Today, we've got some special guests out. We got Jeff here from Sandusky Ohio. I know Jeff Jeff's, a good guy, Melvin Melvin says we're late. I don't I don't know.

I don't feel like I'm late, I'm two minutes, I'm two minutes late. All right! We're gon na we're gon na stay calm here. Okay, nobody's gon na get worked up. One question that I had because we've done one question that I've gotten from people I should say, is they've asked if this is a Nate class.

This one is not, but we I plan to I shouldn't I'm not gon na make any promises promises promises. I don't know I forget what band that is, but we're not gon na make it promises, but I do want to do a version of this. That is an 8 certified class, so we'll have some of those in the future, but this is just gon na. Be a conversation, we're gon na be talking about a lot of different stuff, but we're gon na be talking about retrofits, mostly on the commercial side, but does also apply on the residential side and we're gon na be talking about retrofit refrigerants kind of what the future Holds in this world where things are a change in times are a-changing a little bit about the controls here, because this always comes up all of our interaction with you guys is gon na be on chat, so no need to raise your hand or anything like that.

Just ask a question on chat, say what you need to say in the words of John Mayer with us today we have a couple really great guys. Really great gentleman, caleb saliba all know caleb. He writes for the HVAC school podcast he's one of our admins in the Facebook group in the Facebook page and general pain in the pain of the rear end, but a really good guy and and then we've got our special guests today from blue on energy. Make Mike Mabry, Mabry and we'll fry right, we'll fry, that's it! I think I think we got it all right.

So as we get started here, I just want to give Mike and will a chance to introduce themselves a little bit about blue on, so that you kind of know what we're. What we're talking about is from that side of things. So we'll start with you, Mike, hey Brian, my name is Mike Mabry and with blue on energy. When I came on board there were issues with contractors having trouble with doing retrofits and stuff with larger equipment.

So I came on board to figure out what was necessary, and then we started putting together procedures to make it easier for the contract. Everything we do is is focused on making life easier for the contractor. So that's what I do work with the bigger systems and write procedures for conversions, and I found that to be true mike - has chased me down at several trade shows over the last few years and a really really Pleasant guy and a great representative of blue on How about you will ya thanks and thanks for having us tonight. This is I've, never done a video, so anyways and Mike does a lot more, that he it's pretty modest, so we love having Mike.

I was fortunate enough to be involved with blue one from day. One from when it was an idea to you where we are today, so that's been pretty cool in the early days. I was helping with R & D and just building lots of things that put refrigerants in and see how they work and then, as we progressed kind of started, getting into you the sales aspect of it coming from a general contractor type background, I kind of fit To bridge the gap from you know, contractors, technicians and just being able to be kinda real with everybody and not a sales guy. So now I head up the the sales department at blue on and, and we got a kick-ass team and we're here to help and support everybody.

So that's my story with blue. Absolutely all right, so blue on energy is a company that we we work with now. So I always have to disclose that. So we all we do have a business relationship, but it's a relationship that I feel really good about, because I've seen so many of the good things that have been coming out of blue on that go beyond a product.

And so there is a product: the product is our 458 a its refrigerant, and some of you may have heard about it. But one thing that blue on energy does differently is that they engage deeply in the support of retrofitting and, in you know, general energy efficiency topics that relate to equipment in general and environmental compliance and all that sort of thing. So Mike. If you wouldn't mind just telling a little bit of that story, what is what we you say blue on is in the business of.

I think blue one is in the business of providing solutions, whether it's residential, whether it's larger equipment, with the covet 19 thing going on right now, a lot of the property owners are losing their budgets to be able to replace equipment so they're. Looking a lot more at retrofitting equipment until things kind of calm down and everything so we're there to provide the solutions, give them answers, and hopefully everybody comes out successful. The contractors customer and everybody yep and that's a big part of what we're doing here today. A couple things I want to call out right away: Steve Wright is here: Steve Wright is the president of our SES, really great guy and I'm excited to have him on the and the chat.

I always have to call that out really really awesome dude and then a couple of people have already said that they love the blue on app. So let's get that out there, because obviously there are some who already know about it and say they love it. I've never heard anybody say they hate it. So that's a really good sign.

So what is the? What is the blue on Apple and why do people like it? Well, the blue, on app, we blue one offers a an accreditation. It takes typically 20 to 30 minutes online. It's basically going through the process of doing a retrofit. It goes into use in the dual column, PT charge, talks about glide and a few of those kind of things they take a short cast, and then they get the accreditation in the accreditation on the we've got.

I think it's twenty two thousand three hundred different air conditioning units, along with the processes for doing conversions, we've got best practices. We've got violators for converting. You know doing some cool super heat as well as one of the things I really like. We got a nitrogen calculator, so if you put nitrogen on a cold night, you take the pressure and temperature and then you come back in the morning and it's warmer it'll turn around and do the calculation and say yeah you're there, one percent you're in good shape.

