We were not in a defrost whenever this issue happened, so that does help you in troubleshooting. As always, if you have blown fuses pay attention to whether or not you were in a defrost, it might push you towards like a defrost. Heater issue doesn't always mean that's the case, but this video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. I've got a call on a wing cooler, not working right evaporator.

This is a freezer coil, so it's kind of like a hybrid walk-in runs like 20 degrees. Air temp, um evaporator is powered from the roof, and it's not running so we need to start up there. Coil's not iced up we'll get up there and see what we can find. There's a switch back here.

I'm going to check this switch, make sure it's not super easy. So there's a switch evaporator is pretty dirty switch. Doesn't look like it's off. I mean i would assume you can't really reach up.

There could be installed in the wrong direction, but i think we need to start on the roof. So that's where i'm going to start. This is a overtime call, so it's dark outside um. This is my condensing unit for the wing walk-in.

It's not running. Obviously we're going to open up the electrical section, pull the condensed unit apart, have a look and see what we can figure out all right. I just spun the condenser fan motors to make sure they weren't locked up. Neither of them is locked up.

I don't see anything jumping out at me in here when i open up the electrical section. The time clock does not have any led lights on it, which would kind of indicate a power issue. Um yeah, i'm not seeing anything else jumping out at me, so we're going to go ahead and check for three-phase power, we'll check it at the contactor. That would prove that the fuses are good.

The managers say that they've checked the breaker. So let me get my meter out and we'll check the contactor on this right. Here i mean it's pretty it's self-explanatory, but three-phase power comes into the condensing unit and sits at the contactor and waits for the control voltage to tell the contactor to turn on. So if we go to the top of this contactor, let's see what the voltage is.

So we've got 8.3 from one to two 201 from two to and 209 from one to three, so we're going to end up having a blown fuse. So we're going to turn this guy off open this guy up and we're we're gon na look inside here. We'll put our meter on continuity and we'll tone out these fuses see, which fuse is bad. That fuse is good.

Middle fuse is bad. Third fuse is good all right, but we don't uh just flip fuses on. So what we're gon na do is verify that we've got a good ground and we're going to check to ground on that fuse. We've got no direct shorts to ground on that one, okay, but that's just going to the load side, i'm sorry to the line side.

So now we need to get in here to the load side and check for direct shorts to ground all right, you're going to have to take my word for it. We have no direct shorts to ground, something that you want to pay attention to is. This is an electric defrost. I told you that it's a hybrid cooler freezer, so it's running about 20 degrees box temp and we were not in a defrost whenever this issue happened, so that does help you in troubleshooting.

As always, if you have blown fuses pay attention to whether or not you were in a defrost, it might push you towards like a defrost. Heater issue doesn't always mean that's the case, but i'm not seeing anything down here at the moment. Um. I want to go ahead and get a ladder and go inspect the evaporator and see if we see anything going on down there.

As best as i could. I did a visual inspection on the evaporator. I don't see like in the common places where the fan motor wires go. I don't see any issues there.

Um. What i do need to do is spin the evaporator motors to make sure none of them are locked up. That's fine that one's fine, that one's fine and these are ecm motors, so they do the funky thing when they stop. That's that's common on them.

You see right here. They like wobble um. I toned out everything in here and check this out. Look at what i see there's a wire right here.

I don't know what it goes to, and it's just hanging free in here this guy right here. It's just hanging here and if you look at it it looks like it arced, possibly so i need to go through and figure out what that's for and what's going on with that, because it shouldn't be loose like that all right, i traced it back and it's The evaporator fan motor wiring and if we look at the schematic right here, um with no heater or evaporator contactor, the evaporator fan motors should be wired. These are all of them. It gives you the option of having multiples to f1 and f2 and that wire was dangling right down here on h2, and i bet you.

That is the opposite. I bet you that's a direct short touching h2 so that wire should be going to f1. I don't know why it came off, though that's interesting um, it went on nice and tight yeah, it's it's in there. It's not coming off.

It's very interesting, okay! Well, i'm gon na keep investigating and if i don't see anything else, then we'll go, replace the fuse and see what happens all right. I don't have enough fuses to replace them all and leave spares. I literally only had two 20 amp fuses, so i put the one in there that was bad for now. If i can get this running, then i'll come back and do it once over and clean everything too.

