Ah, it's time to chill out and get ready for a mediocre q, a live stream if you're old enough grab yourself your favorite adult beverage and if you're not stick with apple juice, put your feet up and relax. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat and now, let's queue up the intro music, so so yo. What is up everybody? Hopefully you guys are doing well. I hope you guys are having a great new year.

Hopefully your holidays were awesome. It's been uh, i think i skipped the last stream so yeah it's been a while, since we've done a stream, uh took a little much needed time. I shouldn't say i took time off. The only thing i took time off from was from the live stream.

I still worked like crazy and did all that normal stuff, but life is good. I have a lot to be thankful for um. You know i, as i reflect on the past year and all the things that frustrated me and made me angry. It's all really petty stuff in comparison to things going on around the world, so um, i'm very thankful for that.

I've really been thinking about that stuff, a lot lately and and how petty my problems are. So i i guess i'm very thankful for all that, but hopefully you guys are all doing well, as usual, i have a list of things that i want to talk about and then we've got the live chat going on. We'll definitely pay attention to that too. So if you guys have questions or things you want me to cover in the stream be sure to put it in the chat and caps lock i'll try to get to it.

Do me a favor too um in the chat. How are my audio levels? I i made a little bit of an adjustment because it seemed like it was peaking to me. So is the audio coming across good inside the chat, i'll kind of wait for that to come through hello to everybody? That's in here right now, um, let's see uh. Looking through the chat lots of cool conversations going on as usual, if you guys are watching this on a tv or something like that, and you can't see the live chat, there's a lot of stuff going on in the live chat.

There's great conversations a good community inside the live chat, uh john hershey. Thank you so very much for that super chat man. That is amazing uh. Thank you.

So much for your support. Okay, um! Let me see what we got going on in here. Looks like i'm good, all right, cool right on, so we're going to go ahead and roll with this one. Thank you, everybody for answering that question.

Um! So had a couple videos since the last live stream. I think four to be exact, but we're gon na go ahead and cover the the most recent two. So we had two of them where the one where the customer didn't show up for the beginning part of the video and then we also had the. I was told to work on the wrong unit, so all right glad i'm good! I'm glad that the audio is coming in and chris cooley says my audio is coming through mediocre.

That's perfect! That is perfect. If i'm coming through mediocre that that's that's what i'm about! So right on, thank you very much for all the nice words uh. I can't pronounce the name uh. I don't even know core bag sx.

Thank you so much for the nice words, man much appreciated so um, well uh, here in southern california, the last week we've actually like the last two to three weeks. We've had rain like all the time, and this happens every couple years, we'll get like a crazy, downpour um and then usually it tapers off, and we don't get rain for the rest of the year. You know we can hope that we're gon na get more rain, but as much as we got in the last three weeks, it was kind of starting to get annoying because it was just like every single day and you couldn't schedule anything uh. We don't really get rain that often here so you know i mean we, we enjoy it because we need it, but then it's like kind of a burden, everybody here in southern california.

They do not know how to drive when they get on the roads. You know the first bit of rain that we have brings all the oils out of the roads that have been just sitting in the asphalt and stuff and it creates accidents. It's just a nightmare. We had some snow in our local mountains.

Uh. You know more than we've had in a while. We had a major road wash out in our local mountains, highway 18.. So that's closed indefinitely.

So it's it's having to re-route people to their homes and stuff, it's kind of a bummer. But this is what happens when we don't have the infrastructure for this kind of stuff it. You know it kind of affects us pretty big when we get a good rain. So with that being said, i'll go ahead and cover this question, and i get this one.

A lot and i find myself having to cover it a lot. You know. The whole purpose of these live streams is to consolidate questions, so i don't have to repeatedly. You know uh constantly answer the same question, so i i address this one a little bit in the live stream, usually every couple months but uh one of the most common questions i get is why, in the heck, do i pipe my condensate number one in copper And number two: when i'm working on package units, why do i pipe it into the drains? Why don't we just let it drain onto the roof? Okay, and it's actually a pretty reasonable answer to that number one.

We have code requirements that require us in most cities to pipe condensate runoff from the air conditioning units into the sewer, okay or into the plumbing system, and the reason why is most of our storm drains right? If we pipe the condensate onto the roof, it'll go down in the gutter and then end up in a storm drain and most of our storm drains go directly to the ocean. So they want as much water as we can. That you know is not naturally falling from the sky to be piped into the sewer that way it can go through water treatment plants. So that way, it's cleaned before it gets dumped into the ocean, but there's always some carryover.

So that's why they have us pipe. Our stuff uh ike, really appreciate you being a supporter for so long. It's amazing and uh uh yeah. Definitely you guys.

I don't have the links or anything like that, but we do have a discord. Server uh! It's the hvacr videos, discord server. If any of you are interested in joining the hvacr videos, discord server feel free to send me an email to hvacr videos gmail.com. I know i always go through this, but i don't have it readily available and i'm kind of a dumb dumb when it comes to finding them and stuff so but feel free to send me an email, and i can give you a join link so uh to Be fair, though i'm not in the discord server as much as i used to be uh, really not in it very much at all.

