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 queue up the intro music. So hello, hello, my viewers, how are you, hopefully you guys - are doing cool um? It's warming up out here, actually in california or southern california, where i'm at so it's warming up and work is slowly starting to pick up. So that's cool um.

I wanted to start this stream off. You know and kind of just cover a few things number one. I feel like i have to reiterate it every couple weeks, but please guys please try not to name the restaurants in the comments. Okay, those are one of the only comments that i delete is when people try to guess restaurant names.

So please try to keep that out of there. Okay got ta, protect my restaurant, so i feel like i have to say that, because i constantly have to go through and delete those comments, so whether the guesses are right or wrong, and some of you guys, you probably know where i'm working, because you recognize the Same chains and stuff, but try to keep it out of there because we're just trying to protect the restaurants. You know and try not to uh draw attention, because a lot of the general public doesn't understand um. What's truly uh disgusting? What's not you know and they see stuff in my videos and they think it's the worst thing in the world when in fact it's really not that bad? You know um, we we, as hvac techs, we run into a lot of stuff out in the field and uh.

You know i was uh reading some comments before the stream right now and you know people were talking about the wiring, that's something i get all the time, especially people from other countries that talk about our package units. You know like the carrier package units and how horrible the wiring is in those, and you know in a lot of different things, and it's true. You know there is a lot of equipment out there where it seems like the manufacturers, aren't trying very hard to make it neat and pretty you know and service friendly um. But you know it is what it is and that's what we have to deal with.

So you know we do our best and we just do our jobs and try to make it right as best as possible. You know you can only polish a turd so much. You know so um, but i really appreciate you guys making it to the live stream. You guys are awesome, you know all the support, i got to say.

Thank you so much and i don't even think i really acknowledge this either. You know, as my channel passed like a hundred thousand subscribers here. I don't know back in december or something like that. It's awesome and that's because you guys are watching these videos, so thank you so very much.

Okay. I really do appreciate all of you guys and i really do read or at least attempt to read every single comment that comes through on the youtube channel. So i do appreciate when you guys leave feedback. Okay, so that's awesome and i really appreciate the awards of encouragement.

I appreciate the criticism i've learned from some of the criticism. Okay, i feel like as service technicians. We can all learn right and uh. You know we're not always correct and we all make mistakes and if we can learn from those mistakes, then good.

You know, and i certainly learn all the time - there's something new. You know someone will send me a message and say: hey, you know what you did. This wrong and it's like okay, you know, let's talk about it and we'll have a conversation and it's like wow you're right. You know what i did do that wrong.

So i encourage everybody to to remember that and try to remember to to stay humble um. It's really easy, i can remember i'd, say i don't know at the 10-year mark, maybe somewhere around the 10-year mark of working in hvac, that i thought you know. You know that i was the the king boss, like i knew everything right, um and, and i was knocked back down a couple steps you know i can remember. I was working with my dad and i can remember my dad telling me, like you know, slow down turbo, you know like you, got ta, relax and realize like just because you've had a good run, doesn't mean you know everything you'll, never know everything um and it's Those moments that you get too cocky that you usually get knocked down and you get knocked down pretty hard.

So it's important to try to stay, humble, stay, observant and always try to learn. You know i try to all the time i find that uh. You know. Sometimes i prioritize other things and i don't focus as much on work and stuff like that.

But hey you know, i'm human right. We all deal with their own struggles at home and different things like that. So um you know and - and i think that's something that needs to be addressed too. You know i've done a few videos on it and i realized that you know there's a lot of people out there that deal with mental struggles and stuff like that.

I've dealt with depression anxiety, you know issues like that and it's taken me down dark paths. I've gotten help i've seen a therapist and a psychiatrist and you know all sorts of stuff. You know, there's diagnosis thrown out bipolar disorder and you know other. I don't even understand what half the crap means, but everybody deals with something: okay, some of us choose to to admit it.

Some of us choose to bury it and hide it. I was one of the people that buried and hide it or hid all my issues and uh that made things worse. That made me angry um, you know, and you know i've got videos on it. You guys can find it it's how we live.

The hvacr life is a series that i did with my wife and i talk about all that stuff. So if you guys want to check that out, please do um, also shameless. Let's get some advertising out here, real quick! If you guys haven't already, please go check out my website hvacrvideos.com. You can help to support the channel and get some you know.

Shirts, hats, beanies, whatever you guys choose, really does help to support. The channel keeps my wife busy too, because that's what she's been doing lately is packaging everything up and shipping it out so check it out. If you guys, haven't already okay, again, hvacr videos.com. So all right, we had uh two videos this last week.

I'll definitely get to the chat here in just a few minutes too. Okay, so remember to put your questions in caps lock, so we had two videos this last week, uh the first one titled the kitchen ac is not working and then the other one was titled. Weird exhaust fan issues um. Both of those videos were not too difficult.

