking. And the whole time I'm cooking, I'm cleaning up the grease splatter. And I got separate microfiber cloths for different cleaning methods. So if I'm using it for grease, they stay with grease. They're grouped together, they're yellow. Okay, if I'm using a stainless steel polish, I might use blue. And that's what I use for my stainless steel surfaces. So as I develop these habits, and that's what's most important, developing consistent habits. If you have a new appliance, start right out the gate with wiping down after every single use. If you use a mild detergent, pretty much across the board, mild detergent, you can clean everything, even the TV screen. Panasonic recommends cleaning their TV screens with a 101 ratio of filtered water to your dishwasher, mild dishwasher detergent. So when you say a mild dishwasher detergent or a mild detergent, are you talking about like a drop of dish soap inside a spray bottle of water or something? Yeah, yeah, pretty close. Yeah, absolutely. Like dawn into dish soap. It's like a 101 to ratio. I can't do the math off the top of my head right now. But you're absolutely right. Just you got some water and you put a little squirt, you know, a couple drops of dish soap in there just to get it foaming. And that that'll help. But anytime and I could the best advice I can give anybody, whether it's dish soap, or whether it's any type of commercial grade cleaner, removing that chemical residue is the most important thing is a clean microfiber with clean filtered water so it doesn't have mineral deposits and wiping that clean in a dry cloth to buff it out is really your best safest non-toxic method. You don't have to breathe nasty fumes, but if you neglect it, you're going to have to use some extra aggression to get those cooked off grease or fingerprints or food smudges off. It's going to take a little bit more elbow grease. And if that don't work, it takes a little bit more aggressive cleaner. All right, so we've got top 10 tips here about cleaning. And the first one that I heard you say was that we want to use the least abrasive materials possible. So the least abrasive chemicals for wiping everything down. Tip number two, I heard was consistency. I have a feeling we're going to go through a whole lot more tips than just 10. But let's let's go with the least abrasive and then consistency and then using a mild detergent on pretty much all of your appliances. So there are three right off the bat. And we've only been doing this for less than 10 minutes. So that is amazing as far as moving forward with what we're going to do. I got a question when you talk about fingerprints and appliances and stuff like that. And it sounds like you're in the kitchen right now. If that's the case, lots of us have stainless steel appliances and we touch the handles of the dishwasher, the microwave, and there are all these fingerprints that even when you wipe them off, the fingerprints are still there. And so how do you get those off? So a mild dish soap can work. If that doesn't work, vinegar is a good route to go. But keep in mind that vinegar is an acidic acid and it's on the pH scale, I say two to three, about 2.5 is where that is. And it depends on the type of vinegar you're using. It can be good at removing mineral stains. And that's oftentimes what we see. We're going to handle the water if we have hard water in our hands or we just touch the cleaner and then we go and touch the handle as we're throwing dishes in and moving things. That might leave some residue, maybe some fats, maybe some proteins. I would suggest going with if the warm water and the microfiber don't work, the next step would be mild dish soap. Okay. And if that don't work, then I would look at the product manual and start to look at what recommendations they say for all purpose cleaners and stainless steel cleaners. So it depends on what substrate you're talking about, of what type of cleaner and method that you want to use. So some manufacturers, I think Whirlpool will suggest a lot of fresh products. And the fresh has a full line. Barkeepers has a full line of cleaners. So if your manufacturer don't recommend something, I would really recommend on using translate it to something that's like kind of quality to what you have to what that appliance is. And whatever that appliance is, and if they're making a recommendation and they're saying use cascade inside my dishwasher, then I would use something that has similar chemicals that are in that cleaner. And you can find the safety data sheet online between all of them. It'll share the pH of them. It'll share the different chemicals that are in it. So if a manufacturer says, don't use ammonia, don't use ammonia, it'll discolor long term. As a matter of fact, Subzero will tell you Subzero has a better quality stainless steel. And if you use ammonia on it, you got to rinse it right away. Otherwise, you'll get a hazing effect. Whereas like my LG appliances, I would never use ammonia on it. It's a thicker different type of stainless steel. It has more of a sheen of finish to it. And I don't want to cause hazing that may not, it may happen too quick for me to be able to rinse it off and not have that side effect from that particular cleaner. So I'd always work my way up. And if I was like, I can't get rid of it, I would go to the manual and look at the manual and see what they recommend. So that way I know what type of all-purpose cleaner to use, what type of stainless steel cleaner to use. You made a really good point about checking the owner's manual. So I'm going to call that tip number four, check the owner's manual. And I completely agree with this because there are a lot of appliances that even though they look like stainless steel, they have like, maybe they have like a finish that is like a stainless steel finish, but maybe it has like a blue tint to it, a slightly blue tint, or maybe it's like a film that was wrapped over the top of it. And maybe it's not an honest stainless steel. And so oddly enough, and we've discovered this in cleaning where sometimes we'll go into a customer's house and we assume that it's honest to goodness through and through stainless steel and it's not. It's got a finish on it. And then if you use a strong chemical on it, like James said, sometimes it can discolor and then you're left wondering, oh no, how do I fix that? And so knowing what you're dealing with is awesome. So I love this. And I'm going to call tip number four, the leading the owner's manual. Now James said something that he sneaked in there. And I want to unpack it really quickly for those of you that just think, oh, I can just clean any kind of appliance I want and just kind of experiment as I go. He