Sunday morning rolling out to a walk-in cooler service call, you can see how nasty it is outside right now i don't even want to be outside. We were going to go to lunch today, but no so we'll uh we'll get over there and see. What's going on the customer's saying that the walking cooler is like at 50 degrees, so this video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. The thermostat says 54 degrees, it's set for 37 and it's calling and we got no ice on the coils.

But all the evaporative fan motors are running, so i'm going to jump on the roof. It's my lucky day today. The roof platform is completely free of clutter, very nice. Let's go ahead and go up here, see what we got going on it's funny.

I was just here the other day, pretty sure i filmed another video that looks nice i'll fix that before i leave uh walking cooler racks in here walking cooler should be this compressor right here, oh check it out. No condenser fan motors running. That's not good! That's a walking cooler compressor, but those condenser fan motors should definitely be running right now. Open up the rack and the breaker for the condenser fan motors is trip.

So i'm gon na go ahead and shut everything else off right now, uh because everything's just got to be going off on high head pressure. At this moment, i'm gon na go ahead and shut off the breaker for the condenser fan motors and i'm going to open them up and do a visual inspection. If i remember right, this is the one i think that had lamp cord all inside of it. So we might get to fix that.

Finally, now we look in here and uh: there's a big old fat burn mark right there, um yeah, so that's a problem for sure. So we're probably gon na be redoing. Some cabling here today, possibly getting rid of that stupid lamp cord um, but i need to dig a little bit further we're gon na open up that conduit right there all right. So i open this up and yeah there's the short right there nastiness.

So, ah i got ta see if i have all the materials that i need um. Maybe i can get this done today and then eliminate this from my list of things to potentially do in the future. Also uh these used to be the ice machine condensers over here. These are no longer in use because they have ice machine condensers over there now they've, since taken them out of the rack.

So i'm going to completely take that out of the picture. That'll be done in fact, i'm pretty sure if we come over here and they didn't remove the breakers, but we can eliminate all that crap because those aren't being used at all, i'm just kind of going through here, seeing what's what i disconnected the old ice machine. Condenser fan motors from the breakers, so those are dead, i'm noticing that these fuses are actually bypassed. So i don't know if i have enough of those fuses for today, but we'll at least get them running.

I'm removing this is the ice machine wiring right here and then just going through this one by one and removing everything again, i'm assuming that i have conduit in my van. I think i do. I don't think this will be too hard because we're essentially only running power and a ground for that and power to ground. For that, so shouldn't be a big deal all right understanding the sequence of operation is what helped me to know exactly what was going on right when i got here.

I know that these condenser fan motors in 95 degrees need to be running 24 7 and they weren't running at all. So something was wrong as far as running conduit and stuff. I try not to let it get too confusing, but i'm smart about it. Being that all this stuff was ran in a single conduit, sharing everything and it was really crowded - we're not using that one anymore, so i'm eliminating it and then this one i'm going to go ahead and run an individual conduit for each one.

Since i got two knockouts already in this hole, so just taking the baby steps a little bit at a time trying to make it as simple as possible having all my fittings sawzall every third band saw, i guess just say you know, trying to make everything go Easy just taking it one step at a time i uh pulled all the wire. I left it extra long, i'm still kind of dialing things in. I don't always do it like this, but i was able to get the the bushings for the end of the fitting. So that way, the wires don't rub out, because that's what actually happened to the old one was it rubbed on the the end of the fitting, so just a little bit at a time still got to hook up the condenser fan, motor wiring and just moving along Slowly, all right, we are all wired back in i'm about to turn power on.

We ran into a few problems and i'll show you guys, but i cleaned up the capacitor added grounds same thing here, individual conduit just for that motor individual conduit. Just for that motor same thing got a giant mess of crap right here. So a couple things i ran into, i went ahead and found fuses, but then i found that the last guy lost the screw, so i can't hook that fuse up so i'll have to get a new fuse block for that, but we can come back for that. So that one, so i've got fuses on three of them: um yeah and i went ahead and ran new wire all the way over so uh.

