Posted by DonaldVR on September 10, 2009 under Odor Removal, Residential Ozone Usage | 
Parents who have children in diapers know that the battle against dirty-diaper odor isn’t easily won. As the father of a two-year-old, I often find myself cringing as I step into our son’s nursery and breath in the stink drifting from the diaper bucket. Even after performing the inglorious task of taking out the diaper trash, the odor lingers. What’s a parent to do?
While it may be that the only permanent solution to dirty-diaper odor is potty training, I’ve found that applying an ozone shock treatment is a great way to remove the lingering odor. After a treatment, our nursery gets a fresh start, smelling nice and clean again. There’s no hint of dirty diapers.
The process I use is simple. Obviously, the first step is to empty the diaper bucket. Then I simply plug in and switch on my ozone generator and shut the door to the room. Two hours later, our nursery smells like a fresh breeze! It’s just that easy.
Some points to note:
- If you think your nursery smells a little, chances are that guests to your home, who are not used to dirty diaper odor, will be able to smell it through your whole house. An ozone treatment is a great way for your house to avoid the “stinky” label.
- The generator I use is an OMZ-700. It works greats for removing a wide variety odors from a single room.
- An ozone shock treatment should only be performed in a vacated room. It’s fine to step into the room to switch the generator off, but you and your kids (or pets) shouldn’t hang out in there while the treatment is going.
Posted by markO3 on under Commercial Ozone Usage, Odor Removal, Residential Ozone Usage |
One common question that people have about using ozone is exactly how an ozone machine is able to remove odors from houses, cars, clothing, etc. To help answer the question I figured it was worth a quick mention here.
Basically, ozone removes odor by destroying the molecules, bacteria, and spores that cause unpleasant smells. Ozone (O3) is a highly reactive molecule and is very quick to chemically react with particles that it comes into contact with in the air and on surfaces. The extra oxygen atom in the ozone attaches itself to other molecules, chemically changing their structure to create non-offensive molecules – eliminating the smell
How Ozone Breaks Down Odor
When considering bacteria and spores the same process applies, with ozone attacking the outer shell of the cell causing it to break down. When the outer shell degrades, the cell itself breaks apart and dies.
With this in mind, it makes sense that a situation with stronger odor (and more odor-causing molecules or particles) requires more ozone to remove the smell - there needs to be enough ozone to react with all of the offensive molecules it encounters. This requires either A) a longer ozone treatment or B) higher concentrations of ozone (a larger ozone generator). Check out this chart of common odors to see typical treatment times for common problems.
One common scenario involves people who have “tried everything” to get rid of a smell, but are still left with lingering scents that just don’t seem to go away. One reason that ozone is effective in these situations is because, as a gas, ozone effectively “cleans” any place that air can go. This includes air, walls, ceilings, ductwork, carpet fibers, gaps between floorboards, cracks in walls, and more. Ozone is able to penetrate into these areas and destroy odors that it finds there.
So how does ozone get rid of smells? It chemically breaks down odor-causing molecules in any area where air is allowed to flow.
