Ah, it's time to chill out and get ready for a mediocre q, a live stream if you're old enough grab yourself your favorite adult beverage and if you're not stick with apple juice, put your feet up and relax. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat and now, let's cue up the intro music yo, what is up, how are you guys doing that? Hopefully, you guys are doing well, i'm doing pretty good over here. It was a uh, nothing too crazy, just a normal on-call weekend, but luckily i only had to run one call during the weekend, so it wasn't that big of a deal it's just sunday afternoon kind of got in the middle of a uh. You know dinner plans that i had with my kids.

You know we were going out to dinner and stuff but um. Luckily i was able to make it home in time and get on to that. So, but it's good so hopefully you guys are doing well. Hopefully you you and your families are all safe and healthy, and i know everything's so crazy.

Now i try not to get too involved. Try not to watch the news too much because it's just miserable um, it's just crazy, but anyways hey here we are uh. As usual, i got a bunch of stuff i want to talk about and, of course i want to get to your guys's questions and things you want me to cover too so i'll definitely try to do it. If you guys don't already know what you want to do, if you guys have questions, you want to put them in the chat, and you want to put them in caps lock that way we try to remember um or that way it helps me to grab the Attention and stuff so um, my buddy ike, is in here right now.

Ike is trying to promote the discord server right now. I i would love to promote the discord server, but i do not have the link handy uh. You can feel free to get it to one of the moderators, maybe and then they can probably post a link to the discord server. I just don't have access to it.

I'm not smart enough to get it fast enough without ruining this whole stream, but regardless there is a discord. Server, that's associated with this channel to be fair and honest, i'm not on there very often i haven't been on there in a very long time. To be honest with you, but i know there's a big group of people in there and they all communicate and stuff so feel free to check it out. Um yeah, and that is it.

I guess i kind of ran out of steam there and lost my train of thought, but um. I do want to bring up that uh. You know, as usual, i'm putting more fuel in the fire as to all the craziness that i have going on and my wife is gon na start a little social media venture uh, it's called hvac our wife um. Currently, right now she has an instagram profile and we're gon na work on some other things too.

There'll be possibly a youtube channel and some other things going on. So if you guys are interested go over and uh the the thing about what my wife is doing is my wife's going to try to give perspective on how we deal with things like with my on-call schedule and stuff like that. So if you guys want to get your significant others to follow her, maybe they can, you know, help her. Maybe she can help them.

I don't know you know i just feel like as a community. Maybe we can make this a little bit easier. Hvacr is um. Frustrating and stressful, at times you know, i will say that my wife is very um understanding and uh.

I definitely married up with her but um. You know she's grown up with hvac. Just like me, okay, my wife and i started dating when we were in high school. We got married at like 22 um and we're both almost 40.

um wow. That's quick! How that happened, but i mean that's all she's ever known, really is hvac so um. You know, maybe she can give perspective. I don't know you know, i don't know if it's going to be a good thing or a bad thing, but um her social media handle is gon na, be at hvacr, wife, w-i-f-e um.

So that's the one on instagram and then there's a facebook coming there's you know all the other stuff will be coming too. So please do me a favor and go follow her, give her some support and encourage your significant others to follow her too, and maybe we can get through this together as a community. So all right now that we got business done um. I also want to bring something up.

I will bring this up later on in the stream too. Okay, i have an idea in my head. I have actually had this idea for several years. Even before i did air conditioning and refrigeration i mean even before i did youtube, i had this idea for a really cool shirt, design.

Um. I have the concept it's in my head right, but i need an artist to draw this concept out. This needs to be a legit artist, someone that really can draw. They need to be able to draw um like serious, uh style, cartoon images, um and uh.

Obviously, i'm not looking to uh have them do this for free um, so this would be something that i would be willing to pay for. If anybody out there knows of any graphic artists or people that legit i mean i'm not talking that someone that's drawn a picture of a cow before i mean i need someone that can really draw, because i have a really interesting intro. It's a very intricate idea. In my head, i'm almost worried that it's too intricate that you wouldn't be able to put it onto a shirt, but i know that as a kid i've seen shirts with this style of design on it before so.

I know it's possible just whether or not i can find the right printing company to do so um. So if anybody knows anybody feel free to send me an email to hvacr videos, gmail.com, okay, i'm also potentially looking for some help here and there with the channel and things like that. Um, you know someone that has uh, possibly the art same artist. That can help me with the shirt someone that has possible graphic design.

Experience obviously not looking to hire someone full time or anything like that, but i mean as like, piecework and stuff for sure, so that kind of stuff, maybe some animation, help things like that feel free again to send me an email to hvacr videos, gmail.com and, of Course i'll talk about it a little bit more and stuff. So all right, um, that's a good idea. Alaska hire a tattoo artist to do it. That's a really interesting one, yeah really for sure.

My wife's name is jill j-i-l-o um. Let me see what else uh we have going on. I'm not gon na be able to monitor my email right now. Dude.

I swear i'll shut down this entire stream trying to click on things. I i'm an idiot when it comes to social media, so you want to send it to one of the moderators or something um. Let's see what else we got in here, uh help with the pineapple party schedule. That's right: laska um, keep in mind guys, there's some funny jokes that go on and it may not have context or be relevant to this channel.