They were pretty straightforward repairs, but there was some interesting stuff in each one of those and i'm going to cover that in the things i want to talk about tonight too, i got a whole list of things. So let me have a look at this chat. Real quick and see what we got going on see if i'm missing anything um not seen anything yet in the vid. You hear me talk about temperature, sometimes i say degrees.

What is that fahrenheit or celsius, because we use degrees, okay, yeah um? I am in the united states, so i am talking uh temperature degrees in fahrenheit is what i am talking so yeah. You would have to do a celsius conversion to figure out what it is that i'm talking about, but essentially i'm keeping before you know for medium temperature and high temperature, like air conditioning we're keeping our evaporators above freezing for low temperature and walk-in freezers, we're keeping our Evaporators below freezing um, but yeah, you know you can do the conversions or whatever you want to do on that so um all right. So uh, i had a question from tony and this was an interesting question and you know what this is a fair question. Uh in all fairness, tony, might be a homeowner, but that's okay.

Okay, maybe he's not! And it's okay, if he's not too all right, because this is a very confusing thing, but he's working on a mini split and when he started it up. He was very curious and kind of concerned because he said the liquid line after about 10 minutes of running started frosting, and he was really concerned as to why the liquid line was frosting. Okay. So if you are not comfortable or not familiar with mini splits majority of the time, okay, it is not actually a liquid line.

What people would consider to be the liquid line? Typically, the quarter inch line or something okay that would be an expansion line is what i would call it. Okay, the metering device, typically on mini splits, is out in the condensing unit. Okay, so the line that typically is going to frost like that is actually going to be the line going to the evaporator after the metering device. Okay, so i would call that expansion line essentially is would be my name.

I don't know if there's a better name for it, but it is perfectly normal in most cases, for the expansion line to frost it should have insulation over it. That's typically, why we insulate both lines but yeah. The the metering device, usually uh electronic expansion valve, is typically outside in the condensing unit section of a mini split system. So just keep that in mind.

A lot of people will email me and ask me hey: why is there no liquid line pressure port on these things? Well, because that's not a liquid line, depending on which mini split you're working on. Sometimes, if you go dig into the condensing unit, you can actually find a discharge line connection somewhere in the condensing unit. Some units have them some of them. Don't if you need to get discharge pressure, you always want to be cautious about checking refrigerant pressures on mini splits.

You always want to lean on the manufacturer figure out what their recommendations are, but just keep that in mind when you are working with them. Okay, they are different in the way that they operate. So, let's see what else we got in here. Randy says an r290 unit with an iced up evaporator.

Do you de-ice the coil with a torch um? No randy? I don't because i typically don't de-ice any evaporators with torches. That's just not my style of doing things. I usually use hot water, whether it be in a pump sprayer or with a hose working with r290 equipment. That definitely opens up some more things that we need to be cautious about and be ensure that we follow proper refrigeration practices.

Okay r290 is a hydrocarbon refrigerant. It is unodorized 98 pure propane. Okay, the propane that you have in your barbecue typically has a lot of moisture in it. Um, if you guys haven't ever run into that, i used to have a travel trailer and i used to go.

Get uh propane from the gas station and i'd have the guy fill up the tanks and over time my tanks had a large accumulation of moisture in the bottom of the tanks and it was actually causing some issues and that's when i kind of realized holy moly There is a lot of moisture in this okay and that's one of the reasons, not the only reason, but that's one of the reasons why we don't use barbecue propane for our refrigerators. Okay, the other reason is, is because they add that odorant in there and that's a contaminant okay, the r290 refrigerant it doesn't smell like anything but yeah. I would not use a torch to defrost an evaporative coil. I would use.

I wouldn't even use a heat gun to be honest with you, i would just use hot water. Hot water can be tricky when you're working on reaching coolers, reaching freezers different things like that, because where's the water going to go um, and this is something that i talk with my employees all the time. We just had this conversation the other day, because i had a guy working on a reach and cooler and whenever we're working on a region for the most part, i have them empty out all the food in the region. That way we can work properly on it.

Now, there's some situations they're super busy, it's a friday night. They can't do it, but then they're gon na have to deal with me having to come back because majority of the time i like all the food out of the box so where i'm getting at, is if you're defrosting a region or something like that yeah. If you're defrosting a coil, that's up in the top of the box, the water is going to fall and that's a problem. I fill the box with pans, typically to try to catch most of that water.

You do want to be cautious. You know when you're working on some of the reach and coolers such as like charleston coolers, if you defrost the evaporators and the water starts, dripping around the door frame on the charleston ones, it'll get in and short out the door switch for the light, and that Can be a tricky thing too? You've got to plug it in and it just trips the breaker consistently until you dry, everything out so be very cautious about where that water is going majority of the time when i am defrosting things. What i will do is put pans in the bottom section and sometimes i'll even tilt the boxes back a little bit so that way uh you know the water has a place to go, especially when i'm cleaning condensers, when you have some of these um condensers that Are on the top of like a charleston unit or a dell field, unit, freezers and whatnot? They get filled up with grease and it can be kind of difficult to clean them without just you know, a mess going everywhere so i'll usually take some pans and prop them under the front of the box. So that way it pitches back just a little bit.

