All right, so five install state mistakes that kill systems; five things; five large wide categories of problems that kill systems; things that you don't set up properly. So this kind of goes into the two different elements of process and air conditioning and refrigeration. Almost everything we're going to talk about here applies to both air conditioning and refrigeration more on the air conditioning side. But these are things that installers have to think about both in the installed practices, sort of the practical skills of installing and air conditioning refrigeration system and then also on the startup and commissioning side.

So I want to focus more and more at HVAC, school and Kalos about the commissioning side. Once you get something started up, making sure that it's really operating the way that's supposed to, because that initial part of the life of a unit is such a key part in the long term. Efficiency, longevity and capacity of the equipment and those are really kind of the three legs of the stool that I always think of fishin see longevity capacity. It's got ta last a long time without problems.

It's got to have the proper capacity, meaning the amount of cooling or heating to be able to do the job, and it needs to do it efficiently so that it's not costing I'm an exorbitant amount of money or more than it's designed to so. This is focused on the air conditioning side, the air side and cooling side. Not we're not talking about gas furnaces here and that's one thing that I often kind of lack in is I don't. We don't have as many gas furnaces in Florida, and so I don't focus as much on gas furnaces.

So this is more on the air conditioning side. But since we're here in the spring and where everybody's starting to come in to cooling season, starting to think about cooling season, I thought it was a good time to talk about the five install mistakes that kill systems. This presentation was originally designed to be done throughout the state of Florida at Johnstone's. Then they got canceled.

So I was supposed to be doing this class at Boynton Beach and I figured hey we'll just share with everybody, kalos folks and HVAC school folks. So these are the five things. Five things are improper brazing flaring and leak testing, which we'll talk about all of those elements failing to flow nitrogen and what that does to the system. Poor, evacuation, we're not going to do the deep dive into evacuation that I've done.

A bunch of time, so, let's just talk a little bit about it, no or improper airflow setup. In most cases, no air flow setup is what happens in the field and compressor overheating and flooding. So these are my five faves when it comes to things that kill this all right. So let's talk about proper brazing flaring and leak prevention, best and worst practices.

So having the proper amount of refrigerant in the system is super key to efficiency and operation and a lot of text when they do text or installers when they, when they start up a new system, they focus so much on making sure to dial that charge and You'll hear that I'll make sure to dial that charger. You know whether, if it's exp, you know they dial in the charge by subcooling. If it's a fixed or faster piston system, they dial it in by superheat and they can get super obsessive about. That I mean then again, that's a good thing.

It's good to care about dialing things in, but if you have a system, that's not leak free. It's not clean dry and tight you're really chasing your tail because you have to start with the system. That's not gon! Na leak in any significant amount, now before we go further on that topic, though, I have to say that every system leaks to some degree - and you know this, if you do your deep micronic decay tests, meaning you pull down to a really deep vacuum and you You check to see if it rises, you'll notice that they all rise and that's because every assembly, whether it's your hoses, that you connect to the system or flare fittings or the seals and chat, lift fittings or whatever they do leaks, um and mechanical fittings, meaning fittings That you're, you know twisting in place that have threads those tend to leak more than brazed fittings, which is why, if you're in a really really tight system, then you braise it in and that's why most unit area manufacturers, that's why they have braze connections versus other Types of connections to say there aren't some really great mechanical connections, but if you want to get it really really tight, then brazing is the way to go, which is why we've done it that way, since all of us can remember so we do want to try To keep them leak free, and let's talk about that first thing: when brazing: let's talk about some of the worst practices, some of the things that people do wrong on the brazing side, so brazing without nitrogen. This is an image of copper, tube 1 braised, with nitrogen, one brace without nitrogen.

The difference between the two pretty clear now, one thing that I always say whenever I show these sorts of images is that most of these are done with wide open tubing with pretty high heat, and so these are sort of worst-case scenarios. You don't necessarily this bad inside the system if the system has had very little exposure to oxygen, so in order to build up this black stuff on the side of the copper that you see here, this is called cupric oxide or cop oxide, and the reason that That happens is the presence of oxygen and presence of high temperatures together inside the copper is what results in that or outside any where you get it inside outside forever, but it requires the presence of high temperature and requires the presence of oxygen. So if you have some copper tubing that was sealed off from the factory and never left open, then you're not gon na get quite this much, but when you braise on an open tube. This is what you will see and all this cupric oxide is gon na.

Make its way into your valves into your screens into your filter dryers and it's gon na plug them up. We want a flow nitrogen in order to prevent that from occurring. Another brazing that worst practice is sweating off joints. That means in order to pull things apart, you're heating them up to pull them apart now and installs.

You don't generally do that. So that's more of a service practice, but you really want to try to prevent from doing that whenever you have to take things apart, you it's really better to cut them apart and there's several reasons for that. One is there's a safety element to it. When you sweat off joints and the same kind of pop apart, oil can catch fire and that sort of thing that's one reason, but another reason is, is that you're gon na be more likely to release moisture back into the system, especially when you're working around things.