But let's just see what happens. Um got my amp clamp on there and we're gon na fire this up and see if it explodes. I heard the solenoid valve open downstairs. Condenser fan motor is turned on.

Compressor is running time, clock's good, we're, not tripping the breaker. We need to give it a minute. There should be a fan delay on the evaporators. We got ta make sure that the fan delay comes on.

I bet you, it's just that wire sight. Glass is clear, but the evaporators could still be off at the moment, possibly suction lines, cold already hearing a really strange noise. I don't know if it's coming from this or not compressor number one is off huh. I don't know if it was this that i heard, but it was like a banging noise.

Oh that's, really, weird! Let's open this up, it sounds like a possible loose belt, see how dirty this condenser is. It doesn't look too bad. I don't know if that's what i heard or not. Well that's another thing.

I don't need to deal with that right now. All right, we're gon na go downstairs and see if the evap motors are running so the fan delay has not turned the evaporative fan motors on yet the coil's still getting cold. So it's gon na take a few minutes. You know, i don't know if that wire just came loose because it was on there so tight.

It makes me wonder, because the manager told me he was taking panels off and checking time, clocks and stuff. I wonder if he took these panels off and pulled that wire out. This is the problem that happens when they try to self troubleshoot, because i can come out and potentially solve what might have been something he created. Thinking that i fixed it go home and then the walking can go down again.

I don't know you know i mean we're just gon na. Let it run and see what happens? It's really warm in here. So i would expect you can see my it's still dropping, but i'd say it's at least 60 degrees in here right now, so it's gon na take a little bit for this thing to get cold enough. This thing is completely frosted uh, that's probably hard for you guys to see, but it's it's frosty the whole thing.

So the limit switch isn't allowing the coil to come on um there's got to be something wrong inside the limit switch. The limit switch is on the back side of here, so i'm going to pull this off, get the limit switch out of there, we're going to bypass it for tonight, and then we'll have to get them a new limit switch okay. This is our three wire fan. Delay right here, uh, you can see it right here you get a red, a brown and a black okay.

The red is going to go to your common terminal. Okay, for the 208 volts common sits there and weights. Okay. If the coil gets cold enough, the switch closes and common goes to the fan motors and the fans run.

If the coil gets too hot, it assumes it's in defrost. The switch goes, the opposite direction. I don't know if you call it opens, because i guess you can call it opens and it sends power to the x terminal and it terminates defrost okay. So this is a fan, delay, defrost termination switch.

Now the defrost termination was actually already disconnected on the roof. So it's not even hooked up what we need to do now, though, since i disconnected the fan delay is i need to put a jumper between f1 and common so right here, we've got a jumper wire, we're going to go on and the power's off f1 and Then we're going to go right on here uncommon up here. Okay, so now we have a jumper wire. That's gon na allow this guy to run the evaporator fan motors at least um, and it just won't have fan delay until i can get a new one.

You have to be careful too, because on these high temp coils there's actually a different fan delay than the typical walk-in freezer coil, because this runs higher temperatures so got to make sure you get the right fan delay, don't ever put a standard walk-in freezer on, like One of these um it can become a problem. So now we got operating evaporator fan motors, so um, i'm gon na pop on the roof and then we're gon na check the refrigerant pressures and watch this box come down in temperature. Okay system is operating refrigerant pressures, they're, okay, cyclos is still clear, but here earlier when it was clear, the evap fan motors weren't running so it didn't really wasn't fair, but now evaporator fan motors are running side. Glass is clear.

I did that side, glass and dryer back in uh january of 20 of this year. I don't know if i made a video on it or not, but the unit was low on charge and i can't remember exactly what i did, but i know i put a drive. Oh i changed the expansion valve. I think so all right we're going to watch this thing operate for a little bit and see it dropping temp, good gosh.

What the heck is going on over here. Goodness, gracious, this entire roof is falling apart. This is the walk-in freezer that didn't help it. I just want to get this called done and get the heck out of here.

I'm not worried about anything else right now, all right, it's been running for a bit, it's 38 degrees in here uh. The the set point, i believe, is like 20 22, or something like that. I'm gon na put the panels on and this will get them through the night. If i can get a limit switch i'll come back tomorrow, if not we'll order it.