Well, it's not the temperature that has you a lot lower than you started it. So a lot of things like that: real simple, no cost to the guys, that's blue on energy calm or they can do it through Google or Apple HVAC. I think if you, if you kind of take the the 30,000 foot view of the app it really drives home, what is a blend which a lot of guys need to love that refresher or new education. So it talks about what is a blend and why they're different, which i think is the foundation of this whole thing right.

What does a blend? Why is it different? What was important before is critical, now type of stuff, and really it's a it's an education process of well. Why are we using blends now? It talks a little bit about our 22, and this is all part of the download of the app. So it gives you a good foundational education on what you're about to dig into when you get into that. Why are you actually using that app and it's because of the direction that the industry is moving largely, so it really helps provide that fundamental understanding of why this is all going on as well.

What's prequel, I have to address two things: it already happened, and so this will be a learning moment for maybe more than 50 % of the people out there, and I love small learning moments. The nitrogen calculator. Yes, nitrogen does does change pressure with temperature does follow the ideal gas laws when you the reason why NASCAR drivers put nitrogen in their tires is not because it doesn't change pressure with temperature, because it does so that's a that's a good one. It's not like liquid refrigerant, where you see these massive swings, but it is.

It does change pressure with temperature, as all gases do. So that's a good one if you didn't know that if you add nitrogen on a on a warm afternoon and you come back the next morning and check it and it's cool, your pressure will have dropped and that's natural and you have to use a nitrogen calculator In order to see what that pressure drop will be like Mike mentioned and is part of the blue on app, which is one of the really key things that I love about this app. Is that there's a bunch of free information and the number one thing that I think people love most about the app is all of the free manuals? There's manuals for all kinds of equipment across the board. What types of equipment mmm? What types of equipment will you see there and what types of equipment might you not see there? Mike? Typically, we have a lot of the r22 equipment, we're starting to add the 410 equipment as we're working on a 410 replacement, no flooded chillers.

We don't work in flooded, chillers. There is some stuff coming online with the air-cooled DX chillers, so we're trying to get everything in there, one of the things that we've got some pretty amazing, guys that if we get a call hey, I went on your app. I couldn't find this unit. What can I do and typically we can get it in there in a day or two, so it's it covers the full, the full gambit from little tiny equipment, all the way up to several hundred ton equipment.

A lot of the intelidox yeah, that's a big one, that's a big one! So, let's, let's start with the basics, because there are people coming here who want to know all right. The conversion we're talking in so let's be really specific about what we're talking about here, because we've got a bunch of grocery guys here and a built-up grocery retrofit is going to be quite a bit different than most of what we're talking about here now there is Some there is some, you know stuff that carries over and so don't don't go away, but I'm not gon na give you a bunch of specifics on what you have to do in order to do a conversion over to 407 a or something like that. You know like we're, not gon na we're not going to cover that specifically, but we are gon na talk generally about the things that you need to consider. So, let's start there, what are some of the challenges that people face in a typical conversion? And let's start with just some of the limitations of the refrigerant options that are out there, because that's a really common one that people want to know what what's the problem with pulling r22 out and putting any of these off-the-shelf products that people consider to be drop-ins.

I did my my air quotes that always have to do my live streams, drop-in type refrigerants. What are some of the challenges that people face? Well, the biggest thing is is moving the mineral oil and so a lot of the other refrigerants they've added a hydro carbon in order to move through a mineral oil. The problem with that is the hypercar flammable. So then they have to add something to take away.

The flammability, which is typically like our 125, which is not one of the best refrigerants, so what happens, is they end up giving up a lot of capacity? So what happens is if you've got a system? That's well over sized. So now you run the equipment. 50 percent longer you still keep this space cool, but what, if like? In California, we had huddle 24, where you're limited just how big of a system you put in if I lose 20 or 30 percent on a 95 degree day, I'm not gon na cool the space and the poor guy that went out and did a conversion. First, hot day he gets a phone call hey.

You just did all this to my equipment and it doesn't work. What are you gon na do about it and if the contractor doesn't understand that, with a lot of the other refrigerants you give up capacity, it's gon na be a problem. Luan doesn't lose capacity and we typically on something. That's got a a t, -- xv in it will turn around and improve the efficiency by on average about 15 %, which is huge, yeah and there's several reasons for that.

But but you hit on a really good point and we talked about this in a previous podcast, but I think this is a really good and very true thing. This is, you know unequivocally true that often the best refrigerants from a capacity energy efficiency. You know from a really nerdy standpoint, the latent heat of vaporization per pound. You know it's a big one and then also being able to control the boiling temperature.

They all suffer from this problem of being flammable, and so you know that that's an issue. You know: we've got flammable and poisonous gases that make great refrigerants, but you know what kind of causes some problems so r410a. Being a great example of this, you take our 32, which is a really good refrigerant, but flammable you mix it with 50 percent, literally 50 percent. That always cracks me up.

50 percent are 120. What is it? 125. 125. I always want to say 123.

You know because I know how to count. No, it's 125 so and Barton 125 is a is a flame suppressant and it's not a very great R. It's not a very good refrigerant. I mean pretty much.