But if you guys don't already trust me, you need to go over and follow the hvac overtime youtube channel. The hvac overtime show is um a show that i do with my buddies bill, joe and adam uh friday evenings about 6 05 pm. We go live on youtube and it's uh just a tiny bit different than this style of live stream. Okay, it's really just uh the the guys just talking relaxing hanging out and uh.

It's pretty funny and there's some really uh funny inside jokes that are going on too. So you definitely want to go follow that i'm sure one of the moderators can help by posting a link to the overtime channel on here too, for the guys. So please do that uh yeah and smash the like button for sure so um demonetized boy. Should people try and work on their own hvac systems? Why or why not? Um well see air conditioning involves electricity.

Electricity can be dangerous. Okay. So, of course, there is people that are intuitive and can figure things out, but man you need to be really careful trying to work on your own air conditioning and refrigeration systems. With that being said, you know occasionally i work on my own car.

Occasionally i'll fix my own home's appliances. Occasionally i'll do electrical work around my house, so i mean i have enough knowledge and skills to safely be able to execute those ideas. So you have to be very careful about that kind of stuff. So um i had two videos, the last uh since the last live stream.

The videos were uh, it's not always as simple as the complaint. That was a very complex video. That's still not done by the way and the frustrating walk and freezer call okay, um couple questions below that go along with those, so we'll definitely try to get to those too. I want to look at the chat and see what i'm missing in here.

Um. Let's see, what's it like being a celebrity in a very specific industry, i do not consider myself to be a celebrity at all chase, i'm just a normal dude. I mean. I appreciate that i have a platform and you know i can talk, and you know people will listen and stuff, but um.

I do not consider myself to be a celebrity doll and and to be fair, like this is how hard it is for me um. It was very awkward - and i didn't mean it in a fence or anything like that, but i was in a supply house and some guy that was there recognized me. He said hi to me and i encourage everybody. If you guys see me out in you know the wild or whatever uh stop and say hello.

You know i mean obviously don't flag me down on the road, but i mean, if you see me at a supply house or something like that, stop me and say: hi, i'm approachable. Just you have to understand that. Sometimes i have written on my forehead because i'm a very um uh. What do you want to say? I don't know, i'm just very focused when i'm doing things so you got to get my attention.

Hey chris. You know and it's it's cool. So just do it, but um there was a gentleman that stopped me one time asking me for an autograph and that's a little bit weird for me. So that's that's only happened one time and - and i feel really bad because i told the dude dude you don't want my autograph.

That's that's just weird like not my thing, but i you know. I don't need that. That's just weird! It's just odd. I never expected any of this to happen, so it's such a trip, but again that only happened one time so well, it is what it is um.

Let me see what else we got going on here: uh, hvac overtime is awesome and funny-ish. That's about right, jason, johnson, it's funny-ish! It's a lot of making fun of my friends is what it is so um yeah, i have jason says i have my butler perform meaningless tasks. That's pretty funny! Um! If you guys are watching this and you don't understand what i'm laughing at and stuff i'm interacting with the chat, so if you guys are watching this video, you got ta pop into the chat and say hey or something like that, because you know there's a funny Conversation typically going on in the live chat too so does hvac involve regulated gases. No one should touch it without knowledge.

Um, oh yeah hvac does involve regulated gases yeah for sure ian i mean there's a lot of things about air conditioning and refrigeration. That can be dangerous, i mean you've got combustible gases. You have regulated refrigerants and different things like that, of course. Okay, but i mean you know you just got to be careful.

Okay, i don't make diy videos, i make uh educational videos for other service technicians and i fully understand that some people are watching my videos and i consider those people that are not hvac techs, but consider those people to be intuitive people. Okay - and i can't prevent an intuitive person from trying to figure something out on their own, so if they can watch my videos and figure out how to properly do something i mean i purposely leave things out of my videos. So you know i don't show step one all the way to step 10.. You know this is how you do it uh.

You know, i can't tell you how many times i've gotten emails about how to set my pressure regulators on my torches and all this different stuff, and it's like that's not things that i can give advice on, because that's where you get into a liability. So you definitely got to be careful about that kind of stuff. So let me cross some things off from my list before i forget, as i'm going through things. I already talked about these two right here, so this is an interesting question from nick, so nick wanted to know how he can grow his business into the commercial side, he's interested in diving into the commercial work and he wanted to know.

If i have any advice on how to get into the commercial site first and foremost, i want to tell you something: nick um, i do not have experience starting a business from scratch and building my customer base. Okay, so to in all fairness, i am not the person to talk to when it's hot when it when it comes to actual business advice. I can give you a few tips. Okay, but basically, what i would suggest is if you want to get into commercial.

Okay, obviously, knowing people really helps you out a lot, because a lot of these like what i do is restaurant service, okay, restaurant refrigeration and air conditioning. And i work for big corporate chains and it's damn near impossible to get in into a corporate chain um because they deal with facilities, directors and their emails are unknown like it. You know it's. It's rather difficult, okay, without knowing the right people, but what you can do.