I go in there occasionally and say hi to everybody, but there's a whole community going on in the discord server. So it's kind of cool um. Let me see, oh no. I can't deal with that.

My dad's texting me right now asking me questions. He must not know that i'm live um all right. Let's see what we go in here, um, you know what hey got ta help out my dad, when my dad has a question, so you guys are just gon na have to bear with this. While i text my dad back real, quick, so um, let's see my dad uh, he quickly asked me a question.

He said: what is it that i order when i go to in and out in and out is a local hamburger chain in southern california. So if i do go to in-n-out, what he's asking me is a cheeseburger with fried mustard um and what that is is uh. They take the cheeseburger, the burger patty when it's raw and they actually fry it in mustard. They cook it in mustard and it just gives it a cool little twist to it so anyways uh in and out's kind of an acquired, taste uh it's hit and miss some people don't like in and out in and out is a west coast thing.

It's it's slowly, branching out, so i believe they're in california, arizona, nevada, texas and i'm sure they're in a few other places too, but pretty cool little burger place, i'm going to burn out on it because i've grown up on and eating my entire life, but um. Okay, so uh next thing, uh answering that same question that i was just talking about. Why do i pipe my condensate into the drains? Why do i use copper? I don't like using pvc. The sun just deteriorates everything on the roofs out here, so copper lasts forever.

The downside to using copper is tweakers, get on the roof and steal the copper. So you paint the copper most of the tweakers are pretty dumb. So if you paint it, they just leave it alone, but um. So i wanted to kind of talk about something.

I know we have a lot of viewers and people uh constantly coming into the channel that don't understand exactly who i am and what i do so. I'm gon na do a little introduction about myself. My name is chris. I am an hvacr service technician.

First uh. I am a business owner, um and uh. I grew up in the trade right. I grew up working for my father, my father started in the trade in 1987.

I think and uh i worked with him all my life as a little kid. I can remember sitting on his bucket getting yelled at because his four cell or three cell d, maglite right, if you guys, are in the trade for a long enough time. You know what i'm talking about, but the maglites had four d batteries or 3d batteries, depending on which one he had usually had the three cell, and i can remember getting in trouble because you know i was a little six seven year old sitting on a bucket. While he was in a restaurant fixing something holding this big flashlight and i couldn't hold it steady number one because it was heavy number two, because i'm like oh look at that, and you know i can't damn it christopher put the light over here.

You know it's like. Oh okay, you know i just get distracted like a little puppy, but i grew up working for my father. Ironically um. You know i really started working with them.

Come like junior high time i would in the summer i would go to work with them full time. Well, southern california. Summers can be rather brutal, pretty darn hot out here, uh on average, we usually have one to two months above 100 degrees. Sometimes it peaks about 115.

You know typically for at least three months of the summer season, it's above 90., so i remember telling him that i wanted absolutely nothing to do with this trade after working so many years with him, i was just like. I just don't want to do it, you know so. Then i went into high school uh started working at a body shop working on cars um. You know i just basically took cars apart and put them back together, so they could be painted and all that fancy stuff and uh did that for about two years and then came to work for my dad full time just decided.

I wanted to get into it that was the uh beginning of the part of the year of 2000 and uh 2002, actually yeah so april of 2002. I think is when i officially started working full-time in the trade and uh been going strong ever since i'm now uh owner in the company, my dad and i own it together. My dad has three feet out the door he's if i let him he'd retire yesterday. So he doesn't work in the field or anything like that anymore.

He just uh does administrative work working in the office, but i learned everything from my dad good and bad okay, the bad things that i learned from him. I learned how to grow from those things. So i don't fault him for anything, but i am who i am because of him right so uh. I started making these videos for my service technicians as a training aide because of some mistakes that we made.

We lost several employees at one time and i found myself hiring several technicians all at once that were all experienced, but they weren't experienced in the way that i do things so started using these youtube videos, as like a training aid like hey. This is how i approach this call. So if you go look at the very first video on my channel, it was a beer walk-in that had a blown fuse. That was a video that i made for my my service technicians and then the second video was also for my service technicians and then, after that i made them public and then here we are now okay.

So i do not know everything, nor will i ever, but this is a great way this has afforded me the ability to contact very smart people, much smarter than i in the industry and get in touch with them and collaborate with them. There's a great community in the the social media area, side of the trade right um. You have a lot of other content creators and it is a small little world. So we kind of mostly do know each other between all the little content creators and we usually help each other out.

I was just calling my buddy brett wetzel from the advanced refrigeration podcast. Over the weekend. We just had a conversation about an expansion valve issue. I was running into so i called him and picked his brain about it.

You know so it's really cool, but i am constantly learning. I will never know everything, okay, um. So that's who i am uh. You know i just i make these videos and - and i just have fun doing it so uh - let's see um uh yeah i've had that question a bunch uh asking.