Everybody will agree: it's not a great refrigerant, so that mix it works, because we got a good refrigerant mixed with a not-so-good refrigerant. Well now, when we're trying to also decrease our global warming potential, let alone our ozone depletion now we've got to try to come up with some new ideas and especially when we're looking to replace our 22, which was you know, a pretty decent refrigerant. You know we were pretty happy with it for a long time. The challenge is that we can find good refrigerants out there, but we always face this problem of them being flammable, sometimes toxic, but mostly flammable.

So how has blue on? How has TD x20? That's the the brand name. Refrigerant number are 458 a. How is it solved that problem well, 458, a is, is good and in almost every r22 application, it's a very simple conversion process for units that have got a cap to wear Pistons or flow rate or journey that kind of stuff. You simply, you know, and I push this you do a base link, go in and find out how the unit's working, because, if you've got a unit, that's really really terrible, find out why it's terrible before you do the conversion, otherwise you're gon na own.

It once you've done a baseline found out. You've got a unit, that's working pretty well and you're going to go ahead and recover the refrigerant. According to six white standards, you know you'll go ahead and replace the filter. Dryer you'll pull a really good vacuum.

Five hundred microns or less does a couple of things, make sure there's nothing left in the system and also turns around and helps you with the leak check to make sure you don't have any leaks, then, on a cap, tube system, you're simply gon na go ahead And charge to superheat, and you want to use the manufacturers recommendation. Typically, it's based on return, air, wet-bulb and outside air dry bulb. They got a little chart there to help you out with that on a unit. That's got a TX v you're gon na charge, typically to about eighty percent of charge through the liquid line.

You're gon na go ahead and start the system up and you're gon na charge. Just sub cool and tune in to superheat. Now you're gon na have to make some adjustments on the TX V because of the fact that TDX 20 runs about 18 pounds lower on the suction for the same saturating suction of 40 degrees. So you are gon na have to make some adjustments on that.

So you need to be wearing that and then we need it make adjustments you're tuning, so you're in this case you're saying adjustable, TXV you're tuning it to superheat right. Are you making what? What are your recommendations? I guess as far as tuning to superheat? Typically, we go at about one to four turns because, with the lower evaporator pressure, the valves going to have a tendency of being further open. More of a possibility of flood back so you're gon na want to screw the stem in between one and four turns and as you're charging it you're gon na want to watch the sub cooling once you get enough. Sub cooling, you're gon na know that you've got a good column of liquid, but then you got to start watching the superheat to make sure that you're not flooding back or starving the system, so you're tuning um for so long r22 and everything you could charge to You know seventeen to twenty one degree, delta-t a cold suction line and life is good.

We used to look when I told our chairman, yeah beer can cold on a suction line. You laughed and thought I was kidding, but you know reality is that's how a lot of the equipment got charged and so now, with a lot of the the tools that are available, and you mention your burden with measure. Quick they've got the stuff to turn around and charge the system where you can get it very. Very it's sweet spot.

So that's that's huge! So if you tune the system, you're gon na get the best operation out of the system as well as you're, not gon. Na overcharge or under charge and you're gon na know, when you walk away, you got a good clean system, yep yep, that's a good process and that's kind of a step by step process, and that's what the app takes you through the nice thing about what you Just said is that, with the exception of some of the specifics like how many turns that's essentially a universal process right, I mean, regardless of the type of refrigerant that you're using for a conversion. You always need to get some sub cool. You need to get excited calling up a liquid and then you need to monitor superheat and you make valve adjustments based on that now.

What if it's a non adjustable valve or say it's a piston system? What would you do in cases like that? You're just going to charge the superheat in those cases, and you know if, if you want to pick up a little bit more on the efficiency you might want to replace a valve or you might want to replace the non adjustable portion with a stem so that You can adjust the TSV so, but once the guys have gotten accredited and everything if they've got questions on those, they can give us a call, we'll walk them through it and given the different options as to what's gon na happen by different choices that they make. You know one of the things that's really cool is with the like the test, oh and the field piece that work with the measure quick. It really helps out. As far as the you know, the contractor, it's being able to see exactly what's going on.

I know you work with with true tech, and we've had some really really phenomenal success, dealing with true tech as far as providing access to the newer stuff, that's coming into the industry as far as the smart probes and everything yeah yeah, that's huge! So talk a little bit about this question of oil, carry specifically with retrofit refrigerants like what, because, because I know the words there were issues with in telepak right I mean that was kind of a known thing. What are some of the problems that technicians are running into in the field and what and how does does your software and your product help solve for those problems as it relates to oil return? Well, we approach the oil return a little bit differently. Um. There are a couple of the replacements out there that are just counting 100 % on velocity and hoping that's going to get them by there.

The other one said added with a hydrocarbon, and you know they gave up some capacity. Our chemist came up with an oil. That's one or miscible, with the HF O's under HFCS, and it's miscible with the mineral oil. So it helps to carry the oil through the system, which is it's really important because it gets us oil moving in the system without giving up capacity.