Like filter dryers definitely want to cut out filter dryers, but in general, if you can prevent from having to sweat things apart, then cut them apart. Now there are cases where you have closed couple valves. You know some compressors whatever, where you don't have a choice but to sweat them apart, but in general, try not to do that next. Brazing, worse practice is sanding, copper after it's been cut.

That means that if you're going to you know, use Emery cloth, you're gon na use a scotch brite pad something like that to clean your copper, which is a really good practice. You want to do that before you cut it, so an example would be. If you are going to cut out a dryer go ahead and sand, it go ahead and clean it first before you cut it so that that way, you're not dropping as little shards of copper, because you know when you are when you're sanding copper when you're cleaning It there's little pieces of copper that are coming off and you don't want that going into the system sand before you cut, don't allow birds to fall on the copper. This is another key thing.

You see this a lot when technicians learn that they should deburr or ream their copper, which you should in all cases, if you can do it safely, that's this edge that occurs around the copper after you cut it, because that cutting wheel digs in to that copper. As you're kind of running it around the tubing, you want to take that burr off, because that burn, pin jizz on the copper and it creates turbulence there and we don't want turbulence inside the tubing that leads to inefficiency. So you do want to remove that burr. But I see a lot of cases is Tech's will deburr with the copper standing straight up and they'll drop the burrs down into the copper you know.

What I would suggest is is that in most cases, if you can hold it sideways or tilt tilt it down when you're devouring, that's great, if you can't because of the position that I would say, it's probably better to not be burr than to allow copper fittings To drop into the tubing Eric says, I started using the deburr tool that looks more like a pen. He gives you a nice curl piece that you can grab yeah and then again, that's a skill thing. That's the one I prefer to and I'm forget the brand, but it's just got a little hook on it and you can kind of curl it off nice and easy you're, not kind of just sitting there and doing it real, quick and dropping it down in the Copper, and so that's a skill thing once you've got an experience with it and again. The message here is that you just want to make sure that you're not dropping it into the copper lines.

It's better that you don't deeper than that. You drop it in the copper lines if those are your choices, but it's better that you don't drop it into the lines and you deburr properly. You know again, the term is often called reaming, so, whatever you prefer to call it reaming or deburring, either way works. But that did is need to be part of your process.

Another thing that technicians fail to do is failing to seal open tubing. This is again, this is more on the install side. If you're doing a rough end stage and you run copper, you need to make sure that that copper is completely sealed and even if in florida they run a lot of copper in chases chase pipes. So a lot of soft copper in PVC chases, I tell technicians, don't just use the caps or the rubber plugs that come in that copper.

When you run it, because you can easily damage and deform the end of the tubing and then contaminants air moisture can get into the tubing. So if you're gon na run through a chase or you're gon na have to be you're, gon na be pushing copper like we do in Florida. Pinch that copper braze it shut before you even do that to make sure that you're not gon na get anything in the tubing. So many times the kind of the nerdy technician types focus on things like evacuation, and you know air flow testing and all that.

But then miss the fundamentals like making sure that your copper stays sealed even to the extent that, when you're working with tubing. So if you're out in the field and you're installing a compressor you're installing an evaporator coil when you're in between steps use a little bit of painters, tape even just to block off the ends just to make sure that you're kind of reducing the amount of Moisture Air stuff, that's getting in there again. Painters tape, isn't gon na be completely sealed, but just a sort of a temporary measure, while you're working to keep it sealed off. Just keep the open tubing sealed best you can and if you're gon na leave it for a while make sure that it's sealed with braised off and pressurize with nitrogen, which is a good practice anyway.

If you're gon na leave a house at rough stage make sure to repress your eyes, braise off, put a Schrader port in the end, leave it under nitrogen pressure. On that note, I guess this is worth saying that versus just pressurizing, it's better! If you can flow nitrogen through it, so for some nitrogen through it and then pressurize versus just pressurizing and that what that does is it helps displace any air. That's gotten in before you pressurize, because if air has gotten in and you pressurize, you can still potentially have some condensation inside the lines, and so you do want to try to displace that air and oxygen before you pressurize and that's just the best practice in general. Alright, so next thing is: don't move the torch too much? That's a brazing works practice.

We're gon na talk a little bit more about that. I'm failing to draw alloy into the joint, so failing to use enough heat on the joint. This is the biggest mistake that I see we'll talk more about this, but newer technicians. They are afraid of burning things up.

So what do they do? They start moving the torch all around and they don't use enough heat and they don't draw it into the joint quick enough and so most often newer, Tech's, newer installers will burn up valves one because they don't protect the valves but two because they are taking too Long not because they're using too much heat most often, I see newer technicians failing to use enough heat and it depends on the person. You'll see some people get in there. Real aggressive and they'll burn right through the copper, but that's actually more rare, most people and they get a torch in their hand. They want to start moving it around and they don't use enough heat versus using too much.

And the next thing is, overheating. Valves burning finishes and wires, which just requires a little bit of forethought and protecting the valves and the different components. Let's talk about we're talking talk only about copper to copper, brazing. Here I'm.