If i would have my father on the show um, you know, i don't think he really has any interest in being on this um i've kind of mentioned it a few times to him, but i'll bring it up to him again. But i don't know if it's really something that he's very interested in doing is coming into the public thing. You know for some people you have to understand, you know making a video um. You know even even live right now, there's only 150 people in here.

Do me a favor: there is 150 people in here, there's only 65 likes on the video smash the thumbs up button. Okay, please um, but you know these videos get a lot of views and some people, just you know, have a hard time doing. That kind of stuff in public - it's not it's interesting, because here i come on here and i have you know, i'm just like whatever i have no shame. I talk about almost anything uh.

If you guys don't already know, i also do another show another live show with my friends on the hvac overtime, youtube channel and what i mean when i talk about anything. Is i really do just about talk about anything okay, so go check out the hvac overtime, channel and you'll, see lots of live, shows on there with my friends and it's a total different dynamic, a little less education, a little more bs? Okay. But it's a great fun show with my friends. So let's see what else we got going on in here, how many tecumseh ah compressors, have i replaced um, i i don't know i mean quite a few.

You know over my career uh. You know it's interesting, though, because the beginning part of my career, i changed a lot of compressors, you know, but it was more towards the middle and the latter part of my career that i like i. I really have reduced the amount of compressors that i change, because i really attack the problems before they present themselves and make the compressor fail, because compressors typically don't go bad by themselves, guys, it's very rare, that a compressor fails on its own. You know they're, usually the i know it's a corny phrase, but compressors are murdered.

Usually, okay, they should last you know 20 something 30, something years. If taken care of properly. You know i mean you should get a lot of life out of them, especially the older compressors, because they were made so much more or had so much more uh quality in the older compressors for sure so uh, let's see what else um jason johnson says. If we didn't continue learning, it would get boring, and that is the truth uh.

I definitely hit a phase in my career, where i was really starting to get burnt out uh and these videos actually challenged me and pushed me to the edge, because you guys would be so surprised to find out that when i turn on a camera um, i Listen to myself talk when i'm talking, so i'm working through a problem, i'm troubleshooting something i'm talking to the camera and then i realize wait that didn't make sense. You know, and then i think about it like wait that didn't you know, and then i i kind of rationalize with myself and and having the camera there actually helps me to be a better technician, because i'm constantly thinking, okay, wait! Oh, you know, because i, by heart i'm lazy right by nature. I just want to get don't get home as fast as possible, but sometimes i'll be filming a video and then it's like you know what i'm not going to finish filming this. I'm just going to do this and get out of here, but then i'm like no, you know what i'm gon na finish this i'm gon na go through with it.

So, just because i talk about the big picture approach and the big picture diagnosis thing doesn't mean that i always do that, like i'm constantly trying to take shortcuts to make my job easier, and sometimes i have to remind myself no step back slow down and do It right, okay, so just like everybody else, i try to take my time, but you know there's sometimes that i'm not the best technician out there um. I definitely want to uh. Let me i have a list of things in front of me that i want to talk about and i usually like to cross them off, so i'm crossing that one off real, quick and then uh. I wanted to talk about something um i was just talking about.

Oh this is it right here, so i get this question and i get you know. First off, i get a lot of comments after i i address this okay uh. We get a lot of trolls in the comments. Okay - and let me let me put this out there - the trolls do not get to me, okay, but i do read as many comments as i can so i do read their comments.

Sometimes i just laugh. Sometimes i respond sarcastically like there was one troll that uh samurai. Thank you. So very much for that super chat man.

I really really appreciate you um, so you said that uh, your drive to an emergency service call boys nothing, but oh that's right on bud. So i appreciate it so um anyways yeah, there's trolls that come in the comments and stuff and they don't get to me, but i do read their comments and sometimes i laugh. Sometimes i, like, i said, respond sarcastically um, but uh this person was was bitching at me about venting my frustrations. They were saying that i complained too much.

Stop complaining just get over it and get the call fixed and move on, but you know what um i kind of want to say. That's an ignorant statement, okay and what i mean by that is that you know we're we're trained by a certain group of people. Even growing up, you know, there's things that you don't talk about. That's we don't talk about our feelings, we don't talk about taboo stuff and i actually think it's important to an extent.

I don't want to complain all the time, but i do like to vent every once in a while on my platform to let people know that i go through struggles too. I'm not some all-knowing person. That knows how to fix every single problem. I'm not so all perfect person that you know gets paid millions of dollars to fix everything i run into problems, and i try to show that to show that i'm human on the channel okay.

So, while that guy was a troll - and he was just bitching about me - complaining uh - he he did bring up a good point. That gives me a conversation point. So, thank you very much for being a troll whoever you are um, but you know i mean it's important. I think that every once in a while now you know, there's also a fine line between complaining too much.

