Hey there, everybody, hopefully you guys, can hear me. Okay, if you guys will. Let me know in the chat once you can hear my audio coming through, hopefully, everybody's doing great. We've got a few things that I caught topics I want to cover tonight and then, after that I will get to some questions that I have gotten through email and different stuff and then we'll go from there.

I just want to kind of get a thumbs-up from the chat here. If you guys are watching this stream and you're, not part of it live, there's a chat that goes on while we're in the stream so cool all right. Everybody hear me: okay, right on sweet. Okay, so we're going to get into this today so today I don't really have you know I'll talk about the videos that I uploaded this past week.

Sorry I was late on the Friday video I just uploaded that last night, but I went ahead and uploaded another one today. So that way I kind of made up for it. The first thing that I kind of want to start out talking about is just troubleshooting. Okay, I've I've preached this a bunch of times and I'm kind of going to go over it again and the it's just going to be me moving closer to the mic there.

But so what I want to talk about is you know my little motto that I go by and that is looking at the big picture. Okay and I'll give you guys some examples with something that happened today, but you know the the phrase that I kind of use a lot is: let's take a step back, let's think about it. Let's look at the big picture. Okay and let's solve the problem, not the symptom.

Okay, this sounds cheesy, it sounds corny, but if you guys can go into your service calls with that in mind, it will really help you guys. Okay and it'll help you to instead of just solving the problem. You know, which is a bad compressor, we're gon na look at the big picture and come up with a solution for everything. Okay, I should have said solve the symptom.

Okay, because compressors don't just go bad, something caused that compressor to go bad, whether it was bad electrical connections on the contactor, whether it was you know, a flooding expansion valve that was washing the oil out of the compressor. You know it's always important, and especially when we we diagnose things and especially when we put quotes in for things that we we put room in our quotes for after we repair, you know the symptom. So if we have a bad compressor, let's make sure that we have enough time in our quote, to spend some time diagnosing after we spend eight hours changing that compressor right. Maybe a follow-up visit is within your quote, or you know make sure that the customers sign off on that stuff.

Knowing that you wanted to do a follow-up visit. Okay, it's very important and again, I know some of you guys have heard this stuff, but you know it's it's that stuff that really helps us. So today I had a service call. It was at a new customer someone I'd never been to before.

It was a, it was actually a local hotel and the service call was very vague. It was that they had a reach and that wasn't working, and they really didn't give me very many specifics. It was kind of confusing because they were talking about well. Actually, I know where this hotel is and it's a big one and there's no parking, and I tried to ask and I'm about parking, and this is the kind of stuff that goes into a business.

So, for those of you that are just service techs on the flipside answering the phones, here's what I'm dealing with! I get a receptionist calling me saying: hey, we have a service call. We need you to come out and work on some drawers and I asked them for details and they say well, all we know is it's not working so then I asked him okay, so you know we forward them all of our billing information and once they get All their billing information and we get approved and we give them our insurance, certs and everything you know, then they say: okay, you know. When can you come out, so we scheduled a time and then, as I call this morning, to make sure that they're ready for me, I asked him, you know where am I going to park and they say well you just park in the parking structure and I Go yes, he parking structures, aren't gon na work for a service van. So do you have a loading dock that I could park on? No, we don't you know if you park in the parking structure, we can validate your parking and it okay.

You know so. I went there, I couldn't fit in the parking structure, so I ended up figuring it out, but once I got inside, I was escorted by maintenance and maintenance took me over there and I listened to what maintenance had to say. Okay, because maintenance is the people that have been working on this unit, and I said okay, so what is the problem? They say? Well, it's not working and I go okay. Well, I walk up to it.

The breaker was off. The box was at 70 degrees and I said, but what was happening before you guys called me, and he said well, we've been having freeze-up problems on this unit consistently. The unit has been freezing up every other day, okay cool. So now I have an idea as to what the problem was now.

I also instructed him that for future you know I would prefer they just leave the unit on, because I would rather come up to it frozen up. So that way, I didn't have to probe them, trying to figure out what was going on. I'd prefer to see the ice up situation so that way, I can diagnose from that, because a freeze up can can tell you a lot depending on how it's frozen up. Is it just half the coil is a quarter of the coil.

You know all kinds of stuff like that: okay, so, but you know anyways, it was already defrosted by the time I got there and what I did was. I turned the circuit breaker on and immediately when I turned the circuit breaker on. I saw what I thought. The problem was okay and it was part of it.

It was a symptom was it was part of the problem, but they had a Ronco electronic temperature controller mounted by the condensing unit, and it immediately said 120 degrees on the Ronco temperature controller so and mind you. It was like sixty degrees in the box, so what I did just to verify was I had the field piece, JobLink probes and I put one inside the box and then I came back to the condensing unit and I let it run for a minute and I Went ahead and gauged up on it, and I confirmed that yeah, it was like sixty degrees in the box and and the temperature controller was reading a hundred degrees. So I went through the settings to make sure that everything was working properly on the control and the settings were fine. I didn't see any memory loss or anything.