So all right. It's daylight and we're back today i brought a new limit switch with me and we're going to go ahead and clean this unit up clean the condenser clean, the evaporator change, the fuses and just test the general operation. It's been about three days since that service call customers happy. The only complaint they have is that they said uh.

Excuse me, i'm catching my breath. I just walked up and carried everything up um. They said that they had an internal audit where they come. Do like a safety inspection, and you know, check food, temps and stuff like that.

A lot of these restaurants do that outside of the health department um and their internal audit said that the defrost was happening too often on this wing cooler after i came out. Well. Remember i disconnected the limit switch so by bypassing the limit switch. It runs the full length of defrost and doesn't terminate defrost early based on temperature.

So if it has a 30 minute, defrost does a full 30 minute defrost. So i have a feeling: that's what they were complaining about. So once i put the limit switch back in, it should be terminating defrost early and not running the full length anymore. We're gon na go ahead and get it taken apart, get it hosed off, cleaned off and get downstairs all right, we're going to give it a little rinse! It's really not that bad! I am going to put some coil cleaner on it, but nothing crazy.

I'm just going to watch out the motors, though, and kind of get the motors away being very careful here, just saturating the coil and then i'll put some cleaner on it. I'm using the uh aerosol coil cleaner, because i'm lazy and didn't want to bring my coil gun up. Um completely micro channel safe and it does a decent job. So we're going to let it sit for a minute, do its work and then i'm going to go ahead and rinse it real good.

I've been trying something lately and it actually works. Pretty nice, where you just use the nozzle and i find that you get sometimes it does better. I mean just the the hose with the pressure you know but see it like gets in there really good. I was cleaning a really difficult condenser the other day, and this worked out really well for it.

Nice good flow all right, let's see what else we get in here, so i feel that it helps to be able to actually watch the water come out because then you get to see if you need to leave the hose in a spot, to get it longer. That kind of stuff - it's coming pretty good, we'll give it one more good little once over from the front just to get all this stuff out of here, cool that works and then we're gon na give this guy. So it's amazing even from blowing it out the other way, you're still getting a crap done. Condenser is nice and dry.

I went ahead and replaced the fuses got three new 20 amp fuses and left three fuses for the next guy. That way, that problem is eliminated. Um, you know the more i look at this defrost. I don't know what their internal audit was complaining about, because it only does 15 minute defrost throughout the day and that 4 a.m.

It does a half hour defrost. So it's not for 15 minutes if it defrosted. I mean, i guess, because it has electric heat - i guess maybe, but the limit switches should eliminate that so all right, um we're gon na fire. This up just to make sure condenser fan motors, spin and everything's good and then we'll turn it back off and go downstairs and change the limit switches and then clean the evap good airflow is good.

I like it all right all right. This is where this dank sprayer comes in really handy can literally spray on the back side and it's not making a giant mess, so i'm getting the coil wet from the back side and then i'm going to put uh some of that condensed coil cleaner. It's also good for evaporator, so it's not toxic, so be good. I am inside out upside down up in here, there's stuff on here, so this is safe in food environments.

Obviously, don't want to get in food. I have safety glasses on by the way too and uh. It's also considered a no rinse. So if i didn't get it all off, it wouldn't be the end of the world, got it pretty good up in there all the way around it's just sitting.

There i mean most of the stuff came off when i rinsed it, but this is just going to get anything bigger, yeah, i'm going to let it sit for a minute, then give it a rinse, and i should preface that by saying this is a no rinse. When you use it on evaporators, when you use it on condensers, you have to rinse it. You have to kind of be smart about it. The whole concept of no rinse is because of condensation itself rinses, and what that means is that this essentially isn't corrosive.

It's not going to eat the coil away, so if a little bit got left on there, it would be okay until the evaporator condensates and it basically self rinses the stuff off, but getting some chunks out of it. Nothing crazy, though, we'll make sure we flush that drain pan out real good, go ahead and clean up the blade in the guard. Well, that stuff is soaking, i'm changing the limit switches. I changed them both.

I changed the heater safety too, just because i'm in here and it's a pain in the butt um, i ended up talking to heatcraft and they don't make two limit switches anymore. I swear they used to, but i noticed that this one closes at 35. I believe they used to close at, like 20 degrees on the walk-in freezer, so i think they kind of found a happy medium but anyways, so that was the right limit switch. I've got them ran over there.