Not enough that the box can tip over, but do that so that way the water runs down the back of the box, because if you have to use coil cleaner, which majority of the time we do it'll, actually stain the stainless steel depending on. If it's the really cheap stainless, so you got to be cautious about that stuff, but yeah hot water is my jam for defrosting coils any way i go, i typically don't use a torch or even a heat gun. I used to use a heat gun occasionally when i worked in a hospital setting, because it was very difficult to bring water in and they were really sensitive about water and stuff, but yeah water is my jam um. What do i think of the sporlin probes hunter king? I actually have the spoiling probes.

I got to be honest. I don't get as much use out of them, as i probably should um the spoiling probes are actually great probes. I think i don't know if i have a video on them or not. I thought i did.

I've used them in a couple videos. They have great range on the spoiler probes, but they are really nice uh. You definitely want to buy the longer range ones. If you haven't or if you're looking at them, you want to buy the longer range ones that have the little antenna coming off of them.

Those ones have great range and they're. The cool thing about the sporlam probes, too is they did give measure quick access to them. So you can use the sporlam probes in conjunction with the testo probes, in conjunction with the fieldpiece probes and i'm sure some other ones too, all together and mix and match within measure quick. So that's a really cool feature that they have too so, but yeah spoiling probes are very nice um all right, let's see what else we got going on here, um.

What am i missing? Let's see, okay, so um. This person's saying that uh flexi is saying that as a ship supplier, you used r22 and it's banned in the eu. Why is that still in use and for what machines is it for? So, yes, r22 is being phased out. Okay, r22 is a refrigerant that was commonly used in air conditioning and medium temperature refrigeration for the longest time here in the united states and the rest of the world.

You know it's been deemed environmentally unfriendly and all this different stuff, so it is slowly being phased out in the united states. In no way is it illegal to use we're allowed to use it, but no longer can they manufacture it. They can't make it in the united states and they cannot import it into the united states from other countries anymore. So we are left to deal with the reserves that we have giant warehouses full of r22.

Typically, the i'd say the most popular thing that it's used on is comfort, cooling, air conditioning systems, commercial and residential. So it's slowly being phased out, but in no way is it illegal to use we're still allowed to use it. So all right, let's see what else we got in here: um cool, all right, i'm gon na go and get to my list of stuff um. Let's see uh refrigeration and kitchen eq tech is saying he ordered a mega ohm meter uh for a call that keeps tripping the breaker every three weeks um.

I i personally do not have uh experience with an insulation tester or a mega ohm meter um. I have. I you know what i have used it once or twice um, but you just they they're good to be used, but they have a very small window of where they can be used. You want to be very cautious if you haven't already check out the copeland bulletin.

Just look up uh mega ohm reading copeland, compressors or mega ohm reading or insulation test copeland, compressors uh in a a tech bulletin from copeland is going to come up about their compressors and it's really interesting. What they have to say is that an insulation test or a mega ohm reading is not the the best way to check whether or not a hermetically sealed compressor is good or bad, and, to sum up what they have to say in there, because if the refrigerant Oil has a lot of moisture in it. It can give you a false reading that could make you think that the compressor is potentially bad, when in fact the oil just needs to be cleaned up. So you just want to be cautious.

Now, copeland doesn't say that you can't use them, but copeland basically says you want to be very cautious and the best way to use an insulation test or a mega ohm reading on a compressor is to do a test over time and take a lot of parameters Down ambient temperatures different things like that and watch it and and just watch the trends of of things that happen within the system. So just keep that in mind, but mega ohm readers or insulation testers. I still firmly believe, are a great tool. It's just you have to understand how to use them.

I would be very cautious of personally myself about using the ones that say you know that just have lights on them that say good or bad different things like that, because you know that doesn't do a whole lot for you. I'd rather see a number and then understand what that number means versus just a light that says good or bad personal opinion not trying to attack any one company or anything like that. Okay, you know me, i don't want to talk too much crap about it. So all right, um see what i'm missing in here: uh all right s, man versus field, peace, probes, uh.

I have them both and i love them. Both. I like using my s-man manifold when i'm working on refrigeration racks when i'm, when i know for sure i'm going to be charging a system, i'm still kind of old school, so i'll still tend to grab my actual manifold gauge set it's interesting when i typically work On air conditioning systems, i immediately grab my my smart probes, my job link probes and take those up on the roof with me. So i, but i'm also a creature of habit and it's it's interesting and takes time for me to get on the track of just using probes all the time i was just having this discussion with my buddy adam from the hvac overtime channel and uh.

We were talking about probes and and using a manifold, and you know i was just explaining like i do charge with my probes. You know i'll charge a system charge and air conditioner and different things like that, but uh. It's still kind of a creature of habit, kind of a thing to to grab the manifold set and use that. So i pulled an evacuation using my manifold set today on a tiny little reaching cooler that was too difficult to get all the giant probes.