You know um constantly, whining and crying about every single thing now, but i mean you know to an extent i like people to know that i run into problems right and it happens and that's life um. If you don't vent that stuff. If you don't have someone to talk to about your frustrations, if you bottle that stuff up trust me from experience, it sends you to a dark place for me. It sent me to a place of rage.

Okay, i i had some mental problems. I had to go see help i saw a psychologist and a therapist for i went through an 18-month program where i was dealing with anger issues and, and a lot of that was like mommy issues and stuff, because i had you know just all kinds of family Stuff, it's funny because i was talking to my buddy bill, curious hvac guy earlier today on the phone, and he was saying that i should do an episode on this. So maybe i will i'll do uh how i live. The hvacr life episode and i'll talk about some of my issues, but but you know i found myself bottling all that stuff up and it's so easy to bottle things up and just suck it up and not talk about it, but it builds up and it it Gets you all wound up and then you explode and at least in my case um.

You know i punched a hole in the wall and it just scared me because i didn't hurt myself, but it was just like what's this gon na lead to. If i don't take care of this problem, if i keep bottling this stuff up, so i sought help and - and i got the help that i needed so i think it's important - that we learn how to vent that stuff and talk about it right. Okay, so enough sappy stuff, let's get on to the hvacr talk um, so um in the live chat earlier so again, there's a whole live chat going on and it's a great chat. They were talking about um.

You know places that we go to escape happy places. If you want to say that okay, my happy place, i've talked about it before i have not been to my happy place in a long time. My place that i go to relax is the mountains i like to get out and go hiking uh backpacking. That is a passion of mine.

I have not been backpacking in many many years now. The last time i went was when i took my my my black labrador retriever that i used to have uh, but she passed away two years ago, and it was probably two years prior to that. So it's probably been a good four or five years since i've. Actually gotten out and done what i love to do, but i am at peace when i am somewhere without a map without lights, without anything just a backpack on my back and just getting lost somewhere.

One of my favorite trips that i ever took with my lab. Her name was ava, um was her and i we were really late because i was busy working and i couldn't go hiking. I couldn't get off work in time and we didn't get to start at the trailhead until midnight. It was midnight and we started at this.

Trailhead and we started hiking down a trail and we got lost and we ended up sleeping on the side of a mountain. We were. We were aiming to go to a certain location and i could not find it in the middle of the night and we ended up hiking up and setting up a hammock, and i slept in the hammock with my dog breathing in my face. It was very uncomfortable.

My hammock slid down the tree when i was sleeping. I ended up on the ground, but guess what, when it was all said and done it's one of the most memorable experiences i ever had. I was lost in the woods and it was just me and my dog and we had a blast so um, that's my happy place is getting outside and going hiking, i'm hoping i i'm got a new puppy. His name is luke um he's another he's a silver labrador retriever and i'm hoping that him and i can enjoy some of those experiences soon in the future.

But you know i find that i haven't gone and done those things that i need to do in a long time, and i need to get back to that because i need to go. You know get some peace from you know from everything craziness of life and all that stuff. So, let's see what else we got going on in here. Oh wow, let's see um, i'm looking through the chat right now and uh.

Did i go to trade school for hvacr? Yes, i did go to trade school, so i got a education from my dad. My dad taught me the trade, but then i also enrolled in a local community college that had a trade program mount san antonio community college. In walnut california mount sac uh, i went to mount sac. I never finished the program, i'm two classes shy of finishing the program: uh technical math for hvacr and uh welding.

Is that maybe that's why my welding's so bad um but yeah? No, i need to uh finish that program, one of these days for sure. But yes, i did go to trade school um and i am a formal believer in trade school uh. Let's see chris cooley said, skip a live, train live stream and get some time yeah. I definitely will work has been pretty chaotic right now, so work is actually the limiting factor in me, but i definitely hey man, uh jason johnson, said the gun range hundreds of rounds, that's his therapy.

Whatever floats your boat, we need to do it more and i do, as i say not as i do right, because i'm not walking the walk here, because i've just been so consumed with work, so um all right, uh. Let me go ahead and get through my next questions and things i want to talk about right now, so um nathan asked about stat. Oh, this is a really good question. So nathan emailed me asking me a question about using digital scales.

Okay - and this is intriguing - i have some questions in nathan's statement. I'm gon na paraphrase it so nathan emailed me and was curious about my thoughts on this, because he was always taught that when he's using a digital scale, what he's supposed to do is weigh the cylinder before he starts putting it in the system, then he can Weigh the weigh the refrigerant, as he's putting it in the system and then weigh the cylinder after to compare. If there's any discrepancies between what the scale said, while he was adding it to the system and what it said before and after um tails 303. Thank you.

So very much for that super chat. That is amazing. I really really appreciate you um and let's see he says he wants me to say his minecraft server, playersmp.net uh, playersmp.net, okay, bud, um, so um. I got distracted here with this real quick and where was i going? I already lost oh uh, the refrigerant so um weighing the cylinder before so his question was.