Okay, so that's actually part in the tank there is. There is some of this lubricant that is added in when you charge the refrigerant, if it was for a thirty pound, cylinder, okay - and that's a just to add to that because it's pretty cool it - we've had clear tube studies, kind of go it's several years now, Where we've had a refrigerant with our additive, in it to check for oil stratification, no refrigerant layering, whatever either one and it's been sitting still for well over a year and a half now and there's zero change. It's just kind of proving the fact that our oil is one percent miscible with the refrigerant and also carries the mineral oil so and that's the big hump for a lot of folks in the industry to get over. You know really concerned about the oil carry issue and - and we don't blame them - 100 percent - don't blame them and that's why when we when they actually go and use TDX 20, and they see that that is the case, then we have, you know they're, pretty they're, Pretty jacked, because I think I don't know - we already said it, but to make the life easier if you guys that are out there doing all this work, keeping the keeping the lights on and the air flowing.

That's a huge, huge, huge stress off your shoulders. Moving that oil and it's such a huge thing to have accomplished it's pretty exciting. No, no! It's good tangent just to double down on what we're saying, though, because there's a lot of questions in the chat about hydrocarbons about things like our 290 about, I see butane. Those sorts of things - and I don't think anybody's saying that those are bad refrigerants.

I think it's pretty well accepted that they're good refrigerants the challenge isn't that with them as a refrigerant, it's that now you have to add in something else to compensate for them. As a suppressant and it's the stuff, that's a suppressant, that's not a good refrigerant, and so what the mix the blend of TDX twenty-hour 458 a does. That's better! Is that you're not having to compensate because you're, not bringing in flammable gases in the first place, is that is that correct? Am I getting that right, yeah, pretty much um, like you said that you have to when you mix the refrigerant, you have to have something. That's basically going to leak out at the same rate with the flammable refrigerant, and they do a flame test to make sure that everything is good with that, so that you know, if you put in a flame suppressant, it doesn't bleed out until after all, the 32 Is bled out and the flammable parts there it just doesn't work, so you have refrigerants that kind of bleed out, at the same rate as the r32 to turn around and make it non flammable.

So there's a lot of science that goes along with it right leak rate is a really big thing in blends, especially with flammability yeah. That's it that's a huge concern all right, so one question specific question that Corey asks is: can you explain what specific problems there are / war within telefax and how your retrofit controller works? What would happen within telefax is that coming out of the evaporator and dropping down into the condenser section, there's this beautiful truck, and so what happens is you've got the evaporator sections nice and warm you've got the crankies to the compressor if the crankcase heaters are working. That's nice and warm, but the problem is on a cold night. You got that trap and you get refrigerants condensing out, so the compressor starts it sucks back.

This liquid carries it up into the bearing and washes out the lubrication and all of a sudden, you got no lubricant and it tears up those bearings. So the problem is, is that on the 3d scroll compressors, you don't have what I would call a true check valve. I call it more of an anti rotation valve and they leak back through. So we all know that refrigerants going to travel to the coldest point which is typically going to be the outside in that suction.

So we added discharge check valves. We went to electronic expansion valves that we also use as a liquid line solenoid valve and we went to continuous pump down. So what we're doing is we're managing where the refrigerant sets. You know continuous pump down something - that's been in the industry for for a lot of years, one of the problems that we've seen and it's not really a problem, but is in wiring the electronic valves, the pump down and everything.

I get a lot of resistance from people that they're not real comfortable on doing a lot of the wiring, so we built a control panel. That's got the exp controllers, all the relays, the terminal blocks and everything plus all the drawing than that. So now they've got to do is Mount. The control panel run out some wiring and then turn around and change out.

The existing TX fees to he XPS, but a few sensors in make the connections and they're good to go so we're taking a lot of that. A lot of that stress off of them to make their life easier, giving them a complete package that we've already been testing for the last probably three years. But we finally just put it all into a package to make it easy for everybody yeah, and you bring up a really good positive attribute that sometimes we don't think about, as it relates to electronic expansion valves is that you know yes, a ATX v can be Non bleed hard shut off, but that's just relying on your external equalizer pressure to kind of shut itself off. It's not gon na pump itself down you're, not gon na, be able to control it to pump itself down and with electronic expansion valve you, you can literally use the thing as if it's done right.

Obviously, in this, that's where the difficulty comes in, but you can literally use it as a liquid line solenoid, which is a great benefit and can really prevent a lot of these flooded start problems, which is a hugely underrated problem with compressor failure. I think my two most underrated causes of compressor failure are flooded, start probably number one and number two being overheating because of losing control of outdoor superheat unsplit systems. Those are two of my the two of my ones that I think people miss sometimes because they get so focused on running flooded conditions, which is neither here nor there. It's not what we're talking about.

I'm just going off on one of my monologues for no reason, but hopefully it gets you thinking, which is what we do here so Caleb. I you haven't said a word yet so I know you've got a list of things short start rattling off some of those. Some of those things that you think are good to talk about. What's that? Well, you had me muted, so oh yeah! Well, they was making a weird echo.