And you know vacuum hoses and everything inside of it was a little tiny thing. So i mean there still is a place for me with the manifold, so i still keep both, but i really do. I would say that it's getting close i'd say i probably use my probes, eighty percent of the time, the manifold twenty percent of the time. So just my stance on it um, please guys if you haven't already smash the like button or the thumbs up button on the stream.

It'll definitely help us out. Okay, so um with this equipment. You know - and i kind of talked about it - a little bit. I said especially from the european countries i get people emailing me saying you know the wiring is horrible in my units and different things like that.

So how is it that these manufacturers get away from that wiring or get away with that wiring right? You would think that underwriters, laboratory or whatever you know, certification company uh you know, would would make sure that you know this isn't approved or anything like that. Um my opinion. This is my opinion solely. I do not know this to be factual, but i believe the way that these manufacturers get away with this crappy.

Looking wiring and different things like that is because of the way that they they classify their equipment and i believe um you know sometimes you'll see wires run. You know through a chase without any conduit in a package unit. You know - and i think it's because it's part of that air conditioning unit itself, that it's it's acceptable to have wires just running through there without conduit or anything like that. I don't know if that's completely factual um, but again it's just one of those things.

We have to deal with, you know um, we don't. Unless you get into really high-end equipment. For the most part, electrical is pretty crappy. For the most part, you know the way that they run it in our air conditioning systems and stuff um, and you know, and i'm even guilty, sometimes of being lazy and doing things like using so cord and running it.

You know to a temperature controller and a walk-in cooler. I get a lot of people that give me grief for that. You know. Oh someone can grab that cord and rip it off the wall or whatever i get it.

You know, but also there's there's. Sometimes it's just what's practical, you know, sometimes it's not practical to run a conduit from a temperature controller to an evaporator coil. So i'm not perfect, and certainly in no way will i ever be perfect. So um, you know, and it's it's also something that's fair that i say - and i think i'm pretty open with this and and discuss this as much as possible.

But i genuinely do not know everything and i don't think that i'm better than anybody else. In fact, sometimes i feel like, like an imposter syndrome, kind of a thing, because i i'm just a normal service tech. That's the way i see myself and - and i know it to be true - i'm just a normal service technician. Okay, i do.

I guess i would say it's fair to say that i have an ability to kind of step back and look at things. You know my whole big picture. Diagnosis thing that i preach all the time, but i mean in general i'm just a normal service tech guys. I break things i screw things up.

I make mistakes. I oversize i undersize, you know as long as the biggest thing in my opinion is as long as we can learn from that stuff. I hope that we can grow and become better um, but you know i'm not some holy whatever person. That knows everything.

I don't. I don't know everything um. You know and i'm learning stuff all the time and - and i think it's important too, as service technicians that we know when to say i don't know how to do this. Okay, it's very important.

You know, of course i don't want someone to be afraid of everything, but i also want you to know your limitations um and i'm not afraid to tell a customer hey. This is beyond my scope of work. In fact, i can think of an instance where i was working for a hospital customer many years ago and uh. They asked me to go work on an ultra low freezer and i was like i don't know man, i'm not super comfortable working on ultra lows and uh.

This was a cascade system, two compressors well, two condensing units essentially but um. It was a whole thing, but - and i wasn't super comfortable and i got there and i looked it over and i was like man, you know this. Just isn't my jam like i'm just not confident i'd. Rather, you call a company that specializes this in this and i walked away.

You know, and i just told him i said, look you you know. I got to be fair and honest here. This is not my thing, so you need to call someone else to work on it and uh. We need to know when to do that kind of stuff, because the way that i look at it, as you know, as a business is call backs, are the end of the world and especially when you're working in the pharmaceutical side, which i've done a little bit Of work, for you know that stuff is critical um.

You know you can have a refrigerator that just looks like a basic refrigerator that has hundreds of thousands of dollars in medication or vaccines or whatever in it. I can remember working on a chemotherapy refrigerator that they kept the chemotherapy, medicine and that was lead lined like it's insane and it's the tiniest little refrigerator, and it has you know. I think, one time they told me it was like almost a million dollars in medication. In it you know, and it's like that's the kind of stuff when you really got ta step back and be like all right.

You really need to know what you're doing when you're working on this, because you know there's gon na be ramifications. If, if bad things happen or call backs happen or different stuff, like that, interestingly enough, when i was doing that work, i haven't done it for a few years. It was really cool because there was no question about it. Uh, the the hospital that i was working for, they were super on top of things and like, if i told them like hey, we need to replace the condensing unit the evaporator and everything boom done approved like they were.

I i did like that part of it. It was just there was so much work. I couldn't keep up with it kind of a thing so um and it was fun doing the hospital work. It was but it it i've talked about it before too, but it was kind of a strain on me because i didn't feel comfortable sending some of my other service technicians at the time to go.

