Ah, it's time to chill out and get ready for a mediocre. Qa 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, yo, hope, you'll or hopefully you guys are doing well see a lot of people in the chat. Hey guys, hello to everybody, got a couple things.

As usual that I want to cover, I want to get to you guys's questions. I was uh, I'm gon na try to address some of the the previous chat questions from the last livestream I had mentioned before in the last livestream. I have a way of downloading the chat now so that I can go over and see which questions I miss. So I'm gon na try to address those - I'm not gon na get to all of them, but I picked a few of them that I thought would be a good question, so I'll definitely try to tackle those for you guys.

Let me turn this off real quick. There we go perfect so now I can see that hello to everybody, alright, so first I want to start off a little introduction. Okay, most of you guys that are in here early know who I am, but I have been noticing that question coming up a little bit more asking me about my information, how long I've been doing this okay, so my name is Chris: I'm an HVAC or service Technician been in the officially in the industry for 17 years since 2000 since April of 2002, so a little over 17 years, but I grew up in the trade working for my dad ever since, like junior high school elementary school, I used to go. Do service calls.

I used to sit on his bucket hold his flashlight all that good stuff, okay, but I officially started just out of high school in 2002, I'm 36 - and I just do these - these YouTube videos and these live streams to share the little bit of knowledge that I Have okay just like to help you guys out, you know with a little bit of information, I have whether it be good or bad I'd like to share my mistakes. I like to share my triumphs and all that good stuff. Okay, so now that we've got that done, hopefully that answers a few of your questions and I definitely want to get into some of the stuff. Do me a favor in the chat guys, if you guys have questions, please, please, please put them in caps lock.

It helps myself and just in the moderator to field the questions to make sure I try to get to them. Okay, you know I'm not gon na get to every single question, but it really does help if you guys put them in caps lock, because then that way we can kind of try to see which ones there is there's. Definitely a lot of questions. I noticed, as the streams go on that I miss, so you know we'll try if I fail to answer your question or you have further questions, send me an email to HVAC our videos at gmail.com and I definitely try to get to them too.

Ok, so hello to everybody, I see everybody saying hey alright, so the first thing I want to get into is I'm just gon na go through some questions here, but Abel had asked in the last chat. Actually, no, I think Abel asked me in an email. He said what would I prefer working union or non-union, and I'm gon na answer that question really easily? Ok, it really depends on what's best for you and your family, I have no preference, whether it be union or non-union. I personally run a non-union HVAC company in Southern California, but the union is not strong in Southern California.

Ok, so whatever works out best for you and your family, that's the most important thing. Ok, if you find that you get better benefits that you get better pay via Union and you like working there, then then more power to you. Ok, but it really really depends on your area. There's definitely good things about Union.

There's I'd say some bad things about Union, but there's also good and bad things about non-union. Ok, so it really really depends on your situation and you got to make that decision for your family. Ok, she has to remember: ask around before you go to work for any company, whether it be union or non-union. Ask supply houses.

Ask other contractors ask other service technicians what they think. What the rumors are. What the different things are. You can't necessarily believe everything that everybody says: ok, but it gives you a good idea.

You can kind of gauge what's going on. If you hear a crap ton of bad things about one certain company, then maybe you know you need to lean towards a different company, but you got to do what's best for you and your family. Ok, so hopefully that answers that one for you guys. Let's see definitely could Aaron Riley had asked me.

If I could break down my vacuum setup, I mean more or less. I need to probably need to make a video and show it to you guys, but currently I've been using the the true blue vacuum hose is the big giant blue. I think NorCal Dave calls him the Smurf boner I've been using those lately with a field piece. Vpat 5 vacuum pump.

It works really. Well. I used a Q Tools, micron gauge the professional micron gauge, but I would say that if you're going to use the the a Q tool app, I mean I don't want to talk you out of buying a really nice vacuum gauge. But you can use the Accu tools mic or like they're, cheaper micron gauge because it has bluetooth and if you have the app it does pretty much everything that the professional vacuum gauge does.

Okay, so I'll try to point that out in a video sometime soon. You know what per se I'm not really a tool review Channel I've thought about a couple times. I actually have another channel that I don't post any videos on, but I've thought about kind of doing tool. Reviews on that channel.

I don't want to make this channel tool reviews, though, because this channel is just sharing my normal videos and the live stream, so maybe we'll do something with that soon, where I start reviewing tools on another channel and I'll definitely make it publicly known. If I end up doing that, so alright, let's see what else we got: okay, so Hamilton. This is a great question, so Hamilton. Let me find up in here real quick at a loss as Hamilton mechanical.

He said what's the hardest part of the 608 test. In my opinion, so I took the 608 in 2002. It was a long time ago and the hardest part about the 608 test for me was the dates. They always wanted you to remember all these different dates.

That just seems so silly. I have a hard time with information that is useless and I'm gon na be honest. The dates at which the the Montreal Protocol was passed and all these different things is just a bunch of BS, but I'm not gon na get political with that they got. Ta fill in the blanks; basically, they got ta fill in test space, so they just throw in these silly questions.

