The free training provided by the HVAC school podcast is made possible because of the generous support from our sponsors. Testo rector seal and carrier condensate overflow switches are very much under considered in both maintenance situations, service calls and in installations technicians they get used to installing them. One particular way, and then that's just they want to apply that rule to every single switch that they run into in different applications require different types of switches, even in the unified mechanical code. So James Bowman and I talked about that a couple episodes back.

If you want to hear about that, but rector seal is a leader when it comes to condensate overflow switches, they have the safety switch, they have the easy trap and they also have the Aqua guard lines. All under rector seal may all make different products that serve different purposes. They have products that have the trap already installed, that you can clear out and you can see the entire trap even with the safety switch, the SS one, which is a switch that we've used for years. They came out with a clear body version, so you can actually see what's in the switch, which is pretty cool, we use a lot of the SS twos.

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Zoom want calm for more information, and now your host, the man who is actually a giant nerd but wants to be accepted by blue-collar tradesmen to fulfill some gap in his soul left there by his father or his mother. It's definitely not just because he's a weenie, Bryan or hey hey. What do you say this? Is the HVAC School podcast. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for listening to the podcast. This is part two of the conversation that I had with John Chavez about vrf and Douglass. If you haven't listened to part one then go back and listen to part one first, otherwise, part two is not gon na make as much sense. It's not gon na be as complete.

So here we go part two john Chavez on vrf and ductless number eight is power in and power out, I'm interested in this one yeah so to demystify the troubleshooting aspects. If you believe that there is a component failure to discover that you know first, you want to make sure that you have the proper voltage going into the unit on the kernel strip. Okay, then you want to make sure from the terminal strip to the board or boards are getting the proper voltage. If the board is that lighting up, you know you're gon na check the fuses, because they're going to be some glass fuses on there most likely little small fuses, and if those fuses are good and you don't have any lights and your system is not operating.

Well then, it's probably the board, but if a component is not activating and you got, the board is active in the light and the LEDs or what-have-you is flashing. Then you're gon na make sure that the board is giving voltage out you see. So if you have power going in and you don't have power going out to the component, what's the problem inputs into outputs, then it's what's in between that's right now. This is a real oversimplification, because the condenser fan motor is usually going to be DC voltage with a five or six wire connector.

Okay, you have five volts DC 12 volts DC. You have communication volts, usually in DC you have the condenser fan motor baut, it's DC, then you have compressor, which is going to be VA, see you have to look in the service manual to discover what you're looking for, because, if you're just testing just a task And you don't know what it should be, then it's nearly pointless. You know it's better to know what to expect and then do your tests, power and power out got it yeah, pretty straightforward and that's part of not being overwhelmed. I think this is the thing technicians get in most kind of overcome by overwhelmed by is looking at all these boards, but most manufacturers, at least of the higher quality products that are on the market.

The Mitsubishi zuv the world they're going to have some pretty good documentation. That's gon na describe to you. You know what the different voltages should be at different points, so that you can kind of walk your way through the system with a voltmeter, because that's largely what you're gon na be doing. You test a lot of sensors with an ohm meter, but a lot of what you're doing and diagnosing a ductless system is really just walking through the system with a voltmeter yeah and having a true rms voltmeter unit, something of quality that has at least six hundred Thousand ohm range and both DC and AC voltage.

That's the tip you know, and if you don't have a DC meter, you can buy one at Home Depot for 30 bucks yeah. We also rode all the technicians out on a rail who didn't have good quality to RMS meters, so we should be fine with that as well. Those are the electrical tools that you need and their ranges, but going into number nine, which is go no-go. Temperatures discharge air temperatures, the leaving air temperatures you should be looking for under aah are eye conditions.

Ninety-Five outdoor eighty sixty-seven indoor, you should be somewhere between forty and fifty degrees coming out at the discharge of the ductless unit. That's pretty typical. You know the pipes can get it's cold, as thirty seven degrees. You know before going out on frost protection.

So this is why you need to insulate the condensate lines. You know and there's been times where get a phone call and there's puffs of smoke coming out of it. They're complaining, they don't know what's going on and it actually just fog, that's how cold it's gone right. It's actually hitting the air in the space, the air and the space is actually condensing onto the cold air.

That's exiting the unit yeah, where it's not relative. Humidity is high enough to cause do, but it's high enough to cause fog, but if you're getting 55 degrees coming out of the discharge, 80 67 indoor yeah you're, probably looking at trouble certain the system for potential refrigerant issues. That would be my advice. These systems are they're, not your father's heat pumps.

You know they operate at a more efficient level and heating mode under a HR conditions, which typically starts at 47 degrees outdoor in 68 degree of 50 percent, humidity indoor. You could be getting 110 to 130 degrees coming out of discharge. I was in Oklahoma, it was nine degrees outside. I think it was 50 or something in indoors when we started a unit and it was 138 degrees coming out of the unit, and that depends a lot on the on the particular respects of that particular system.