If you guys are familiar with the Ronco controls, they can have an EPROM failure where they have memory loss, but I didn't see that so I went ahead and got approval from them to go ahead and change to try to change the temperature sensor. The thermistor on the end so tested it, it tested bad changed the thermistor and I got the box to start reading the correct temperature. Now again, I'm making assumptions that this is what was causing the unit to freeze up. This was a refrigerator.

It wasn't a freezer. It was just a two drawer unit and you know I I'm again just going through doing the best of my ability making educated guesses, and I don't tell the customer that. But it's true because I didn't see the condition I didn't see it iced up. So I have to make an educated guess found a bad temperature sensor.

The temperature controller thought it was a hundred degrees in the box when it was sixty degrees in the box. So what would happen? The box would continue to run because it would never satisfy and it would freeze up okay, but I don't just stop there. All right I could have, but I'm gon na look at the big picture. Go ahead and gauge up run the system check the sight glass.

The sight glass was flashing, okay, so that's one other thing, but I'm gon na go ahead and watch the Box come down to temp and I noticed something that the box came down to temperature really fast, okay and when it did what I noticed, what my my Field piece job link probe. I just had the return air probe in there. I noticed that that temperature came down to 24 degrees when the the probe for the temperature controller was still saying in the forties, and I was like huh that's kind of odd. It came down pretty quick, maybe my maybe my my temperature probe was getting supply air somehow or recirculating the supply air.

So I just let the box operate and I let it satisfy, but then, when I noticed is when the box satisfied again, this is a refrigerator when it's satisfied, my field piece, JobLink probe, read the identical temperature of the Ronco temperature controller. So, okay, that confirmed to me that the Ronco temp control sensor that i just installed was reading the accurate temperature. But something was going on with the air, because the the field piece JobLink probe - was reading a lot colder. While it was running okay kind of had an assumption but watch the box operate, I went ahead and while I had my gauges on the unit, I went ahead and when it turned back on, I cleared up the side glass.

It took less than a. You know. Right about a pound less than a pound of gas and did a leak check on the the condensing unit. While it was shut off, nothing nope, no traces.

I did find some some caps on it that the the seals weren't very good and they were kind of full of rust and whatnot, so you know recommended replacing the caps. But before I finished up, I, like I said I saw the Box come down to temp. But before I finished up, I went back over to the evaporator coil and I took a piece of paper and I put it up to the fan motor and I noticed that the fan motor was spinning in the wrong direction. So if you can picture this, this kind of looked like an omni temp evaporator coil, similar okay, but it actually had an axial fan motor.

It was a custom unit, so it had an axial fan motor as the evaporator fan motor and the fan motor was sucking air into the coil and blowing it out the drain pan. Now this isn't that type of a unit. So I knew something wasn't right about that. What was interesting is, according to the customer.

This unit was installed three years ago and nobody's ever worked on it. This is the first time it broke down, which kind of blew my mind that the fan motor was running backwards. This entire time and economy me wonder how this thing ever tempt properly either. So it was real simple.

I went ahead and flipped the fan motor around. So that way, it was drawing air in through the bottom of the unit, the drain pan and blowing it out the fan motor out into the box, which is the way this is supposed to work, and that would also explain why I saw that really cold temperature. On my my JobLink probe, okay, my JobLink probe reads the temperature a lot faster than the Ronco temperature controller; okay, so it it uh. It basically explained what was going on with that again.

This is taking a step back and looking at the big picture. Okay, so the symptom was the box was freezing up. Okay, I found a couple things wrong. We found that the temperature sensor had it was bad and it was reading a lot warmer.

I was making the temperature controller think that it was a hundred degrees in the box when it was sixty degrees. Okay, then I found that the unit was a little low on refrigerant. I topped off the charge. I also did a leak check on the evaporator and found nothing, so I told the customer just to keep an eye on that, but then I also found that the evaporator fan motor was going in the wrong direction.

Okay, so we're looking at the big picture, but before I left you know, I instructed the customer about other things that could cause the units to freeze up. I noticed that they had an excessive amount of defrost inside the defrost clock, so I'm talking every what did they? What was it every hour and a half or every two hours? They had a 15 minute defrost throughout the day, so it was like this thing would run for two hours. Then defrost run for two hours, then defrost my assumption again, I'm making an educated guess, because I'm not the person that normally maintained this unit. My assumption was they'd been having this freeze-up problem for a long time and they were trying to remedy it by you know: adjusting the defrost clock, it's also possible that someone tried to remedy it by flipping that fan motor around.

I don't know it was hard to tell whether or not it had been worked on it didn't look like it bit, flipped around in a long time to me, but you know who knows so big-picture diagnosis, okay, everything was good after I left after I corrected all The issues and the customer was very happy. I also educated the customer on you, know, door gaskets and her drawer gaskets. I should call him because it was a two drawer unit and drawer wheels and drawer closing hardware and making sure that the the cooks and the kitchen staff were closing all the drawers. Okay, as I was working, you know I was talking with the customer because it was the maintenance staff, so I was, you know very open to explaining everything that I was doing to him because he was interested.