But for me the hardest part about the 608 test was all the different dates that they wanted you to remember: okay, the important things. I think that you need to focus on that. You will retain from, and that will mean something to you in your career is what the different types of refrigerants are, whether it be CFCs, HCFCs, azeotrope, stiffer until I got yeah that has meaning, but the dates it just seems kind of silly, but anyways, I'm going Off on a tangent about political BS, so, but just in my opinion the dates were the hardest part, remembering those so alright when are economizers required in California. So my understanding is that anything over five tons, if I remember correctly - 2000 CFM's, I'm pretty sure, that's the the title 24 requirement that you have to have any Cana miser on this.

I I'm kind of pulling that one out of my backside, but I think that's correct, so you got to have a basically on five-ton systems. You got to have economizers, you got to have duck detectors, that's when they start making you all the fancy stuff with them. So all right - and that was AC kid that had asked that question so um, let's see what else. Okay, I'm gon na, go and get you a couple more questions on here.

So mr. Johnny boy had asked me to talk about press fittings for refrigeration piping, and that's really interesting that you asked me that mr. Johnny boy, because I have been reaching out to spoil and and spoil and has been reaching out to me because they want to Send me just just to use soom lock tool, so I can try it out. Basically, honestly, I don't think I have a lot of use for press tools in refrigeration because I don't really work in situations where I have to have a fire watch, but where the press tool would come in, I think very handy is if you work in a Hospital sector, if you work in government sector, where they make you pull hot work permits, hot work permits can be a nightmare.

I've done some work in the past on government buildings, where you basically have to shut down the building essentially, and they want you to come in overnight. They want you to have a fire watch, someone to watch the the braze joints, basically for the next X number of hours to make sure there's no fires. They want a second person standing there. They essentially want you to go through this whole permitting process, and that is a situation where I would find that, like a press tool such as like zoom lock made my spoilin or there's some other ones too, would be a great great resource.

Now I've done a lot of reading on the different press tools and a lot of people have a lot of stuff to say about whether you should be brazing or using press tools and different things and where it all comes down to. In my opinion, again, I've. Never used any of the press tools. I've never used the zoom lock.

I've just read a lot of reviews and different things, and I see people complaining. You know. Oh, I had this many joints that failed or this happened or that happen. I kind of think that a lot of the failures come down to the installation, everything that I've read about the Zoom, lock tool or any other press tool comes down to following the manufacturers instructions to a tee.

You cannot get lazy, and this is something that I don't understand where people will get lazy when they're doing a press fitting right, because you're saving hours and hours of time, not braising joints and you're using a press tool. So do you even have a reason to be lazy? I mean you're you're gon na get that job done in half the time, because you're literally just gon na be cutting reaming cleaning using a depth gauge. Putting the fitting on crimping the fitting checking the fitting with the depth gauge and with the little gauge that they give you I mean you just have to make sure you follow the proper instructions. So I do see a need for those press tools, they're very, very useful.

In certain situations there is also a lot of other requirements and you have to really lean on the manufacturers installation instructions, whether or not you can use them on soft copper. Whether or not you can use them on old, copper, you know there's a lot of different things. You need to think about. Okay, you necessarily may not want to use them on old, corroded, copper.

But again I can't really talk from experience because I've never used them, but I just you know, have read a lot of reviews. I do see a use for them just personally, I haven't used them yet and I'm talking about the spoilin zoom lock tool, but I definitely am gon na be getting my hands on it soon because they have reached out to me. I just need to call them back basically and set up a time for them to come, meet with me and do a demo, and let me try the tool out. You know, so I will definitely do something with it.

Maybe I'll try to get it on film. Show you guys what I think about it, so I don't know if it's quite necessarily gon na be using every single instance, but there's certain instances where I think it would be a great tool. Okay, so hopefully that answers your question. Mr.

Jonny boy. Alright, let's see what else I see a lot of questions coming in here, so let me see Matt sprinkle, so you said you had bad luck with zoom lock, but so what was the bad luck? I mean honestly. Was it an installation error did where the instructions followed to a tee, I'm really curious. Okay, yes spoilin is my sponsor, but I'm gon na be honest whether or not I like the tool so I'd like your feedback Matt, even if you don't want to put it in here, send me an email, matt hvac, our videos at gmail.com i'd be really interested To hear your feedback, because i want to know what kind of questions to ask when i'm going through my demo, if you guys any of you guys, have questions that you want me to talk to the spoilin rep about, I will do so I'll.

Ask them I'll. Ask them everything. Okay, so send me the questions you guys want me to talk or to ask them. When I go through my demo and we'll see if we can't get this stuff answered for you guys.

Okay, all right, I I'm sure I'm missing a lot of stuff in here, but I'll definitely get to it. Ernesto I see HVAC our vlogger. You said on your last put Instagram post. You showed your van and a lot of people.

Ask me why I carry r22. I explained out here in the Bay Area. We have a lot of the same issues with how expensive a permit is, and it's crazy yeah. So Ernesto touches on a good point.

He's the HVAC HVAC, our vlogger he's another person that has a YouTube channel he's just starting it up. He says some pretty cool content on there. So definitely give him a subscription if you guys, are interested in his channel. So he brings up a good point.