talked about the safety data sheets. And I'm a huge fan of reading the safety data sheets, which every single manufacturer and that creates chemicals is required by law to provide. And so you can just do a Google search for whatever the cleaning chemical is. And James mentioned a barkeeper's friend. It's one of my favorite products for stainless steel. And it's because it's been around for 138 years and it was designed for stainless steel. And so when we have like the water drops that drip down from where you put your cup in and the water drips down on the fridge or the water drips down like from your hands on the fronts of the dishwasher and you've got those like streaks that seem like they'll never come out. If you'll take some barkeeper's friend in your hand and you'll just spray your hand with a spray bottle or you'll just add a couple drops of water so it's damp. And you'll take just a damp cloth and wrap your finger in it and tap it so that there's not a lot of barkeeper's friend, not a lot, but you'll go over those areas with the grain of the stainless steel. It will remove those really icky sticky mineral deposits that are like etched in to the stainless steel. And then you can just buff it off, wipe it off with a clean damp cloth and then buff it off and it's good to go. I mean it looks great. Absolutely, absolutely. Be really careful and read the safety data sheets if you're not sure. So I'm going to say safety data sheets is number five. So we're rocking and rolling here. Thank you, James. We've got a couple questions. You were talking about microfiber cloths and Natalie Jones says, what about how to wash the cleaning rags with a variety of chemicals? Does this damage the washing machine? That's a great question. Yeah, so washing machine seals are meant to handle a lot of different things that go into it. Certain things that can damage the washing, the seals and washers in my experience are more acidic type things. So believe it or not, vinegar can be a little slightly acidic for some seals. While some use it and they don't see immediate problems, I think with continuous and prolonged use, there might be dependent upon the particular manufacturer and the type of seals they used. Briefly in the 90s, when they first started introducing ozone being injected into commercial washing machines to eliminate the use of bleach and hot water, they found that they didn't really necessarily do all the homework they needed to do and the seals were made of polyethylene. Well, within days, weeks, those seals were rotten and water was just pouring out the washer past the shaft. And I mean, these are big machines and this is dumping gallons, gallons of water onto the motors and such. But what we found at that point was the ozone was damaging the seals. So the seals and dishwashers and washers, it depends what the manufacturer uses. If they're using a polyacrylate, a polyethylene, I would air caution on using anything that is acidic. I would lean more towards the manufacturer recommendations on what to use to remove mineral deposits. Baking sodas seems to be pretty safe and neutral when it comes to cleaning them type of things. But I would avoid heavily acidic things. So if you have rags, the biggest thing that I could say in anything, in my most experience of anything with kitchen rags as oils and cleaners, mop heads, is don't dry them. If you wash them, don't dry them. Spontaneous combustion could take place. I've been a part of many fires where I've actually watched a cart full of mop heads that haven't been washed sitting in a cart, catch on fire next to me while I was repairing the washer for them to go into. And the mixture of the chemicals, I've seen drier fires with chemicals that hit the galvanized steel of the basket of the drum turning. And once the heat and the right variables were right and they completed that fire triangle, created a fire. So I would say washer is probably okay unless it's very acidic. You're probably better just tossing it in the trash and getting rid of it. As long as it's not going to have any spontaneous combustion because we know dirty rags with oil can spontaneously ignite if they're in a closed container. But I think from a washer, you have the least amount of worry than you do with putting it in the dryer. And for those that are using microfiber cloths, one thing that I want to add is high heat for microfiber cloth will damage the fibers. And so one of the things that we recommend it's easy to do and it's pretty inexpensive, but many people have a laundry room with a door on it. And if you are inside your home and you're doing this at your home, what we have are those, they're actually shoe racks where they have like little hooks and you put your shoes on them and it has like, I don't know, 30 little places for shoes and it just hooks over the back of the door. And so when our microfiber cloths come out of the washing machine, we just shake them out and then we hang them over those little hooks. And so they're really shoe hooks, but we use them for microfiber cloths to dry our mop heads and our microfiber cloths. And that way they never have the high heat. And then instead of us trying to deal with it that way, as soon as they're dry, we just pull them off and fold them up and we're good to go again. So that's a quick tip. That's perfect. So we've got a couple other questions and I wanted to go back to the question that said, how often should I clean my fridge? That's a great question because most people have refrigerators and if we don't clean our fridges, like what happens? Is there anything bad if we don't maintain our fridge and how often should we keep those cleaned? Yeah, so there's different components. There's different sections and there's different intervals at which you clean them. I clean the external part every single day. I wipe it down. I got the mirrored glass. So I use a different cleaning technique. It's just a microfiber cloth. I treat it like my TV. So if you got a refrigerator with a display like that, I use an anti-static microfiber or what's called an E-cloth. That's great for those surfaces. For the stainless on the exterior, I wipe it down every day. I would say maybe once a week, you know, when it be problematic, depending on use, how much you're at home, maybe once every two weeks. Internally, I would clean up spills immediately. But I would say me personally, I would clean the interior of my refrigerator every one to two months. And then more importantly, what affects the operation of your refrigerator is cleaning the door gasket regularly. And that's just doing a simple spot check each week. If that door seal isn't tight against there, it's going to leak cold air out or