He was asking me because you know he knows a little bit about refrigeration, and so he was just like well. Why did you do this? And - and I just explained him you know before I took my service gauges off on there, because I was looking at the big picture. I did a pump down test on the suction service valve to test to see if the compressor would pull into a vacuum. On the suction side, you know just just big picture looking at everything just to be safe, and you know when I did that he asked me well, why are you testing the compressor suction valve and I explained to him: this is what can happen.

You know and and went through all the steps. Okay, so the reason why I bring that up was it was the perfect scenario where I wish I could have filmed it, but unfortunately, because of the you know, it's just like kind of a fancy hotel and - and I knew it just didn't - it didn't - have the Right vibe to be able to open up my camera and bring it in there and start you know, filming stuff. So that's why I wanted to bring this up, because this was one of those things where I wish I could have so that I could show this is the steps we went through. You know this is why we did that.

I think that that's really important. You know, and one of the things that I talked to my guys about - and this is just just the way that I go about is - I will listen to what the kitchen staff says. You know, and I will take their what they say you know and and put it in the back of my mind, but I usually am gon na listen to the management or the maintenance staff. Okay, because and and if the kitchen staff tells me something that contradicts the management or what the maintenance staff has told me, then I will bring that up to the management of the maintenance staff and say look you're telling me one thing: your kitchen staffs telling me In the other, what do you want me to do and the reason why I do that this is actually something that came up in my company the other day.

Nobody did anything wrong, but the reason why I do that is because we've been led astray by kitchen staff before where we have a guy that goes out, says hi to the manager and then you know goes into the kitchen and ask the cooks: what regions not Working and the cooks say: oh it's this one, and so he starts working on it and he's two hours into it and then the manager comes over and says: what are you doing? That's not the region that I called you about. You know they don't know what they're talking about, and you know it was one of those things where they actually had another region that was down, but the manager was upset with us because that wasn't the one that they called us about and they didn't want us To work on that region, so communication is a big thing about troubleshooting too, and communicating with the right people thanks a lot Zak. I appreciate it man, you know communication with the right people. Talking to you know the the management and and getting the management's approval before we do things I'll give you another example we had this was and again nothing that we did wrong, but this was a couple years.

Back, probably two years ago, we sent someone out to install a lettuce, crisper and a lettuce. Crisper is essentially the a couple different companies make um. I think this one was made by glass tender, it hangs on the wall and it just has a hopper in it and it holds all the lettuce, okay and they can pull their lettuce out and make salads so they're kind of awkward in their top-heavy. That's the other thing, that's tricky about him, because the compressor was usually located in the top of it.

So when you would go to lift it off the wall, it would hang on a bracket or sit on a shelf when you go to lift it off the wall. If you didn't know how heavy they were, it was kind of you know, they're a little misleading because it looked like two people could do it, but it was really a three to four person job to get these things off the wall so anyways. What had happened was you know, my guy went over there and grabbed three of the cooks and said: hey guys, can give me a hand and, as they were, thank you so much Nastya as they were dropping the lettuce crisper off the wall. They had a couple.

Cooks and then my guy one of the cooks, just decided to let go of the lettuce, crisper and the whole thing dropped and smashed on the ground, dented the whole side of the lettuce crisper, and it wasn't good and the cook that dropped. It was acting like he was hurt, you know, and it was not a good situation, so my tech did not do anything wrong. In fact, he probably held on to it too long himself because he was trying to stop it from dropping and he probably hurt himself a little bit. Okay in a situation like that, I would tell my guys to protect yourself if you've got to drop.

Something you've got to drop it, but the reason why I tell this story is when the manager came over. The manager was completely frustrated and upset because they had no idea that we had asked the kitchen staff to help them lift that unit off the wall. Okay, again, communication: it's a big thing about troubleshooting and helps okay, the manager. There was nothing that we did wrong, but, like I, after everything, you know we were fine.

I took I deal with facilities and everything was good, nothing that we did bad in our set, but the way that that I talked to our technician is it was a learning experience look. This is what we do, even if you know the cooks themselves of the kitchen staff are perfectly capable of helping you. What I always do is run things through the manager. Okay, because then it puts the liability on the manager.

So, instead of us saying well, we asked these three guys and they said they would help us if we'd had done it. The other way we would have walked to the manager and said hey. I need three of your guys to help me out. Can you go get them for me and and ask them to come help me, then that lets the manager be the responsible, one that picked those cooks and then I'll usually even ask the manager to come over there, and would you mind just kind of supervising that Way they can see so that way they see everything that's going on.

Okay, so you know just some advice about communication. That's what I'm just trying to bring up communication. Okay, this all goes into troubleshooting and I guess we're kind of getting into you, know, ethics and how we deal with restaurants and different things too. Okay, if you're new to the channel, you know I just want to kind of do a little introduction.

My name is Chris: I do these live streams. Monday night, I upload two videos a week Mondays and Fridays and then these live streams are away for me to answer. So I usually start out with an educational topic, something to talk about for the first 20 minutes or so and then I'll get into questions in different things. Okay, so I gave you guys the examples again.