I deal in Southern California and this is a question I get a lot. Two people ask me why I still use our 22 now there is. Alternatives are 22 personally. I've explained this a million times, but personally I choose not to use the alternative refrigerants.

That's my choice: okay, I'm not judging anybody for using them, there's an instance for using them and there's a lot of situations where people want to use them to save different money and stuff, and this actually turns out to be a perfect time right now to go Ahead and plug ralphe ralphe is works for Honeywell, refrigerants and he's always in here. He was in here earlier today. I'm sure he's still here. I'm gon na put his email in here right now.

Any questions about alternative refrigerants or any of the Honeywell brand of refrigerants shoot Ralph an email he'll, definitely answer them. Okay, so in Southern California, changing an air conditioning unit is a nightmare polling permits, especially like Ernesto said in the Bay Area. I work in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Inland Empire, that kind of stuff it's a nightmare, to pull a permit. What the hoops we have to jump through to change an air conditioning unit oftentimes, will double the price of the unit and I'm not kidding with you.

So what you guys can buy a unit for it'll cost the customer - and that's I mean it'll, just it's just ridiculous: how expensive, sometimes they get so oftentimes the customer will opt to repair the unit's. Personally, I still use our 22 because I don't want to go through the hassle of changing things over my preference, so you know those are some of the things we run into it's. It's definitely interesting because I hear other people talking how the can get units changed out, left and right and it's just a nightmare. Getting through the permitting process.

I mean just off the top of my head to change a package unit. We have to make sure that the unit does not wait. I think it's over 200 pounds anything over 200 pounds or more. We have to get a structural engineer involved, meaning that they have to go through the building plans find out if the building can handle the extra weight load.

If it can't, then they have to make retrofits to make it handle the weight load. If you have to get the structural engineer involved and they don't have current building plans, then they'll have to have new building plans drawn up if they can't find them from the recorders office or something once you get the structural engineer involved and they sign off on Everything then you're gon na have to do elevation. You're gon na have to prove that the package unit itself is not going to extend past the roofline so that way the cut home-like crap Chad. Thank you very much man.

I really really a Ted dude guys. Thank you very much for the super chat, so you guys are awesome. Thank you so very much Wow yeah. So once they sign off on the structural load, whatever mean the building weight, you know extra weight that the units gon na cost.

Sorry, I was a little distracted. You guys, those super chats were awesome. Then they're gon na make sure that Brian dude. Thank you very much.

They're gon na make sure that the the unit doesn't extend past the parapet wall so that the general public can't see it from the ground level because they want to make sure that the aesthetics are perfect for the building. Once they've done that, then they want to make sure that you install the unit according to code, which is normal right. They want to make sure that you put seismic straps on the units and make sure that the unit doesn't shake off the roof which is kind of silly, but anyways. You got to put seismic straps on it.

Then you have to do duct testing. They want you to make sure that the ductwork doesn't leak and that the unit is operating as efficient as possible. They want you to verify the refrigerant charge. You have to call on a second party contractor called a hers Raider to come in and make sure that everything's good once you've done all that, then they want you to call for a inspection basically and provide them with all the information, and you have to fill Out all the correct paperwork: I'm sure that a lot of you guys have to go through that same stuff.

All over the country, but just in California just seems to be a nightmare, and if you're working in the city of Los Angeles or Los Angeles County, you have to make sure that you use Los Angeles County, approved duct tape, meaning that you can't use. You know this brand of duct tape because it's not Los Angeles County approved so anyways, I'm going off on a whole tangent, but that's why it's so difficult for us to replace units oftentimes. It's such a nightmare. Okay, so oftentimes we'll just submit a quote or a parrot, and the customer runs with it, so it is what it is: try not to get too political on this stuff.

You guys these super chats holy crap. Thank you very much guys. That is amazing. All right.

Let's see what I missed here in the Wow, I'm so blown away, Brian Ted Chad, you guys thank you very much, man Wow, all right, okay, I'm kind of going through here. Prime time. I mentioned a website that calculates BTUs for walk in boxes. So there's three programs that I think three that I can use to: rustle refrigeration with it, which is made by HT PG products corporation now or whatever right.

Just look up an app called R Us Box R Us s, Bo X, rest box is an app. It's Russell refrigeration, they do load calculations, Trenton refrigeration also does load calculations, and I believe you can go to their website and download an app. Then you can go to the heat Kraft engineering manual and do a manual load. Calculation it'll explain how to do it.

Those are the three three methods I have for doing: load calculations for walk-in boxes. I have to be honest with you. I have used the RUS Box app our USS Bo X and that's Russell refrigeration. I've used their app for years, whether it doesn't matter what brand I'm using.

I've always used their app and it works perfect for me. So those are the apps that I use to do load calculations for walk-in boxes and you can edit everything the location you're at the lights, the you know if you've got forklifts if you've got trucks, if you got anything driving in your walk-in box, it'll edit, the Loads and I've never been led astray by the rest box app. It's always done very well for me, so Wow guys, I'm still blown away by those super chests all right. Let's see what else, what are the compression ratios of scroll compressors just curious? Well, Adam I mean I don't have those exact compression ratios off the top of my head, but I will say that the compression ratio - definitely it's higher on the scroll compressors when you get into the low temps and that's why we have to have mechanical cooling.