There is some ways that you can make your foot in the door and then you got to do the work yourself. Okay, number one! You can become a warranty contractor. Okay, doing warranty work for the manufacturers, it's the refrigerator manufacturers, the air conditioning manufacturers, okay, you can start doing their warranty, work um and then that will get your foot in the door, but you would be responsible for getting a hold of the customer you're, not working For the customer you're working on behalf of the warranty companies - okay, that's one way to get involved in it uh. There is also um networking events: okay, uh.

What i'm gon na encourage you to do is uh well, actually, yeah, there's networking events that you can get involved in um. I believe, there's one called. I think it's refma. It's the restaurant equipment manufacturers, some something along those lines.

I believe it's refma or something like that, and basically it's where all the facilities directors go and then you you can meet. You can interact with them. You can set up a booth. This is your company.

You can show them what you're about things like that. Obviously, getting involved with property managers now some of these things can be frustrating and they're going to be kind of controversial, because you know there's a stigma about property managers right, they're, notoriously cheap and all this different stuff. Now not all of them are notoriously cheap, but there's a good portion of them that just want everything for the cheapest as possible, and i mean is that really a wrong thing for a customer to want everything to be as cheap as possible? No, not necessarily, i mean they're out looking out for their own interests right, so they want the best job for the cheapest amount of money. I mean that's just the way that we work.

Okay, but um you can get in with property managers they're always looking for new people, but one of the biggest best pieces of advice i can give anybody especially starting their business, is don't be the lowest price. Okay, you don't realize how much that is going to hurt. You too many contractors think that if they're, the lowest price they'll get all the work and they will but what's going to happen, is they're going to realize they're, not making any money their employees are going to start wanting raises. They can't afford to give them raises.

They're going to want to raise their prices, the customer is going to be unhappy like it just starts a vicious cycle. Okay, so pricing yourself as the cheapest person out there is not the right way to go about business. You need to look at what you need for your business to operate successfully and adjust your pricing accordingly. Okay, so that's one piece of advice.

I can give you about that um, you know, so it it's! It's rather difficult, though, because a lot of these commercial companies. Now, if you just want to do commercial air conditioning, it's a little bit easier because you can get in with property managers, you just need to look up property managers in your area, commercial locations, warehouses, different things like that and just pass a card. Do a cold call, knock on someone's door offer your card say: hey, i'm a new contractor, i'm looking to get some work. That kind of stuff - just remember, don't price yourself as the cheapest person out there.

Okay, because you're just hurting yourself and you're hurting the industry too, because you'll realize really quick that you're going to have to raise your prices within a year or so and you'll realize that that entire year of your life, you, you bent over backwards. And you worked your butt off for pennies and you went nowhere, so you got to be very careful about that kind of stuff. Okay, um. Let me see what else we got going on in here.

Uh, let's see cleaning coils might be a bit dangerous for any diy situation. I mean you know, i don't know if that's in context, i i kind of scrolled in here late, so you know cleaning, coils and stuff. That can even be dangerous too. I understand if it's done right, if disc power's disconnected stuff like that, but even still you can get motors wet, you can get sensitive electrical components, wet and different things like that, but an intuitive person definitely could figure out scott hvac rookie.

Thank you so much for that super chat man. That is amazing. I really appreciate you bud um, let's see what else in here who tops off 410a, who evacuates and sends a full target, joe corbin, i top off 410a, all the time uh. I have topped off of the the 410a is a near azeotropic blend.

Okay, there's! Hardly any glide in it, and fractionalization is almost a myth when it comes to 410a, so topping off the charge, in my opinion, is not a big deal at all. Okay, um and it that said, for a lot of the actual refrigeration blends too. It's actually uh they've done a lot of research on those uh. I deal with 448a and i've read some research saying it's really not that big of a deal topping off the charge on 448.8 and that's even a higher glide one.

But i've heard that it's pretty not that big of a deal you know, but it really just depends on how big the leak is and how much gas you think is out of the system. I mean, if there's only six ounces left in there. Of course, you know get rid of that recover. I mean vacuum the system down change the dryers and recharge for sure, so um nyx plumbing thanks.

So much for that uh super sticker man, that's awesome, but i really appreciate it. Um, let's see what else we got in here, what am i missing, um just making sure before i start going back to my list uh, you can't find copeland compressors because of covet dan. So that's an interesting thing. So someone reached out to me.

I don't know if it was you dan or if it was someone else, someone local to me reached out to me because they were curious about a compressor, and so i looked at my local suppliers, the 98 deville. Thank you so much for that super sticker. You guys are amazing all right. I really really appreciate all this support.

It's very humbling, um, so yeah i was doing some research now. I personally haven't had a hard time getting compressors the ones that i've had to replace, but i have done some research and i'm starting to notice cole morris. Thank you so much. You guys are blowing my mind with these super chats and super stickers.

Thank you. So much okay um, but uh yeah. It is starting to get harder and harder to find components. I'm i order a lot of stuff from parts town which is a refrigeration parts distributor and i'm noticing man, some i've had stuff on order for a long time.

You know from certain manufacturers - and it's just not coming so it's taken a while for sure, so you definitely want to do your research ahead of time. Call your suppliers find the best bet if you want, if you have a copeland compressor that you can't find a replacement for. You definitely want to go to the coppola mobile app and use their cross reference. Software within the app and it'll also help you to cross-reference to a compressor that would potentially work too so definitely check out the kopla mobile app um.