Big-Picture diagnosis, okay, you know I. I can't stress that enough. Looking at the big picture, okay, it takes you a little more time, but you look a lot better when you submit a quote granted the quotes a few bucks more than the next guy, but you're saying we're gon na solve the problem. You know the other guy's saying we're just gon na change, the compressor I'm saying I'm gon na change the compressor.

Then I'm gon na spend a couple hours diagnosing further and telling you exactly what caused that compressor to go bad. Okay, big-picture diagnosis, I'll get to the chat here in a few minutes, guys couple more things. I want to cover another example that we had was we had a kitchen staff that we went to a restaurant to install a new refrigerator that the restaurant had ordered. We said hi to the manager when we arrived and but then our service tech went into the kitchen and he had a new refrigerator that was out on the back dock, so he unpackaged it uncrated it plugged it in made sure it came down to temperature.

Then he took it into the kitchen and asked the cooks hey, which, which refrigerator are we replacing? And the cook said? Oh, that one right there, so my service tech pulled the old refrigerator out, put it on the back dock pushed the new refrigerator in went out onto the back dock recovered. The gas asked one of the kitchen staff to come, help him load the refrigerator into our trailer, and then he took the trailer and went and dumped the refrigerator went up to the manager got an invoice. Signature said we were good manager was happy and we he went to the dump through the refrigerator out in the dump. Everything was good and then we got a call back the next day and said we changed the wrong refrigerator.

They still have a refrigerator that wasn't working now, granted there's a lot of fault on the management staff in that whole situation, but had our tech communicated with the manager grabbed the manager by the hand said which refrigerator am i changing? You know where does it go made? The manager, you know, be part of the the decision-making instead of asking the kitchen staff, because guess what the kitchen staff don't pay us, they could tell us anything they want. You know it doesn't matter, because the manager is the one that's paying us or the manager is approving the payment. You know that corporates paying us so communication, it's those things. Okay, you know.

One of the things I try to share in my videos is is the mistakes that I've made, and these are the mistakes that we as a company have made, and you know yes, there's a lot of fault on the management staff, but it also falls on us Because we have to deal with all the headaches and and and you know the service tech - it doesn't fall on him so much but me in the office. That's what we have to deal with. You know on a daily basis. It's silly stuff like that, my tech didn't do anything wrong.

There's just certainly things we could have done to help the situation same thing goes for buying a compressor from the supply house. Hey. I need this compressor. Okay, no problem get to the supply house pick up.

The compressor go out to the job rope it up to the roof, go ahead and install the compressor and then find out it's a 460 volt compressor and you needed a 208 three-phase. So there's some fault on the supply house there, but most of its on you, because you didn't verify you assume that the supply house gave you the right part. Okay, I, like my supply houses, no offense to them. I don't trust them.

I always double check because it's going to be me at the end of the day that has to answer for the mistakes to the customer, to my boss, to whoever okay. So you know in a situation like that you're kind of up a creek without a paddle right, it's kind of a problem, so communication, okay, verifying that things are correct. Looking at the big picture, don't just assume and don't just go into things. You know like everything's gon na be super easy and - and you know you always got a question and and go through that stuff.

Okay, all right guys. I am gon na start with the questions. I had a very interesting question. I don't know if you're in the chat right now, I did invite you to the livestream.

I had a question just before I went live and it was from a high school student and let me pull up the question here and it was very interesting. It says it says: hey I've recently found your channel and he seems to like the subject and he was wondering if he should get in this career, how much it requires as far as education goes and if there's a livable wage and he says he's still in High school so he's just asking okay, if you're watching that you didn't give me your name but to you I say yes to anybody out there that is interested in this trade. Okay, if any of you guys, are in the chat or watching this stream and you're thinking about it, this is a great trade. Okay, it is what you make it.

Okay, if you choose to be lazy and you choose to not be thorough, it can be miserable. Okay, if you, if you, if you get frustrated easily, it's a little difficult, okay, it's a challenging trade. You know on any given day we as HVAC technicians and I'm gon na talk about myself. I'm talking everybody! That's watching this! We are forced to be electricians.

Plumbers. You know customer service people, refrigeration, guys. I mean we do a lot okay, so it is a very good trade, but it is also a very challenging trade. It can be very rewarding if you get into the right area the right field of what you like to do.

I would suggest that this would not be for someone that is not mechanically inclined if you're not mechanically inclined, maybe you need to get into a management position, some kind of an office position or a sales position. Okay. This is definitely a good trade. Now, as far as the pay goes, it changes all over the place.

Okay, so here in Southern California, an apprentice can expect to make anywhere from fifteen to eighteen dollars an hour starting out, okay, and that all depends on how much education he has. Okay and I'll get into the education in a minute. You know experienced technicians if your stuff don't stink, you're, going to be making 35 and up if you've got a little bit of learning, you're gon na be making around the just under you know the 20 to 35 range I mean and and then depending on the Type of the field - you know the area of the field that you get into heavy industrial and stuff, like that, you can make fifty five dollars an hour and up I mean it, the sky is the limit, okay, but it's all dependent on your abilities and how Much you can handle. Okay, do you want to get into management all kinds of stuff? Okay, but you got to start from the bottom.