Most of the time coming into low temp scroll compressors I mentioned on the last - live stream. We use a DTC valve or a temperature responsive expansion valve to cool the compressor, either if you're, using the temperature responsive, you're, usually using it's cooling, the suction line. Coming back, if you're using a DTC valve, it has a sensing element in the head of the compressor and it blows right into the current case, basically, and all that at Erev, a temperature response of expansion valve or a DTC valve. In a nutshell, it's a D superheating expansion valve.

It basically takes it's called liquid injection. It takes liquid refrigerant and it meters it through an expansion valve and blows it into the suction of the compressor, basically to cool off and to help reduce the discharge tempo. The compressor, hopefully, that answers your question a little bit there. Let's see what else we got going on here.

Oh rayray, right on bud all right, I'm gon na go ahead and go ahead and get to some more of this stuff. On here oh yeah, I got to say so, does last weekend I kind of talked about it in Zach's live stream just in the chat. I just wanted to address it, because I had a few questions in the beginning of the stream about it. I had mentioned that I was gon na go on a vacation.

Take a day off. I took I was planning on taking the weekend off. I took Friday off for work and then we drove up to a mountain community in our area called Mammoth Lakes spent a day out there. While we were there Friday afternoon, ish, we had a nice road trip up there with my kids and my wife and then Saturday we went out to go hiking with my daughter and my daughter actually ended up getting sick, she's.

Okay, everything was all good, but she got altitude sickness. I didn't even know it was a thing, but the mountain community that we were in was about 9,000 feet in elevation and right in the middle of the hike. She basically got really sick started. You know getting sick and couldn't walk anymore and everything and long story short.

We got down the hill, but I did have a very nice vacation. So thank you guys what what I didn't have to cut short, but I mean it was still a nice time. So, thank you to everybody that was asking in the very beginning of the chat and the stream. I really appreciate it and yeah.

It was definitely nice, so alright, so something I wanted to address and I'll get to some more questions here. Ooh, I'm gon na answer. You a question because I'm very curious about that question. So of course, ironically, the curious HVAC guy asked me that question.

I want to talk about researching on the fly, so my video that I posted today was the walk-in expansion valve replacement, and I want to talk about researching information out on the fly. So I carry a spoilin BQ kit in my van okay, where I make expansion valves all the time, thanks mister Johnny boy. I really appreciate that and often times I'll build an expansion valve out in the field. Okay.

So what that usually means is, is I do it kind of on the fly? I don't have a lot of time to do. Research. I usually don't have time to call the manufacturer. What I will usually do is Google, Google search information or all I'll.

Ask the Google write about you know, for instance, in that information. In that situation i google-searched HT PG expansion valve selection. Okay, you just got to know how to the right phrase to look up and a document came up where I showed it in my previous video, where it showed spoilin valves for HT PG, which is heat transfer, product groups, walk-in equipment, basically, okay, so HT PG makes Coils for a lot of different people, if you just look up Russell refrigeration or kolpak refrigeration, you'll see it'll just pop up. Okay, as the HT PG group, you can also Google search.

Kolpak expansion valve selection, Russell expansion valve selection forget about HTP G, go to heat craft heat craft expansion, valve selection, you'll find all kinds of installation information. I suggest that you guys google, that information. It definitely helps out in the field to be able to size and different things. If you're curious, like if you're out in the field and saying hey, I wonder what size Sylla night valve, I should install Google search spoil and solenoid valve sizing.

Okay, all the information is at your guys's fingertips. We have these amazing smartphones that have everything on them. Now I mean this is crazy. What it can do to compared to what we could do 17 years ago when I started - and I mean you know - I still had a Thomas guide in my van.

You know we had MapQuest to print out directions. We didn't have GPS that was directing us everywhere. We had to print stuff out, so we have a lot of resources at our fingertips. All you got to do is ask the Google, the Google will tell you almost everything, but you also have to know how to decipher what's good and it's bad information.

There's lots of people out there, don't just trust some YouTube dude telling you what to do. You got to do the research yourself and find out whether it's credible information, okay, but I highly suggest you guys do some research yourself also when selecting expansion valves, especially, I suggest that you lean on the manufacturer of that particular equipment if you can, for instance, heat Craft heat craft has a nozzle in their expansion valve or in their metering of Earth. I'm sorry in their distributor so in between the expansion valve and the distributor is a small little piston. Okay, we call it a nozzle and what that's there to do is to distribute the refrigerant evenly after the expansion valve.

Has you know, change the state of the refrigerant different manufacturers build the nozzles into their distributors. So, that's why it's very important to to lean on the manufacturer of the equipment to select your expansion valve size, because if you Nessun to what heat craft says, it may not match up completely because maybe hold zona Russell or coal pack included the nozzle error. Maybe they put in a different sized nozzle, so you always want to lean on each manufacturer to figure out what size expansion valve you're gon na put in the system. If you can't get the manufacturers installation instructions, then you can go back to spoil in or look at another manufacturer and just kind of come up with a rough guess.