Let's i saw a question here hold on what happens in topping off jj. Does it not mix in so the theory in topping off the refrigerant charge, if you have a high glide blend, meaning that it's a multi-component refrigerant, there's three four five different refrigerants that make one refrigerant mixture right, so the theory is, is that if there's a refrigerant Leak, it's potential. There is potential that the refrigerant that leaks out will be one of the five refrigerants that make the total new refrigerant right. So if you leak out one of the five refrigerants, then it's no longer going to be insert name of whatever refrigerant here.

So that's the theory behind that of why you shouldn't top off. So it's really a matter of paying attention to how much refrigerant has leaked out. If you think more than half the charge is leaked out, yeah i'd probably be considering going ahead and removing that refrigerant and replacing it. But if we're talking you know, you know just a small amount of refrigerant or something then i've.

I've done fine, especially with 410a. Just topping off the charge um so uh al is asking what would i personally be looking for from a new helper or tradesman in the field? He recently made the jump from residential to commercial, so as a as a business owner um, i am when i i just hired an apprentice and he's been working with me for a while he's doing really good. But what i'm looking for an apprentice is someone that is teachable: okay, someone that is interested in learning, someone that has drive and someone that i think is not gon na go get a dui tomorrow: okay, someone that is gon na, be here for the long haul. Okay, so this is really big as a contractor.

When i hire an apprentice, i mean the way that it really works. You want to break it down for the most part. I really don't make a lot of money off of that apprentice because i'm making an investment into him, i'm giving him knowledge and i'm helping to build him up and i'm paying him right to grow him. So i might make a few bucks here and there, but i'm not really making money like i would out of a full-fledged technician and i'm putting a lot of my time and effort into that apprentice.

So i got ta make sure that this guy's gon na be around and come a year or two. You know when he's ready to be a full-fledged service technician and then he's like oh yeah, i'm gon na go work for someone else, because i've had that happen and, of course, there's things that i could always do to make that not happen right, but i'm looking For someone, that's just not gon na jump ship for a buck an hour, okay and that's really going to be in it for the long haul, but that there's a lot of communication. That's involved from both parties to make that happen too constantly asking each other how's things going. How do you feel? How could we improve that kind of stuff, okay and i'm looking for an apprentice or a technician that just wants to grow and wants to better himself and wants to do right by the customer? Okay, that's what i look for when i'm trying to hire someone new.

So hopefully that answers your question for you bud um. Let me see what else we got here. Uh happy. He didn't say anything about crack.

Oh that's funny! Laska! That's funny! All right! Uh you're not an hvac technician kyle, but could i you could say that you're a bit of an advanced diy or you love learning about fixing pretty much anything mechanical electrical automotive? Oh thanks! So much kyle, that's really awesome, but i really appreciate it um. Let's see what else we got here: uh yeah! Definitely everybody be safe out in the heat it was hot. Today, it's about 100 degrees, that's pretty normal for us, so who isn't on their damn phone all day, oh yeah! That is definitely a really important thing when it comes to a technician or an apprentice is someone that can actually focus um and not be staring at their phone every five minutes for sure that's really important um. Let me see what else i got.

Okay, i'm gon na go and get to my list of things to talk about so uh. We already answered that question okay and then uh jason had asked me. He emailed me and asked me about walking cooler, defrosts, okay, so jason, i'm going to go kind of broad with this question and we're going to talk a little bit about it. So jason's question was when and if do we need a defrost setup? What kind of setup do we need on a walk-in cooler - and he just kind of wanted me to elaborate about that so, first off, let's simplify this matter.

Okay, uh air conditioning system typically is gon na run. You know and cool the occupied space you're, typically going to maintain a 75 degree somewhere between 70 degrees and 75 degree occupied space, okay, typically you're, going to have about a 35 degree, evaporator td, on most common air conditioners. Okay. So if you take that 75 degree return air temperature and you subtract 75, so 7654, so it's at about a 40 ish, 40 degrees to 50 degree, uh saturation temperature on the evaporators.

What you're typically going to see? Okay, the point that i'm making here is on an air conditioner, we're talking about the saturated temperature of the refrigerant when it's in the middle of the evaporator. The point that i'm trying to make is that on an air conditioner for comfort, cooling, it's never below freezing. Okay, unless you're dealing with some crazy industrial stuff, it's never going to be below freezing, so you don't need a defrost strategy, typically on an air conditioning system. Now, when you step to medium temperature refrigeration, that's when you really not need to start thinking about defrost strategies.

Okay, uh federal safety standards say that we have to have our food maintained below 41 degrees for for non-frozen food. Okay with that being said, a typical evaporator td on a walk-in cooler is anywhere from 10 to 20 degrees, depending on the weird setups that they do and with that being said, the most common is about a 10 degree. Evaporator td, now the evaporator td just to clarify, is the uh difference between the saturated refrigerant temperature and the occupied space temperature. Okay.