So you'll have some systems yeah. You know high heat systems that will produce more and some systems that will produce less and the ambient conditions vary from unit to unit but you're, correct, and that this range is going to give you a good general range to expect and heating mode. I'm not sure if the discharge heat temperature would be any more than that it could quite possibly be, but definitely some manufacturers have systems that can operate down into the negative teens. You know at 80 or so percent capacity.

That's a pretty incredible that with the software and what basically you know, ductless systems are, is a computer. You know we're all familiar with the hardware, it's really the algorithms that are and some manipulation of the compressor system that can allow. For this I mean there are systems that can operate in cool mode at negative 40, we're in a good time right now to be in the HVAC, our industry you're, seeing all these advances, but the next one is find the root cause. I think that we covered that you know, don't be a parts changer.

You have anything to add to that. No, I think we covered it. I mean there's such a wide range of things that you can look at and I think what you said about surveying the situation, knowing the job history. Those are such huge factors, because if parts were just recently changed on this unit - and you don't know what they were and why they were changed, that's where you get at least really frustrating loops where you replace the same board three times.

You know we had a job recently that was like that, where it kept taking out boards and even to this day, I could tell you about it, but essentially what it was. It was a three-phase application, so it was a Delta system. So there was a high leg and it was connected. One of the legs was the high leg connected to the unit and, theoretically, that shouldn't have been a problem, but for some reason, even though we were measuring proper voltages, I think just the higher voltage to ground and was causing some some shorting.

For whatever reason I don't know if it was transient something that was coming in, we were in Florida, so we have a lot of power issues, but every four or five months we were taking out power boards on these systems, and so we ended up making a Change and re tapping on the incoming power to legs that were not the high leg on the Delta system. Since then, we haven't had an issue. I don't know if you want to speak to that specifically, because I didn't find anything that you should do that, but that seemed to solve the problem, but that took really kind of being analytical and thinking right. What are all of the possibilities in this electrical distribution system that could potentially cause this there's plenty of times where you'll find yourself checking voltage, and maybe if this system can operate between 187 and 253, volts okay, 190 to 50? Something like that.

You got to look on the nameplate for the manufacturer and, if you're operating at 250, let's say in the high-end is 253. That's not okay, even though you're within the range voltage is not a level signal, it can go up and it can go down depending on the day and depending on what's happening within the electrical system itself. If you run those high is all your other components will be high too, so that five volt DC and the 12 volt DC that's going to be higher. It think it's important to acknowledge that if you're constantly running high voltage or low voltage and you're burning out boards, you may need a buck booster.

What a buck booster is it's a type of transformer that has taps and you could tap it where you order it by the voltage in the amperage and it's a box. It looks like two and a half 60 amp service disconnect stacked together and that's how big it is and you can get the voltage to buck down right. So if you're running high voltage, you could buck it down either 12 volts or 24 volts and it will maintain at that level. So there's been plenty of times, people are burning out boards and they don't know.

Why, and I ask questions you know, are you near a factory? Are you on the outskirts of the grid? Do you have common voltage issues because the technicians usually know the utility will never take blame for that. So if you're unsure about all these questions, you might have to put a data logger on there to record the voltage and catch it right, because, if you're burning out boards, your customer is going to lose faith in you. Unless you take a greater step into an investigative process and you can rent data loggers, sometimes your utilities will loan you them. They have these expensive tools and you set it up and you discover it.

You know the buck. Booster is the answer. I've sold, maybe five. A year - and that's just me just one person getting those calls, I mean I'm sure if I took fifty percent of the calls out of all the state of Texas, I may sell 100 a month.

I don't know right and you make a good point, because a lot of technicians look at this and they're like okay. Well, that's not my problem. That's the utility or that's the electricians problem or whatever, but anything is taken out boards in your unit is your problem because the customer views it is your problem and there's a lot of people who would dispute that, but it's just the reality of life and business. Like you said the power company, the utility they're not going to take responsibility for it unless you can absolutely prove it so you're kind of left doing that in some cases and we've put those devices in the past.

If you make small input, voltage, changes to particular appliance and that's a that's good advice now. One thing I will mention quickly with ductless is a lot of guys will say: well, I put a surge suppressor on it. Well, a surge suppressor, first of all, the ones that you buy at Home Depot or ever they're, not very good. If you look at the specs on a lot of consumer available surge suppressors, they're, not great and they're, not really designed to protect super delicate electronics, let alone the fact that a lot of these issues are not due to surges surges are one set of problems that Can occur but if you have a constant voltage issue where it actually is coming in high or low from the utility, then the surge suppressors not gon na do anything with that surge oppressors are just designed to choke down transients which are surges from lightning strikes or Shorts in the actual distribution grid, the guys who say that they're gon na use a surge suppressor to solve this.