Usually I mean it's. You know I've gotten away when I can't find information I'll. Just look at what heat craft recommends and and I'll usually get away heat craft is really good about having all kinds of product information out there available to us. All you got to do is ask the Google, so I'm gon na try to get to the chat here guys if I'm missing your questions, don't hesitate to throw them in here again.

Mister Johnny boy asks about shirts and hats. I have not placed any orders for shirts or hats just because of the nightmare that it has become and trying to distribute the shirts okay. I can't necessarily give all the shirts away. I pretty much gave away the majority, the ones that I had ordered on the first run, just because I bought a bunch of shirts, but at this point, because of the sales tax nightmare, that there is, I'm not gon na order new shirts.

At this time I will say that I do plan on taking shirt side. You have a few shirts left over if anybody happens to be going to the HR show in Florida in Orlando, and I think it's February I will be taking shirts with me, and I will be giving them out if people I'll figure out a way to distribute Them walling at the HR show, but at this time I'm not really gon na ship any more shirts out - and I don't know if I'm gon na be placed in another order or not just because I can't be losing it's. It's a lot of money to have the shirts made. So at this time until I figure out a better method, I haven't ordered any more new shirts, mr.

Johnny boy. So let's see train is the king of HVAC. You know what, because of that super chat? Ted. Yes, Trane is the king of HVAC, so look at Ted just bought me guys.

So all right, let's see what up okay bill curious. Hvac guy asked me if I have ever converted a fixed orifice or a curator metering device on a carrier package unit to an expansion valve and no, I have not bill, but I have been doing a bunch of research to try to figure out how to do It myself, I do know that train does make a retrofit kit for their Accutron metering devices or their fixed orifice metering devices. I don't know if they make it for every single package unit, but I as much information as there's as much research as I have done. I have not been able to find any information about carrier offering a expansion valve retrofit kit.

The problem is, is the the distributor and the feed lines coming from the distributor finding out what size they need to be? It's not just a wing it and throw it together. The valve sizing probably wouldn't be that hard, but it's the distributor, that's the nightmare. So I've been thinking about reaching to my contacts, that's Portland, to seeing if they can help me to it's something that I want to do, because we have so many fixed orifice metering devices that are failing, that. I would love to put in an expansion valve so bill.

I have not yet, but I am doing some research myself. I'd be curious. If you find any information about that bill, let me know so all right, let's see what else Adam okay, so I'm walking into a conversation here and I don't know what it is. But I see Adam responding to Tyler Smith saying avoid empty hands.

Don't take a trip to and from the truck with, bringing something you need to complete the job or put it away now I don't know the context of that phrase that you said Adam, but that is a great point to make without knowing the rest of the Conversation I try to do that every single time I'm working on a job, I'm trying to be as efficient as possible. If I'm going down to the van it's sometimes it gets very frustrating because I love to just. I need to go get this and I just drop everything and go grab it take something anything even if it's not a giant something or other you know take a case down that you're done with every time you go down to the van take something every time You come up, bring something you know that way: you're not making waste of time. You got to go down to go to the bathroom, bring something back up with you.

You know that makes your job go, that much smoother, even if it's just taking it down to the bottom of the ladder, even if you're not gon na put it all the way in the van just getting it off. The roof makes life that much easier so that way, when you're done with the job there's one less thing you got to do makes your day goes so much smoother, instead of just being done and having a giant mess, because I tend to make huge messes on The roof and I'm really bad at it, and I've been trying to get better. So all right, let's see what I'm missing, I'm gon na kind of go down to the bottom. Let me see what else does a scroll compressor compress more air than a reciprocating compressor? Adam showers, more air, well it doesn't, it doesn't compress any air, it shouldn't, be compressing any air, but basically you know scroll compressors.

Someone had asked me and I'm gon na go ahead and address this one really quick. Someone asked me, you know: what's better a scroll compressor, a reciprocating compressor, there's good and bad things about a scroll compressor and a reciprocating compressor. Okay, the information that I've read is that scroll compressors can definitely be more efficient. They can be quieter, they can draw less current.

They can basically be more efficient to operate electrically and refrigeration. Wise but scroll compressors also have hot, and you know some problems they have high higher than in my opinion - and I don't know if there's scientific evidence behind this, but I tend to notice higher discharge temperatures uncompressed on scroll compressors and I tend to notice. You know more issues such as on a reciprocating compressor. They can pump down to a lot lower pressures, basically, okay, so on a scroll compressor, you know trying to pump them down.

They don't really like that because they don't want to run into it. That's a problem with the scroll compressor, there's Goods and Bad's to it. Now you do have to be careful to about scroll compressors because they can be more efficient. So with that being said, if you have a reciprocating piston driven compressor, that's a really old system and you try to throw a scroll compressor of comparable BTU capacity in the system.

You can have some issues too, so the condensers have to be sized properly. I wouldn't I've done this, where you throw in a scroll compressor into a really old packaged unit that had a reciprocating compressor before that, and then you have head pressure issues right off the bat. So you got to be careful about situations so there's Goods and Bad's to scroll compressors. That's all I can think of right now.