So it was all your fault. There was an interesting question that came up in chat, so I don't remember who said it but um in regards to the oil additives there's a question about. Is there any concern for having now too much oil in the system, given the additive? If you already have a full systems worth of oil - and this is the no because it's eight ounces per 30 pounds - so yeah it's, so it's not a huge huge amount um, we haven't seen any problems. Typically, when you charge the system, it's not like you see the sight glasses go up or anything like that.

As far as the oil level s well, that hasn't been a problem. There was another question asking about the global warming potential of your refrigerant and Retin comparison to some of the others out there like 407 C and 410, a r22. What is blue on or TDX 20 s global warming attention? We are the lowest of any refrigerant currently on the market for our 22 replacements, the hf o --'s are substantially lower, but they're not intended to work in the current or 22 equipment gotcha and for everybody. Listening our 22 s, GW Peas, after the fifth assessment, is 1760, so we're looking at a lower global where i'm attention it's a little low.

Sixteen hundred's low sixteen hundreds there you go yeah and that's something that a lot of people missed along the way missed in EPA class. Was this whole ozone depletion potential ODP versus GWP. We went to r410a, not because it had a better GWP because it doesn't, but because phase, zero, ODP and so now and again, whenever i bring this stuff up, everybody just hears you talking like this, you know like some sort of monster will go and look. I'm not giving opinions about about political questions and all this people started putting you know how they think.

It's all a scam and the scheme or whatever look. What we're doing here is coming up with solutions that are going to be compliant well into the future and they're gon na solve a lot of these problems that we've been having. So don't get hung up in the in all the politics of this sort of stuff. Environmental politics goes deep, just focus on you know.

Look we want to find really good salut that we no longer have to worry about I'm dealing with these with these regulatory problems, and that's one really nice thing. One thing that you mentioned Mike that I love about this particular refrigerant and I think most technicians will love - is that it is actually a lower low side pressure, so you're actually working with lower pressure. But the one question that I've heard people ask is: will that lower pressure, because it's lower velocity does that lead to oil return problems? No, typically, we run about 50 and a half pounds to give you a typical 40 degree suction. It does lead to some some other issues.

Hot gas bypass valves need to be adjusted if it's a non adjustable, hot gas bypass it'll need to be replaced. If you've got fan, cycling, switches, they're, gon na need to be adjusted and or replaced. Now, if you're doing something on a compressor, that's got you know hydraulic motors or electric unloaders. You may have to make some adjustments on the switches that are controlled, run, lower pressures.

One thing: that's pretty cool if you measure the head temperature and not discharge temperature at head temperature, we typically run 20 to 40 degrees cooler than our 22 on the head temperature. So it's got to tell you something. Less friction, less heat, good thing, yeah! That's unequivocally a good thing: wherever you can decrease, you know compressor temperature temperature, where the oil is most likely to break down. That makes a that makes a really big difference.

Let's take a few minutes here and talk a little bit about glide about blends and and that whole question. You know just a little bit of the dew point bubble, point type stuff and I'm sure you've talked about this, probably more than anything out there. So just give us the quick rundown. Well, with with with r22, you typically get a 40 degree saturated suction.

You would turn around and start off with maybe 95 % liquid, as you went through the coil, you absorb more heat in the beginning of the coil less at the end of the coil, because you've you've lost your liquid person, more vapor with blends the refrigerants boil Off I kind of want to say I want to say in a perfect sequence: well, you have one boiling off at one temperature or another one boiling off at another temperature, so you have actually do have a temperature change from the entrance of the leaving of the Coil and that'sthat's typically, your glide is the difference in temperature, whereas 22, it would be 40 degrees all the way through as long as you had Bertram in there, but with a blend it starts out a little colder and ends up a little bit warmer. It's a simple answer: yeah and my favorite line, and it is not mine. I'm often now quoted as if I made it up, and I did not. I do not remember who've told this to me.

First is bub cool and duper heat, so you, you set your sub cool based on bubble point and you set your superheat based on dew point bub cool and duper heat once you hear at once. You will not forget it. Even if you wish that you could sing away, was it Tim okay that sounds like Tim yeah? Okay, tim is one of those guys who has taught me a lot of things, but then also annoyed me, and so then I forget it and you know anyway, just a little little fun between Tim and I, but it's a really good one. It's a really good one, all right so I'll give it back to you Caleb what else you got um well on the glide there's a couple of questions regarding, so we do a retrofit with TDX 20.

Well, what happens if we have a leak? Little later on, you guys recommend 20 %, because then we got it's a high glass and refrigerant 10 % 20 %. When is what's the threshold before we start, you know not chopping off refrigerant or finding. You know things like that. The industry standard is 20 %.

You know it kind of depends on how this how the system is working. If you're working relatively well small system, I might go ahead and just add a little bit of refrigerant, because the only way you're going to know how much refrigerant you actually lost is to pull the refrigerant out and weigh it. So you know we're doing testing right now to actually determine where that point really is to determine at what loss rate we get to a point where we start losing capacity. So you know the industry set %, so everybody kind of used that - and I mean the thing to remember - is all the refrigerants out.