That's not always the right move. No, the thing about search protection is that you have a 20 % chance of it actually working in the condition that you think it should work like brownouts. Your lightning strikes, because again, a lot of the stocks are very special in how they can destroy things and it's very random. But the surge protection is just insurance and that's how they should be sold as not a all covering solution, but just part of an insurance policy.

If you're having voltage issues, the main thing is try to solve the voltage issues, whether it's a new transformer. On the pole, or the utilities don't operate under the National Electrical Code, they can do whatever they please. They don't have to ground things properly or use the right ground gauge wire. It's only after the connection from the house between the pole and your main circuit breaker box.

Now, after the circuit breaker boxes, when you're building expector in the codes come in to do any kind of relevance, I spent a number of hours. I like to say 40 hours is probably more on learning about grounding and bonding and signal communication and the importance you know: what's the difference between a shield and why you need a shield why good ground is important, and so these are all subjects that are very, Very relevant for ductless systems, because if you don't have a good ground, you're gon na have a premature failure. Have you ever seen those little white spots on circuit boards? They look like little spiderwebs or you know, look like salt yeah. I have that's the manifestation of a bad ground, that's the radiofrequency interference and the electromagnetic interference attacking the board, because the ground is improper.

It's very important. Those subjects signal, communication, grounding shielding and bonding yep for sure, and we could go on and on about this I do think I do want to get you back on and go over. Maybe some more like specific tips, maybe get a little more specific in some of the stuff cuz. You have a whole list of this as well, but step number ten is to find the Y and then I think ties right into what we're just saying.

Well, as it relates to finding the root cause, what causes this in the first place? Yes, so the ghost in the machine, what I like to describe as a conductor and a very sophisticated Symphony right, you can have up to in a mini-split system, up to eight thermistors active current transformers pressure, transducers and the motors themselves. The a DC motor is not voltage DC when they describe DC they're, actually describing the type of motor a BLDC motor, a brushless, commutator motor and digitally commentated or DC means that it just communicates. It sends voltage feedback just like an ECM electrically commutator motor. It's a feedback device, you know and depending on the condition that the motor is operating in, it sends different voltages back to the circuit board, and that translates into some action or inaction.

You have all these components being controlled by the conductor or the Y and things which is the algorithms and the software. Once you are able to discover why the component is doing what it's doing, then the troubleshooting becomes all that much easier. The point is, is that you have to understand, we think in terms of the inputs, so we say: okay. This is a thermistor so test this to mr..

But what is that thermistor telling this brain? That's driving everything and what are the interdependencies and that's where you can really start to become a master, especially if you specialize in a particular brand of equipment that you're installing a lot. You know if you have a something that you're seeing a lot. It's be hooves. You to understand it well into going to the interdependencies and understand the whys, i would say, because i've been to seven different manufacturers trainings multiple times when i first started.

You know i just immersed myself in this. What i find there's a lot of commonalities in the programming when i said ghost in the machine is like what's making it. Do this a lot of frustration for a service technician, that's going to a service call on a ductless unit for the first time is like you know what is going on here and the conventional mindset it's just on and off right you got relays. You've got contactors, you got motors that have maybe two or three speeds.

You notice it's on and off on everything, gas valves on and off, but with these systems it could be neither on or off and you're just wondering. Why is it doing what it's doing? Well, it's programmed to do that, so, if you could find out why it's doing what it's doing then troubleshooting becomes much easier and I'll give you an example. Typically, there's a sensor, that's hanging outside of the condenser coil in in the upper corner and that sensor typically controls the fan, speed of the condenser fan motor. Then you have another thermistor, that's connected to high on the condenser coil on elbow in a copper sheath and it sticks in there that typically controls a defrost.

So once you can put together why these sensors are place where they are and what they're expected to sense relate to printed circuit board. You'll be better off for sure and then in truthfully, like I'm in a position where, when we started doing a lot of duck lists, I was starting to move out of the field and more into the office. And so I have guys who are much better versed at what all of these things do than even I am and when I look at a piece of equipment, I think the first thing is this curiosity that you and mentioned: where do you say? Okay, I see this sensor, so what does it do? A good technician always wants to know the answers to those questions, even if it's non, you know that you've been particularly familiar with, and by pursuing that you'll often find out more about the equipment than even people who maybe work on it. Every single day do because they maybe you've, never thought to ask that question.

I don't know it's just there. It's an outdoor air temperature sensor. Well, okay, but what does it do? What is it telling the the board? Was it telling the the central processor? So that's! It's interesting stuff, a curious thing happens when you ask a lot of questions and attempt to understand. The answers is that you become an expert at asking questions, there's plenty of times where I've been on a job site and I wasn't all knowledgeable, but I was able to ask the right questions and their force build on that and come up with solution or solutions.