I talk a lot about different types of metals and all that sort of thing, but we're talking install practices here. So, let's be practical when you are heating, a joint for installation and we're gon na say that you're most of you're, probably using an oxygen set, oxy acetylene torch somebody using air, acetylene or swirl turbo torch type of flame, which is totally fine. There are some some different practices, but the goal here is to get the bay material to 1,200 to 1,300 degrees, so you want to get the entire joint between 1200 and 1300 degrees, so that is between dark cherry and medium cherry. That is the temperature change or the color change that you want to see on that copper before you begin applying rod and the easiest thing to do is just to get your torch up to it and then, if it starts to get a lighter color, then dark Cherry then, just back the torch up a little bit as you braze, just kind of move the torch around, allowing the base metal to melt the rod.

I don't think brazing is really that complicated, especially with copper to copper, but the biggest mistake I see people make is not getting the entire joint to that dark cherry to medium cherry color. Before they start applying the rod, some will say: well, you don't actually have to get it that hot well. There are some rods out there that will melt more in between the blood red and the dark cherry temperature, really high silver content rods. That sort of thing, but in general, most of the rods that you're gon na be working with you're gon na require you to get to that temperature because that's the temperature that your rod melts at there's.

These two different points called liquidus and solidus, and that's because your rod has multiple components in it. There's there's multiple materials inside of a rod most of the rods that you know rods we use or 15 % silver. That's a really good quality rod to use, but then it also has phosphorous and copper in the rod, and so you have these different metals that all have to melt in order to pull into the joint. If you don't heat it up enough, some of the metals will melt.

You know specifically, like the silver will start to melt first, but you're not going to draw it into the joint with all of the metals in order to have that that proper bond a lot of technicians out there, it's a lot of installers get used to just Heating up the edge of the joint thinking that that is enough, and it will often seal and a lot of cases, so it won't necessarily leak right away, but then, over over time, you'll get these little tiny, pinhole leaks that are hard to find, and it's just Because, rather than pulling into the joint they've, just sealed the edge and we've all seen that next thing is, and this comes down to the concept of oxidization, I actually wrote a tech tip about this yesterday. The type of flame you want to use is a carbonizing or a neutral flame, which means that you either have this small third feather. So the way I look at it is you've got your knot. Third feather.

Second, feather you get your first kind of flame here get your second feather, and then you have your big feather that goes out here on the Oxus headland. It's calling it here. The acetylene feather you want to have a slight carbonizing flame, also called a reducing flame, or you want to have a neutral flame, which means you just make that feather disappear. You do not want to have an oxidizing flame and the reason is an oxidizing flame has excess oxygen and it oxidizes the joint, and so it creates oxides, copper, oxides, cupric oxide and that results in a weaker bond a weaker, a joint connection.

You want to have one of these two types of flames. My preference would be that you use just a slightly slightly carbonizing flame, otherwise known as a reducing flame, as I'm going along to have any questions feel free to ask them in chat. Ok, so now we're gon na talk about brazing best practices. You want to braze, while flowing nitrogen at 3 to 5 SC.

F H, the ass just means standard cubic feet per hour, so really CF H is a better way of thinking of it. I've heard people say 3 to 5 psi nope. You do not want to pressurize well, while you are brazing, you want to flow so flowing and pressurizing are two different things and 3 to 5. Sc F H is just a whisper of nitrogen.

A lot of guys will say: well, I don't have a. I don't, have a special nitrogen regulator. Well, first off they're, not that expensive, you can get them. You can get the nitrogen regulators that have flow built in or you can get a separate little connection regulator that has the floating ball for this purpose.

But if you don't have either of those what you do is you just take the T handle on your nitrogen regulator and you just adjust it till it's just barely whispering. That's not a flow regulator. That's a pressure regulator. So that's not ideal, but it'll work in a pinch and we do it all the time.

So what I don't want technicians to do is use excuses for not following best practices, because they claim they don't have the proper tools, because in a lot of cases there are really effective. Workarounds like that that you can still flow nitrogen while you're brazing. It's not that difficult. You have to pull the knife or turn off your truck anyway, and it's gon na prevent a lot of problems down the road, especially with things like THC failure.

You just flow nitrogen. A lot of people say well, how do you get flow? Nitrogen, well, you hook it up to your nitrogen tank and you open up the other end and you just flow it through now. Sometimes that last joint may be tough to get sealed, and if that is the case, then if you need to shut it off for that last joint. Well, then, that's fine! Because again, the goal is to have displaced as much of that air and oxygen as possible, because it's really the oxygen and the water vapor that are and he's inside the system, oxygen and water vapor are in our air at all time.

So I using dry nitrogen. We displaced that Bert says: there's a great video on HVAC school for how to flow. Yes, Bert. Has a video up on the HVAC school YouTube channel on how to flow nitrogen while brazing and in fact, even before you flow like we said you need to purge.

First, because you have to get all of that air displaced before you even start to flow nitrogen, so purge it through first and then flow next thing is when you're brazing wear proper PPE. That means definitely wear safety. Glasses masks, those sorts of things. There is a recommendation by OSHA that you should use.