Do the hospital work, so i constantly had to be there. So i felt like something's sitting on my chest all the time, because even if i wasn't on call if a call came in for one of those units at the hospital like i had to stop what i was doing to go and it just felt like a Burden so um, i ended up losing that customer to to my for, for other reasons you know i didn't let them go, they ended up letting me go um and i certainly could have done things better, but in the end it was actually a uh a blessing In disguise kind of a thing, so all right, let's see what else we got in here um. What do we have? I see um, let me see what else uh 448 versus 449. I see proceeds asking dallas ralph that question any differences.

Okay got you um using either yeah. I've always been a 448a fan. I've never used 449. I know they're very similar, just different manufacturers, as my understanding, i'm sure ralph will be able to help you out a little bit more and in fact what i will do is go ahead and put ralph's email in the chat right now.

If anybody does have any refrigerant, related questions feel free to send ralph an email and i'm sure he can help you guys out. So, let's see what else we got in here, um, let me see going through the questions here, looks like i'm not seeing too much make sure if you guys do have questions you put out in uh, um put them in caps, lock, okay, so um! Why? In my videos - and this is this is a question i get all the time too - and i've answered this a million times, but it's fine. I don't mind answering these questions again, so why do i not use a gopro? Okay, um? I don't use a gopro because i get motion sickness, guys and editing the video from a gopro there's something about the way gopros, because they're attached to your body, they move a lot and stuff, and that just makes me nauseous so yeah. That's why i typically don't use a gopro.

I have them i'll put them on a tripod every once in a while to get like second b roll footage and stuff like that. But for the most part i get these questions all the time. I film everything with my phone: it's a galaxy s10 plus and uh. It works great.

It has an amazing microphone. In fact, i said this before too. I have a note s20 ultra, whatever you know, they got too many dang letters and numbers after the phones, but i have you know the biggest badass note phone that they have and i actually find that the camera is really good in the note phone, but the Microphone sucks, so i really prefer - and in fact you guys have even said it too. The day that i first used my my new note, 20, whatever phone someone said what happened to the mic like and it was like, i knew it too when i was when i was doing the footage like there's a difference so yeah, i really like the s10 Plus for filming it is my favorite phone to film with so.

Let's see what else yeah smash the thumbs up button guys, it really does help out the stream so field piece, heated, diode, leak, detector versus the accu trek, ultrasonic leak detector, so they're totally different leak detectors. They both have different functions and uses um. An ultrasonic is not for me: i've i've demoed in ultrasonic before, in fact i've demoed the accutrack ultrasonic leak, detector and uh. It just didn't become useful for me, but my buddy rick um from uh hvacr survival uses.

I remembered his youtube channel this time, but rick from hvacr survival uses uh ultrasonic leak detector and he likes it. So it's to each their own. So keep it in mind. Uh.

You know the the the traditional heated diode leak, detector or infrared leak detector. You know those are great leak detectors. I've used those style, my entire career, i'm not a fan of the ultrasonic just because you got to wear headphones and my experience using the ultrasonic was whenever you would use it near neon lights. It was a problem because you could hear the neon light, hissing, sound and um.

It was just uh, just not my style. Okay. So but again, i'm not saying don't buy one. I mean if it's, if it's what you're looking for go for it um.

You know any tool that we can have in our arsenal to make our job easier. We don't necessarily use every one of our tools every single day, but you know um. Sometimes it's nice to have a certain tool for a certain function. Uh.

The one thing i didn't try with the ultrasonic leak detector, when i was testing it out was i did not get the opportunity to try to find a bearing with it like a bad bearing or something that was something that i kind of thought about. After the fact was, it would have been neat to try to listen to different bearings, to hear the sounds and then know when you can hear one going dry or something like that. That would have been an interesting test to do with the ultrasonic. So if one of you guys has that, i encourage you guys to try that um.

You know there's so many tools out there and one thing i'm going to say too, and this is kind of a gripe that i have with most supply houses right um. You know most supply houses, they don't know about the new tools. I can walk into one of my supply houses and pull at least two to three tools off my truck and show them just a supply house manager and he'd be like what, when did this come out? I'd be like dude. I've had this for years.

You know so supply houses, unfortunately, don't have all the information at their fingertips. It's interesting because a lot of us in the trade, especially the older guys i'll, consider myself an older guy i've. You know been doing it a while, but um. You know we we tend to rely on the supply houses, especially from the past.

I was brought up taught to listen to everything the supply house manager said, and that was good for a long time. But then you run into other supply houses and you think you can do the same, and then you find out that manager doesn't know what he's talking about different. You know. That's a whole nother tangent to go off on, but oftentimes these supply houses don't even know that most of these new tools are coming out or even exist, and i think that's a really cool place.

For you know these social influencers or whatever you want to call us guys that make videos on youtube or podcasts. You know we have our fingers on tools before supply houses even know they exist. There's another problem that i find with supply. Houses, too is oftentimes and i don't know the technical terms for it, but they have like you know: uh manufacturers, representatives that rep certain brands and so they'll bring in all the brands that that rep covers right and oftentimes, and this is just my ex my opinion.