So what I want to address real quick is a test that I did, because I think we kind of hit on a lot of the technicians are frustrated by this whole. You just have to wait in the charge thing you know like. That throws a lot of guys off, so we talked about the go and no-go temperatures output, temperatures, but another thing that I did that is kind of encapsulated in your tips. Here is I used the test of 605 ice and test as smart probes app, and you can actually measure the inlet.

You know, sir. Your return temp coming into your evaporator and then your outlet discharge temperature coming out of your air handler head fan, coil head and you can use that tool as long as you know, your CFM to calculate your delivered capacity and then the only challenges. Of course. How do you find your CFM, which you can find that in some cases by just looking at the manufacturer's information, if you set your fan, speeds is a high speed manually, so you set it to high speed manual.

Then you can look at your chart and have a pretty good idea of what your CFM output is. If the unit's clean, the blower wheels clean or what I also did, is I used a vane anemometer and actually measured the outlet of the unit and use my vane anemometer and came up with a very close semblance of what the manufacturer was saying. So I feel pretty confident about that output reading using the vane anemometer, and so you can in some cases use that and that'll give you a good indication of whether or not you're outputting close to what the manufacturer intended for that system so long as you're driving It to full capacity, I saw that video. Oh, you did what I think I thought it was great.

Okay, good. Oh, I was worried different. I think YouTube is an excellent source of discovery. Of course you got to check your facts.

You know just you can't believe everything that you listen to and see on YouTube, but there's a lot of good folks out there and, and that particular video I thought was an excellent example of not using your gauges. I mean you could discover the BTUs of a unit if you have a 9,000 BTU mini-split and that's nominal right. Nominal means that in a HRI conditions, these rated conditions it's going to achieve 9,000, but it has a potential of being 3000 or 14,000 depending on the atmospheric conditions of both indoor and outdoor. One of many great things about ductless systems is that you don't have to worry about static pressure right.

So if you read on the submittal sheets or perhaps even the sales catalog, you can discover the BTUs, like you said, set it to high, get your Delta H. Your enthalpy between the return and the supply in Delta H times the CFM times 4.5 voila. That's your total BTUs. The gauges can't tell you that so I've been working a lot with Jim Bergman on his measure, quick, app and he's gon na be working with different manufacturers with different sensors and different probes.

To do the same thing or you can manually enter, and that's the nice thing about that is you can manually, enter and find your enthalpy right there on the application saves a little bit of time, even if you don't have the fancy software or fancy probes, pretty Cool stuff coming out, but I think that's the direction that we're going with ductless is less relying on your gauges and, more so, relying on the actual delivered capacity on the air side of the system, which i think is senate cool. Well, i would say any air conditioning system, true on ductless, it's more critical just because you have less useful information. Otherwise, with conventional systems, you can always sort of default to the refrigerant side. I hate to call that lazy man's way, but you can always kind of go back to the old-fashioned way.

Where's, the ductless. You just don't have that opportunity. So using some of these newer techniques, it's gon na be the way to go, and, as always, most manufacturers with ductless, like I mentioned before. They want you, when you're talking about charge, to look at the actual factory charge, weighed in so way out way and the charge that's kind of the way they want you to do that they don't want you to just free handing in charge now, which makes sense It really is critical charge and you may have a charge: that's functional and cool mode.

Let's say you overcharge it in cool mode. Well, that may be a significant problem in heat mode, so you can't just rely on one set of seasonal conditions to set a charge. Free hand, when I say free hand, just adding and refrigerant, like you typically would on a unitary system yeah if ductless so charging a system by pressure. Any refrigeration system by pressure is not advised all refrigeration systems, whether it's a water felt fountain or a 10,000 pound.

A day industrial ice machine or all critical charge, yeah, it's a hard sell, getting Tech's to believe that, but uh yeah charge is critical, so is everything critically charged depends on what you mean by. That is the charge of every system. Critical. The answer is yes to that: getting the system charge critically, if you work on ductless systems than you know, they can be challenging to maintain and if you don't work on ductless systems and you're, just gon na have to take my word for it.

The the fin spacing on the evaporator coils are very tight and even actually the condenser coil fin spacing is also tight, and then they also have these blower wheels that are really long and the cups on them are just tiny and they tend to gather up. Don't over time and they just stop working efficiently if they get dirty at all, they get any significant grime on them. They stop working properly. So the challenge is with ductless is how do you clean them because often ductless systems are, you know, they're mounted up on the walls in places that you can't get water all over the place? So how do you clean them properly and one way you can do it is you can pull them all apart? You can pull the blower wheels out, but even then, if you do that, you still have to worry about how you clean the evaporator coil.

So what do you do? Pull the whole air handler off the wall, we'll never fear rector seal makes the dissolve kit and it's the word dissolved without the e on the end, as is very popular nowadays and to omit new vowel. So it's dissolve and they may it's a kit, it's also a cleaner, and so they have a cleaning solution that you can spray on the evaporator, coil and blower wheel. But then it also has this bib that mounts underneath the air handler or fan coil whatever you want to call it, and you can actually use a wand to clean that off and it all funnels down into a bucket and what's nice about the kid. Is that because everything fits inside the bucket, so you just keep the bucket on your truck.