If I didn't answer any of your questions, definitely send me an email and I'll try to get to some more of it. So HVAC kit, our evaporative coolers on refrigeration, racks, effective well sure I mean it depends on how you're using them. So I work in the Coachella Valley occasionally which, if it gets very, very hot, there's summers. On average, there are 110 to 120 degrees in the summer time on a regular and we will have high condensing temps, and we noticed that there's a lot of efficiency loss in the equipment when the condensing temps get that high.

So oftentimes we will, if we have a rack, that's designed for it. We have put swamp coolers on the racks that have panels, and then you put vents on the other side. So that way, the evaporative cooler can blow through the system, but there's Goods and Bad's to it. If you have an evaporative cooler and it's an enclosed space, you're gon na have moisture problems, so we tend to get calcium buildup on all of our equipment, which does start to degrade the life of them.

We see condenser fan motor failures a little bit more, but I've also taken evaporative coolers and just literally set them on the roof and put a small little duct on them and blown them at air conditioning condensers to lower the condensing. Temperatures definitely help, but the energy efficiency of an evaporative cooler just just blowing that energy it their electric bills, are ridiculously high. Okay, but their equipment life lasts a little bit longer. They go through a lot less compressors.

When we have lower condensing temps, you have to sacrifice something. So in a situation where you really really have high condensing temps and they can afford to you know, let go of some electricity cost. Basically, let the cost go up a little bit higher and evaporative cooler. Might be a good solution to bring your condensing temps down.

They also offer some evaporative cooling medias. You know for different packaged units. Different companies offer them where you can basically bolt them to the side of the package unit, and it's not. It works like an evaporative cooler, but it uses the condenser fan motor to still draw the air through the evaporative cooling media.

There's different things like that. They call them pre coolers those will help to but yeah they definitely are effective. But whether or not they're energy efficient, not necessarily okay, so why would an all refrigeration be three-phase, more efficient, less part starting components? Yeah, that's definitely true. Mr.

ice, if we could, you know three-phase, is my favorite to work on. It's definitely a lot easier. Starting components. Can be a pain sometimes and they're, usually in small little tight compartments and they're, just a pain in the butt and they drive you nuts, but you know the reality of it is.

Is we can't always bring three-phase into the small prep table equipment because they don't make three-phase compressors use? I don't know if they make a three-phase compressor smaller than a three quarter horsepower most prep table. Compressors are one third to one half horsepower compressors here in the u.s., at least. So you know that's a situation where you'd have a problem too and I'm sure there's more to it too, but it's just one of those things where it's just not very common here. So um all right can the evaporative and condemn, or can the evaporative and the condenser use different materials instead of copper, they have tried different materials.

They've tried stainless steel in the past, they've tried, they've, tried, aluminum different things, there's definitely weaknesses and and there's ups and downs or Goods and Bad's to everything so there's all kinds of different metals that they use, but for a condenser. Essentially, you know when they have aluminum it's it's very, very susceptible to different cleaners and different things like that. That can degrade the aluminum same thing with copper. I mean there's, there's Goods and Bad's to it.

Alright, it says: what's the largest walk and I've worked and I don't work on very big stuff, so I think the guess walking cool I've ever worked on maybe was like a five horsepower system. Yeah, that's about the biggest, never anything bigger than that. So I don't even I think you might have been able to drive a small forklift into it, and that was about it, nothing bigger than that all right, I'm gon na go and get to some of my list right here. What quick? And so this is a really good one, so the co D poster 52 asked me: should he get his general manager to shut off the swamp cooler for the kitchen as they're going into the winter season? This is a great question, I'm assuming from his question.

He works in a kitchen, maybe as a cook or a busboy, or something like that and he's asking me if the general manager of the restaurant should shut off the swamp cooler for the kitchen. This is something that we have to do so we have evaporative coolers that cool our kitchens here in Southern California. Quite often because we have a really moderate climate, we have low humidity, so we can use an evaporative cooling as air conditioning for the kitchen. It's definitely not as effective as an air conditioning unit if you have an evaporative cooler for the most part, your kitchens not gon na get below 80 degrees, and it's gon na have really high humidity in it.

Okay, but again you have to understand that in the summertime our humidity levels range from 7 % when it's really windy and dry outside to at the most 30 percent. If we get to 50 percent relative humidity, we are losing our minds in Southern California. Okay, so we will often use evaporative coolers to cool a kitchen. But what you have to be careful about is yes, a lot of managers, they call them, they say hey.

I want you to shut off my evaporative cooler on my swamp cooler, but they don't understand that a lot of times we're using that evaporative cooler that swamp cooler has a make up air unit too. So we can't necessarily shut off the air going into the building. We might have to just shut off the water pump which distributes the water across the evaporative media in the cooler. Okay.

It just depends on the situation. If the evaporative cooler or the swamp coolers being used as a makeup air device, then you don't want to shut it off because, what's going to happen like I've mentioned before, if you have an exhaust system coming into a building and it's pulling all the air out. Okay, think of a paper bag. If you put your mouth over it and suck the bag, the bag is going to collapse.