I'm going to put this in here and then i'll wire them all back in the condenser is running now, so we're just waiting for the limit switch to sense 35 degrees on the surface of the evaporator coil. It's actually on the frame and just to confirm too, when i was here the other night, the coil was so iced up that there was ice around the limit switch too. So i know it was cold enough and it wasn't turning on. Why now? I don't know you know who knows but anyways we're just waiting for the fans to turn on all right fan.

Delay works back on we're gon na, let it run, and i want to check the satisfied temperature because i just want to make sure i'm a little worried about their internal audit. They were talking about. I asked them if they were having temperature issues and they said no, but for all i know when the manager was troubleshooting, he could have been turning on that temp control uh. So i didn't watch it satisfy the other night, but it shouldn't take too long today, because it's still all the product is still.

You know, 30 degrees in here. So all right, i did have to adjust the box temp a little bit colder because it wasn't getting quite as cold as i wanted it to uh we're still pulling down right now. Our box temp is 37 degrees and they typically won in the 20s. So i'm gon na go verify with them what they want, but it was uh satisfying like at 38 or something so um turned it a little bit colder.

It's running right now, superheat's still a little bit high, but it's coming down. I'm not too crazy. Worried about that right now we're just gon na let it kind of stabilize and satisfy i'm not afraid with these pressures we're running a clear sight, glass, the sub coin's kind of irrelevant. As long as i have some sub coin, but yeah we're running a clear sight.

Glass, so all right, i did end up adjusting the super heat a little bit um and the box temp is set at 31 degrees now so it's turning on at 31 and should be getting a little. They want 28 to 32, so our superheat's at about 11 degrees. Now i'm not going to adjust it anymore, we're going to tell them to keep an eye on everything and i'm going to wrap this one up. I forgot when i came up here, to put the covers back on the condensing unit that when i came the other day, the x terminal was actually disconnected.

So since i put in a new limit switch, i usually don't like to hook up x terminals unless i know what's going on, but because i replaced the limit switch. I went ahead and hooked up x so that way it can terminate defrost by temperature. So that way, it won't necessarily go in as long of a defrost so because it's a hybrid we're only doing 15 15 throughout the day and then a half hour in the middle of the night. So we'll see how that operates for him, even when we're on an overtime call, even when it's late at night, i still tr, i mean you know i get frustrated, but i still try to take my time and go through the proper steps.

Now i may not. You know completely troubleshoot something put my service gauges, or so you know whatever, but i always try to still take my time when, especially when i'm diagnosing electrical shorts - okay, i don't just throw fuses in there. I can't stress that enough. Okay, i don't put fuses in to see if they blow again, it's so easy.

You have a volt meter, just grab it and test for any direct shorts. You know before you throw fuses in there. The reason why i do this is because i used to do that and i remember you know we would keep a box of fuses in our van for a reason, because we'd put a fuse in there it'd blow, you know we'd go up there. We you know, we just keep changing fuses until we found the problem, and you know when, when i started doing that, i really started thinking.

There's got to be a better way, you know and then it's like hey. You know what get my meter out. Let's check for direct shorts, let's look for motors locked up before we go and change fuses. Now.

I've also learned the hard way uh. There was a service call that i did one time many many years ago on top of a golf course, and they had a direct short on their kitchen. They see it was a big kitchen, ac and uh. I was up there trying to find the direct short and i just kept resetting the breaker until the main breaker blew okay for an entire panel.

Okay and when i went to go reset, the main the main handle actually broke off and i could no longer reset it anymore. So then they were down an entire panel that ran multiple air conditioning units and they had to go that way for the rest of the weekend, because it was a really really weird giant 480 volt breaker that their electrician couldn't get over the weekend. So, and it was that all because i was resetting the breaker, you know and didn't check for a direct short before i reset the breaker, and it's those lessons where i learned, like hey: stop resetting breakers stupid test for ground. First, okay check to see if you have direct shorts, there's no point in just resetting it to hear something pop or to electrocute someone or whatever.

Okay. So that's the reason why i don't just change fuses or don't just reset breakers and why i try to always remember to test for direct shorts and that kind of stuff. Before all the things that i the little tips and the little you know, bits of advice that i give to people is usually because of mistakes that i have made over my career and i have made a crap ton of mistakes. Okay, but i've just i got sick of making them and i tried to start reflecting and saying hey.