So if we're trying to maintain - let's just say a 40 degree, walk-in cooler, typically we're going to go a little bit lower. But, let's just say: 40 degrees, space temperature in the walk-in cooler. Then that means that the the saturated temperature of the refrigerant is typically going to be 10 degrees below that which is about 30 degrees. Okay, that's obviously below freezing.

So we have to have some sort of a defrost strategy. Now, if you have a walking cooler that is barely ever even entered or exited, you know and there's not a lot of people going in and out, then you could potentially um uh scott again thanks. So much for that super chat man, the 98 deville. I really appreciate it.

Uh dan young, you guys are crazy with the super chat challenge. You guys are distracting me, but thank you very much laska you guys holy moly thanks guys, so um, i'm getting distracted by you guys. Is that your guys's challenge to distract me here because you're doing it. Thank you guys.

You guys are awesome. I really appreciate it, but with the evaporator temperature going below freezing, we obviously are going to start to have frost particles that will freeze and eventually freeze up the evaporative coil. So we have to do some sort of a defrost okay. Now again, if you have a box, that's not entered and exited very much they're, rarely ever opening in the door.

You might be able to get away with doing an off cycle defrost, meaning that you set the temperature of the space above about 40 degrees. Then, when it turns off theoretically it should defrost any frost particles that would build up on that evaporator, but it's not very common. Okay. The best method is to put some sort of a defrost clock or some sort of a defrost strategy build or build it into the system, so that way it defrosts it so many times a day.

Now, when you get onto a walk-in freezer, it's absolutely critical because, typically on a general walk-in freezer for a restaurant, it's about negative 10 degrees space temperature inside there. That means that your evaporator temperature or your saturated refrigerant temperature is going to be about negative 20. So obviously, you're going to need some sort of a defrost strategy on that now on a walk-in cooler, we typically will do an off-cycle air, defrost or or just an air defrost. I should say so.

A time clock will disconnect the refrigeration and just run the evaporator fan. Motors you'll circulate the air from inside the box, because you know it's above freezing right, but on a walk-in freezer you have to have some sort of a electric and or hot gas defrost to try to really get in there and defrost all those ice particles. Okay, so jason. I hope that i answered your question about the defrost, but the biggest thing to remember when you're dealing with walk-in coolers is the saturated temperature.

Your refrigerant is typically going to be below freezing in that evaporator coil when it's running so. Therefore, you got to have some sort of a defrost strategy. Okay, if, if you have a box again, that's barely ever entered, then you can get away with just an off cycle. The thermostat set at 40 degrees.

You know it moves the air across, but the best bet is always to put a defrost clock on those systems. Okay, let me see what else we got going on inside this chat that i'm missing um. Let's see what do we have? Yeah smash the thumbs up button guys it really does help out the stream. It looks like we have 321 people in here right now and 129 likes.

So please smash that button get that number closer to the actual views that we have going on um. How often do i work on chillers uh? I actually don't ever work on chillers. Oh, i should take that back. I work on a very, very small type of a chiller, but nothing like you're thinking of okay, i'll work on like a power pack, beer units which are tiny little chillers, but it's not even fair to call that a chiller.

So no, i don't work on chillers and i don't work on boilers or anything like that. Am i nate certified. Would i recommend getting nate certified crazy dragon chan um? I was nate certified, i'm pretty sure it expired during the whole covid shebang, debacle, whatever that is um, so i haven't renewed my nate certification, but here's my stance on nate esco, rscs certification. Any certification is better than no certification, okay and the cool thing about almost all these industry certifications they have out there nate.

Any of them is that, in order to maintain that certification, you have to continue your education, you have to keep going to school and prove to them that you keep going to school in order to maintain your certification. So, of course, as a technician, i'm always going to push everybody out there to get nate certified or any other trade organization certification. Anything you can do to better yourself, so that way, you're forced to continue to educate yourself, because this trade is always changing. Okay, now we're not going to get into the political side.

All of them are there to make money guys. Okay, every one of those certification programs are there to make money in one way or the other. So keep that in mind. Okay, um, let's see uh.

Let's see what we also go, would i use an all-purpose cleaner, like simple, green, on a coil on the roof, no uh umbroy uh, because, honestly, i'm not smart enough to know the chemical composition of something like simple green and i don't know if it's going to Have any adverse reactions with any of the metals on the upstairs equipment, so i'm going to use a coil cleaner that is approved and certified to be used, cleaning those coils, and it's actually meant for that purpose. So i would just be very careful about mixing chemicals and using chemicals that you don't know whether or not they're going to have adverse effects so be very cautious about doing that. Let's see what else do i work on any hot gas defrost system, cyborg sheep? It has been a long time i have in the past uh, but not enough to give a lot of information about them, but i have done it in the past. The the refrigerant charge is critical.

Obviously, when you have a hot gas defrost system, because you need that refrigerant that extra refrigerant in the system to be able to do the reverse cycle defrost, so you got to make sure you do that. Let's see what else do i ever use rsrs or heat packs albert rodriguez? I'm going to be honest, i don't know what rscr's or heat packs are so no apparently not um. There was a question that i wanted to answer, so i covered this one, i'm crossing them off my list right now, um! Oh, this is a really good one. Okay, so in my recent video uh, it's not as simple as the complaint.