I don't know this to be fact, but i tend to notice that, if that, if they have a certain rep that you know market certain products, parts and tools and different things, they often will get pushed back from that rep. At least my opinion is that they'll get pushed back from that rep if they try to bring in their competitors stuff, because it's not very often that you find two major competitors of tools in a supply house. Um. Sometimes you know that's just my opinion.

You know because i've asked managers like hey, why don't you carry refrigeration technologies, products and they're like well, because corporate doesn't let us and they've kind of alluded to me that it has to do with the fact that they're really big with whatever name of brand. You know a competitor of refrigeration technology, so they don't want to bring in the competitor the competition you know, um, which is interesting because it's kind of the supply house not realizing what us service technicians want out in the field. In my opinion, you know, and and then you have someone like me - that'll - make a video and say hey look at this new product that i found and you can get it from this online supply house. Of course, i wish i could push my local supply houses better or more.

You know, true tech tools is a great supply house. They really are at least for tools um, but you know i i want to support local, but local doesn't have the tools that i want. So i tend to push people to true tech tools because they do have them and they're cutting edge and they have tools before anybody else does so there needs to be a shift here. You know with our supply houses when it comes to products and chemicals and tools and different things like that.

The supply house, in my opinion, should be educating me. I, as a service technician, should not be educating the supply house and i realized you know. I have a little bit of a different thing going on because, whatever you want to call me a social influencer or whatever like yeah, you know i have reach and people reach out to me and stuff. But still you know, i feel like supply.

Houses should have more of these tools and i will say too, i know i'm going off on a super rant on this, but i will say too that again not completely understanding the supply house, but i could only imagine that the supply houses probably have to purchase All this stuff up front and if it doesn't sell, i bet you there's some issues with things sitting on their shelves forever, because i can think of some supply houses that i can go in and see some field piece stuff on the shelf that that's been replaced. Two times since that product was being used and it's still on their shelf, and it's like why you know so obviously they're stuck with it. So you know maybe there's something going on there too, but you know i'm ranting at this point um. Let me look at the chat and see what i'm missing in here.

I do that a lot. If you guys haven't noticed, i tend to go off on these rants um as a student in hvacr sal asks um uh and oh, i see your your comment. There. Justin um, my moderator justin, says: gopros have very poor audio and that is true.

They do have poor audio. You can get around that, though, with the rode wireless go, wireless, lav, mic and stuff, but yes, they they typically do have bad audio on the gopros and they tend to have a fisheye on the lens, too. You got to do some stuff in post to kind of make the fisheye go away. So sal asks as a student in hvacr.

What are good areas to specialize in hvacr is a broad area, right heating ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration, and then within that you can go into commercial heating and air conditioning go into residential. You can go into industrial, you can say the same for refrigeration, all of them. Okay, so do what you can get. I mean focus on where you can get a job focus on your education, okay and just work.

Your way up start with a company, see what you like see if you can intern or do an apprenticeship and work your way up, um, you know you can watch videos from people from myself from other people and you can you know kind of see like hey. I, like restaurant stuff, looks interesting like that's what i do or you know what restaurant stuff is too greasy and too high fast-paced. You know, maybe you want to go into more of a residential air conditioning setting, but if you go in the residential side, you're probably going to be pushed a little bit more into the sales side. Okay, there's still some companies that are not heavy on sales, but majority of the residential companies out there are heavy on sales and they're just pushing new equipment left and right, and then they have installers that do that.

You know the installations and then they move on. So you know it just depends, but all areas of this industry you can make very good money in almost all the different areas. You can be a service technician. You know, depending on, if you'd like to be an active person, you can get into the restaurant stuff or the supermarket stuff, but you can also go work in an institutional setting for like a hospital or a school, and you know work nine to five no overtime.

You know be home for weekends and all that stuff i mean, there's there's so many different things. If you get into the restaurant side, you're going to be getting some overtime, you're going to be doing on call if you get into the supermarket side, you're absolutely guaranteed to do insane over time. And you know you're on call quite a bit, and so i mean there's so many different aspects of it. So i love this trade um.

You know the the thing i hate about. This trade is running a business uh running a business is frustrating for me, but i'm not a good business person. You know so um, but my favorite part is is just talking with customers and fixing stuff. It's almost therapeutic for me when i'm stressed out because of things you know, i just want to go run service calls and fix things.

I love it. I still do um yeah all right. Let me see what else we got going on in here. If i miss things, just keep reposting it in caps lock how to prevent condenser corrosion um.

You know, there's a couple different methods that you can do. Refrigeration technologies has a coil coating spray that you can actually spray on a condenser that will actually help i've used. It a few times there's a process that you have to use it's kind of an epoxy coating that you spray on the condenser. Typically, when it's brand new - but i mean i'm sure you can do it when it's mid use too but yeah coil coating is probably going to be one of the best things you can have coils professionally quoted by certain companies.