bring warm air in. And that makes your refrigerator fight harder. So if you can imagine that taking place, and then your condenser coils are dirty as well. So it's fighting to keep set temperature, it's leaking air in, your refrigerator is going to be exhausted. So cleaning your door gasket is hugely important. Just doing spot checks weekly, cleaning it as needed. So that way, because what that can lead to is your evaporator coil leading up. And your freezer is what gets your refrigerator cold. And it does that by diverting the air into your refrigerator through a series of mechanical devices, diverters and things like that. So if you take care of that pretty frequently, then you can kind of go with the rule of thumb about every six months cleaning the condenser coils. It might be a little bit more frequent if you have pets, multiple pets, because their hair and the dander and the dirt can get in there even more as they shed, especially through seasons, you know, going from summer to winter, winter to summer, you know, moving that, they're going to shed. And that might get the condenser coil a little bit more dirty. And so to base on your specific circumstance at the intervals of what you clean, your condenser coil and the condenser coil is located at the back bottom of your refrigerator. If you're uncomfortable, I would hire a professional, but basically it's going to take you've got leveling legs on the front, you have to kind of put them back up so the refrigerator can sit on the wheels. That way you can pull it forward. And as you pull it forward, you want to watch any water lines that are attached, you got a power cord that you need to be aware of, and always unplug any appliance that you're doing this level of cleaning. If it's a simple wipe down, that's fine. You don't want to shut your refrigerator off to clean the interior because then it's going to take that much more to acclimate and get up to temperature, you know, and your freezer, you know, so it's helpful to do those things in the winter. Clean those because the food can stay outside, you get a little bit more time to clean it. But if you're cleaning the condensing coils, the best thing you can do is a vacuum. And I would use a HEPA vacuum. You don't want a vacuum that's going to push particulates back into the room. Now everybody has a real big kitchen. So if you're sucking everything and it's blowing right out back behind you, you're getting the rest of your appliances dirty, and then it's going to suck it right back in there. But a vacuum with some crevice nozzles, some narrow nozzles to get in there, and a flexible appliance brush is super helpful. And if it's unplugged, you don't have to worry about the condenser fan coming on. The condenser fan purpose is to blow the air over the condenser coil to get rid of that heat so your refrigerator can run at its optimal performance. So when you start to have the accumulating of wind on the condenser coil and your door gasket's dirty, your refrigerator is like, please just help me out. I need some help here. I'm having problems keeping up the temperature. So those are some simple things. So one to three months on the condenser coils, if you have pets, six months max. And then I would just do weekly spot checks on the rest of the surfaces and clean as necessary. That was so detailed and so helpful. Thank you so much. But now I want to go back one step. Give us the how to of how we clean the door gaskets. How exactly do we do that? Absolutely. So first off, what do you want to avoid? You want to avoid anything that's going to dry that door gasket out? So avoid petroleum based products, avoid flammable. Your best thing is warm water or mild dish soap. I mean, if you think about it, we're not getting anything really on there. That's too bad. We're not getting like cement, right? We're not getting those type of things. We're just getting some occasional, we got ketchup on our hand. We open the door and the kid closes it and runs on. You got some dried up ketchup on there. So I would say, you know, just for normal white down warm water, if you start to notice debris on there, use a mild dish soap and you want to make sure you dry it afterwards because they kind of look like an accordion, right? If you look at the gasket in the refrigerator, it's kind of accordion. They got grooves in there. If we're getting food stuffs in there and moisture, these organic materials start to produce mold. So if you need to use a q-tip to get in there with a warm solution with mild dish soap, by all means do that. The cleaner you keep them, the better. And in some of the older model refrigerators, I found that when, in my field, that when we pack out refrigerators and we prop the doors open so it doesn't grow mold, sometimes the things that you use deform the gasket and then you get this weird shape in the gasket. You can use a hairdryer to kind of warm that back up and use your fingers in a rag to kind of pull that back out and let it reform its natural state so that way it seals when you close the door. It's hugely important that that is a sealed compartment. It's a closed system. That is awesome. Thank you for sharing that with us. And then you talked about looking for leaks. Where are we looking for leaks and how would we know if we had one in the door gasket? It's very hard to tell. You're going to see more symptoms of, you know, maybe ice cream melting. If it's the freezer that's not sealing correctly, you might pull something out and you drink and you're like, this is a little bit warm. This doesn't seem right, you know. So those are some of the visual indicators. It's hard to tell an air leak without like specialized professional tools. So what I would say is a visual look. You can see it. The next thing would be to understanding, you know, what the products inside the refrigerator are they are they tasting warm? Did you feel warm? I need to address this because that will freeze the evaporator coil. And then once that freezes, it's lost all its efficiency. And the first thing you're going to notice is the refrigerator warming up. Okay. So I would look for those type of things to tell me that, yeah, it might be not sealing correctly. So if we maintain it then on a regular basis, we can prevent damaging it so that it completely has to be replaced. Absolutely. Absolutely. And by regular maintenance, you can retain a lot of your manufacturer warranties. If you read through the warranties in the product manual, you'll see that there's exclusions for using inappropriate cleaners, not having regular maintenance. So and that's what makes it great to if you don't feel comfortable with it using a professional cleaning company, they'll maintain