He was always taught that when he's weighing the refrigerant in the system that static discharge can mess with what the scale says, and so that's why you want to weigh it before and confirm as you're putting it in now. I don't know if i quite believe in that. Let me step back if i didn't explain that right he's thinking that sometimes there can be static discharge, which is true when you're, adding refrigerant into the system and he's saying that can mess with the reading that you get as you're weighing it into the system. Now i personally have never seen that before, but i do find truth in your statement and what you're describing because my normal process is to take a cylinder weigh it before i use it then add it to the system right and i'm.

I have it on the scale and the reason why i weigh it before from experience with the older scales. They were very susceptible to static discharge, so this is a little different than what you were thinking and i could be incorrect. I've never seen it mess with the numbers as it's going, but what i have seen it do is as you're adding the refrigerant to the system. It will short out there'll, be a static electricity, shot going to the scale and it'll actually short the scale out and make it not work anymore.

I have had that happen on older scales like as i was adding refrigerant. I saw a little spark go from the refrigerant cylinder to the scale and then boom. The scale went blank and stopped working. Okay, so because of that, the first time that happened it screwed up, because i was working on a critically charged system and from that point i always learned to weigh my cylinder before write it on the tank, then use the scale as i'm adding it to the Thing and then that way, if i ever run into a problem, i can always look at what it weighs after so yeah.

I do agree that it's good to weigh the cylinder before and after, but i i don't know, i've never heard of there being a discrepancy due to static as you're, adding the the stuff. So he's basically saying that sometimes even though it'll have a digital display, it may not read the right numbers because of a static discharge. I've never heard of that. But i'd be intrigued if anybody in the chat has ever heard of that um.

But you definitely want to be careful because you know on the older skills for sure static discharge did affect them a lot and on some of the older scales they were in the installation instructions. They would actually tell you to run a ground wire or a ground. Strap to the cylinder to make sure that it grounds it out, so you wouldn't have that static discharge. So um, let's see what else we got going on here: um, what's: okay right on looking through hold on just a second um: oh okay, cool! Ah, let me go through the chat and see what i'm missing here.

Uh. Can i can you install a schrader valve on an older window? Ac yeah, you definitely can but window acs are critically charged systems, so they they contain very little refrigerant, and that can be a problem when you try to put a service gauge on there. So you want to be cautious about that um all right uh. Let me get to the list of things that i talk about um.

Oh, i had a great question on a recent video when i was uh when the customer didn't show up. I had several people in the comments say. Why don't i do the work at night time or why don't i let the customer give me a key to the building so that way i can do the work and i don't rely on the customer being on time. Okay, there's a lot to unpack with that question.

Yes, i i have done night work in the past. I despise doing night work and let me tell you for two main reasons: okay number, one uh: it screws up your entire week: okay, let's say that i do a night job on monday, okay and i i work all day monday and then i work all monday Night well then, i take tuesday off because you need sleep right, but then, unless you work friday, night or saturday morning, you lose out on a day of pay okay, so i don't like doing night work for that reason. Number two: i have a rule at my company that my employees are not allowed to be alone in the building unless they have someone else with them for safety reasons. So if my employees were required to do night work, i would require two employees to be there and then i would lose out on both of those employees.

The next day i have a very small company. Okay, if i lost two employees, i'd be the only person working right to have one other guy, but i'm very, very small, we're only four trucks: rolling two service technicians right now: a maintenance, tech and an apprentice so yeah we have a problem there. Okay, i prefer not to do night work. The next reason why i don't like nightwork is from my experience once you let a customer know that you're open to doing night work they'll constantly ask you to do that night work over and over and over again for every single reason.

I don't like that. I don't like them thinking that it's okay to just have me come in to fix a region in the middle of the night. No, that's not what i want to do in a perfect world. My customers don't really go for this, but in a perfect world i want to charge overtime, doing night, work and they're not really into that.

They want you to charge straight time and it's just a mess. So i just prefer not to do night work at all and i do early morning visits most of my restaurants have an inventory day where they come in early. So most cases there's one day a week that one of my customers is there at five a.m. Actually, four a.m and then there's another restaurant: that's there at six a.m.

So if i have to do any early morning work, i usually schedule it for those inventory days because they're already there so um and that particular customer - and i did discuss it in the video too - that didn't show up they were. They were told that they knew. I even spoke to the person that showed up. They just didn't show up, so it was all on them.

Uh, let's see what else we got going on in this chat right now, um chris says he does a lot of retro repairs on reach ends when you size an expansion valve. Do i size it on oem equipment or use sporland sizing, chart or sporland sizing charts? Well, i always reach out to the manufacturers chris majority of the time, if you're working on a reach and cooler, i'm going to give you a blanket statement and tell you that you need a quarter ton expansion valve! That's almost always what you need on a reach and cooler: uh quarter ton just put in a quarter: ton balance, port and you're, usually pretty good um, but i always reach out to the manufacturers. Okay, i'm not going to necessarily lean just on spoiling for sizing a valve, because the manufacturers usually do weird things with their btu output of the evaporative coils. They size things weird and stuff.