You can have package units and air conditioners completely coated, evaporators and condensers, but you know after the fact on our side of it after you've installed equipment. I'd highly suggest you check out refrigeration technologies, uh refrigetech.com, i think, is their website and uh. You can go there and they have a coil coating that'll work good. I have a video on my channel uh.

I don't know what it's titled, though, where i show the coil coding process. Send me an email at hvcrvideos gmail.com and ask me about refrigeration technologies. Coil coding - and i can get you more information if you're interested, so let me see what else field piece or fluke, multimeters, hey both of them make great meters field piece, i would say, is more tailored toward the hvac technician. They have more features typically built into their meter for specifically hvc technicians.

If you buy a fluke, you're, typically going to get a higher end meter, i'd say the field pieces definitely give accurate good numbers but uh the field piece i mean the fluke is going to be more of you know. Super super, accurate numbers fluke is going to cost a little bit more. My jam is the fieldpiece sc480. That meter has everything that i need it to it's a clamp meter.

It has phase rotation. That's one of my favorite features when doing startups on new three-phase equipment is. I can check the phase rotation before i even start it up, but the field piece sc480. That is my favorite meter right now.

There's gon na be a link in the show notes of this video. If you guys don't already know every one of my videos anybody's youtube. Videos, for the most part should have some sort of show notes, so they call it the description of the show notes if you're on a computer screen, there's like a little drop down arrow you hit it and boom there's going to be affiliate, links, there's going to Be my mailing address, you know all kinds of stuff in there so feel free and check out other people's stuff too, because there's usually really good information. I usually have links to all the tools that i use in that video and different stuff like that, so um.

Let me see what else we got going on in here: uh, okay, so peter had asked some questions. Uh peter says demo the um dial-a-charge that i have in the background and then there was actually another question from someone asking about the simpson meter that i have up there so um. I have a couple older tools in the background, so this dial of charge right here is um before we had super accurate digital scales. This is what they would use in the industry to figure out a very critical or precise refrigerant charge, okay um, to be fair and honest.

I've never used that dial a charge that was before my time, one of my service technicians, actually his dad, bought it at a garage sale and gave it to me. So i've never used the dial a charge. I don't even know if my dad ever used the dial a charge to be honest with you, because i think they always had scales, even when my dad started in the trade. As far as the simpson meter, that was my dad's simpson, i think that's a simpson.

260, i think - and that was my dad's meter - it still works to this day. I don't use it obviously, but i just use it because i just have it up there, because i think it's cool. It was just sitting in our shop and then next to that i actually have an annie or hermetic compressor analyzer, and i actually i didn't use that annie. One of my technicians actually gave me that too, but i used another one.

I don't have it in here. Right now, but i used a bigger one by - i think thermal engineering or something like that. But the hermetic compressor analyzer was a way that in the field by using alligator clips and different things like that, we could start a compressor and run it forwards and backwards. And test a few things just to see if it was good or bad before we drove to go, get starting components so um all right, let's see what else we got going on in here, um.

Why don't i use the bachrach h10 pro? Never you know never used, one uh never had a need to. I started out with a cps leak seeker that yellow thing. Oh, my gosh. We would break the wands on that thing all the time and then worked my way into the detex select, which i use for many years with the detect select, and then i have the inficon stratus now which replace the detect, select and then very soon.

Very soon, i'm going to have a new leak detector. So keep that's all. I can say about that right now: how's, the viper condensate pan and drain cleaner work, good jeffrey jeffrey, to be fair. I've never used the pan and drain treatment, but i have heard a really good things about it.

From the people on the east coast uh over at hvac school, my buddy brian orr um. He does a lot of videos on it, and i've heard some really good results from them over there, because we typically don't have humidity here. We don't get that slime build up in our drains for the most part, so uh we have no need for - or at least i haven't had a need for the pan and drain treatment. Yet but i like, i said, i've heard really good things about the pan and drain treatment, so what job related get harder for hvac techs to do as he approaches retirement well, um as an hvac tech approaches, retirement we're gon na assume that he's getting older and We're gon na assume that he's getting heavier in weight; okay, um! Assuming that, because that's the trend that we go here in america right so assuming that it's gon na be harder and harder to lift your tool bag as time goes on, it's gon na be harder and harder to climb into some of the weird access panels and Attics and different things like that, working in restaurants like i do it would be harder for an older technician to climb into attics.

Of course, i'm not saying every technician is overweight and out of shape like me, but i mean, as you get older, that's kind of the trend that we go so hvac techs and i get this question quite often from people too. Like hey, is it too? Am i too old to get into the trade at 50 years old? I and - and i say, no you're - not too old - to get into the trade at 50 years old, but you're going to have some hurdles and you're going to need to specifically focus on certain parts of the trade. More likely, you know institutional type, work, education facilities, schools and different things where the demand isn't high um. But you know dealing with restaurants and - and you know, climbing in attics and different things like that is definitely going to get harder and harder as you get older.