those records, use manufacturer specifications in order that it should have a problem. You got a little bit more, you got a little bit more of a fight to go ahead and get things under warranty and get those repairs taken care of. That is so helpful. Thank you so much. All right. So I'm going to add in, because all of us have a refrigerator, I'm going to add this in as one of our top 10 tips that we clean our refrigerator on a regular basis and that we check the door seals, cleaning it with a damp cloth and just mild detergent, going over the accordion version of that and in between, just making sure that there's no ketchup and there's no ketchup, hot chocolate or whatever it is that you get on your fingers, jelly or jam or mustard and make sure that it's clean and then check the quality of the food to make sure that it's cold and that stuff is freezing properly and then every six months or so, I think, what did you say for the coils? One to three months or three to six months? Yeah, six months is pretty regular but if you have animals or you're in an area where you have windows open and you're going to have a lot more pollen and dust being introduced into the environment, then I would check it at about three months and be able to make a determination that is based on your special circumstance. And one thing I did want to point out too is like, my refrigerator recommends that you take about, I think it's like two tablespoons to a quart of water, so you take two tablespoons of baking powder and you stir it in water until it's completely dissolved because baking soda can be abrasive, it's not as abrasive as bar keepers powder, but you can use that to clean the walls of your refrigerator and your freezer using that mixture and it'll help eliminate odors. That is awesome, thank you for sharing that with us. Okay, so and one thing that I do want to recommend and we didn't say this but I just want to throw this out there for those of you that do not know, James was really careful to say if you are moving your refrigerator out that you have to lift it up in order to access the wheels so that you can roll it. If you just pull it straight out, you can scratch the floors. So please, please, please be careful about that because if you just pull a refrigerator out and you're not paying attention, you can have great big scratches in your hardwood floor or scratches on your tile or whatever, so please be careful and that's another reason why if you're not sure, hire a professional. That's right, I love it. There you go. So MCF says, what is the best way to clean cast iron stove? Great, this is really a common one that comes up a lot because people have these amazing looking kitchens and then those great just get all kinds of food and stuff on it. Yeah, absolutely. The first resort I would always go to is the manufacturer because they recommend Sub-Zero, recommend some cleaners for their stainless steel. They're abrasive powders, they got stainless steel, so it depends on the grade of all these things but the first thing I would start with is the least minimal abrasive thing and that's taken in some hot water and some dawn dish soap in there and letting it soak. I would use baking powder too, you can add a half a cup in the sink full of water, let it fully dissolve and you can put it in there and even add some dish mild dish detergent and then just scraping though and we all know too, matter of fact, like when I clean my cast iron pan, I put water in it and I boil it so that if it's big enough to fit in a pan, you might even want to boil it, all right and be careful when you handle it. You're going to want to make sure you're wearing the proper protection to not burn your hands but to get off some of that heavy built on burned on grease, that means you probably have a lot of boil overs and it can happen but typically that's like cast iron grill grates to what's on a stove is completely different to me in my experience and I found success in just cleaning them with mild dish soap and they make nylon brushes that are kind of like a toothbrush and they got like maybe a little spatula and in for crevice cleaning a little to get in some places you normally can't reach without damaging the surface, those are great. You can scrub them, you might even be able to use the SOS pad and a lot of cases if you use, I think it's a number 000 steel wool pad, that typically I don't think will hurt the cast iron but I would want to look that up through the manufacturer to make sure that I'm not taking off any special finishes that that particular manufacturer may have used for that grill grate. So that's the first place I would start, if I had to go with a more aggressive cleaner I would look across the board at what manufacturers are recommending, what the recommendations are so if that's something like simple green and you mix it to this ratio, I think the biggest thing anybody has to look out for is how particular chemicals react with particular metals and the only way to understand that is to read the manual, if it doesn't clearly indicate it, feel free to contact the manufacturer, feel free to call a professional that are that specializes in that before applying it to anything so that way you don't, these are investments, appliances are investments and we want them to be around as long as we can, right? So proper care, continuous maintenance and following the manufacturer recommendations are absolutely key in maintaining their longevity. I love that, I'm so glad that you said that and I want to go back to something that you said earlier about reading the safety data sheets. The safety data sheet by the globally harmonized system has 16 different sections and it will tell you in section one what the product is and they will give you the information on the manufacturer. So there's a phone number right there in section one, it's the very first section in the safety data sheet and it's all across the board now and so if you're not sure get the safety data sheet it's always available online, you just do SDS which is shortened for safety data sheet and then the name of whatever it is that you're trying to use as far as the cleaning chemical and it will tell you if it's safe to use and the reason this is really important is because there are a lot of people that try to take shortcuts, they're like oh I have a stove and I'm using oven cleaner to clean the inside of my oven can I just spray this on the outside of my oven because if it's good for the inside it must be good for the outside right and they make guesses and when they do that they're not paying attention to my stove is right next to my granite counter which is right next to my wooden cabinets and they go spraying