You've got the bib. You've got the little drain that drains down into the bucket you've got the cleaner. You've got everything all there in one place. So it's a pretty cool kit check it out.

It is the erector seal dissolve kit. Also, if you work on ductless, one thing that a lot of people struggle with is this idea of testing performance on a ductless system because checking the charge is really tough. On ductless I mean you can tell if the thing's flat but other than that, it's tricky because there's so many moving parts, but what you can do pretty easily on most ductless systems is you can get a a chart that shows you the different CFM output for The different stages of operation - all right, if you guys have listened to this podcast for any amount of time. You know that I kind of have a little bit of a crush on the test of 6:05.

I it's just a stupendous, can I say stupendous and not have it seem like hyperbole, I'm gon na choose to say stupendous. It is a stupendous tool for the investment that you spend on it. It is a great term, a hygrometer, and for those of you who are like what the heck is, that they're, my hygrometers well tell you you thermo hygrometer is basically digital for psychrometer, that's another term for it and it measures, wet, bulb, dry bulb relative humidity, the Dew point: you know it can extract all those if you've ever looked at the psyche chart you need a couple pieces of information, then you can extract the rest, but what the 605 eye does really well is that you can measure these readings in duct. So you can take wet, bulb, dry bulb, relative humidity in the returned, wet bulb, drywall brilla to humidity in the supply and right there in the smart probes app, it will actually calculate delivered capacity.

As long as you enter the CFLs reduce pretty cool CFM Allah. I always want to say CFM's CFM of air, so the 605 eye is a great tool, but when you add in what Jim Bergman is doing with the measure, quick app, which you can find out more by going to measure quick, comm, four slash download now on That application - you know, I'm excited about that product, but the test of smart probes in this test is 6:05. I work with Jim Bergman's measure, quick app, and so you can get the best of both worlds. A really really highly functional, app plus the test.

Oh 605 is that the actual smart probe app that you can use directly the 605. I it works great, but you can extend its functionality by using it with the measure, quick, app and so getting delivered. Capacity is a huge thing. I mean you can actually show your customer right there in your phone.

We've already done this in many occasions like look. This is how much capacity this system is actually delivering. Here's what you paid for here's, what you got it's a great product and it's also just a great way to get your indoor wet, bulb and dry bulb, which you need anyway, if you're gon na calculate super heat on a fixed or fit system. If you want to use it to calculate target delta, T your air temperature split, it's also great for that.

It's just a good all-around temperature measurement device. Plus it gives you that additional data that you can only get from thermo hygrometer and you have the ability to get it in the duct plus Bluetooth and, like I've mentioned a million times, you can get that particular product to test. Oh 6:05, I, by going to true tech tools, comm and at checkout, use the offer code get schooled all one word: no caps, no spaces get schooled. Look at the bottom left-hand side of the screen when you're in the process of checking out there and there's a coupon code box type get schooled in there and you will get a great discount all right.

So anything else you want to hit at the end before we finish this up. Is there anything that's real important that you don't want to miss in this episode, if you notice that this thing was really more of to get into a mindset right, because if you don't have the proper mindset or conducive mindset to finding a solution, all you're gon Na do is be frustrated by the way. There is no such thing as inverter compressor, there's single rotary, twin rotary, scroll, compressors and what-have-you, but the inverter is the drive mechanism. An inverter is a DC to AC converter.

Okay, a rectifier is the AC to DC component. So you're only getting half the story when people say inverter ductless system, it's actually a rectifier and an inverter I'll have to throw that in so it helps kind of again demystify it. All other thing that we didn't talk about is learn computer and electronics, terminology which is imperative. You know, as conventional systems become more sophisticated.

You know they're taking the cue from the ductless world and understanding, maybe what a diode is? I'm not a proponent of troubleshooting circuit boards. Some manufacturers love to get into the weeds when I say manufacturers, employees and manufacturers. They just want you to understand the level of how competent they are and their understanding of the systems. We don't have to do that power and power out, but it's good to know some of the terminology.

So, if you're weak on understanding computers, that's going to work against you, the more terminology, the more vocabulary you have to understand the system. You know the better off you'll be at mastering it. Another thing here is 50 % of the heirs can be cleared by resetting the power. So that's good news.

I wouldn't expect - and I wouldn't advise people to walk to a system that has a error code shut up a power. You still want to do your troubleshooting checks, but if it comes to the point where there's lag time between your phone call to the support agent and the phone call back or what have you, you can turn off the power and you want to wait. At least 5 to 15 minutes, depending on the system, how big the system is to let the capacitors discharge and then turning on the power, and you got a 50 % chance that the air coats going to go away and that's because it's a computer! You know computers have bugs, you know they have little burps of issues and you may have ran into a situation where the system didn't know what to do. So.