There are blends so they all fall under that same category, but we're actually doing testing in our test chambers now to kind of figure out exactly where those numbers are so as soon as we get that finalized and everything it's something we'll be publishing on the edge. So, just to clarify all of the retrofit replace r22 replacement. Refrigerants are blends. That's what you that's! What you were saying, they're, correct, yes, right, correct, even 410 is a blend, and then there are some refrigerants that are single component refrigerants, like our 32, that are used.

Other places, but it's not used in the u.s. because of its flammability and another thing that I think is key to point out here - is that there's two different reasons: why we're concerned about and a potential fractionation one is efficiency, but the other is flammability. When you have a flammable component as part of the refrigerant - and that was actually one of the primary concerns with r410a - is because, when it does leak at different rates, more 1/25 leaks out than r32. And so what can happen when you have significant leaks is not so much that you're gon na lose capacity and refrigerant, but potentially that your refrigerant could drift over into an unsafe zone? That's at least that's my understanding and I've talked to several people about this from different manufacturers, and that's what they've told me, and so that's where some of that comes from, whereas if you have a refrigerant that doesn't have those flammable components, senator has a lower percentage Than that becomes a little bit less of a concern and you're really just watching for the for the capacity and efficiency of the equipment more so, which i think is more so kind of what you're saying in the case of TDX 20.

Yes, cool: let's see here, I'm gon na I'm gon na start pulling up Jim's screen here, but I'll. Let you keep going Caleb with anything. You've got in your list. Well, there's one! That's come up a couple of times, both in the zoom chat and on YouTube.

This one was a really fun conversation that I had with with Jim and that we had to Brian the conversation awful or do you mean actually fun? No well, it's fun! For me. Okay, you were wrong yeah as long as you were having oh, I was wrong. Okay, well, I don't think that I don't remember that at all of it so keep going Leilani was there added witness? Okay, all right fine, and I kept you on the topic of compression ratios, because there's a there's a really famous educator out there. That says, as a you know, general rule that if you have a high compression ratio, your efficiencies going down but actually is proving correct with blue on.

Let's talk about that further, how does that actually work yeah? How does that actually work? Well, there's a couple different thoughts I mean, like I said with. If you can measure the head temperature, you can't do that on a hermetic compressor. But if you do it, like, I don't know five year or oh six II, one of those where you can actually physically measure the head temperature in the head temperature from r22 to TDX twenty will drop 20 to 40 degrees. Okay, lower temperature is lower.

Friction all right in addition to that, we're love, running lower pressures, so you have lower pressures, lower temperatures, and on top of that, if you look at a there's, a sine wave where it actually shows the current wave and it's a lot smoother than it is with Our 22 current draws more consistent, lower temperatures, lower pressures and, typically you know, we pick up 3 % on capacity. Do you lose 1 % somewhere in that range? So you know it really has to do with how much work you're getting or the energy that you're spending and compression ratio is not the answer that everybody used to you know countered on I mean I remember back in the day where you could actually weigh a Motor until what was on it, that's going back a few years yeah and that's a common okay. So I think this is a good one to to think about a little bit. Sometimes when we say things like lower compression ratio means better capacity, better efficiency, we're not talking about.

If you change the refrigerant, you know we're talking about with the same refrigerant. If you have lower compression ratio, you're gon na have better capacity and better efficiency, and I think that still remains true. But when you change the refrigerant, you change the whole paradigm. You change the latent heat of vaporization, obviously you're, going from something you're going to generally a slightly lower average coil temperature when you go to TDX 20.

So those are all factors, but I did pull up this because this kind of speaks to this. I pulled up this screen that shows a before and after that Jim did - and this was really one of the more convincing things that I saw. This isn't a real-life system where he'd changed it from our 22 to our 458, a and actually shows from a capacity standpoint. Let's see if I can zoom in a little bit more on here.

Where not only did you see better total capacity, but you also saw better sensible heat ratio and Leighton removal which, for our market is a really nice thing. You will notice - and this is one characteristic of measure quick if you've never used it before - is that here you've got your evaporator temperatures. Forty point three degrees on r22 and then, when you look over here, the evaporator temperature is thirty, seven point seven degrees, but on this screen, measure quick is not using dewpoint like many calculators would use it's actually looking at average coil temperature, and so this is a Conversation that Jim and I had had when he was actually coming up with this screen, and I think this is so much better because now you're really comparing apples to apples, you're, comparing consistent coil temperature, not with the lowest temperature that the coil sees and not with The highest temperature of the coil sees, but with the average coil temperature. Now I'm saying this assuming that that's still how this works I haven't tested recently, so I'm certainly hoping that's the case and if any of you think I'm crazy, please tell me, but that's my understanding of how this is and that really helps.

You understand why you're gon na look at a better, sensible heat ratio, because when you're, trying to remove moisture lowers better, in fact, 0.72 is pretty much nailed to what you would want. A sensible heat ratio to be. And then you also have better total capacity as well. So there's a lot of reasons why I really love this.