the oven cleaner and it gets in other places that now it's damaged those other surfaces and if you are a professional I want to caution you on one thing and be very clear about this, you might have insurance and good for you if you do, however here's the caveat if you're using an oven cleaner for example and you're using it on something other than the inside of the oven for which it's intended that chemical is inside your care custody and control which means you know what you're doing and you know how to use it and so if you file a claim for granite countertops or wooden cabinets that you've damaged or if it's the top of a stove top which is the exterior that doesn't have the same enamel that the inside of the oven does your insurance company is not going to cover the claim and so if you're experimenting on customer's appliances you did not read the manual you do not know what you're doing and you will be replacing it out of your own pocket so I do want to caution you on that which I cannot emphasize enough if you're not a hundred percent sure pause tell the customer that you will research their really expensive top end of the end of the world appliance and you will get back with them and do not experiment on their appliances if you're not sure do not it's okay to say I don't know I've never seen a Sub-Zero fridge or stove or whatever it is I've never seen this brand before do you mind if I hold off on today's cleaning until I can research it and clean it properly I'd hate to damage it and I don't know any customer that spent the fortune on their appliances it's going to go nah just go ahead and experiment I'm cool with that they will never do that nope nope so I'm glad we had this conversation that's absolutely true I've been a part of claims and in the commercial restoration that where claims were negated because of care custody and control they allowed it to sit too long without it being properly mitigated thereby degrading the surfaces the surfaces and yeah their claim was negated they had to pay out of pocket talking about stoves and appliances though what is the difference between gas and electric when it comes to cleaning because the products are different or are they the same yeah that's a great question so obviously um one anytime I want to play anytime you clean the appliance where you're getting in deep disconnect the power make sure that it's not going to turn on because if you're wiping something and you inadvertently hit a knob and turn it on you might be spewing gas and might ignite a flame in your arms over it or you turn on the elements so always unplug and and disconnect the the utilities gas is a bit more extensive in the clean because you got grates you have burner caps burner heads and all these things need to be pulled off and cleaned in soapy water that's where you want to be really careful on what you use because some of the the the burner heads are aluminum and most commercial grade oven cleaners I know oven bright uh it is bonzy is another commercial grade cleaner with Georgia chemical company that'll actually discolor and in some cases melt the aluminum even baking soda has a negative effect to aluminum so air caution on that so when you clean those it's about elbow grease and diesel you know so you're gonna be pulling a lot of those off uh you never want to use a rag that's dripping wet that in any case because you can get into electrical components you can get it into the crevices that go down into the insulation if insulation gets wet if it gets real wet you can start to develop mold you know so you want to air caution on that and use you know wet rags but not dripping wet so when you clean a gas range those are the components going to come off you got more removable parts that you're cleaning versus an induction or a flat top like mine I'm going to use distilled water uh wipe it I don't want heavy if I if I lived in southern Indiana their water was so hard down there it was just destroying some of the dry cleaning machines so when you use that you could be leaving residues of minerals and build up and especially if you use it in an oven to use a steam to clean it like an easy clean you pour water in the bottom of the oven it can leave that mineral deposit behind once it's dried and it's evaporated and you're just gonna have this film behind so I would say if you're going to ever clean with water use a filtered tap water using a pure filter or something like that or bottled water refraining from you know any type of water that could have minerals in it you know spring water things like that so if you use water it has less minerals that's great for cleaning because you don't get that residual after it's drying and gone so cleaning electric avoiding the electrical elements in the back if you have exposed elements sometimes they're underneath so you don't have to worry about it as much but you just want to avoid getting it too wet you want to avoid using baking soda or any type of oven cleaner on aluminum ammonia can have some adverse effects and you may not see these adverse effects from these chemicals right away but continuous prolonged use over time starts change the color starts the damage the finish that the manufacturer intended to have this light span for this amount of time you're shortening that even though you don't see it it's taking place I'm so glad that you brought up all of those tips one of the tips that I want to hang on to and this is really important and I think this is true for all of the electrical appliances is and this is one of our 10 tips of the day is if you're cleaning an electrical appliance please unplug it before you start doing any of the heavy duty cleaning and this is because we want to make sure that it doesn't come on automatically when you for for example you've got your hand down the the garbage disposal or something make sure that it's turned off so that it's not just going to something's going to happen or if you are changing replacing those cleaning the coils of your refrigerator you want to make sure that that's unplugged and so if you are doing some heavy duty cleaning please either turn them off or just flip the breaker so that it's not going to come on automatically and like attack you okay because we don't want any weird things happening can you talk to us for a second about um self cleaning ovens I know that yeah that is something that I've personally had some issues with where the builders built them into cabinets that were so close to the cabinets that when they heated up to that the high temperatures it caught the cabinets on fire and now we have house fires in the kitchens cool so that's a great point I'm just going to be honest and transparent I'm