Let's go ahead and turn knit's familiars on, hopefully nothing blows up. Both of them are running. Looking good, don't see any problems, we're going to get a current draw on them and so long as that good then we'll turn on the compressors. We're allowed to run 3.2 amps mind you.

I've got the cover off, so it's pulling quite a bit of air right now, so we're good on that one! We're good on that one! So we're not over amping! So i'm gon na put the panels back on and we're gon na turn the compressors on and make sure everything else is good. Walking, cooler, running warm suction line. Coming back looks like we've got a some sort of a oil leak or something there's. It's not yeah.

It's oil we're running a clear side: glass. All the compressors were down. They didn't even realize it walking cooler, clear side, glass, beer, walking, clear side, glass, cooks, drawers, not clear sight glass, we're going to give it a minute to try to let it clear up if it doesn't i'll top off the charge. All right everything's been running.

I went ahead and topped off the charge on those little cook stores, so they're good for now. They'll have to call us back for a leak check before i put my gauges on this one, i'm not going to take any of the caps off and i'm going to do a leak check just because i see so much oil in this area. I don't want to potentially fix the problem, so we're going to do the leak check. First, let's see what we pick up.

Common places are capillaries the pressure controls very common. Then rotor locks very possible. It's just a leaking cap. Wouldn't surprise me huh interesting, i'm using the detect, select.

It usually picks these things up right, quick, let's see if it's working yeah it's working, it picks up the vapor in my gauge hoses interesting. So it's a very small leak, whatever it is. Okay, i'm gon na put some big blue all over it. Remember when we spray the big glue on you want a steady stream.

We don't want bubbles, we don't want to create bubbles when we start spraying it we're just gon na spray, a steady stream all over this bad boy all over the cap, especially because this is one that when you take it off, you might not see the potential Leak and i have a feeling - that's where it's going to be that or on the road a lot, so i don't have my inspection mirror, because it's still in that condensing unit that i showed in my recent video but right back here on the bottom right down Here, i'm picking up a leak, it's just some bubbles and then also right here right here on this cap right there. So it's a little tricky. I know for you guys to see it, but it's right on the back side of this cat and then this cup right here and then i was picking up something on here. So i'm gon na clean it up really good with the towel and then check it.

One more time, all right, so the best thing is, i keep getting a bubble that pops up on the back of that cap. I don't know if the camera is going to focus on that nah. It's not going to focus on that, but i keep getting a bubble right there. That's an easy one.

That's just tightening in the cap. The cap itself actually has oil inside of it. So that's it. Maybe i can even just tighten the packing.

Possibly, let's see if the packing was loose, the packing was loose and that'll. Do it? No, not really packing's not loose, so all right well, we'll see if we can't just tighten up the cap all right, it started back up. I went ahead when i i hadn't front seated that valve on the receiver threw the unit into an immediate pump down, so we can go and just check the starting liquid level of the receiver, see where it's at all right. Here's our receiver right here, there's the liquid.

I mean that i haven't heated it up yet so we're gon na take a heat producing device and we're going to uh run it just a couple passes up and down making sure not to get the soft plug and then we're going to check where the liquid Levels out on this bad boy, okay, i'll run my fingers a bit. I clearly feel a temperature difference right here, interesting because it almost seemed like i can kind of see that before i heated it up, so this unit already has the max refrigerant charging at three quarters of the receiver. So i'm not going to add any refrigerant to this bad boy: that's uh, nice and good. I went ahead and marked the level with the paint marker that way.

We know from this point forward that level needs to be there um and i went and put the date too, so we're gon na go and open this system up and let it come down in time. It is still 50 degrees in there. So it's gon na be a while 31 degrees saturation temperature. Let me make sure yeah i'm on 4, 4.