It's I think, it's very important that people in here remember that just because you graduated a trade school does not mean that you're gon na start making. You know in my area $ 35 an hour because you're, not okay, even if you went through two years of schooling and I'm sorry if you paid ridiculous amounts of money through a private trade school. But even if you paid that ridiculous amount of money - you're not gon na start, you know making $ 30 an hour. It's just not gon na happen.

You are gon na have to work your way up. I will say that all across the United States and around the world I would even say is that, while at least in North America, wages are going up, okay, wages are going up because there's a demand for service technicians. We have a skills gap, bla bla bla. You know all that stuff, you guys have all heard it.

So we have a massive shortage of service technicians in the entire construction industry and wages are going up because there's less of us out there. Obviously we get to ask for more money. Okay, so wages are going up, but just because you, graduated trade school or went to trade school doesn't mean that you're gon na start out making $ 35 an hour. You do have to work your way up.

I would HIGHLY highly suggest personal opinion that you do not work for a service company that is gon na, throw you in a service van after you've ridden with someone for two months. Okay, you have not learned enough to be on your own after two months of just riding with someone now in a perfect world, I'd love to say I put my guys through a three year: apprenticeship, la-de-da-de-da that doesn't happen, okay, but we evaluate them based on their Skills they ride with us for a while and then depending on their skills. Then we start to move them out. We branch them out, we put them into a service vehicle and we have them start.

You know meeting me at the job. We have them start doing. Preventative maintenance'iz, you know little things and then working their way up to being full service technicians. I imagine it's very similar with other service companies, but I just highly highly discourage you from jumping in a service van or letting a service company put you on a service van too soon.

Okay, it's gon na! Do nothing but hurt you and hurt everybody else, because they may be forced to give you a bigger wage but and come the day. You have to leave that service company and you go to work for another service company just because you are making that much money at service company a doesn't mean you're gon na make that at B, because b wants you to have all the skills that you didn't. Have with service company a so I suggest that you just act like a sponge and absorb everything that you can and so for the guy from high school that sent me that email. Yes, this is a great trade, don't be discouraged from it.

I would highly suggest personally what I appreciate as a business owner is when someone calls me and says: hey, I'm really interested in getting into the trade I have already enrolled in the local community college. I found that they had a trade organizer at trade class. Okay for HVAC, I'm I'm two months into my schooling and I was curious if you would be willing to hire someone, that's already going to school and willing to learn. That's what I'm looking for, I'm looking for someone that has shown me the drive that they've started to go to school before they even applied with me now.

Do I think that school is gon na teach them everything? No okay, they're gon na learn some from school they're gon na learn some from me or whoever else they're riding with and then they're just gon na have to learn some overtime. There's research that you have to do on your own at night. You know after work, what I'd suggest for those people that are being apprentices out there is you know if you are working with someone, don't walk around the roof with headphones? Okay, take the headphones off your head, listen! Listen to the sounds, even if you're doing something as boring as changing filters. Just listen! Listen to what's normal! Listen to what you think isn't normal ask questions, write down model numbers of that really weird-looking piece of equipment over there that you don't know what it is and when you go home at the end of the day after you're done changing those boring filters.

Google, that model number research about it. So then you can go to your boss and say hey. While we were working there. I you know, you know, did the same thing.

You know I. I heard this noise or I read about this and it didn't seem right. That's the stuff that impresses me: okay, when someone comes to me and says: hey while I was there, it didn't sound right. So I did some research and I found out that that noise is more than likely a bearing going bad on the motor and then what do you think, and I appreciate, though, questions okay, so you know it's it's it's a very good trade.

So to answer that that guys, could that kids question yes get into the trade okay and for anybody else interested in the trade? Do it it's a great great field, but you have to be motivated. You have to have mechanical skills if you're gon na get into service. There is other things you can do if you don't want to get into service. Okay, supply houses need people all kinds of stuff all right, but this is a very good trade.

So that was the question on that. I kind of want to see if you guys have any questions in the chat, if you guys do go ahead and post them back down at the bottom. Okay, I'm gon na slowly start reading from the bottom up, but I don't want to get lost all the way in the top, so anybody that has questions go ahead and post them and I'll try to answer them. Okay, I'm gon na just start reading here.

Real quick yeah, you know I'm still learning everyday Brian Milburn just said that he's you know still learning every day and that's true. That's that's where I am I'm learning every day. Okay, Todd! You want me to look at the camera, so here's the funny thing Todd. I get enough of people telling me to stop looking at the camera, because apparently I have steel eyes and I stare into their souls.

So then I don't look at the camera and then people say that I'm not looking at the camera enough. So it's just kind of funny. I can't win all right: okay, so total tech you were thrown in a restaurant refrigeration with no schooling and trained for only a few months by a hack. It was crazy, but it did work out for you and that's great that it did work out for you.