not a fan of self cleaning self cleaning will take that appliance to like 900 degrees so it's like sitting in your car in park putting your foot on the gas and watching that that rpm go up and just well you're running it you're running it it's the same thing with your oven and interestingly enough what you're cooking off the fumes that are produced anytime you get a new oven right you heat it up you can actually smell the paint and the materials and the oils that they use in the manufacturing process coming off well we never get it totally hot enough to get even more of that out and plus the cooked on things that we have when we heated up to 900 degrees it's taken all its components to the highest parameter that is can withstand and we're pushing the limits and then like you said the sides are going to get hot and depending on the manufacturer and the quality of it might not have as much insulation so the fumes that are coming off they're going to tell you if you read manuals take birds out of the area remove them from the room open all the doors all the windows that's red flags for me you don't want kids or pets around because they can walk by brush it and get burnt so I don't like the self cleaning function because of that because of the risk because I know through normal spot checks cleaning weekly cleaning after every use I don't have to use those aggressive techniques methods and all that to in order to clean my oven so I can cook a pizza or I can cook a pie those are two things that continually boil over they're always so I would say if you want to reduce that get a silicone mat they make silicone mats that go in there they go up to about 500 degrees you're perfectly fine putting it in there and it makes cleanup easy but if you do get some spillage over before you heat it up the next time and fill your house up with all these soot molecule that's what it is it's soot molecules it's taking this food and just heating it up and it's dispersing everywhere you can use some plastic scrapers these razor blades there's plastic razor blades as well they sell them in kits where you have one handle is a razor and the other is a plastic those are great and if you may not want to go in and just start using elbow grease and scraping it off I would make a baking soda paste and just hit that one spot let it sit for a little bit and then scrape it off and then wipe it with the rags as we've already discussed if you have aluminum you decide to put aluminum on the bottom and you peel it off and you got little chunks staying back use some dish soap and a few squirts and a cup pour it in there typically it'll have a cavity you don't want it to go over enough that it drips into the lower pan or into any crevices but you can put it in there and let it rest a little bit let it start to dissolve that and you can typically scrape it right off with the plastic scraper I love that thank you for that I I think one of the things that we need to really pay attention to when it comes to the oven and I want to go back for a minute to something that James just said when we talk about the self-cleaning oven because I get this question at least 10 times a week the self-cleaning oven is a feature that a lot of people like because it is available but just because it is available does not mean it's the best way that you should clean your oven and there are people who have at one time use a chemical spray like an easy off or something like that to clean the oven and now they want to try to use the self-cleaning oven and what James just said and I want to really pay attention to this if at one point you added extra chemicals and now you're heating it up to the 900 or 1000 degrees and it's just like overkill what has happened now is those chemicals that you once used to spray to clean the oven are now heating up so hot that you better get out of the house if you're going to do it and I don't recommend doing the self-cleaning oven if you're not physically on the property because I have been in homes where the homes have caught fire and something that they don't tell you in pretty much anywhere is if you use a self-cleaning oven and the cupboard does catch fire they the the self-cleaning oven will say ventilate right open all the airs and windows but if you have a fire that starts oxygen fuels a fire and so you need the windows closed if there's a fire because you don't want it to feed the fire right so if the oven is too hot and it catches fire and you have the windows open thank you for ventilation bad for ventilation because now the rest of your house is going to catch fire so it it doesn't make any sense okay it doesn't make any sense and I've been in neighborhoods where there were five homes like I was cleaning a home when I caught somebody's stove on fire their oven oven caught fire because she did the self-cleaning oven I was on the premise when it happened and there were five neighbors that came over and go oh that that happened to so-and-so through the block there were five homes in the neighborhood that had caught fire because the builder built that in the cabinets where they put the oven inside the cabinet it was too close and they just caught oven fires yeah and so it's not that the builder was negligent maybe they didn't know that the ovens were going to heat up that hot but it was a common thing and so we started sending out memos to everyone saying hey listen please do not use your self-cleaning oven please do not and so I just want you to be aware if you do there are people that have used it successfully and they love it that's great but please be aware there are issues and if you are a professional house cleaner you do not want to find yourself in a situation where you just burn down a customer song I promise you that from experience and I want to add that's a great point and that really gets me thinking so one thing I want to add is like anytime you self-clean you got to pull the racks they say you can leave the porcelain in there but it'll just color your racks and then they won't fit right but here's what it is to your point of hey I do it I did this and I didn't have any problem whether there's a thing called pyrolysis and pyrolysis in the fire world is what causes flashovers and everything it's just the decay of the materials so if you use the self-clean and it's in a cabinet like that may not happen right then but that heat is changing the combustibility of the materials that are around it through pyrolysis it just continually gets hot and hotter and hotter and it starts to heat out the natural oils in there till one day it happens so it's a lot like playing frogger you know you may get across up to level three but level four they got you well