I think it's called a class three darkened lenses, because there is actually some radiation that comes off of even an ox acetylene flame. So if you're gon na be doing a lot of brazing, that's something you're gon na want to talk to your manager about wearing a tinted properly specified safety glasses. For that and it's a good idea to wear gloves, although it seems like most people in our trade, don't wear gloves of the two, it's far more important to make sure that you're wearing eye protection, like we mentioned, don't cut, I mean cut joints rather than on Sweating them sand copper before it's been cut deburr only when safe to do so, meaning that deburring is important, but only do it when you're not gon na drop crap on the lines always seal and camp tubing when transporting or leaving allow the copper to melt. The alloy, not the flame, which means you got to get the copper to the right temperature and protect the work area and components, and this were carrying components, part is an important one.

I would always suggest having a fire resistant drop cloth. That's a big one. If you're gon na be brazing inside, so you lay down that fire resistant drop cloth. It's like made out of a fiberglass sort of material.

You lay that down, underneath where you're gon na be brazing to protect carpet and vinyl flooring, or anything like that, even better. Yet, if you're dropping little bits of braze material that can even burn through that is take a piece of sheet metal and lay that down think about if you're gon na be raising up near a wall, for example, especially with air acetylene. So if you're using an air acetylene rig rather than an oxy acetylene rig air acetylene is a cooler flame, but it's a bigger flame and it it projects more convective heat, and so you want it. You want to really think about protecting.

What's behind it, if there's wires or there are any pink sort of painted surfaces on the other side, get those out of the way if you can or protect them with a metal shield, you can also use theirs. There's a lot of different jello sprays. Those gel sprays are really nice for spraying on surfaces that are kind of in the zone where they could get damaged by some of that. A radiant or convective heat spray.

Those down with the gel I've seen people use gel on things like valves. You know next to the braising area that generally doesn't work. Your best bet there is to you, know, get a wet rag or get wet rag or hot wok, or you know one of those other products that you know, putties that you can pack around the valve. Those were probably the best out there, because then you can pull them off and reuse them when you're done most says Gel is nice for braising inside units with insulation right, and I think you were telling me about this - the other day Moe somebody was, I think It was you, and actually maybe it was my tech Travis.

I think was talking about it too, that whenever you have cases where you're braising you know inside and there's insulation just make, you know making sure to get that all kind of soap, or at least coated with some sort of gel to make sure that you're not Scorching it because scorching of insulation happens a lot so think about all those things now. This talks about this image here is one that I've had out for a while - and this is sort of some of this is disputed. Ground Tech's get really worked up about. Where do you heat first and where you heat second, but this comes from essentially Harris's guidelines.

What do they say? Heat the tube first and then that conducts heat into the joint and then move the flame around over the joint again you're, not wiggle in it all over the place, but you're just kind of moving it around. In order to get it to the proper temperature, which is that dark cherry red and then apply heat to the joint edge without melting, the alloy directly with the torch. So this looks like I'm heating it directly with the torch. But it's because it's in two dimensions draw the alloy all the way into the joints.

So I tend to finish by heating up deeper into the joint itself to make sure that it's drawn in and then often I'll, come back up to the top and just sort of put a nice cap on it. Just so, it looks pretty inspect with a mirror and then allow to cool naturally before wiping clean with a wet rag or brush. I do like wiping it clean just so that way, you can better see you just you know. It looks looks nicer at the end, but I would definitely allow it to cool, naturally, which is different than soft soldering.

A lot of plumbers. Soft solder they'll actually tell you to cool it right away and then that actually makes for a stronger joint. I was just reading that the other day which I'm not expert at soft soldering, but I think that maybe where some of that quenching sort of action comes from where people are wanting to cool it off right away. But you do want to let it cool down.

Now you don't want to let it cool you don't need to let it cool all the way to ambient. Just let it cool down. You know five hundred degrees, something like that. Just you know give it a couple minutes.

You don't need to. Let it sit there. All day, long next thing here is using a torque wrench when flaring we're watch we're just talking about flaring in general, but the first first thing here is use a torque wrench and the reason why, more than anything else why I would suggest that you use a Torque wrench for a while, at least while flaring them again, you should do it all the time, but just being realistic. Here is because a lot of people don't realize that you that it requires different torque, um specs for larger copper versus smaller copper.

So if you look at like a ductless system, this is the most common case when in air conditioning where we're still using flares the larger diameter. So maybe your your 5/8 or your 3/8 need to be tightened to a much higher spec than the quarter-inch. Does we don't think about that and we tend to kind of tighten everything to the same tension. But if you look at the spec and you use a torque wrench you'll get a much better feel for what that feels like.

And what you'll find is. Is that often the larger flares need to be tightened much more than you're used to and the smaller flares need to be tightened less than you're used to, because either way you can create damage if you overrun or do it, if you under, do it you're gon Na potentially leave leaks, it's gon na be more likely to begin to leak over time. If it's not tighten that tight enough, and if you overdo it, you can actually smash the flare and then it can potentially leak. For that reason as well so so use a torque wrench get a torque wrench out.