Okay, I was in a similar situation, love him to death. I I started working for my dad a long time ago and I was kind of put in the same situation where I was just kind of thrown out there, and I was taught a lot of things that were what I consider to be wrong. Okay, beer can cold and all kinds of different stuff. There was some some education in that stuff because some of those things I learned they were wrong and don't do them some of those things I I would ask like okay, so why am i charging to? You know just a certain pressure I think I mentioned this recently was you know I can vividly remember in taught how to charge or check the refrigerant charge on in our 22 package unit and back in the day we worked on a lot of carriers, but this Was just the method that I was taught and it was simply cover up the condenser or block off the the condenser fan motor discharge until your head pressure got to 275 psi.

I don't know why. I still remember these numbers once your head pressure got to 275 psi. I was told that your suction pressure should be at 65 psi, and if it wasn't you added gas until it was now. We all know that that's incorrect.

Okay, I was never taught anything and those were all fixed, orifice metering devices, so I was never taught anything about target superheat. You know, which is the right way to charge that system to check air flow and then adjust the refrigerant charge via in while, while monitoring the target, superheat. Okay - but you know things were forgiving back, then things aren't forgiving like that these days. So you know there was some value in what I was taught because hey they got it working and it worked it just wasn't efficient, but back then we didn't need to be as efficient.

Ok, the equipment was less than 10 seer. You know you could overcharge a condensing unit and it was no big deal. Ok, because there was enough storage room and that condenser for it to just sit in there and it wasn't a problem. Ok, but nowadays with micro, channel condensers - and you know the our our system is much less forgiving, so we have to be accurate, ok and, unfortunately, the equipment that we have these days doesn't last as long.

So it's less forgiving, it doesn't last as long and it's not so accepting to abuse. Ok compressors. They can't handle liquid as much as they used to be able to back. Then ok, we're dealing with scroll compressors.

Now sometimes certain Scrolls can handle liquid, but some can't ok back then it was all resets and you know so just things are different, but there's still value. Ok, so I was never a Punk working with my dad. I never told him you're wrong. I know you're wrong.

I would always listen to what he had to say, but then I would go home and I would research - and I would you know, find what was inaccurate and - and you know in in politely bring it up to him. Hey. You know you told me to do this like this and I'm just kind of curious why you said so you know and and and and this you know, then I would explain this is what I read and and that's how I bettered myself again, not knocking my Dad because he did teach me a lot and I still work with him to this day and you know, but it was just different times. Okay, so alright keep going in here see what this and I I also remember a time when we would clean condensers with our 22.

Of course that was all pre 1991 Montreal Protocol 1992, whenever that was of course, okay. It was all before then, but yeah. I remember cleaning condensers and blown out drains with our 22 because it was so cheap. It was nothing, you know: vacuum pumps, huh those were a luxury recovery machines.

Those were a luxury. Okay, things are different. Now that wasn't the right way. I learned and we moved on and I try to share those mistakes and that's the whole point of my videos is.

I am not perfect whatsoever and I try to share the mistakes that I have made so that way. Hopefully, you don't necessarily make all the same mistakes that I do. Okay, I think it's important that people still learn a little bit on their own, but I try to share that with you guys. So that way, you guys understand you know and can learn from my mistakes.

Okay, because I've made a lot of horrible mistakes that I hope you guys never make. So, okay keep going into here. Seeing what I'm missing everybody that's come in here, hey. How are you guys all doing? I really appreciate you guys coming into this stream.

Okay, alright vanassa's. You said the best book for apprentice, learning on the job for refrigeration systems and electrical circuits. Okay, so that's a hard one, the Nasus! You know my favorite book for an existing service. Technician would be commercial refrigeration for air conditioning technicians by DIC worse, but that is technically a book that is written for someone who's already an air conditioning technician that wants to learn refrigeration.

I still think it's a great resource, so that's one of the books that I would highly suggest all of you pick up if you haven't already and again that's commercial refrigeration for air conditioning technicians by dick Wars. Right now is the third edition highly suggest you guys get that book now. As far as for a beginner, you know, I would say just the simple rack manual, the refrigeration and air conditioning technologies manual - would be a good one. You know there's lots of good books out there.

You know a book isn't going to teach you everything you need to be able to absorb what it tells you and use it out in the field. Okay. I definitely think that there's a lot of great resources that weren't even available for me when I started you know 17 years ago, whatever it was, you know, so the the Internet is great, but the Internet can also be bad. Okay, you get these funny guys that don't know what they're doing making youtube videos.

Okay, so be cautious of those guys they're kind of shady alright, I'm one of them all right. R22. An attire DJ, sub err, it's funny Kel Kel de okay. So I can remember, if any of you guys in this older guys in here, remember the TV show rescue 9-1-1.