4., so 30 degree saturation temperature, it's like 51. In there right now. The txv's are probably working their butts off. I'm also going to go check to see how clean those evaporators are.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the evaporators are plugged up they're uh center mount ceiling mount coils that pull up through the middle and blow out so that often the dirt is hidden. Uh we're gon na go ahead and take the gauges off, go down there and then probably just let it come down to temp on its own. I'm not gon na wait all night for this. I can't stress this enough guys.

I'm all finished up and i picked up all my crap okay yeah, there's a few broken tails from zip ties, but i mean i picked up all the wires guys. Even if it's not mine, i picked it up. Leave yourselves a clean roof makes you look better makes you feel better when you come back, it's just all together, just clean up after yourselves, all right, we're gon na go down and check the box again, one more time can't really see up in here, but they're Dirty on the inside there's airflow, but not as much as there should be it's about 49 degrees in here now so it'll get down to 10. But i'm probably gon na send someone out here this week to go ahead and clean up these coils because they're not doing routine pms yet so all right, that's gon na wrap it up for this weekend or for today.

I guess it's sunday, so it seems like i've been getting a bunch of these service calls on the weekend. Lately i don't know what it is uh i went from getting almost no weekend calls to it. You know it's just whatever it is. What it is that it it is frustrating, but it's how it goes.

Okay, in the midst of this coveted stuff nobody's doing routine preventative maintenance. I should take that back. I have one customer that's starting to get back into it again, but it's very minimal to people that are because these restaurants are basically in survival mode in survival mode. You know they're just trying to save every penny.

They can. They don't mind spending the money when they have to, but routine preventative maintenance to them is a an expense. That is something they can hold off on, because they're essentially taking a gamble. It's not their fault.

You know that's life, that's how the restaurants work and i'm not. It's not my decision to say whether or not they should i'm not going to refuse their service because they don't do preventative maintenances, because guess what there's another guy that'll take my job and a heartbeat? Okay, we'll start doing the work for me, probably less you know expensive than i will probably take it. You know in a heartbeat okay, so i'm super thankful and i totally understand - and i want to continue to work for these customers, so i'm gon na work with them. Okay, um, you know we as a contractor.

We, you know, sometimes have to do this kind of stuff right and it's just part of the game and how you do it so on this one, uh walking, cooler wasn't working right and i already kind of made some assumptions because i walked up, as i was Talking you guys, i took the cover off and boom it hit me hey. The condenser fan motors aren't running and it was really warm outside now uh. I don't know if you guys caught it, but the um fan cycling this. This con refrigeration rack both of the condenser fan motors, actually cycle on and off, via temperature switches that are mounted to the discharge lines of the compressors, a couple of them and actually i'm trying to remember here.

You know what no actually this one has fan cycle controls on like two of the main compressors i think, and i think they're wired in series or something like that yeah. That is what it is. If i remember right but anyways those fan cycle controls have been bypassed, because if you look, if you go back to the footage, when i was wiring up at the contactor, i showed the the compressor contactor is actually wired. 24.

I'm sorry the condenser fan motor contactor is wired 24 7.. So that is something i would like to fix, but that's not something if you ever walk up and you find safety's bypass as long as it's not like a dire emergency, you want to be very cautious about rewiring those in especially on a sunday when you don't Want problems to happen, okay, so as time goes on and we do more work on this rack yeah, i might wire in those safeties again assuming that maybe the previous company bypassed them for who knows why? I don't even know okay um another thing too, or actually to get back to what i was talking about. So i made some assumptions. I saw the condenser fan motors, weren't working and because i understand the sequence of operation on this, i immediately shut off the breakers.

All of their compressors in that rack were off on high head pressure. The manager only realized that the walk-in cooler was down. I went ahead and informed them. Hey, you're, walking, freezers down your beer, walking's down your cook stores are down like you guys got some issues.