If you don't have one, you can get one. There's a lot of different ways: you can do it. My favorite torque wrench is not a digital. Yellowjacket makes one that's an old-school analogue torque wrench that uses different heads that are sized specifically for common flare sizes, and that is my favorite kit because of the size of the heads.

A lot of them are using adjustable crescent wrench style heads nowadays, like the ones shown here in this poor image. I don't prefer those personally, but I understand why a lot of people like them, because you just have one and you can use it for all the different applications without having to change heads, but the biggest causes of flaring leaks that I see are improv depth is A big one so not having the copper, the right height above the block, and this is one reason why I strongly suggest just getting a modern flaring tool unless you've done a lot of flares. If you've done a lot of flares - and you know how to make them where they don't leak, then you don't need to be listening to this part anyway for newer technicians, a lot of them do struggle new and installers struggle with making consistent flares, and it's because They don't have a feel for it. It's is one of those things.

It takes a lot of practice to get good at and installers often just don't have that many reps on it, especially since there's only certain types of equipment that have flares, so I would suggest getting a good quality modern, flaring tool that has a stop on it. So that way, they run it through the block, it hits the stop, they know it's the right depth and then you're good to go as far as that depth side goes. The next part is that forgetting to ream now reaming deburring, you know it's a correct name for that. Reaming or d burning is really important when you're making a flare, and it's really important that you don't overdo it or under, do it.

What I often see, if I hand someone a deburring tool, is that they'll sit there and they'll fin that edge out till it's almost like a little a little point in a little knife edge. And then, when you try to make a flare with that, it will crack on the edges, and so that won't work. But if you leave that burr there, then it's not going to it's not going to seal as well, because there's gon na be a little burr left on the face of the of the flare so either way. Reaming deburring is really important on flares.

Obviously, cross threading is something that you see a lot of newer installers do and I think just practicing taking that flare assembling it so taking the actual flare, pushing it up against that mating surface that cone lightly. Tightening it that's the right way to do it, where you see a lot of newer, installers and technicians, they'll, take the flare, nut and they'll. Just sort of you know immediately put it on threads and start tightening with without actually pushing those two surfaces together, and that just comes from things that you learn when you're a kid working with. You know working with your dad or with your parent, and they kind of show you how to prevent from cross threading, but you'd be surprised how many newer workers, just don't have a sense of that and they have to be shown even things.

Basically, you know basic ideas like that. Next thing is, you know, don't over and under tighten like we talked about and that's where using a torque wrench will give you a much better sense of that, especially with newer installers. I definitely want to see them using that torque wrench. They get that feel and then improper use of thread sealant.

So I'm a big fan of nylon. They talk about a night log, a lot and I log is designed to be used a little dab, a little dab on it. Some people will say: well, you put it on the back of the flare. Put it on the front of the flare put it on the meeting surfaces put it on the threads.

Frankly, I put a little bit on all of those areas, but we're only talking a little tiny bit. We're not globbing it. On there I put a little bit on the threads. I put a little bit on the mating surfaces where they, where they push together.

I put a little bit on the back of the flare when I'm actually making a flare and in all honesty I don't use my log when I'm making the flare. I still just use good old mineral oil, I'm just a just a drop in mineral oil. The reason is is that 9 log is very sticky, because it does actually act as a thread sealant in addition to an assembly lubricant, which is what makes it so awesome, especially under vacuum. It just helps you hold those really tiny, tiny leaks that can occur under vacuum and that's actually one of the really big values of nylon, but because the stuff is so sticky.

I don't want to use too much of it. I don't want to go getting it into the system where I don't need to, and I don't want to get it all for my tool, so I'll actually use oil when I'm making it just a slight amount of oil and then, when I go to put it Together, I just put little tiny drops of nylon on just to kind of make sure that everything seals together. It goes together, nice and snug. Now one thing to mention there is that that will change your torque spec.

So what I say is most manufacturers will give you a torque spec range. I would not go to the titer range. I would stay on the looser side because you can easily over tighten when you use an assembly lubricant like nylon, and that is a feel thing, because the specs not going to tell you and that's actually one argument that people will use for not using it. I'm just going on my experience and my experience shows me that using my log greatly reduces flare leaks in the field by deploying that into the field we've seen much fewer flare leaks and we've never had an issue of contamination.

Because that's the other argument, they'll say you know you get that in the lines it's gon na plug up external expansion, valises or electronic expansion valves is gon na plug up the system and we've literally never had that happen. My experience tells me that, as long as it's properly applied, it will do no damage because it's made of refrigerant oil. Well, here we go. I already talked about all this, but because I need you know my slides a little better using a little bit and I Log prevents a lot of problems.

Don't use too much for a lot of reasons, but the main reason is that is sticky and it'll catch dirt. So you don't need to want to use more than you need use a torque wrench proper assembly lubricant check, clear against cone, use a modern flaring tool, leak detection. So so far what we've talked about is preventing leaks. That's a big one! When you have a system that leaks, it causes significance, system impacts all right, lead section before tests first purge before pressurizing.