This right screen is compared to the left one here. Anybody have anything to add there did I lose everyone. Did everybody fall asleep? That's good chiming, quick from a comma, more, not as technical of a statement, but if you look at those screens and you look at something - you know using measure quick, it's a it's a huge opportunity for a differentiator as a contractor out there to go in to A customer and say: let me show you how things are running and then, when I'm finished, let me show you how things are running after I've done my work, so it adds value to their time. It actually shows a customer, large or small.

Look what you're paying me for here's, what I've done so many situations in the feedback I've got out in the industry. You know you charge me 800 bucks. I don't know what that you did now. You can go in and you can have a full pretty diagnostic on the back of that.

You can show them in pretty simple graphics how things were working before what you did and how things are working after, so you can show them that the retrofit is doing what you told them it would do and that the tune-up is doing what you told them. They would do and then they're very happy to pay for your services as opposed to fighting for getting paid on a job order or whatever it may be. It's just a big differentiator to have in your back pocket yeah exactly having a refrigerant that actually works better in some cases than the prior refrigerant. That's a pretty nice differentiator, I'd, say yeah, and this guide that I'm showing you right here.

This is actually kind of a. I guess a press release that Jim wrote personally about this question of why he likes working with blue on why he likes the product why he trusted and for for the you know, hvac school audience, the general HVAC school folks, you guys all know Jim. You know that he's a technical guy he's a nerd like me he's you know, he's he's, you know Yoda level master nerd, I'm the Padawan nerd, and so when Jim says something we all listen and - and this is a really great to look at why he really Likes the product and again the question often comes up. You know why one blend over another, it's one of the most common questions that we get well.

If you could look at oil return, you look at capacity. You look at efficiency. Those are really your. Your three Biggie's and and yeah in some cases there is some adjustment required, but that's really true of all of them, and the thing that I like about the blue on app and conjunction with measure, quick app.

This sort of thing is that they're teaching you to do it the right way, which is, if you can measure before, make your changes measure after tune your performance. So not only are you putting in potentially a better refrigerant but you're also making those fine adjustments that probably should have been made from the first place. So because, when you look at something like this screen, you may say well, they could have made some of this. Some of this tuning adjustment, even on their r22 system, and that is potentially true, but they didn't because because they weren't as well educated and that's why I like the approach, train people first, you know even the way the app works were you got to go through That 30 minutes 40 minutes of training to make sure that you know what you're doing.

I think that's something we can all kind of get behind as professionals in our industry. One question: that's that's being asked and something we're going to talk about. Is this question of budgets, and maybe you know how are how are organizations gon na think about this? What questions are you getting and seeing from organizations as they're, making me making decisions about replacing with their capital expenditure budget or maybe doing retrofits yeah? I think historically, customers, end-users are kind of looking at a few different options of what to do. Replace equipment cost a bunch of money, keep using our 22 some markets that skyrocketed some markets.

It hasn't, but we all know it's it's either not gon na. Be there eventually or it's gon na, be extremely expensive. I know up in the northwest as little as 3 so weeks ago was almost 900 bucks for a 30 founder of r22 up there, so replace equipment keep using our 20 to do nothing or retrofit right. So they kind of had those four options, three of which costed a lot of money or would soon cost a lot of money.

The fourth option was to retrofit and then the retrofitting itself gets put in its own buckets. Why retrofitting you got a mandate to get rid of our 22? You want to repair a system that had a leak and go ahead and retrofit it at that time or do you want to be proactive and use blue on and get the savings in the ROI from the retrofitting? So a lot of those options have been taken off the table for a lot of the end users, as capex budgets have been slashed because of the coronavirus. Money's been been frozen up, and so really they have one option which is retrofit and having something that's viable to retrofit to now is becoming more and more important than ever, and I'm getting a ton of that feedback from our large commercial customers, not commercial customers by Large end-users, others say you know, we had you know 500 grand budget or whatever. That number is for replacing equipment this year in 2020.

I don't have that or I have half of that. So I need to do something and so they're turning to blue on, because you know we have a full solution: the protocols to support the warranty that goes along with the education process and now to make that even easier for the contract. We have these control panels, so if you take a walk down in a day in life of a contractor there, any users gon na call them say I can't replace this. What can I do? Well, we can use blue on.

I have a. I have an entire kit - that's plug-and-play damn-near, to come out with protocols, I'm educated on it. I call up. I have questions Jonas on site will get this puppy humming and it's actually gon na save you money on the back end as well as on the front end not having to replace that equipment.

So it's a it's becoming extremely popular and we're inundated daily with with those calls. You said something there that was really interesting and I'd like for all everybody. Listening to to really hear this that you mentioned they might meet you on site. That's.

That is something that blew on offers is a technician, a blue on technician. Meeting you on site for the retrofit. To get it done. Is that correct? Yes? So if you're, if you're working on typically we're very hands-on, especially with guys they're folks that are doing their first conversions over to blue on on larger systems, I'll be very hands-on.

We like to dig in like Mike said earlier: let's talk it to you before you do it and make sure everything's ready to go, but if you're gon na do a you know, 105, 10 and telepak out there we're gon na come we're gon na join you We're gon na train you on-site and do that work alongside of you so, which is also pretty cool to think about. If I'm contractor X, I'm gon na tell my customer, you know I'm gon na bring the refrigerant manufacturer to your site and we're gon na. Do this together, they're gon na take the risks they're gon na train me on how to do it. They're gon na be there for any questions problems.