I want to talk about that video, because the complaint in that one was that they had a water leak, okay, and that was a very frustrating one, but that was a very you need to be thorough when we're going out to do these service calls okay. So the complaint was a water leak. Of course the management on site didn't know what i was talking about. They didn't know that the call was even put in uh.

We kind of figured everything out towards the end of the day that they were complaining about condensation. Coming off of the supply vents in the building? Okay, but it's not just as simple as saying hey, let's insulate those supply vents, because we had to look at the entire building as an envelope and say: why are the supply vents sweating? Well, you know, go watch the video and you guys will see, but one of the issues that i had was the hood filters. Okay, the hood filters were extremely plugged up and that was causing some issues. So i got a few people questioning me.

Why don't i clean the filters and why don't i replace the filters? Okay and the reason why i don't replace the filters i let the management deal with. That is because i've done it in the past and it turns into a disaster. There's no hood filter out there, that's the exact same, they have different sizes, you have to order them correctly. The height and the width needs to be correct.

You need to have the grease trough on those filters going vertical, not horizontal, so the filters have to be sized correctly. It's just a pain in the butt for me and it's too much of a headache. I've eaten too many hood filters because i priced them or i sized them wrong and got the wrong ones, and i couldn't return them because they were custom and it's just not something i do now as far as cleaning the hood filters. Why don't i do that? It seems easy enough: no, it's not actually okay, because um you're supposed to clean those filters and clean them in a place where the grease is not going to go down into the storm drains or anything like that and plus.

I don't have time to clean filters. Okay, that's not my thing. There's companies out there that professionally clean filters and or you replace them, the customer is perfectly capable of cleaning their own hood filters. It's just not something! I need to stay in my lane and focus on what i know how to do, and i just can't be dealing with all that other stuff, i'm busy enough and go crazy enough.

Just dealing with air conditioning and refrigeration. Okay, peter had asked me a question in the chat. Actually, if i like heat craft or tr, actually i think he sent me an email, but he said if i like heat craft or trenton better all right. So when it heat craft is a refrigeration manufacturer.

Trenton is also a refrigeration manufacturer. Heat craft is sold at almost every supply house that sells refrigeration equipment. Trenton is exclusively sold at united refrigeration, okay, i think they're actually owned by united refrigeration in a weird way on the back end or something, but that's a whole nother con topic, but trenton makes really high quality nice equipment. I personally don't use it very much.

Okay. I have used some trenton stuff and i've been very impressed with it, but i honestly don't use united refrigeration very much, so i just don't use that stuff. Okay, my favorite condensing unit right now is a uh russell condensing unit. They make amazing condensing units as far as the evaporators go, though, i can't say that there's an evaporator out there that i absolutely love okay, heat craft, condensing units.

I mean it's all about what you're comfortable working on um. I really like the tren. I mean the uh, the the russell ones because they still come with a standard, copper, tube and fin condenser, and it's not a micro channel condenser. So i really like that about the wrestle ones.

So you know, i'm not gon na say that either one is worse or better, there's good things and bad things about all of them, and it's really about what you're comfortable working on um. But given the choice between trenton and heat craft, i mean, if someone put a gun to my head and said i had to choose one i'd, probably choose trenton to be honest with you, because they just are made really well uh and the heat craft they're made. Well too, but i'm not a fan of the really smart, evaporator evs and all that fancy stuff. I like just a standard evaporator, still call me old school, whatever you want to say so um.

Let me see what else we got what's my recommendation on fixing leaks. Do i replace a line or do i just solder over it uh late night? I would solder over braze over something. If it has, it has a pinhole leak or something like that. I mean it really depends on on every situation.

Is it rotted out? Does it have a lot of corrosion on it? Then it's going to be replaced, but if it's just a leak where something rubbed against it - and it's easy - you know fixable, then yeah i'd braise on it it'll be fixed forever. You know it really depends now. Is it a cap tube, that's leaking? No, i'm not going to braise on a cap tube, i'm going to change the whole cap tube, so i mean every situation is different for sure um chase. Thank you.

So very much for that super chat man. That is amazing, and your comment says the day you stop. Learning is the day. You know nothing, and that is absolutely true.

This trade there is always something new to learn every day. Something's, changing technology is evolving new equipments new refrigerants. The glide is getting bigger and bigger on these refrigerants and then they're getting rid of our refrigerants and we're going to natural refrigerant. I mean every day, there's something new, so of course, we can always learn for sure.

Um, so let me see what else we got in here uh. How often should the hood be cleaned that packed up grease is a kill so um restaurant hoods in the restaurant like, for instance, the video that i made where we had dirty hood filters uh they used to have a policy that those hood filters were cleaned two Times a week they should be pulling them down at least two to three times a week: soaking them overnight, draining them out. Now, on the flip side, that particular restaurant chain used to be really good about cleaning their filters. And then someone got the bright idea to run the hood filters through the dishwasher and that actually created a whole nother problem, because the grease would be like vaporized almost and it would get stuck in the dishwasher exhaust ductwork and the ductwork is not cleanable, because it's Not meant for grease, it's not meant to ever be serviced or cleaned, so you got to be careful about that too.