I spit out an error code and then that problem went away, but the air could remain that's good. In class, it's just like a computer. In that regard I mean when a computer locks up on you, something did happen, but that thing that happened may not reoccur for a very long time or may never reoccur. And so it's not to say that I think when people talk about bugs there's, not an actual cockroach going around in your unit, I mean it's not magic.

It's not something did happen. My instructor, an AC school used to call it P FM. You know which it's up here, frigging magic, that's a pretty hard p FM, does not cause problems in these units. However, sometimes there's in there small voltage inconsistencies or little things that can happen, that don't reassure and when those things occur, it may lock out on a code and that code may reset just by resetting the power just like it does on your computer.

So, in the same way that you would reset your computer, sometimes when things start getting sluggish or acting odd, you would do the same thing with any advice that has a significant amount of electronics in it, and often that does solve the problem exactly the next thing Here is 50 % of the service calls are building science-related. What I mean by that is the envelope of the building is affecting the performance of the system, the more you can understand about the thermal envelope and it's connected to the whole system. The whole. You know cooling and heating system, the better off you will be, you know, because a weak building, structure or subpar or inferior construction materials will certainly affect the occupants comfort level.

There's been plenty of times where I've experienced a system that, for example, you know - maybe spitting out water, okay and you're, going to go through your trouble checks and there's no air code for spitting out water. Well, what's happening. Is that there's a tremendous amount of infiltration where basically what's happening? Is that the humidity is it's such a state into space? Is that as soon as that, cold air hits a part of the unit's casing it wicks and boom? You got spitting water so that wouldn't be the fault of any particular manufacturer. It's a building issue.

Does that make sense? Do you have any examples? Sure I mean a common example would be. I mean this is actually installation problem, but we see issues with ductless systems that occur if it's an exterior wall and the penetration with a copper goes through. The back of the exterior wall isn't fully and correctly sealed, because now that's gon na act as a straw. Drawing in moisture and that will result in all sorts of gunk all over the place, you know mildew and all sorts other junk, and that's not the problem of the unit.

That's the problem with the fact that you haven't sealed the envelope properly yeah. Now, in lots of other applications, I mean. Obviously the load is a huge thing and if you have a system, that's in a circumstance where it's vastly oversized for the load or undersized for the load. Those are obvious factors, but then also the humidity design of the space.

Another huge consideration do you have to take all of this into account. It's still an air conditioning system, it's not magic, and so it has ranges of operation that are generally better than it's unitary counterparts, but it has limitations sure it has limitations just like any Pacifica. So you have to know the application and make sure that you're matching it to the application. I mean there are cases like if you look at Mitsubishi makes a ductless 6000 BTU head that matches up with their MXZ.

And if you look at the specs on that ductless 6000 BTU head at design conditions, it removes zero latent, meaning, zero pints of water. None because of the way that it's set up, because it has the exact same air flow characteristics as the 12,000 BTU version. In so it's producing the exact same airflow at less BTUs of capacity, and so therefore it has the coils just not getting cold enough. So if you take that and put it into a room, say you put it into a closet that you're designing you're, designing this closet to keep your clothes from getting mildew or whatever.

Well, if you put that in that walk-in closet you're, going to do the opposite, you're gon na make that room into a mildew cave with that unit, because it's just not designed that particular unit is designed for zero Layton removal. It says it right in the specs of that particular unit, and I actually pointed that out in that video that we discussed earlier. There's lots of it and you got to know the equipment what's interesting about the 6, 9 and 12. In that case, it's the exact same system, exact same components.

It has the same CFM value. It doesn't show the pipe removal on the some little I haven't read any verbiage, so were it actually claims or states that it doesn't remove latent, but the difference in those three units is the circuit board. Part number changes in my mind. I just don't think that they tested that unit yet or something sure it could be.

But you clearly know that if it is a 6,000 BTU head, unless it is because what the circuit board is doing, is it's telling the electronic expansion valve to feed less refrigerant into it? I mean that's the only thing it could possibly be doing so if it's not doing that, then their capacity ratings are incorrect either it isn't doing Layton removal or something's wrong in the way that they tested when they printed that sheet, which is altogether possible because I Haven't physically tested it, but just going strictly on what the manufacturers telling you based on those design conditions, that would not be a good match if you're intending to put a 6000 BTU in a space that you're wanting to remove a lot of moisture. Out of that would just wouldn't be the best design unless you got some compromise that it's different, no, they show it would have to remove some latent. Your sensible heat ratio has to exist. You would discover that by doing your total enthalpy check and then your sensible check and what between is your latent correct and you do that through testing.