But if you cut a hole in the bottom of the bag, the air will pass through if you cut the hole the right size. If we have exhaust fans and building pulling the smoke and the heat out of the building we have to put air back in or that building's gon na be very hard to open the doors. It's not gon na collapse, but it's gon na go into a negative air pressure. So that way, when you open the doors you're gon na get a blast of air from outside in the wintertime that air might be really really cold air.

So, shutting off a swamp cooler going into a building, we got to make sure it's not being used as a make up air unit. First before you try to shut it off. Okay, if it is being used as a make up air unit, I would suggest just shutting off the water pump portion and dealing with the air coming into the building. Newer codes in California are starting to require that we temp or air it's not.

It just depends on the the county and the city that you live in. I know in the Midwest and back east you guys use tempered make up air units. You have heating sections, it's very rare for us to see a heater and a make up air unit here in California. So hopefully I answered you guys's question they're, not remorse power, how many BTUs equal one horsepower.

That is not a number that I have off the top of my head, I'm so sorry, but maybe someone else can answer that, but Ernesto HVAC, our vlog or I can answer that question because I don't do any work for Subway. He asked me if subway have such a bad rep as out there and the Bay Area owners do not want to pay yeah. There is kind of a bad rep. I don't want to talk crap on subway, but I have heard bad reps about owners not wanting to pay for different stuff and things like that.

But I don't do any work for any subway owners. So I can't really attest to anybody in my area, but I have heard that rumor, let's see what else rafael gomez, what a walk-in freezer worked properly with the evaporators facing each other. I think I'd kind of emailed you on that one Raphael. I think you asked me that question too, so in that situation it really depends.

Okay, the manufacturer has installation instructions on basically how close the evaporator fan coils can be to each other. So yes, there is instances where you can have them blowing out each other, but you've got to follow the manufacturer's instructions. What they don't want you to do is blow condenser fan or evaporator fan motor into evaporator fan motor to where one side doesn't let the others air or they cancel each other out. But if you have enough distance between the evaporators, it should be okay, you also don't want to have a situation where the discharge of one evaporators blowing into the return of another evaporator, so the manufacturers usually have installation instructions where they recommend that you have a certain Length between the evaporators and they also have piping instructions and different ways to set them up to help cool a box.

Okay. So hopefully that answers your question for you, but all right, let's see top apps that I use in HVAC, so measure quick is like the number one app the field piece app. I will use. Occasionally I use the let's see what else the Copeland mobile app is.

A huge app for me and then the tecumseh compressors, has an app too that helps you find starting components and different things, but the Copeland mobile app is a great resource for diagnosing compressors for sure that is an awesome awesome, app I'll try to do a video! Maybe where I show the different apps, I've showed them before, but I'll try to do one more recent and show some information on that ooh mr. ice. How do you troubleshoot a broken pickup tube in a receiver? I'm gon na give you guys a visual on that one hold on, so a receiver typically will have a dip tube inside of it. So this is a receiver, and this is the dip tube.

You can see right down here that it basically comes down to the bottom of the receiver and what it does is. This is the inlet of the receiver right here, and this is the outlet of the receiver, so something that can happen, especially on bigger receivers, not necessarily on the small stuff. Is this dip tube can crack or it can break off a situation where that might happen. Is if you have a flashing sight, glass and what you can do, what I would suggest you do is find out what the refrigerant charge of the system is.

A symptom might be that you have a flashing sight, glass and no matter how much gas you add. The sight glass keeps flashing, your expansion valves not working correctly, all that stuff right. So what can happen is if this dip tube is broken or cracked, then it this receiver is always going to have vapor in the top of it. Then it would pull the vapor off the top of the receiver and feed that to the expansion valve and not necessarily pull the liquid.

The purpose of the dip tube is to make sure that the outlet pulls liquid from the bottom of the receiver down here. In the bottom, sometimes that might be two inches from the bottom. Who knows okay, so in that situation I would expect you to have a really really low subcooling, okay, and I would expect you to have a flashing side, glass, actually, no sub coin. Essentially, a flashing sight, glass and no matter how much gas you add to the system.

It just still won't clear. Then that's when I would suggest you suspect, a receiver dip tube, that's broken or cracked. I personally have never seen one in my career, but I have heard a lot of people talk about them, especially in the grocery market sector, with the bigger receivers. I could imagine that on the bigger ones, that's when you can get some really violent action going on in that system and that could possibly crack or break that receiver.

So in my situation, my experience, if I came across this, what I would do is, I would add so much refrigerant to the system and once I know that I've added more refrigerant or close to more refrigerant than the receiver can handle and that sight glass still Doesn't clear up? That's when I would suspect a receiver problem and the no sub coins gon na be a huge thing. We typically don't use sub coin as a metric for charging in refrigeration systems like walkins and stuff like that. But sub coin is a metric to let us know like we. We typically want to have some sub cooling coming out of the condenser and we typically don't want to have more than you know X, number of sub point two.