Okay, there was a TV show in the early 90s called rescue 9-1-1, and this always stuck in my head. I was this was before I was in the trade, but I still remember a recreation of a camping trip with an AC service technician and it was so horrible because he went to. He went camping with his family and he decided to fill up their air mattress with our 22 refrigerant, so he filled up the air mattress with our 22 refrigerant and one of the kids again. This was on TV, okay, but I just remember this: I don't know how serious it was, but I remember one of the kids suffocated because apparently he was breathing in the r22 through the holes in the air mattress or something like that.

That was horrible, but I can't remember if the kids survived or not, but I just remember that episode of rescue 9-1-1 and he filled up his air mattress with our 22. So back in the day our 22 was yeah. It was so cheap same thing with our twelve. It was so cheap that you just you know you didn't you, you even purged with that stuff.

Most of the people again way before my time, but you know it was. It was common practice to just sweep the system with our twelve and you know just push all the air out of the system and start it back up. You know most of the people weren't using vacuum pumps and different things, but again everything is so less Fergie to the these days. Okay, with the polyester oils, we you know moisture is a huge deal with mineral oil.

It was easy. You just push the moisture out. No big deal okay, but with polyester oil, its absorbed into the oil and it's hard to get it out, and it causes problems with the system that that can lead to acid that can lead to burnouts and all kinds of things. Okay, so things are less forgiving.

We have to follow the proper refrigeration practices and we're also getting into some scary stuff, because I just did an episode coming up soon. I don't know when he's gon na release it with Brian or podcast about our 290 refrigerant, and you know some of the things that we run into a service text. You know he also just did one with a manufacturer, but you know I just kind of give him a service technicians perspective of our 290 and there's a lot of safety concerns when it comes to that stuff. So there's no room to cut corners when you're working with a lot of these new refrigerants, especially the hydrocarbon ones, because they're flammable, okay, you've got isobutane.

You've got our 290. That's not good! If you make mistakes, if you fill that system with air, you can cause some big problems and try to mix that refrigerant and then yeah. It can be big and bad okay, so we got ta, follow the proper refrigeration practices. Okay, keep going.

Yeah 404 has taken that title and I'm really bummed out prime time that 404 is uh is bouncing out because 404 has done me so well. I love 404. It's a very low fractionation right on 404, even though they call it a blend, and they tell you to be afraid, it's it's you can. You can charge a 404 system without worrying about it, half the time it doesn't even matter.

If half the charge has been gone. The fractionation is solo. 404 is just it is III, like 404, a lot other than the high discharge temps. That's I really do like 404, so, okay, keep going back up into here, yeah purging with propane! That's right! Keep going up into here! You guys! You got questions nitrogen yeah night! Remember, puttin nitrogen in our in our car tires when I lived up in the desert, because you know when we would put just the normal oxygen for our air from the compressed air tank.

You know that then the nitrogen wouldn't fluctuate so much in pressure. So is, as the regular air did, okay, keep going down into here, see what I'm missing guys. You know my recent videos, you guys I'm not gon na, go all the way back up into the chat. So if you guys got something put it down here in the bottom yeah, some of the refrigeration units are starting to ship with four for eight, that's correct that that has been adopted by a couple manufacturers.

So that's something new! You know the heat craft units for majority of the aftermarket coils. You can buy they're pretty much. You know rated to be certain BTUs before for 8, with 407 see with our 22 with 404. They give you a bunch of different options.

You know and the BTU output that they'll put out with that refrigerant, so it's a new thing coming out: okay, be cautious about these systems, because you want to make sure you're labeling stuff, in that this is another thing that started to happen in the mid-90s. When we had all the r12 retrofits, you know that we're out there there were so many of them. It's very similar to what we're going through right now is that nobody was labeling things and it ran it just led into a big problem of guessing what refrigerants were in things. Okay, so it's very very important that you guys label your refrigerants and a Sharpie is not enough.

You guys need to get the proper labels. I usually put three labels per system. If I can, okay or a paint marker, sharp or your sharpies fade off so put a fit a paint marker and then try to make sure that when you do, if you use a paint marker that you put it in a place where the sun's not going To beat on it and fade it really quick, but you need to be labeling your systems for the next guy. Okay, because that's nothing but a headache trying to figure out what refrigerants in a system, especially when it's one of these new blends, that's just a nightmare.

Total tech, that's a great question. What is going on with my podcast? It's just me being lazy and not doing it. I currently have paid for podcast hosting. I have a pot I paid for a website.

I've done it all. I just haven't recorded the podcast, yet I've even actually I've recorded a few podcast. I just haven't edited them down. I've even got like papers written out, so it's just me being lazy, total tech.

So I need to do it. I know I'm sorry. I will get to it aired in 92. Is that the episode of rescue 911 1 Todd that you're talking about? I I just saw your thing right there.

I don't know, if that's what you were talking about Todd that that sounds like something: okay, all right! Okay, so Gary black, you said: what does a swamp cooler do you're sure you won't see one on the East Coast in Maryland, so a swamp cooler is, is a slang term for an evaporative cooler. An evaporative cooler is simply gon na. Take a media pad of some sort, okay, we might call - and they may use straw - they may use like a paper material or a cell deck material, and what they're gon na do is swamp coolers, typically, work really well in dry conditions: okay, where you don't have A lot of humidity, because what you need is you need to evaporate the water, so you're gon na pull air across a pad that you've put water on, and the assumption is, is that that air is dry and it's going to cool the air? Essentially, okay. So that's all a swamp cooler is it's just an evaporative cooler.