So i always look at what they design the equipment to work with and then go with their sizing. Now i don't always necessarily use an oem expansion valve okay, depending if it's r290 oem no questions asked. But if it's a reach and cooler, i may find out what the oem valve is or or maybe order one oem valve one time and then find out the size and then from that point forward, just use an aftermarket valve. That's the right size majority of the equipment that i work on.

It's a quarter ton valve so let's see what else uh kevin sullivan. Thank you so very much for that. Super chat. Uh and you said at nighttime.

Wholesalers are closed. Yeah yeah! I got you, nighttime wholesalers are closed um, you know, but a lot of customers and like if you do grocery store work and stuff. They want you in there at night time because they don't want the customers. You know dealing with you doing weird crap.

In the rest, or in the supermarket and stuff but um, it's just one of those things, but i prefer to stay away from night work as much as possible. Here's the next thing as a business owner. If i send my technicians to do night work, it's very rare. If i don't go to the job that i'm not awake, wondering how the job's going.

I can't sleep. You know during the day i'm there to answer phone calls and help them through problems, but it's just a pain altogether doing night work and i just prefer not to do it. Um, let's see uh t lech says he's had the old, cps and tiff scales go wonkers by the interference caused by bad fluorescent lights by giving off uh radio free, yeah, rfm yeah um, i've had lots of stuff. The old cps skill is actually what failed by static discharge.

To me, too, i used to use the cps scales all the time. I will tell you that you know now. I use the field piece. What is it the srs3 wireless digital scale, and i have run into issues with that too, where, if i'm on a roof - and they have like weird satellite dishes - i've i've had interference with that too, where it starts to read wonky.

So with that being said, i still weigh everything before i start. I give myself a baseline that way as i'm adding something and if the scale stops working then at least i have a baseline as to where i started. I can get the scale working or i have an old wired one in my van that i'll go grab and then finish it, but i always double check everything before i start write the weight of the cylinder before i even start putting it in the refrigerant system. Um, let's see uh in a recent video, i took a uh, a temporary temporary thermostat and dropped it in the duct and i tried to address it in the video.

But i still got a lot of comments. Why, in the heck, do i use such an expensive thermostat when it's being used as temporary or dropping down in the ducts, because i don't carry a lot of truck stock? I carry one thermostat on my trucks, that's it. If i need another thermostat, it's got to be, or you know i have to order it so in a bind in that particular situation, i had an energy management system that wasn't working properly and the customer needed it operational. They weren't approving the energy management system replacement.

Yet i've quoted it there's a lot of other people involved because they don't buy direct through me and they just haven't approved it so bottom line. The equipment needs to be working, it's just a bunch of corporate politics, so i do what i have to do and i put the thermostat that i have in my truck in there so yeah it's an expensive thermostat to drop in the duct. But that's all i keep on my truck and you know i'm not going to carry a bunch of other extra stock uh and that's all that i let my guys keep on their trucks too, because we control the stock. So that way, we don't have a bunch of excess spending.

Um some people emailed me about using like uh, like the the temperature, duct sensors and different things like that in a temporary pinch or the little resistors, and now i'm not into any of that stuff. It's all about simplicity. If it's gon na be a thermostat, i'm just gon na drop one down in there just in case i'm not the person going back um and then using like the little induct temperature, sensors and because there's weird ones you can drop in there. That run the whole unit, accustats weird things like that: nah not into that stuff.

I just make it simple man. I don't want to confuse my guys. You know when they come into behind me to try to finish something. It's just just it's a normal thermostat or put the automation system back in play.

So um, let's see what else we got going on here, um my pinot eight. It says uh you've been doing hvac for 12 years thinking of putting in the r. What's the best way to do that school, um, yeah uh go, you know, get enrolled in a school, but this book right here this is actually the older version, there's a there's, a fourth edition, but commercial refrigeration for air conditioning technicians by dick wars. This is a book that's written for air conditioning technicians that want to get into the commercial refrigeration side.

This is a great book. It assumes that you understand the basics of heat transfer and stuff, and then it just really goes into depth about refrigeration. So, like i said there is a fourth edition. I just have it in my room because i was actually reading it last night, but this is a great book to get for any technician out there.

It will greatly improve your skills and bear with me it's getting hot in here open my slider, which you guys don't know what you guys can't see is there is a sliding glass door right here going to like a rose garden in my yard and uh. I have a nice little window to open when i get hot in my office, because this giant computer that i have running this entire stream is stupid, big and stupid hot, so need to upgrade my home hvac system for sure so um. Let's see we answered that question, i'm going through my list right now. Let's see ravi asks about.

He sent me a picture of his walk-in freezer and he's trying to figure out why he has ice all over the inside of his freezer. He said that he had a bad door heater for the door and he replaced that, but the ice is still on the inside of the freezer and he wants to know why. Okay: okay, when you have ice in your freezer, walk-in freezer we're talking about okay, typically, two reasons are causing that number one air infiltration. If the door heater is not working on the door or if the door, gas gets bad or you have holes or cracks in the walls and there's infiltration coming in, that will cause ice.