and it's it's also the fumes it like I said if you use a spray and then you try to use the self-cleaning oven those fumes become so incredibly toxic that you can't you cannot stay in the house you cannot stay in the house and they do say get your birds out of the house get your birds your cats your dogs get everybody out of the house and people too I had a gentleman call me one time and he was in a panic and he said uh my house stinks really really bad and the fumes are so bad it's burning our throats what do we do and I said how did you get this way and he said well we just turned on the self-cleaning oven but we have always used the spray instead and I said get out of the house open your windows and get out of the house just get out of the house turn off the breaker make sure that you turn it off so that you can stop the process get out of the house because whatever you're breathing right now it's already burning your lungs and your throat yep so I hate that it's horrible please don't don't play dumb games if you play dumb games you win dumb prizes as they say that's right do you have any advice for cleaning hoods and filters I know lots of people have like grease and stuff that goes up there and then it's kind of a mess absolutely so there's two types of filters there's metal and charcoal charcoal you typically just replace that's replaced annually or about 120 hours of cooking time that's a good rule of thumb to use as far as the metal you're going to have a couple different types you're going to have baffle which just tends to be mostly stainless then you're going to have a mix of aluminum and stainless steel for the mesh so like any type the thing that has aluminum avoid putting it in the dishwasher avoid using any type of corrosive cleaner on it baking soda things like that you can do a quick little research and find the things that are that will react negatively like ammonia with uh with that aluminum so pull them out anytime that you have the heavy cooking season like the holidays even if you're not cleaning the whole range and hood at least clean the filters pull them set them in some hot water and it always goes back to the manufacturer I've read some manufacturers recommendations on using ammonia for the stainless steel baffle type you put them in a trash bag with ammonia set it outside and you can do the whole rinsing I'm not a big fan of using anything that has heavy fumes I like green approaches easy and just staying consistent it works for me as far as the mesh I would soak them in hot soapy water making sure that I rinse them completely to get rid of all soap residue and then making sure that they're fully dry once you remove the filters up inside if you got any grease that's sitting there you can make that baking soda water paste you know I think it's like a half a cup to a few tablespoons of baking soda with a little toothbrush and you just put it on the spot let it sit 15 20 minutes scrape it off and wipe it clean but what I want to stress that's most important is doing everything you can to use a flashlight and look up where the fan is and see if you can see up in the duct if you're starting to see an accumulation of grease it's time to call out the professionals and have that vent clean because that can create a structure fire um so hoods are sucking in all that you can get heavy splatter and maybe if you don't start to neglect the filters it's just going to continually move through so it gets up past the filters so but as long as you're maintaining it and going you don't have to do that as much but the further neglect you do the more extreme measures you're going to have to take and I would really call out a professional so they can look at the most cost effective solution for you as a homeowner to ensuring that your risk you're mitigating all these risks of structure fires or any type of damage or failure and I'm really glad that you brought that up because there are little tiny things that we can do when we cook there are ways that we can cook like with lids and things like that that will help contain some of the grease and from a cleaning perspective please please please contain all of your grease when it goes up the sides of your cow birds and it gets on the ferns that are above your cabinets and everything and it gets on your trinkets and your ornaments and it's thick in the air and then it settles on all of your stuff it's it's just a mess and it's hard to it's hard to clean because then when the dust kicks through your house it sticks on that grease and it's it's just nasty so please I love what James is saying about regular maintenance so thank you very much um what and I would I would be remiss I have to ask this question this is another one that we get asked a lot it's about the uh plastic or the the rim we see it oftentimes in either the garbage disposals where we get lots of gunk there or inside the washing machine in those front load washing machines where there's a gasket a big gasket and then like there's this little overlap and there's gunk that gets in there and then it molds how do we clean those yeah so great point what's going to help you clean your garbage disposal is going to help your dishwasher because oftentimes the dishwasher is connected to your garbage disposal uh so a lot of them if you do some research you'll see that they say not to use the ice cube and the lemon wedge technique simply what you can do is get kind of like a baby bottle brush or a beaker brush and you can use some dish open mild detergent some warm water you can clean out the rubber baffles that go down into it and then what you can do is just simply pour some um you know vinegar down in there uh and then uh while you're letting that you use I think of like maybe a half a cup of baking soda and a cup of vinegar you can pour that down in the garbage disposal let it sit okay and by the way cut the power off before you're sticking that brush down in the garbage disposal and don't stick your hand in there it's not necessary you can clean those baffles and get that off uh but when you got the power off and you put the baking soda and vinegar in there and letting it sit boil you a small pan of water a couple cups of hot water and then you can once that's boiling you can go over there every 10 15 minutes and pour that down the drain that'll get rid of a lot of that gunk that's billed up that causes a lot of odor I'm sure you can smell it when your dishwasher starts to drain you can smell that kind of rotten egg smell it may not always be coming from your dishwasher you might be getting the smell from that that disposal so keeping that clean is super helpful and then once you get that down in there you can establish power