Best Way to Get Rid of Odors

Like all things, there is a ‘best way’ to do just about anything. In this article, a former IAQ tester will share with you what I believe to be the ‘best way’ to get rid of odors.

The easiest (but worse for your health) way to get rid of odors is to mask them with chemicals. Products like Febreze or any other air freshener, according to the Environmental Work Group contain many cancer-causing chemicals. If you must mask the odor, use essential oils and do your lungs a favor.

The first step in your quest to get rid of odors is to properly clean the floors of any dust (mop, vacuum, etc) Once you get rid of dust, all you need is to run the HVAC system 24/7 with a MERV 11 furnace filter. I’ve blogged about that several times.

If you want to get rid of pet odors, you’re probably dealing with urine. You’ll need to rip out carpets and pads. Next, you’ll need to douce the urine stain areas with enzymes. Lastly, you’ll have to perform a one or two-day ozone shock treatment in the unoccupied structure. The best way to do that is one hour on, one hour off via a 24 hour 30-minute timer.

If you want to get rid of cooking or second-hand smoke odors, then you’ll need to clean off surfaces with a de-greaser, clean the carpets with a degreaser (or replace them) and then follow up with a one to four-day ozone shock treatment, on hour on and one hour off the whole time. This time, you’ll need to flush all of the byproducts of the oxidized chemicals (now tiny particles) out of the house via a negative pressure technique we preach. It involves opening all of the windows and doors and pointing a 20″ box fan outwards from the lowest window, the rest of the window sealed, to draw air in and force the air out via the box fan. If you don’t do this (and most ozone generator vendors only care about selling you and ozone generator, don’t care about your health, so they won’t tell you this) then those tiny particles will be breathed in deep into the lungs and like second-hand smoke, potentially cause problems for health. (humans and pets) So make sure to do this final step whenever you perform an ozone shock treatment to get rid of second-hand smoke.

Just remember, ozone is not for breathing! It’s only for use in unoccupied areas. Wait one hour after the ozone shock treatment before going back in and comply with all state and local regulations. If you have any questions, please give us a call.

Disclaimer: In the USA, the FDA has not approved ozone for medical use. If you have any questions about using ozone, please talk to your doctor or health professional. Ozone is not for breathing! Breathing high concentrations of ozone can harm your lungs (see EPA warning on ozone air purifiers) We do not sell ozone air purifiers. We only sell commercial ozone generators for use by Contractors (or homeowners acting as contractors) to ‘shock’ the air in unoccupied areas ONLY! Please use as directed for air shock treatments, and only if you feel you can competently follow instructions.

2 thoughts on “Best Way to Get Rid of Odors

  1. I know very little about ozone, and after reading a few of your articles I get the feeling that you don’t want to be in the room while an ozone generator is running. I have a small ozone generator that I got to hell when the cat used the liter box which seemed to work so I tried sitting on the couch with it and the cat to see if it would help with my allergies, and I did have a much less runny nose and was in the room with it for several hours. That evening I woke in the middle of the night and experienced the most intense panic attack that I have ever had that lasted for about 7 hours. I was just curious if sitting near the ozone generator could have brought that on, I would be curious to hear your thoughts on this situation. Thank you.

    1. Ozone air purifiers are dangerous. If you fall alseep and brethe in high concentrations of ozone, your lungs can shut down. Low amounts of ozone are fine,
      but at night, it gets cold. Ozone doesn’t break down as fast, and it builds up. Very dangerous! So no, don’t use your ozone generator in that manner. Our
      ozone generators are only for shock treatments. You turn them on for 30 mintues to 1 hour. Come back 1 hour later. The ozone has converted back into oxygen.
      Odors gone. Any bacteria, mold viruses, pathogesn on surfaces are dead. Same with mites. VOC’s. Odors. High concentration for ‘air shock” when nobody is home
      is how to use these.

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