You know speed bumps that we might hit I'm gon na get through it and and that's a big deal to bring the manufacturer on-site. I think that's a huge selling point but, more importantly, it opens up such a great line of communication between the contractors and us and that conversation never stops once we're on site with someone or do a training. We talk to them all the time and we answered our phone every time. So, yes, we do come on-site and do you typically if it's over 20 tons, we just want to know what you're doing send us the make model serial number we'll say you know what we don't need to come out that one's you know pretty straightforward or yeah, That one's a little bit more involved when we get to your control panel, we'll come out, show you how to hook everything up charge that puppy yeah, and so the support is huge.

A lot of people in the chat are asking a lot about the refrigerant itself and we've obviously been saying a lot of the great benefits of the refrigerant. But I think it's going to be important for you moving forward to not think blue on energy as a company that manufactures refrigerant and we've talked about that a little bit. But but I want to ask you that question again because, rather than because we're getting questions about prices or any questions about a lot of that sort of thing, and obviously you know those are things that you have to you have to find out. You have to get those price just like you would anything else available all that.

But how do you want contractors and technicians to think of blue on energy moving forward and what should they go to you, for? I think we've really evolved into it and it's been. Our goal is in full HVAC solutions right, whether you're using blue on or 410 or a different replacement refrigerant we've put together the team and the and the technology to really be a full HVAC solutions provider. You know we get calls some guys, not that we don't like these calls. We get calls from you guys working on their.

You know furnace in a basement. Hey, it's not firing up. What do we do and we help them now? That's not our main goal. The point being is people are calling us for all sorts issues, not just retrofitting, not just blue on, and we we have the team together to answer those questions and help make the life of the guys in the field easier.

I think that would be the holistic view of blue on HVAC solutions, not just blue yeah, great stuff. So are there any questions that we fail to to hit on here? I think one of the things that that you know that's been asked a few times is: what are the changes you have to make in the equipment and I think a lot of it depends on what all is in the equipment. You know the the more kind of controls you have in the equipment, the more likely you're gon na have to make adjustments to those controls. That's it that's kind of the nature of all retrofits, because a lot of the grocery guys know this.

In some cases, maybe some cases you have to change seals and that sort of thing and that I guess that's one question that I have for you is: do you run into that cases where you have to replace a rings or anything like that with the retrofit? We don't have to replace all the rings, one of the things that I do just because it's a good practice if I'm pulling Schrader's out or replacement on the caps. One of the things that drives me right up a wall is seeing these damn plastic caps. Put on there, you know I mean it's just a possible source of leak. So whenever I do anything, I always change the the Schrader cores and I always put on nice brass caps, just as a you know, an extra way to prevent leaks, but as far as having to change over rings and things like that, it's not required yeah.

We're getting some questions about kind of the general questions about the refrigerant landscape, which is another reason why I kind of brought up that last point. I don't think we're necessarily talking about a blue on energy refrigerant being in new OEM products anytime soon we have this big backlog that we're solving for still, and that is really the kind of the sweet spot not to say that it can't happen in the future. I think anything is a possibility, but there's a lot of questions that are just outside of all of our pay grades like we can't solve geopolitical questions, you know which is again. That's that's that's! This voice comes in.

You know it's like yeah, I'm just trying take over the world. Everybody gets a kick out of it. That's why I do it, but you know it. We can't solve all of those really huge problems, but we can solve the ones that are at our doorstep and when you have an application where you've got a facility, Tony was talking about one of our customers.

We've got this facility. That is a super weird r22 units that we cannot get easy replacements, for it would take this enormous change and the customer is very interested in making the change now away from refrigerants that are, ozone depleting and high GWP, and so this refrigerant makes a lot of Sense for that, but more than just the refrigerant it's the whole solution. We got to look at the equipment. We got to look at the site.

We got to communicate with the customer and that's the point. The point is: is that retrofit takes support? It takes thought Caleb's, a really big fan of the building performance industry as mi, and it's like that. You know if you want to solve a problem, a complicated problem, humidity or inter air quality. You don't just go in and throw a box at it and that's what we've been doing in retrofit we've been saying: what's the easiest drop-in? Well, that's not how it works and it's never how it's worked and just to be clear again, you don't ever take any refrigerant, including blue, on including anything and put it on top of another refrigerant, because we always get that question well.

Can you top off? No, you can't top off any refrigerant with any other refrigerant. That's never how it's worked. That's never what drop-in meant. So, while it is a great replacement like any refrigerant, there is some tuning that needs to take place in order to get optimum control.

Somebody asked a little bit ago about what what software do you use. You know here we are huge fans of measure quick measure. Quick is the software that I would suggest you test in test out, use good quality tools. This isn't this isn't a time for analog.

This is the time for digital. This is a time for really detailed information. So that way you can make sure you're giving the customer the best that they can. They can hope for and I'll stop ranting there Caleb what else you got? No.