So you can use sub clean as an overcharge metric and/or, an undercharge like a severe under charge metric. But you know, as long as you have some sub cooling coming out of the condenser. If you have a system with the receiver, we're not really gon na say we want to have ten degrees, sub, clean or whatever you typically. You just want to see some sub cooling, and then you want to clear up the sight glass.

So hopefully that answers your question for you, but let's see okay, so mr. Johnny boy in the wintertime that is below freezing can a walk-in cooler have vents to the outside and use that cold air instead of a compressor to save electricity. Yes, they do have economizer type systems for walkins. You do have to be very careful about those systems because they will typically have like a linkage.

Type set up. I've never seen one but I've just read about them and read reviews on them. But I could imagine that it would be like some vents that you could open up and would only have to be in like an extremely cold climate. And I would imagine that you got to have some sort of a vacuum breaker and some sort of a heating element to make sure that your dampers and different things don't freeze up, because, if you're pulling that air into the building, you could freeze your product too.

Too much so, but those systems do exist, I don't know how often they're used I've just read about them. Personally, so let's see what else? What is my favorite meter? So personally, I use filled peace meters. I use the filled piece SC 660, but I also do have a fluke 902 meter. It's a clamp meter.

It's a refrigerate C clamp meter. I tend to lean on the field piece one just for the features it does. What I need to do now. I do want to address this too, because I've had this question a lot if I was working on really really technical equipment.

If I was doing a lot of work on VFDs and different things like that, I would probably lean on a fluke meter a little bit more, a high-end fluke meter, just because I need the accuracy for me. The field piece SC 660 is very accurate. It does everything that I needed to do. It has some cool features, such as phase rotation that works perfect for me and it does pretty much everything I need to do but, like I said, if I was working on supercritical and equipment, I might get a more accurate, expensive meter, but you know I love The field piece once so: let's see what else yeah definitely check with the health department before installing walk in economize.

Just because another great point, too, is you got to remember what what how clean is that air coming from the outside there's a lot of different factors that go into it. So it's not just a slap in an economizer damper and call it a day. I mean. There's a lot of information that you got to make sure you're doing right.

So all right, let's see, let me get to some more these things. I have on my list right here. Oh so, here's another really good question. So Nathan Pollan asked me: what do I use to get equipment onto the roof? Okay in certain situations, so best-case scenario: if money's not an issue when I'm working on big equipment, big compressors package units different things like that, I'm gon na use a crane.

Okay, the best situation best thing I can do is use a crane as much as possible, but there's times where, let's say I just can't justify using a crane or there's times where hey. I want to save a couple bucks and I don't want to use a cream, so what I actually have is, I have a Sumner equipment, lift okay, it is essentially a it has forks on it. I can lift equipment up to 24 feet onto the roof. It has outriggers, I'm actually gon na pull up a picture of it, really quick for you guys and show you and it's a pretty cool little lift and it works really well for the situations that you know, you have to lift equipment really really high.

So I'm gon na go and share my screen, really quick and let's see display capture, let's see if I can do this right turn this off and let me turn this off there we go and I'm gon na go ahead and share this over right now. So this is a Sumner equipment, lift as you guys can see down at the bottom. We have little Forks that that, basically, this whole thing lifts up into the air and we have outriggers to help support the load. We have a winch right here and I lift exhaust fans.

I've lifted all kinds of stuff up onto the roof. Using that equipment lift the lift was quite expensive, I want to say it was like three or four thousand dollars, but it's it's paid for itself. In the seven years, I've had it easily easily paid for it, because you know I mean whenever we use that lift we charge a nominal fee for it, and we, you know, we we basically made up our money. Lifting you know every time we've used it.

It's definitely a great little lift to use to lift equipment under the roof. They have smaller versions that you can use for ice machines. I lift exhaust fans. I've never really lifted an air-conditioner on the roof, but condensers compressors different things like that.

That thing gets me under the roof, no problem in a situation where you need to now. If that doesn't work, of course, a rope and a pulley system. I've never had to use pulleys to get equipment on the roof, but I've read a lot about people using like gantries and putting pulleys on and that's definitely a great idea. So yeah that's what we use to lift equipment onto the roof so yeah.

I guess you could do two lifts for different units, yeah yeah, that I guess you can call that a duct jack or a high Jack. That's also another thing to call that the cool thing about this. One, though, is is it has the outriggers. The outriggers are a big thing, because that's simple the load with that lift.

I can lift 650 pounds, not that I ever want to lift that much because you're gon na have to manhandle it once you get onto the roof, but you could you could lift 650 pounds on that unit, so the higher you go, the less the the weight Goes, I think you can lift 650 to 224 feet. I think, is what you can do so definitely a cool thing to use when you need to so all right. Let me see. Okay, I'm gon na go and get to some more of these questions here.

Real quick huh, Oh okay, so ray ray. You asked me a really good question ray asked me: how hard is it to get restaurant customers to purchase new equipment? So I kind of addressed that a little bit with the permitting process when it comes to packaged units on the roof when it comes to restaurant chains, which is majority of the work that I do is like big restaurant chains, you know equipment replacement. It just depends on the chain. I have one particular chain: that'll change, equipment left and right when the equipment gets three to four years old five years at the max.

They change it out, get a new warranty when they buy a new unit.