There's so many different things that you got to worry about, so the best way to clean filters is to soak them in a cleaning solution overnight. Rinse them off, let them go down the drain, but you have to make sure that the drain has some sort of a grease trap. Okay, you don't want to put them down into a storm drain or something like that, because then it goes and clogs up things and all kinds of crap like that, but our restaurants typically have grease traps. So if they flush something down um, you know the the drain.

Then it's going to get stuck in the grease trap before it goes into the sewer um all right, let's see what else we got in here, it would be boring if you knew everything you love learning every day. That's very true, nick very very true, so ryan had a really funny question, but it's actually a pretty smart one. He was curious about water floats for swamp, coolers, ryan um. So i know exactly what you were talking about ryan in his email.

He said when you buy these new swamp coils, they come with the cheapest floats in the world, and that is absolutely true. I have been. I have sold swamp coolers to customers that i literally ripped off a bunch of stuff and put on the fat. The components that i wanted on.

I've literally pulled the crappy ass swamp, cooler, bearings off and put on pillow block bearings before i even installed the swamp. Color, i've done that before too, just depending on the customer, but as far as the water floats go yeah the ones that come with almost every swamp, cooler they're junk the kind of water floats that i buy. I don't there's not a specific name but they're. The floats that are all brass and they have an adjustable thumb screw on them, so you can actually take them apart and they have mechanical action to them.

It's not just one piece, that's not serviceable, so those are the ones that i like to buy. They're not very expensive at all the ones that i buy, that they have a little screw that you can adjust and then you can adjust the float level and stuff and keep something in mind when you're dealing with swamp coolers floats don't last but a year. Okay, as a as a rebuild on a swamp cooler or an evaporative quality, when i do a rebuild on it, i'm going to replace the pads i'm going to replace the pump. It doesn't matter if it's still working, i'm changing the pads, the pump, the water flow.

We're cleaning the whole thing out: we're going to oil. The bearings grease the bearings, whatever they have, and possibly depending on the shape of it change the temperature control. If it has one okay and that's going to be an annual thing because floats and everything they all go bad, they run they. They just trust me they get worn out and those water pumps they're cheap as heck change those too.

So all right, let's see what else we got going on in this chat that i'm missing uh. Do i ever deal with systems running off of a pressure control instead of a thermostat um, yeah yeah? I definitely have rock town. I've made a few videos on them. I've actually done some.

I did a podcast with brian orr, actually on hvac school talking about using pressure controls as a temperature controller too, and i think i even wrote an article for him over at hvac school, but yeah. I've worked on it coming up in the trade, there was a lot of legacy r12 equipment and we had a lot of pressure controlled equipment. So it's something that you do it's a little time consuming to properly calibrate a pressure control to control temperature inside the box. And if you guys, don't know what we're talking about think about this concept, you can take a pressure control and if you have a refrigerator.

Typically, a self-contained refrigerator: it's usually not a remote one, not with these big blends we have today, but on a self-contained refrigerator. If you have a pressure control, you can use that pressure control to control the temperature inside the refrigerator right, but it gets a little complex when you start having multiple evaporators and things like that. But if it's just a basic system with a single evaporator, you know condensers no more than you know three four feet away. You can control the temperature of that box with a pressure control, because at any given pressure, the refrigerant is a certain temperature and or at any certain temperature.

The refrigerant is a certain pressure, so if you know that by using a pressure temperature chart, i have one on the wall right here. You can look at it and say r22 at 19 degrees. Fahrenheit is 42 psi. Okay, so am i trying to maintain 19 degree? Temperature inside the box - okay, that doesn't mean that that's where it's going to be set at because then you have to start looking at your evaporator td, also, okay, and that gets a little complex when you're setting that, but it is possible.

So, yes, i do work on it. Occasionally. Um nick had asked me a question about ice machines and he's talking about a hotel that needs a very reliable ice machine and they don't want it to have any downtime. They can't afford downtime on this ice machine.

Okay, so, first and foremost nick he's asking me what brand and he gave me two brands, scotsman or isomatic. The first thing, i'm going to say i've answered this question a bunch of times what is my favorite ice machine? Well, first off my favorite ice machine. I work on two manufactured ice machines and i work on them all the time and i feel like i'm pretty comfortable working on them. A manitowoc quiet, cube machine and a hoshizaki, cuber or flaker uh, and my third favorite would be a full.

It nugget machine okay, but it's not that those are better than the other machines. It's that i'm comfortable working on the hoshizaki, the manitowoc and the fault machine. Okay. So it's really about what the contractor that installs the machine is comfortable working on okay and what you have available for parts.

So i'm not going to bad mouth scotsman or isomatic. Now i don't care for those brands, but again it's because i don't work on them. Very often, okay, so i'm not super familiar with them. So my suggestion to you would be you need to look at the the hotel.

How often are they doing preventative maintenance? Okay on an ice machine with high usage like in a hotel that machine is going to need to be cleaned about every three months like legit cleaned and, if they're not cleaning it at least every three months, they're going to run into problems. If it's a water cooled machine, because that happens a lot in hotels depending on, if it's a big one, it might need more. And it's going to have to have proper water conditioning for the water going in. Especially if it's going to be recirculated water right or from a from a loop or something now, if it's going to be dumped down the drain, you still got to worry about cleaning it, but those machines need to be cleaned on a regular basis.