Now we use them out here on the west coast, not so much for comfort, cooling. There is some situations where we'll use a swamp cooler in an evaporative cooler for comfort cooling. Most of the time we use them for, like a forced air or a make up air unit. We do use those occasionally up in the desert area, where it's really dry, they'll use them.

As comfort cooling, you can run a whole house on a swamp cooler, but it's it's tends to be a little muggy. The reason why they call them swamp coolers is because, when you're in a house that has an evaporative cooler on it, it tends to feel like you're in a swamp. It's real muggy and thick and just yeah. You know so it'll be cold, but it'll just be gross, but we do use evaporative coolers for pree coolers for air conditioning units.

So you guys are probably seen some of my videos where I have. I don't know if you guys have seen those ones before, but I used to have a restaurant. We recently changed all their ACS, but we used to have pre, coolers or just swamp coolers. That would be directed at the air conditioning condensers and it was essentially because they get temperatures of 120 degrees on the regular out there in the summertime, and so we would just take that swamp cooler and blow it on the condenser and hopefully drop the answers.

Uh. You know condensing temptation, because if you guys don't already know as the condensing temperatures, the efficiency drops, there's there's a happy window of when it's good, but once you get past the threshold of ridiculously hot condensing temps, the efficiency drops off the roof on that air-conditioning unit. So I've also got I've made a couple: videos on a refrigeration rack that I have that just has a bunch of equipment in and it has a swamp cooler hanging off the side of it. That one is also one where we're just pre cooling the air going into that rack because they get 120 degrees in the summer and a lot of those old condense and units can't handle that they do.

You know they're not sized adequately to handle 120 degree outside air, so you know we'll put a pre cooler on them essentially and just cool the air. It does make it more humid in that rack, but you know it's just kind of one of the things you got to deal with out in the desert out there and that's not in the Palm Springs area. I do a little bit of work out there. So, okay, keep going in here see what else I'm missing guys see you, but I'm this and yeah swamp cooler is like droppin ice in your pants one of the cool things about those.

The building that I have all the swamp coolers or I used to have all the swamp coolers was in the summertime. When we would go do service work, it was so miserable. You'd have to literally go downstairs. Well if we had the swamp coolers up there.

So you could just go stand in front of the swamp cooler and you know it cooled the air 20 degrees. So if it was 120 outside at least you had a hundred blowing on you and it felt so much better than 120. So that was one cool thing about the swamp coolers, but that's about it other than that they're a mess. They got it.

You know. If you use swamp coolers for pre-cooler units, they got to be maintained. A lot sorry about the noise, my dogs in the ground. Behind me and she's sick, so I had to have her in the room with me yeah.

I do need to have a logo they're saying bigger picture yeah, something like that. Okay, keep going up; Indy, hey I'm just looking through the chat. I don't want to go crazy, but I just want to see if I missed any questions here, so I'm still liking that uh that m12 Milwaukee fuel drill driver that I have in my bag, that thing's still working out really nice. So we'll see I'm actually looking into buying some more than Milwaukee stuff.

I've been making the jump from the DeWalt stuff just just slowly, trying to change a few things and try out some of their stuff. I've had a lot of people talking about it. Yeah, I'm not seeing too much in there so yeah is that oh cool, I'm gon na have to look that up yeah rescue 9-1-1 seat thanks Todd. I really appreciate that man now.

Did you remember that episode, or did you google it right? Now? That's really interesting! Yeah, I remember that episode from when I was a kid. I'm gon na write that down right now see my dog. In the background. She has the cone of shame on her right now.

What's up sweetie, my dog had a tumor and we had to go get a biopsy on it, so she's kind of coming out of sedation right now. So I don't know if you guys can see her there in the back rescue 9-1-1. I'm gon na write this down, so I don't forget it cuz. I don't want to lose.

This chat a free on freak yeah, I'm gon na. Look that up yeah. I was a really sad episode if I remember right so I remember that I could watch that. Well, that's funny: okay yeah, so the Milwaukee stuffs working, pretty good, I'm gon na turn around and talk to my dog for a sec lay down sweetie all right.

Let me go back into here. Jeffery minook, you said you meant a comment back on my field. People files to your fault, man I got buys with the AC calls. Oh, I died.

It's all good bro, no worries. How often am i in the inside area? I live in the Riverside area. I live in her repo Valley, so I'm always in Riverside okay. So let's talk about the oh, you know what I'm really interested in is Billy or not.

Billy Brent Ridley posted a picture of the m12 pipe cutter. I want that. I'm gon na yeah, I'm gon na look into that for the m12, for when I'm doing piping jobs, that thing looks cool, not necessarily, I don't think for refrigeration piping. I don't know I'd have to see it cut before plumbing pipe yeah.

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