The second most common reason for ice on the ceilings is a defrost problem. Okay, usually the defrost is running too long and or the defrost termination fan delay switch is not working properly so on a walk-in freezer. What they typically do is when it goes into a defrost. We naturally have to do a defrost so many times a day to remove any ice or condensation buildup inside the box right or ice.

So you you put it into typically electric strip heat. Okay is what they do now. Sometimes they do hot gas defrost, but typically it's electric stripy electric strip heaters will turn on the evaporative fan motors turn off and it's just gon na the heaters are at the bottom of the coil, the heat's gon na rise, the cold air is gon na fall And it's gon na defrost the ice, but if the heaters run too long and the box gets too warm and defrost what'll start to happen, is you'll have condensation all up on the ceiling and the walls will start to liquefy or ice drops will start to liquefy And they'll start to drop down. Okay, also, when the system turns back on the evaporator fan, motor should not turn on right away.

Okay, because if the evaporator fan motors turn on right away, what it's going to do is it's going to blow steam and water droplets. All across the box, because also on your coil there's water dripping down too, so you typically have like a drain period. Um if you have new electronic controls, but on an older system you just had a defrost termination switch or defrost termination fan, delay switch. So, basically uh if the coil gets too hot, when it's in defrost it kicks it out a defrost, but then at the same time, when the system goes back into refrigeration mode, the evaporative fan motor should not start up right away.

Okay, so if you have ice droplets, all over your box number one look for air leaking into the box solve those problems, whether it be a gasket or cracks or holes or whatever solve those. And then the next thing is investigate your defrost system. You could have defrosting too long for the coil and or your defrost termination fan. Delay switch could be faulty causing water droplets and ice crystals to farm all over the place.

Okay, that's the most common reasons. Why we have ice inside of a freezer also make sure that your drain is draining outside of the box. It's not leaking inside the box. That kind of stuff that's really important, too um.

Let's see what else we got going here, uh jason johnson says: come up north, you won't be opening the slider ha ha yeah, it's 10 degrees right now, yeah! No, it's uh! It's probably what's the temperature outside right now, it's probably about 48 degrees outside maybe 50, but it's probably about 82 in my office right now. So it's pretty darn hot all! Right! Let's see what else um, let's see um all right. How do you defrost a window unit that freezes up well, there's something causing it to deep to freeze up? Typically it's an airflow issue. It might have dirty coils um, but uh the best way to defrost.

It is just turn off the compressor if you can and just turn the fan on and let the fan circulate. That's the best way, all right um. In a recent video uh, though, the air conditioner video um, i was told to work on the wrong unit, was the title of video. When i went to go, make a leak repair on the system.

I cut out the uh, the coremax high flow schraders and just put in normal schrader valves. Why did i do that? Well, the high flow schraders are a huge leak point or the core max fittings are a huge leak point on systems and they can be problematic. Also, they create a big problem when you need to evacuate your system, you cannot remove those schraders to do an evacuation when you're using the high flow schraders, okay versus a normal schrader that we use every day where you can put a schrader core schrader core removal Tool and you can pull the schrader out - you can't do that with the high flow schrader. Now there is a tool to remove the high flow schrader and change it, but you can't pull an evacuation on the system when it's out so when possible.

I either change the high flow shredders, just change them out. Whenever i have all the refrigerant out, i just change them out. Pre-Amp preventatively and or i replace them with normal schraders in a perfect world. Normal schraders are better because then we can put schrader core removal tools on there and pull a better evacuation, so uh tails 303.

Thank you very much for that super chat, android man. Thank you very much for that super chat man. I really really appreciate it. So android man says it's time to use his hvacr hoodie yeah.

If you guys don't know, i do have merchandise available. It's a great way to help support the channel. You can go to my website hvacrvideos.com. You can see some of the shirts back here.

My wife and i handle the packing and shipping of everything we do it all in house. We have hats available. This is my hvacr hat now i purposely on this hat did not put hvacr videos, because i wanted you guys to be able to wear these at work and not represent a brand and contradict your uniforms. Hvacr is just an acronym right for what we do.

You know, and it doesn't have my logo or anything like that on it. This is a very breathable um hat that i purposely had made it it's kind of hard to explain until you guys have one in your hands. It's breathable like a trucker hat, but it doesn't look like a trucker hat. It's it's solid right and one of the biggest things about this hat is the black underbill.

I've specifically had that looked for this hat for a long time, because when we're at work, you know we touch the bottom of our hat and if it's white, it gets all dirty and nasty okay, but we have sweaters beanies all that stuff available. So, if you're interested check out my website, hvacrvideos.com um tails 303 again, thank you very much for that super chat. You said what made me want to get into this trade. You have really good ethics.