Now specific brand machines, some can do better. For instance, a hoshizaki can do a little bit better and go longer in my opinion, than a manitowoc when it comes to cleaning. So typically, you can get six months to a year out of a hoshizaki. It might look nasty inside, but for the most part they still operate a manitowoc, not so much okay.

So it really depends on how often the customer is going to have this equipment maintained, how far they're going to go with the maintenance, and that's really going to determine what style of ice machine you need to go with. Okay, hoshizaki has always done a pretty good job of keeping their sensors and different things like that. Out of the water area, they have very minimal sensors. A float sensor, that's that's being touched by water on a regular but the manitowocs.

On the other hand, they have a lot of sensors that are in the water area getting dirty. They have water level probes, they have ice, thickness, microphones and different things like that, so they require a little bit more tlc than maybe a hoshizaki machine, okay, but it really depends on your particular situation, so be very cautious to go in there and also look at Who uh, you know, has the best available parts: okay when you're out there, so hopefully that answers your question for you bud all right. Let's get to the chat and see what i'm missing going on in here, um uh! If it's a dirty nugget ice machine would that make a poop nugget, huh um, it might actually make a poop nugget if you've worked on some of the the the fullet machines. You know the crazy thing is i used to work on fullets like for probably a seven-year streak, all the time for a particular customer that i used to work for a long time ago.

Um and this customer is in the medical industry, okay, um and uh. The machines were so nasty and it just blew my mind because um yeah, it just kind of blew my mind and the stuff that you'd see coming out of those little nuggets of ice, would be pretty nasty kind of looked like poop nuggets for sure. So um lewis asks oh. This is a great question, so in a recent video.

Actually, no, i didn't say this in a i haven't shown this video yet so i'm going to give you guys an example. I talked about this on the overtime show and i might have kind of teased it or something. So i had a situation - and i explained this on the overtime show that i was working on an air conditioner and i walked up to it and it was flat on refrigerant. Okay, so i went and grabbed some uh and it was an r22 system.

So i went and grabbed some 404 a right and some nitrogen, because i didn't want to charge the customer for r22 as a trace gas, so i grabbed some 404 put it in there and then dumped about 200 psi of nitrogen on top of that 404a. To try to help me find the refrigerant leak, but something weird happened when i was doing that and all of a sudden, my pressures were really high and it kind of tripped me out we'll come to find out long story short the schraders. They were cormax fitting style, schraders were not being depressed on the high side and the low side go figure both of them at the same time, and it made me think that the system was out of gas. But when i started putting the nitrogen it actually pushed that nitrogen into the system and the system had the full charge of r22.

It was a freak situation. Okay, all right now i mentioned that i was able, because i, when i, when i made the repair to the system, i recovered all the refrigerant and i i didn't want to have to sell the customer new r22. So i came up with a way to remove the nitrogen and the 404 from that r22. Remember.

R22 is a pure gas, so what i ended up doing was taking that tank of r22 or the mixed gas right taking the tank setting it in a bucket submersing. It in water and letting it sit outside for about two hours. I put a a compound pressure gate. Actually, no, i use my digital gauges, but i put my gauge hose on there and i monitor the saturation temperature of the refrigerant and i removed refrigerant from that cylinder until my saturation temperature matched the exact temperature of the water mind you, it sat in there for Hours you know equalizing out, so i kept removing refrigerant from the top of the tank from the vapor until i hit the exact saturation temperature of r22 at that temperature.

So i was able to save that, but i made a comment that i didn't want to have to sell. The customer new gas and someone had asked me lewis, had asked me why. I would charge the customer if it was my mistake that i put nitrogen on there and i would have charged the customer if i had to sell mark 22. and the reason.

Why is not because i want to thieve the customer or be a punk? It's because it really wasn't my fault. Okay, if you work with the coremax fittings, you guys know those things suck all right and they really are problematic and that's not my i mean yeah. You know - maybe i should have noticed it, but it's not something that i can eat. I can't eat 9.9 pounds of refrigerant for something because the schraders were bad.

I ended up having to replace them because they were bent out of the way and when you pull them out, you can look at them. The little pan on them was bent all the way to the side, so they were definitely bad and yeah. That's not something! I'm going to warranty on the customer like no, that's not my fault, you know can't lose money like that kind of stuff. So um, let's see what else we got going on in here.

If i'm missing anything um, oh yeah, uh distraction hits hit that thumbs up and answer my email bro. I will answer your email scott i'll have to we'll have to do that, not on the thing, because that's pretty complex on that one. So i'll i'll message you later um, i'm doing good rick. Thank you very much man all right, uh, let's see um.

Let's you guys are funny with the ice machine comments. You're making me laugh. Um portal to portal pay overtime, calls start and at service footage driveway. Uh vlad, thank you so much for that super chat.

Man um, so i don't know if you're asking me or if you're commenting to someone else uh what about pay so the way that my company does it is we pay portal portal on overtime? So if you leave your house at five o'clock in the afternoon to go, do an overtime service call and it takes you an hour to get to the job site. We charge that travel time to get back home too.