You know, but that happens when they're busy. You know they don't necessarily know everything so um now i went through uh the you know. Basically in my head i went through and kind of knew. Okay.

This is what's going on. I shut everything down and immediately started. Looking for electrical issues now, this is not the only restaurant that has that lamp cord. I took over a few restaurants from another contractor and they use that lamp cord on all sorts of things, so i actually have one or two more of these exact refrigeration racks that have that lamp cord ran just like that, so i've been kind of waiting for An excuse to dig in there and fix it now.

This was one of them, because we had an electrical short. I took the time and kind of took the initiative and just said: okay, we're going to rewire the entire condenser familiar system for both of these. It's it's cost effective. Basically, instead of me trying to pull wire - and you know - fix conduit and things like that - it's just easier for me to rip it all out and start over.

So i was able to do that. I think um people ask me this all the time i think on this job. I think i was on site for three hours. I think, if i remember right, so that's not too bad if you think about it.

But again you know because i'm super familiar with this equipment. I can probably do it a little bit faster than someone who isn't familiar with it. I just kind of know the sequence of operations, so it's really easy and stuff pops up in my head right when i saw that it's really easy for me to kind of imagine in my head, okay, conduit here, conduit there. This is how i'm going to do it.

You know user friendly, that kind of stuff. I prefer, like the seal tight conduit, uh liquid tight. Essentially, so that's what i went ahead and used. I'm surprised that they don't use liquid type from the factory when they built this rack.

Even though it's ul approved, i don't know, underwriters laboratories, i'm just blown away that they let them use indoor conduit, because the rain gets on that but anyways whatever i'm rambling. At this point so uh, you know the the refrigeration leak that i thought was on the well. There is a leak, but it was so small that it really hasn't leaked out very much charge. Okay, um, and i think it's really important that when you guys are uh leak, checking this stuff like if you see something like that before you apply your service gauges.

Just like i said in there, you guys want to do a quick leak check to see because sometimes it could be in the cap and by taking it off and putting it back on. You can inadvertently fix the leak and not realize it. So i like to prove the leaks before i try to disturb it. If i can okay, i was able to tighten that up pretty good, so we'll see if that solves it, and i cleaned up all the oil so eliminated that now i also wanted to as we're coming into the the fall here soon in the next couple weeks.

It'll, you know some places will start getting cool again: we're gon na start using uh head pressure, control valves, okay, head pressure, control valves. That's why i had to fill that receiver up to the three-quarter mark. This unit has a head pressure, control valve on it, and so essentially what it does is it's a low ambient control when the outdoor air temperature drops. Okay, the refrigerant pressure goes lower, okay, because the refrigerant reacts to temperature right.

So, as the refrigerant pressure goes lower, the pressure differential across the expansion valve drops and we have a head pressure control valve to help to maintain that pressure differential okay. So with that being said, we have to have extra refrigerant for the flooded charge, because what we do is we flood the condenser with refrigerant, so we have to have that extra refrigerant in the system for it to work properly. So that's why i checked the liquid level in the receiver. Okay, now, you won't necessarily always fill them up to three quarters of a receiver, but that is the easiest way in my opinion, to do it when you're out in the field - and you don't know how much refrigerant the system has leaked out.

What i do is i put in the maximum amount of refrigerant that that system can hold when it's pumped down. That is three quarters of a receiver that we have. We have room for expansion in case. You know something happens and we don't want the receiver to blow up or something okay, so i used the thermal imager just to show you guys.

You know where the level was. It was really interesting too, because i don't know if you guys caught it. I said it in the video. You could really see the the liquid level before i even heated up the receiver.

That's very odd, because in the winter time i can't see that so i don't know if it was something about the summertime or what. But that was pretty cool all right, i've rambled enough. I really appreciate you guys, remember that i do live streams monday evening work permitting. The last couple been at work.

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So really appreciate you guys uh, we will catch you on the next one. Okay.