So you want to you, want to force some nitrogen through the system, make sure that it's moved through the lines and that you're displacing before you pressurize, because once you pressurize, you can actually can actually condensed moisture inside the system by pressurizing. So you want to try to purge through first and displace as much of that water, vapor and oxygen out of the system, air out of the system, atmosphere of the system before you pressure test and again flow nitrogen, while brazing as well pressure test at low side Test pressure now again worked because of time an install practices here when you're doing an install you're, generally gon na pressurize be pressurizing the line set and the evaporator coil. So, look at that low side, test pressure, spec on the equipment and pressure test at that low side, test pressure, spec, often I'll see, technicians, pressurize and much lower pressures than they should be. In fact, I was guilty of this for most of my career.

Most of my career, I pressure tested at a hundred psi. A problem with that is, is that when you pressurize at lower pressure than the specified test pressure, it's gon na. Take you much longer to find leaks and you're gon na be more likely to have leaks at the end of the day. So if your low side test pressure allows you to pressurize to 350 within pressurize it to 350, that's gon na be your best.

A best practice for pressurization I'm allowed a hold for at least 20 minutes. I know that's asking a lot. Some people want to do less than that, but the reality is even 20. Minutes is a little too short.

I mean it would be better if you could do pressure test for hours. Some manufacturers specify 24 hour 48 hour pressure tests on things like vrf systems through the RV systems. You do want to hold it under nitrogen pressure for as long as you can and recognize that again, every system is going to leak a little bit, but under standard nitrogen pressurization it should be almost unnoticeable if, after 20 minutes, you have a 1 psi pressure drop. That's a problem you got to find out where that leak is, and it may very well be in your gauges, which is why I suggest not using complicated gauge manifolds for pressurization.

I suggest using very simple probe type setups in order to reduce potential leak points. Electronic leak, detection, worst practices, so let's talk about an electronically connector and when to pull it out first off electronically. Detector is only gon na react with what it's designed to react with, which is generally refrigerant, and so newer people may not understand that. You can't use an electronic leak detector with nitrogen nitrogen is present in all of our air.

It's the the primary constituent primary thing that our air is made up of. You can't do nitrogen leak detection with any sort of typical leak detector, because it's all over the place um. So if you're gon na use an electronic leak detector, you have to have refrigerant in the system, which is where, if you had a system for example, that was, you know, had leak down and you were having a hard time finding it. You could use a little bit of trace refrigerant and then pressurize on top of that in order to attempt to find a leak that can be done, and that is okay by EPA standards.

But in most cases, if you have a really big leak, you're gon na be best using your ears using a bubble solution. In order to find that, if you want to learn more about leak detection, I would suggest going to the refrigeration technologies site and looking at their guide on leak section, because it's a really good one kind of goes step-by-step through. You know where to start with leak. Detection, but as far as using an electronic leak, detector first thing is most guys.

Move too fast. You're, not gon na just go in there and wave it around and find a leak if you're doing it under evaporator coil or on tubing or whatever. You need to move very, very slowly. Some technicians forget the difference between a heated, diode and infrared.

So if you're using a leak, detector, that's elite, detector, you're, not familiar with you need to know. Is it heated, diode heated pentode, one of those sorts of leak detectors or is it an infrared leak detector? These are by far two most common types. The big difference is with a heated, diode, heated, pentode type. You can take it and place it right on the leak and it'll just keep going off as long as it's over the leak, pull it away.

It'll stop move it back in. It will pick up the leak again with infrared. You have to keep moving it. So if you move an infrared over a leak, it'll go off.

If you hold it, there it'll stop going off. So you have to keep passing over the area very slowly in both of them. You can't move too fast to moving too fast as a problem with every type of leak detector, but with an infrared. You have to always move it, because what will happen is if you're used to heat a diode and the way it works, and you try to do the same thing with infrared.

Where you take it and then now you hold it over the leak. It's gon na. Stop going off and you're gon na think well, there's no leak there, so that's important thing to know also make sure you're using a quality electronic leak detector. The best fleet sectors on the market are expensive.

So that's a good indication of whether or not it's a good lead detector. I don't know any cheap high quality elite detectors a lot of good ones out there. My favorite is the Bacharach H, 10 series H 10 Pro some people, don't like the fact that it's kind of big and bulky this one shown here is the info Khan Stratos, which is probably the highest quality handheld leak detector that exists. It actually show refrigerant concentrations in ppm, but it is in parts per million, but it is a infrared, so you got to get used to infrared if you're gon na be using one like this field.

Piece makes a couple great leak. Detectors. Testo makes you great leak. Detector, I've tested all of those they all work.

Fine, the TIFF zx1 is a handheld leak detector that has a great reputation in the grocery or for duration space. So there's some good ones out there, but you don't want to go with you. Don't want to go with cheap they're gon na cost you generally over about 300 bucks to get a good lead detector and that's on the that's on the low side, even they're back to expect to pay that for a good leak detector. Another mistake that people will do is they'll use an electronic elite detector with the indoor fan running in order to do a proper leak detection, you want to do it in a very still conditions, with very little interference, and so, when you're doing it with a fan Running, obviously, it's not gon na work, it's got ta, it's got, ta be off, it's got to be still and needs to have been off really for a while.