We need more people. Like me, um. I said it kind of at the beginning, but i started working for my father and i watched my father uh. You know try to teach me the things that he couldn't teach me.

I learned on my own and i grew from everything i learned my values and my honesty from my father. Okay, i still work with my father him and i run the business together. He's semi-retired. He just does an administrative position.

He does not work in the field anymore, but um he's the person that got me involved in the trade, and i absolutely love it now. I do not have any sons. I have two daughters uh. Both of my daughters have no interest in getting into the trade, which is fine, so um.

You know. The best that i can do is try to share my knowledge with other people, because i will not be passing it on to you know my child, so i try to pass it on to everybody else as much as possible by training apprentices by sharing my knowledge On videos that way, we can continue this. You know, and i encourage everybody out there to share their knowledge too. So um really.

I appreciate the people out there talking about the hats. Thank you very much. I really really appreciate it. Um.

Let me see what else we got going on in here uh. What am i missing? I'm looking through there um. Yes, i have heard of legionnaires disease um, all right, cool uh, a cane. Oh, i already answered that question um.

We already did that one and uh with commercial accounts. I had a question: do i get paid on site? No, i work for large chains and sometimes in a best case scenario we get paid in 30 days. That's not very rare, that's not very often. Normally it's anywhere from 60 to 90 days before we get paid, it's just part of the game.

You have to do when you're working with these corporate restaurants, it's kind of a pain in the butt, but it's all about procedures and people doing things right. And if i don't get the paperwork to the right people in time, and if that person doesn't get it to the right people in time within their company, then the process starts over and it's just a pain in the butt, but typically anywhere from 30 to 90 Days is when we get paid and it's a pain, but it is it's just part of the game. So um recently made a video a couple videos back about a beer walking not working and it had a blown fuse on the roof. This was the one that had a condensing unit up on the mezzanine with the giant cooling fans that i turned on to annoy the people making videos in the parking lot, but uh in that video.

I had a really good question in the comments and someone said: hey wait, a minute if that was a three-phase system which it was. It was a three-phase 30 amp disconnect on the roof and one of the fuses was blown and he had a genuine question. If one of those fuses was blown, how did it not single phase the compressor, because it was a three-phase compressor and if you guys don't already know if you have a three-phase compressor and you remove one of the wires and you still have two legs of power Going to that compressor, it will do something called single phasing. It needs all three legs for that compressor to work right: okay, uh, robert mckenzie um.

Thank you very much for that super chat. It says from rob and jenna met me at the hr show in orlando. You need some black shirts, so right on man, i really appreciate it um. I have plenty of black shirts available at hvacs.com, so um speaking of that and i'll get back to the question real quick.

I will be at the ahr show in las vegas here. In a couple weeks, actually here at the end of january, we have the hr trade show in las vegas. I will be doing booth time at the sporland booth and at the refrigeration technologies booth, so follow my social media i'll announce it more once we get closer to the show, but i will be doing the ahr trade show in vegas i'll be there for all three Days if work goes well and i hope to see everybody out there, that actually goes to the show. So back to the question, why did we not single phase that compressor when we blew a fuse? The customer got lucky because when it blew a fuse, it blew the fuse that ran the control circuit, so it actually disconnected the time clock from the picture.

So, therefore, the system did not run anymore now on a three-phase walk-in freezer system, just a standard traditional one. The disconnect at the condensing unit typically controls the evaporator. If you pay attention to how you wire it, you can wire it in a way that, if any one of those fuses ever blows, the compressor does not continue to run. But you got to get creative with the way that you power certain components in the system, so you have three fuses.

Two of the legs are gon na run the time clock you know, and then two of the legs are gon na run the compressor contactor. So between those three legs, if you wire it correctly, if any one of those fuses was to ever blow, you can set it up to where nothing will single phase, but you got ta think and it's often not done via the the manufacturer. So sometimes you may have to change some things around, but it is possible that you set it up appropriately. So that way, if anything ever blows as far as the fuses go, it doesn't single phase the compressor and then ruin it.

Um had a really simple question, but it's okay to ask these simple questions. You know i get questions from homeowners technicians. You know business owners and it's fine. I appreciate all the questions, so the question was: can r290 be used as fuel for a barbecue? Yes, it can r290 is refrigerant.

Grade. Propane r290 can be used for a barbecue, but it's a little bit expensive. So you want to be very cautious about that. Right now, for a 16 ounce can of r290 it's about 40 dollars, my cost okay.

So with that being said, that's actually right about the same price as 410a, if not a little bit more, it's quite expensive. The difference between barbecue, propane and refrigerant grade propane is the purity and the moisture refrigerant grade propane is like 99.9 percent pure uh. There's no moisture in it and it you know it's there's no odorants added to it or anything like that. You can't smell it at all.

Barbecue propane has a lot of moisture in it. I know that from experience from having a travel trailer and it not working when my propane tanks got low because they were full of moisture, it's just not something and they add an odorant which is a a contaminant.