But again, the reason why you would remove no latent would be is if your coil temperature was above dew point. If that coil temperature at those airflow ratings at those CFM ratings in the capacity, because that's how that works, obviously is it if your capacity to be to use, if you have a wet coil, it's not going to operate correctly. You know it's not going to remove. Like you need a colder coil, you need to be below dewpoint correct if you're, at or above to a point, that's problematic, but right.

What I'm saying is that on that particular model, let's say that you have a MXZ, 8 B or HC. What have you and you are running your max capacity, which is a hundred and thirty five percent total indoor unit capacity compared to the outdoor and the six thousand? The only way you can go well, then, that's your answer, but if all the other units are off that particular six thousand BTU unit has a potential between 3000 and maybe 10 or 11,000 VTS, depending on the temperature and and that can be discovered of the space That can be discovered by the capacity charts you know so the higher humidity the higher the BTU potential you have. So the next thing is building expectations with the customer. If you think a job is going to take an hour schedule 3.

So you can tell mr. and mrs. Jones, we have worked on plenty of ductless systems and we know that it's going to be a minimum of 3 hours to properly diagnose the trouble and find a solution. And the reason why I do.

That is because, when you show up you're not going to have the manual most likely and you're going to have to call a buddy or call a manufacturer - and you give yourself some and our company some time to do a proper job, you know maybe clean the Coils, whereas if you just charge a service call, it's probably going to be a losing venture for you. Will you lose jobs to other folks that haven't heard this podcast or this advice sure, but don't lose money? Everybody in the industry should be making money because we're the doctors of HVAC. You know we're the professionals when you build those expectations and manage those expectations. Things start to get a lot better working environments.

The last two here, where is the worst place, to put a condenser it's on the roof? When you have the Sun beating down on it, you lose capacity because your roof temperature could be 10 15 degrees difference between the street level temperature and that's going to lower the capacity of the system. When you add heat to a motor that makes it less efficient. Add excessive heat to heat exchanger, it's going to be less efficient. There are plenty of applications where I've seen the outdoor units inside of a garage, which is great.

If you can get the ventilation of the garage to be equal to the CFM of the condenser fan motor, then that system will run just fine. You know they're very, very quiet, they don't vibrate and you just get a louver sighs right like, for instance, if a one and a half ton outdoor unit, it has a maximum CFM of 1800 CFM. Then just make sure you have eighteen hundred CFM worth of ventilation. In the garage to have that air exchange you know, and the benefits of that is that unit will last longer right in heat mode, you can lower the defrost cycle and increase the performance.

Is it's typically not going to be snowed on or in the windchill factor? Will be eliminated, that's beneficial and in cool mode a garage can be a lot cleaner than an outside with your dog, all the other things that are outside that can affect the condenser coil. There are vrf applications that I know of where you have 500 tons worth of condensers inside of a building when I say condensers their heat pumps, but it's just outdoor units and they have maybe one or two mm BTU unit heaters in that space and the unit Heaters are set to come on if the temperature is below 50 degrees, then it's going to come on and work until, like 55 degrees or something protecting the condenser. Putting in the shade very helpful, then the last thing is verifying the application like a wrong application, is a pretty high or common factor with these systems, for instance, in a computer room. You know I'm not gon na stop this from happening, but a computer room has a constant load.

If anything, the load increases over time because you're adding more servers so winter and summer, the load stays the same relatively speaking, and the whole purpose of anniver driven compressor is to save money when the load changes right. The part load savings right. So if you look at data air or Leibert or stutz, those are maybe one or two stage compressors right and it's all about their specific temperature. You know maybe 70 degrees, setpoint plus or minus 2 degrees and 48 percent, relative humidity, plus or minus 4 percent, not 4 percent humidity.

4 percent of 48 percent got it right relative to minimal and when you have conditions like that, you know that's not for Douglas, because ductless systems typically don't cycle long humidity, right, they're, not there for latent control. So you want to spend the money on getting the proper equipment. A server rack can quite easily cost fifty thousand dollars, and you want to put a $ 3500 mini-split in there protecting $ 50,000 worth of equipment or a business operation. You know, can the business survive without a server system? Probably not, and I read somewhere and I've had trouble trying to find it.

If somebody can find it and email you. That would be great, but I think ASHRAE or some institution published years ago on a crack application in a computer room air-conditioning system. The budget should be 30 % of the value of the equipment. So if you have a hundred thousand dollars worth of server equipment - and you want to spend at least thirty thousand on your cooling equipment - I think you'll be able to get a redundant air-conditioning system for that.

So you have two systems yeah. I worked in cell phone tower applications for a while and those were all redundant systems and it makes sense. I mean at that point when you have a lead lag redundant system. It's not so much about efficiency.