I also see this happen. People will use electronic leak. Detection outside and they'll still think that they have leaks on their condenser coil, and the reason is is that their gauges and ports are leaking and that refrigerant is kind of moving around because remember, most refrigerants are going to be heavier than air, so they're gon na Settle around that condensing unit and so they're gon na get picked up all over the place because you connected and disconnected your probes or because they're potentially still leaking. You know a lot of people use pretty leaky gauges and that will create interference and I can't stand false hits on equipment that a result of a technician being sloppy with refrigerant.

That's escaped from the system. Another thing is: don't don't forget to wipe off bubbles before electronic testing a lot of times? You guys will first try bubbles and then, if that doesn't work, they'll go to electronic. There are some bubbles that cross interfere with some detectors, and so you want to make sure to wipe off those bubbles before you start expecting, unless you know that the bubbles that you're using do not cross interfere with your particularly detector, I haven't had that experience with True blue bubble, my lead detector - I don't find that they cross interfere, but maybe I'm wrong so I'll. Leave that up to you to decide best leak, detection move slowly use liquid detector to pinpoint leak spots.

Good old, big blue! That's what we use in Kalos. What I've used for a really long time, I'm a big fan of using your ears using your eyes, so listen for leaks! Look for oil! If you see signs of oil, then grab those soap bubbles and spray it on there now even finding bubble leaks, really small ones is a skill, an acquired skill, because it requires a lot of patience. It's not like every leak makes these gigantic bubbles. Little tiny micro leaks make little tiny micro bubbles and you have to get used to spotting those there's lots of videos online Burt's, very proud of how good he is at finding those, and it is it's it's a talent of itself, but always be looking for oil.

Always be listening and use that these are soap bubbles too, to find them searched with the system off when possible. One thing we do a lot of heat pumps. If we're trying to find a vapid, Acorah leaks is we will run them in heat mode for a little while just to build up the pressure and temperature of the coil to make it a little easier to find at the evaporator. So you can do that, but you would still want to do your search with the system off remember to check your service ports.

Remember that you connecting to and from the system probably cause some leakage there. So don't allow that to cross interfere, ventilate the area as needed in order to make sure that you're not cross interfering. I've seen you even seen. People use a leaf, blower just kind of blow the refrigerant out of the area to help help to athlete detection.

So it's diluted and they never stop after you found one leak. There could be more just the other day. Bert did a post where he was showing that he found an obvious leak outside, but then in the process his helper actually found another leak inside of the evaporator coil. If you would have stopped at the first leak, which in this case was actually the outside leak, he wouldn't have found the leaking of a protocol proper evacuation, best from worse practices.

So, first, let's talk about what are we doing with evacuation? What are we trying to accomplish? I'm not gon na get into the science of this too much here in this webinar, because we do a full full version of this that takes an hour and a half by itself. But what we're doing is we're getting air out of the inside of the systems. Just as simple as that, in order to get air out of the inside of the system, we have to create a low-pressure zone at our pump in order to get all the stuff from the inside or you know, get all of it, but as much of it As you can, and from inside the system out of the system, that's our goal and in order for us to do that, we have to use a micron gauge. So if you don't have a micron gauge, that's where you need to start, because none of this makes any sense.

If you don't have one and if it doesn't actually work and if you don't have batteries for it so start there get a micron gauge. You know keep some alcohol rubbing alcohol in your trucks. You can clean out the sensor if that becomes an issue, keep some extra batteries for your micron gauge in your truck and now you're gon na be prepared to at least know. If you have a good vacuum or not, and then you can decide whether or not you need to invest in some additional tools in order to do a good job, this is our standard rig here.

What you're seeing here is our standard setup that we use eight kilos, one hose one three-quarter inch hose cores removed. This is a core remover here, micron gauge on the liquid line, cooling only from the suction line, with a good quality pump. In here we show a nav AK, electronic digital pump, electronic being the internal electronic micron gauge, and then it has a DC motor. So it's a really nice high quality pump, there's a lot of them out there.

Another one of my favorites is the VP 85 from field piece. This pump and the VP 85 from fill piece are my two favorite pumps in the market right now but anyway. So this is our standard setup that we use eight kilos and it works great. What are some of the worst practices? Well, some of the worst practices are skipping, the micron gauge.

Without a micron gauge, you have no idea whether you have a deep vacuum. It's just as simple as that a lot of people will say. Well, I just look at my suction gauge and see if it's all the way down - and I say you know - okay, that's great! That's like trying to measure off ten feet with the odometer in your car. You can measure distance with the odometer in your car, but it measures at a scale.

That's completely unrealistic for measuring at ten feet, and so a micron gauge has to measure this really really. Fine level of vacuum, this really fine level of pressure that you're, just not gon na, be able to do with a regular suction gauge. On your under gauge manifold, it's not going to tell you enough. The next thing that people do is they pull a vacuum through a manifold and again, can you pull a good vacuum through a manifold? You can time-consuming and you're relying on the fact that your manifold isn't leaking and most manifolds Dooly, especially when you're measuring down and and deep vacuum.