How could i have done this better and now you know every time, even to this day, when i do a job i reflect on it and i think okay, what could i have done to make that go smoother? You know what, if i would have you know caught this problem. I mean i'm not perfect. I still make mistakes every single day. Okay, i'm human, just like you guys just try to learn from them all right, so we went through all the steps on this.

I utilized the time that i had to go ahead and clean it right now. A lot of restaurants aren't doing pm work: okay, because they're trying to save money, they're doing more reactive maintenance. Basically, when something breaks, they want you to clean it kind of thing. Okay, but with that being said, when i go in to do service calls, i take that advantage or take that time to go ahead and clean things up too.

It adds more time and it is frustrating because service calls aren't as simple go out and you know change the limit, switch and move on. It's go out. There diagnose clean the evaporator clean the condenser. You know check the charge check the superheat because nobody's doing the proper pm service anymore.

So there's no more short service calls. You know typical, you know i i usually do two service calls a day, maybe three, that's it because that's a whole day, that's eight hours! Nine hours worth of work um, you know, and it's just because they aren't doing normal routine maintenance at a lot of these places anymore. So you have to be thorough when you go out there: okay um, so i take the time when i go out on the service call to go ahead and clean everything up. Yeah the evaporator wasn't horrendous yeah the condenser wasn't horrendous, but i was there.

Okay and i could potentially eliminate another service call tomorrow or the next day and get it done now right now. I've got so much crap going on and so many places i have to go back to that. I can't even remember and it just gets frustrating. So it's like, i i've, been really making an effort when i go out on overtime, calls to try to finish them, or at least get majority of the work done while i'm there.

If i can okay in this situation, i couldn't but it's frustrating, because you know there's nothing worse than getting called out on a sunday night and then you end up rewiring an entire rack, because you know that it's just going to be one more thing. You have to do next week, you know, so i try to get it all done when i can as much as possible. Okay being thorough, still keeping the customer in the loop still keeping the office in the loop, letting everybody know. Communication is key guys.

Okay, you can't just go rogue and go solo, and just do your own thing. You got to communicate with your company. You got to communicate with the customer, make sure the customer's okay, with what you're doing that kind of stuff. Okay.

Luckily i have a pretty darn good relationship with most of my customers and i kind of know what i'm allowed to do. But it's not always like that. Okay, so um we got them operational. I ended up adjusting the temperature controller down.

I have a feeling the temperature controller issue and the defrost was what their audit company was talking about, because they were actually maintaining like 37 degrees in that box, when they were supposed to be maintaining 32 at a max okay. And then, if it went into defrost yeah, then their temperatures would be a little bit higher. So i got that box temp down. I ended up adjusting the superheat down and we left the defrost how it was, and it's it's been about a week since that, since i did that and all has been well all right, i really really appreciate you guys making it to the end.

Keep in mind, i do live streams monday, evenings 5 p.m. Pacific! I try to do them in my office. I've also been doing a lot. More of the service call live streams, those ones i'm still trying to kind of figure out, because the audio and the internet service sucks, but anyways um.

So my live streams are monday evening on youtube. 5 p.m. Pacific time work permitting, i typically go live with the hvac overtime crew. My buddies adam joe bill myself, typically go live monday or friday evenings around 6 05 pm pacific time, um ish.

I wasn't here the last week, but we typically do that. Okay, that's on the hvac overtime, youtube channel. Do me a favor and go subscribe to that? If you guys haven't already okay, uh and um yeah, i totally had a brain fart right now. Okay, i usually talk about channel support.

If you guys are interested in supporting the channel, if you guys are considering purchasing any tools, any support you guys give to the channel is great. It helps me to keep doing these, but at the same time i'm going to continue doing them. Even if you guys don't support okay, so don't feel obligated to support basically okay, but there's a couple ways you guys can support the channel. You can support by kim.

You know, patreon patron, okay, um, there's links in the show notes of this video. You can support me by becoming a youtube channel member - okay, that's just kind of like patreon, but it's a subscription service. Okay, um! You can support me via paypal, donations um. If you're interested in purchasing any tools, you can go to truetechtools.com and use my offer code.

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I got hats and shirts go check it out. I really really appreciate it and we will catch you guys on the next one. Okay.