You know they're not so concerned about how much power are they gon na consume, they're much more concerned about the reliability of the cooling equipment and the fact that you have a backup, that's gon, na work when the time comes. So I'm with you on that, because most ductless systems, traditional ductless equipment, isn't really designed for that type of redundancy. Anyway, the controls aren't really designed for it, because you want systems with the lead light controllers, that one runs and then it's running lead and the others running lag and then after a week or so it switches and they switch back and forth. So that way, they're getting consistent, runtimes as well, that's right, but typically we're faced with a IT guy that has zero power or the budget pen.

They call you and you got to go out there and figure out what the tonnage is. You're not talking to the right person about this conversation, so it's unfortunate, but I think this last thing that's left here: Brian, is our wine rooms, a good application for inverter ductless systems? Okay. What would you think what do I think? I don't know that much about wine rooms. I've done, I think, two or three poured that I've been personally involved with in my career, and I think the answer is no, because wine rooms do have a relative humidity element.

And if I remember correctly, I think the wine rooms require higher relative humidity so that you don't have quark drying. Am I correct on this in my own right path here, yeah? So what in wine rooms? Typically, the white wines need to be in a drier area and the red wines in a little higher humidity and again anytime. You hear specific temperature and humidity, that's not for ductless. There are plenty of websites and folks out there that you can go, buy wine room systems that are specifically designed to handle the type of wine room, but the wine rooms that I've been in.

You know the millwork and the wood species alone took a craftsman a year to make and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars - that's just the wood. You can imagine that some of the wine might be priceless. I don't know so having the correct application of whatever technology. That's gon na serve that space is key to long lasting, well-designed system.

If you dry out the corks, what's going to happen, is the wine is going to leak? If you have too much humidity, you can get gnats, you can grate mold on the wood. That's used is typically there's wood in the wine room walls, so no ductless is not for wine rooms. The reason why I mentioned that is to talk about the lack of humidity control with depa systems, but also acknowledging that different technologies go to different applications, and there is a difference between design and application, and it's good to acknowledge the difference in understand the differences good Stuff. Well, John, I appreciate it.

I thank you for taking the time and thank you for doing this, and we will certainly do this again. Sometime. Okay will do. Thank you much all right, sir.

Something that's been emerging lately, it's in the unified mechanical code and then a lot of local municipalities are starting to enforce. This is the idea of tamper, resistance, refrigerant cats, and this is to prevent the theft and abuse of inhalants, primarily the abuse young people using refrigerants. As a means to get a quick and easy hi, so it's a serious thing and it's something that is emerging you're gon na start to see codes and local municipalities enforcing this. So what I would suggest is go ahead and start to get some know: vent caps from rector seal on your truck now, both on your installation, crews and on your service fans.

If you have to put on new caps in any way, maybe start using no vet. Instead of the typical caps that you've been using, a lot of guys will point out, while I don't want to have to keep that tool on my truck or you're gon na have to keep the tool on your truck anyway, because if your competitors use the no Vent caps, then you're gon na need to have the truth anyway, and rector seal makes a nice little keychain key that you can put right on your right on your keyring and that way you've got it, and so once you start to use them, whenever you have Cases where you've got caps that don't have skills you can offer them to your customer has an upgrade. You can install them and then it reduces the faff and the risk that an adolescent, especially it's mostly young kids, are gon na abuse, the refrigerant as an inhalant. So that is the rector seal, no vent caps.

You can find out more by going to rector seal comm, hey thanks for listening to this episode. If you're listening to this in mid-september, I recorded this before the hurricanes hit hurricane Irma. So I have no idea what happened after this, which is sort of an ominous and soumarin ominous thing, like I'm recording this and within a couple days, we're gon na get hit by probably the biggest hurricane I've ever been hit by in my life. Currently, the track is literally going right over my house that projected track, so it all may be good, and then you may never hear about it again and all that kind of thing or it may be really bad and I may not be releasing podcasts for a.

But who knows? Who knows, but one thing that I want you to know, is that no boy? This is gon na sound kind of emotional here, but it I've never regretted working in this business. It's a really really great business and it's a business that deserves great people and great people who have the recognition from the country recognition of what we do every day. And so I'm talking about HVAC our. But I'm also talking about the trades in general and electricians and plumbers and welders and all of you and who are out there working with your hands.

And so the blue-collar roots network is an homage. It's paying respects to the men and women who have worked their entire lives, maybe without the respect they deserve. Let's face it. I don't think blue-collar workers get the respect that they deserve, but you know truthfully most of the blue-collar people who I've known they're not out there.

Looking for respect they're out there, working fixing problems, building things and taking pride in the work that they do every day. The real good ones, but you and I have both seen a lot more forces of people who come into this trade who don't care, who don't care about what they're doing and are just looking for either the quick buck or they're. Looking for the job that they can do, because there can't do anything else and that's sad, I want to see the Brotherhood and sisterhood of people who work in the trades come back and the maps of the blue-collar roots Network is. We've got a lot of good quality podcasts that are going to be coming out kind of moving forward to trade, with good quality people and having this sort of broader conversation.

It's not just us talking into a mic.