So what I would suggest is not pulling through a manifold and instead just connecting your vacuum hose directly to the system through a core tool, and you can use the core tool as your isolation and just simplifies things and eliminates a lot of potential leaks. That can recap on pulling at vacuum. The next thing is people neglect to remove Schrader course pulling trader. Coors is a really good practice for a lot of reasons as part of installation.

You really should be pulling trader Coors initially when you're braising anyway to prevent from melting them, while you're braising the system in so this you're, really almost in most cases, they're already gon na be out, then you just put the core tool on so that way, you Can put the core in again later once you've actually introduced refrigerant into the system? Removing trader course should just be sort of a given, but the question isn't whether or not you remove them? It's when you put them back in, and I suggest that you don't put them back in until if the system is actually charged and you're ready to run it, then you can put the shredder cores back in that's also good practice by the way when you're recovering. So pulling trader cords is also very helpful for recovery allows you to get the refrigerant out of the system, much quicker without having so much heat and the and having to reconvince the refrigerant into the tank. Another worst practice is people leaving the pump open to atmosphere when not in use. So when you're not using the pump, you should shut it off.

You know put put the caps back on. It helps prevent that oil from being exposed to atmosphere when it's not in use and then using refrigerant hoses for evacuation. We talked about this a lot but refrigerant hoses, using for charging using them for recovery or using them for a lot of different things, and they can easily become full of oil, and you know all sorts of stuff that you don't want to be getting in. The way the process, when you're pulling a vacuum as well as the fact that they tend to be more leaky and smaller gauge, so we suggest using large gauge dedicated vacuum hoses for evacuation.

Cuz. Evacuation can take a long time sometimes, and we want to make it as quick as possible to pull as deep as possible to ensure that you don't have any leaks so use dedicated, hoses, proper pump maintenance. That means change your oil regularly. If you just connect a micro engage to the pump itself, just micro engage to pump.

You should pull down to under fifty microns. If you do not, they need to change the pump oil. Try it again. Sometimes it takes a couple.

Oil changes on a pump in order to get all that contaminated oil out of the sump of the pump, but make sure that your pump can pool below fifty microns by itself just pump and micron gauge. That's a really good first test. Do that regularly to make sure your pumps performing remove straighter cores like we talked about and connect the micro engage at the furthest point of the system, not the pump. So this is what we show here is that this vacuum actually has a built in micro, engage and that's helpful because it tells you what the vacuum is at the pump.

But it doesn't tell you what the vacuum is at the other side of the system and that's why we connect our micro, engage on the far side, completely opposite from where you're pulling now this is for install. This is for a typical install where you're pulling on a line set and an evaporator coil. If I was going to pull on the entire system say I replace to compress or something like that. I would then use a tee here and two hoses, and that way I would get more capacity, but at that point then we'd have to use two core remover tools: we'd have to valve them both off when it was time to do our decay test.

Once we pulled down to deep vacuum and then this micro engage is gon na be more prone to jump up with this system. Here, once I pull to where this micro engaged is 300 microns, and I valve off the valve here to see how quickly it rises. This valve isn't gon na jump up quickly. In fact, they may actually keep going down for a little while and that's just because I'm pulling on the far side or I'm measuring on the far side, all the way opposite from where I'm pulling.

And that ensures that if I'm seeing three hundred microns here, it means I have much less than 300 microns on the other side of the system that I'm pulling from. So that is evacuation and for installers you know this. Isn't the this? Isn't the full science of it, but for installers this is really all they need to know check your oil change. Your oil make sure your pump can pull down, use big hoses, remove your cores connect your micron gauge at the furthest point of the system, best practices.

Now I see I have Steve Rogers here: Steve Rogers is the air flow master, the air flow maestro, and so he's watching me he's making sure that I'm not gon na say anything stupid, and so I'm not gon na say anything stupid. I'm gon na keep it really simple. I'm gon na keep it practical for what you need to know in the field when you're setting up new equipment when you're commissioning new equipment. So this is once you're all ready are gon na start running the equipment, and I'm gon na tell you what I think is most important for modern system, and the first thing to recognize is that a lot of the conversations that are had about air conditioning equipment And air flow relate to systems that we really don't install anymore and again, I'm talking mostly about residential here, mostly about air conditioning when we're talking about air flow here, but most of the equipment that we put in today has an ECM blower motor, an electronically commutated Motor okay and what that means is, is that is essentially a variable frequency drive motor that can speed up it can slow down so on and so forth.

Now not all of them are created equal. So there are no absolute rules about this. In some cases you have manufacturers who put in very under sized blower motors, sorry for some of you manufacturers out there. But when you look at the design specification, the design static for a fan coil, for example, an air handler - and it says, point to static external static that it's designed for that means that they put an undersized blower motor in the thing and they did it so That way, they can get an efficiency rating or they could build it less expensively, but that's not the best way.

I want to see fan coils with a rating of at least point five and a lot of furnaces are gon na have a point.