So, let's see what else we got in here, all right, i'm going to go to um my list of things to talk about, so you know one thing i do want to encourage, and i do this a little bit in my videos. I haven't been doing it as much is disassembling things. Okay, let me step back here. I encourage everybody to get their grinder out very carefully and start cutting components up.

You know whether it be expansion valves these ones i cut with a band, saw using a porta band jig and i you know sliced the expansion valve. I disassembled it sliced it put it back together, so you can see the working components same thing with this head pressure control valve. But what i'm encouraging people to do is like compressors. You know when you change a compressor.

I encourage everybody out there. If it's a semi-hermetic, it's a no-brainer, you just unbolt everything and take it apart little fun fact: if it's a copeland compressor and it's under warranty or you're getting a core charge, they have no problem. If you disassemble it um all that they want is the parts back, even if you just got ta shove them in the compressor and put the head back on and call it a day, they're. Okay with that so um i encourage everybody, and so does copeland encourages people to take compressors apart because you can learn, you can learn what copper plating does you know if you have a compressor, that's drawing locked, rotor amps and you know, but you can still feel It turning when you cut it open.

I bet you're gon na find a lot of copper plating. You know causing uh issues within there and um. So i encourage everybody to open things. Up cut them open, learn how they work.

It was forever it. It probably took 15 years into my career before i cut open a compressor really like it took me forever to cut them open. I it just wasn't something that interested in me and i probably should have done it sooner, because you learn so much once you start cutting them open. I've cut quite a few open now you know on video actually shown them, and it's really interesting.

You know to see that the failures and it's like wow, you know i found some compressors that literally failed because of metal fatigue inside the compressor, but i found majority of the compressors i find were killed because you know copper plating or uh burnout. You know they had a short to ground. You know things like that so um, but it's it's very interesting once you start cutting open components and learning how they work holy moly um, philip. Thank you so very much for that super chat, man that that is amazing.

Man - that is awesome. You know all of this stuff helps. So thank you so very much. That's amazing, philip you're, the man but um all right.

Let me see what i'm missing in here um. Do i ever work on mini splits uh. It's not very often thomas that i work on mini splits. I've installed, probably five or six in my career um.

I've worked on, probably you know 30 40 of them, but um. You know it's not something that i do a lot of my videos uh. It's not something that i'm afraid of by any means, but i will say the mini splits that i have worked on it. You know sometimes, depending on what brand it is, it can be kind of difficult to get a hold of technical support um.

I encourage anybody that has refrigerant related issues to start with recovering the charge, evacuating the system and weighing it back in uh. That's a really good starting point on most mini splits. Unless it's, you know an obvious electrical problem, so um phil up again thanks so much for that super chat. Man you're the man, dude um, all right uh.

Let me see what else we got in here: um, i'm gon na go to my list of things to talk about um. Let's talk about what happened in my recent video with the exhaust fan issues, i want to talk about the exhaust system in a building and building balance in general. Okay, when we and i kind of briefly touched on it in my video, but when we're walking up to these exhaust systems, we have to think of as a system. Okay, even if a restaurant is calling us about a singular exhaust fan, not working, we have to think about it as a system, an exhaust fan, if you think about it, it pulls air from one place to another.

It extracts it majority of the time. Out of the building right, we're pulling heat we're pulling smoke whatever it is out of the building if you're working in a medical facility, you're, exhausting whatever fumes from whatever okay uh the 98 deville again. Thank you so much for that super chat. You guys are amazing.

With these super chats, uh efren guys holy moly. Thank you. So very much you guys are wow. This is humbling.

Thank you, okay, so when we think about these exhaust fans um, we want to think about them as a system. Okay. So if an exhaust fan was designed and installed properly, it has to have make a pair there has to be somewhere for the air that is extracting to come from if we're think about a paper bag. I've shown this example before if you take a paper bag, a brown paper bag and you put it over your mouth and you suck the bag is going to collapse.

Okay, the building does the exact same thing, except for it's not going to collapse, but it goes into a negative pressure. All right, if we cut a hole in the bottom of the paper bag, the correct size, the bag will no longer collapse and we will suck air directly through the bag. So if you think about an exhaust fan that is pulling smoke out of a kitchen, we have to have makeup air. You have to replace the air that's being pulled out of the building, so we set up some sort of a make-up air system.

Now, when you have multiple exhaust fans, you've got four exhaust fans. You really have to start looking at the building, even bigger as a giant system. Okay, the air conditioners are included in that system too, on most new buildings, because they're pulling fresh air from those. So understanding the exhaust system is so important when it comes to troubleshooting problems.

Now, in my situation in my recent video, as best as i could tell, the only problem was that the hood filters that was their main issue, the hood filters were plugged up, but they also because the cook didn't understand that the make-up air system is meant to Diffuse, the air where the cooks are, you know he was cold, so he put cardboard up in there to try to prevent the cold coming through, but that was creating more of a problem now.