again and then run some water and just let the garbage disposal run for about a minute and let it rinse out that's great for the garbage disposal but I would once again always refer to the manufacturer to ensure that you know you understand the components that are inside there so if there's happens to be an aluminum part you know you're not causing any damage so really all this boils down to is doing your research on what you own as far as washers that bellows that or that membrane that goes between the tub on a front loader and that door really it's wiping every time so as you pull the clothes out like once you wash clothes get them out of there promptly because the more they sit they start to build up mildew and they can stink even after a few hours you know even more so if you leave them in there for a day but if you continually keep that dry and just kind of pull that out and keep it dry that's great I would use that I would not use any aggressive detergents or anything like that they do sell like pods that you can put in a dish or I'm sorry in a washing machine and run it so if you're performing that maybe two three times a year and then you're doing sort of you know throwing some baking soda in the washer and running that on a cycle with no loads in it that can help you because the thing that you want to prevent if you want to prevent mold in this buildup in your machines really avoid using fabric softener and overuse of detergents fabric softener we tend to overuse it coats everything it starts to coat the the screens for your drain pump and that can cause issues in your dryer it can coat the sensors and now it can't operate at its set temperature so you can put a load in and it kind of overheats it goes past the set point so that's 180 degrees by the time that heat gets through the sensor and that stickies fabric softener and got went sticking to it now it's going way higher and because of the differential it's going back down before that cycles its heat on and off maybe a 15 degree differential but the dirtier the gets the more you overuse these detergents and fabric softeners it coats these components and it starts to put them out of operational parameters so now you got this big window of turning off and on now you got extended dry times you have a washer that's not draining as efficiently as it should so that might cause a problem during spin and getting the water out fast enough and you get what's called in the world is called carryover so if i'm using a bath we call it a liquor mix in back in the day when we did that it was a dose of chemicals in a bath once you go from that detergent bath to the next bath you don't want detergents you're going through a rinse but carryover can carry over some of those detergents if it's not draining properly and the use overuse all these products can absolutely attribute to that and i'm so glad that you brought that up as a house cleaner i can't tell you how many times a week i get the question how do we clean out that inside rim and i love the front load washing machines they're so convenient they're just awesome and it's fun to watch the clothes spinning around but the the clothes and i want us to just walk through this logically for just a second the clothes are being washed so there's water inside there's moisture inside and so when we open the door we've been told and trained to leave the door open after the wash so that it can air out but because of the folds of the bellows of that rim that goes between the door and the drum of your washing machine what happens is it folds over and it's kind of like it's closing a little door to trap everything inside and you have to kind of open it up and with the dry cloth clean that out and i'll share a secret with you they sell these little stick on hooks you can find them at the hardware store at walmart or whatever and they're just they you just pill the little sticker off and you stick it on and it doesn't damage if you pill it off it's like a little what do you call it a command strip thing and you just stick it on the side of the dryer with a terry cloth and the terry cloth is just a simple cloth that will hang on the side of your washing machine or dryer and when you open the laundry if you'll take that cloth and you'll clean out the inside of that you'll dry that with like half of the cloth flip the cloth over and then wipe the inside of the glass door so that that's dry and wipe around the seal of that as well and if you will wipe those two areas and you will keep those areas dry and you can just it's it's clean because you've just done a load of laundry you can just hang your cloth back up there and let it dry and then every couple of times throw it in the washing machine and wash it and let it go through a cycle but if you will keep that dry after every single load it will keep your washing machine really nice but once you get to the point where you've got mold and hair gunk and all the the stuff that's trapped in there because it does it traps hair it's bobby pins and hair elastics and whatever else goes through the dryer q-tips if it's anything that's in your pocket receipts or whatever it will trap all that inside that rim so clean that out and then dry it and your washing machine will be so much happy i love that as a tip um our time is up our time is up oh my goodness it did and i knew this would happen i have learned so much this has been so incredibly helpful um james please tell our listeners where they can go to find you learn more about you absolutely so my email i'm always monitoring that it's james.copeland at prismspecialties.com feel free to email me as i said i'm constantly monitoring it because as i said i'm the commercial go-to guy for my entire network so as commercial claims come in uh they're contacting me and that is usually a knee jerk reaction to react quickly so i'm constantly monitoring feel free to reach out to me with any questions you have happy to help the masses well thank you so much and also i'm going to leave links in the notes below to james website as well as his email address and just if you have any questions i know there are a lot of questions we didn't get to today we had several people that said uh how about a top loader machine i want to answer that in the questions below afterward over uh norel says thank you very much you guys thank you so much for for joining us today this was just absolutely awesome to have you here i really appreciate you guys joining us and james i appreciate your time and attention today you have been immensely helpful as we move through the new year to take care of the appliances that we've invested so much in thank you very much for today thank you happy new year