Good morning, everybody we're going to talk about a few condensate considerations this morning, some of the things that are kind of more in depth than just cleaning a drain. First off i want to apologize because i do come off as condescending sometimes, and the reason is is because i am condescending, so i just want to make that really clear. I'm very sympathetic to basically every mistake, you've ever made because i have literally made every single one, but our goal in everything we do is to not have to go back to do a quality job technically, meaning that we, when we say this is what's wrong. It is that that's wrong right so troubleshooting properly, and then we want to do really good workmanship.

And if we do those three things, then we'll make money right, because the not going back part is the whole part that actually drives sales. If you start to become motivated by not having to go back, then you start to look at the whole system. I don't want this thing to break anytime soon and in that you and the customers motivations become aligned, because the customer doesn't want you to come back anytime soon either. Now they may not know that, because a lot of people don't understand how complicated these systems are.

So they think, ah, just replace the capacitor get out of here right, hooray, everybody, that's kind of how our mindset gets. We do not want to be motivated by rapid service calls right. This is the mode we get into, especially in the summer. It's like, oh man.

I did 12 service calls that day, if you did 12 service calls that day. That is a breakdown of the organization, because, if you have to do 12 service calls in a day that means that either we're understaffed in some way we're having a bunch of callbacks or having a bunch of warranty, calls something's going wrong in order for that to Happen, i would rather you do five six service calls a day and spend a good amount of time on each one being really thorough, maybe even less in some cases, maybe three or four, if you're being really thorough and you're getting a lot of quoted repairs as Part of your service call become motivated by that. Instead, because we can always dial back our customer base. As we get more thorough right, we can always do more cod work and maybe do less of these kind of you know.

Property management maintenance type things that we that we do a lot of around here, not there's anything wrong with that. But if we're getting really good at being profitable on every job and not having to go back, then we can focus more on that. That really needs to be what we try to get motivated by, and i know it's tricky. I understand the motivation of you know wanting to get to that next job, all right, we're going to talk about condensate considerations.

First thing: why does the water from our fan coil here? Why does it end up draining outside? Because, what's that, what's the old saying is water flows, downhill right, water flows, downhill? Everybody says that this this ain't complicated water flows, downhill right. This is easy, but there's a problem because the water does flow downhill, but then what does it? Do? It drops back up? It goes back uphill again right. People who don't work in florida are completely gobsmacked by how we do drains, because how we do drains is we have an air handler sitting on a platform generally right, and what does the drain do? It goes over? We have our clean out here right and then it just goes down into the platform goes outside then comes out like that right and then that's how it drips, and so this whole area from this level to this level is what what is this called. It's called a trap right, and so why does the water end up coming out this end, what makes it go back? Uphill, negative pressure, negative pressure, it's it's! It is there's pressure involved, but it's just the column.

It's just the weight of the water up here. So as this weight as this gets higher than this, it's going to balance and push out right water seeks level right. So if we stack up more water on this side, it's going to push out this side. But is that really flow? I mean it is flow, but it's a very low flow.

There's, there's almost no pressure associated with this, and that explains why our drains back up as much as they do because we're putting a lot of water in here. That's just sitting there, it's just standing water. It's just hanging out right: it's barely moving, even when the system's running, when it's not running it's just sitting there. So it's a lot of water.

What's in that water, nothing but living organisms and bacteria and fungi and all that kind of stuff. Right, i like to say fungi like that we don't have much flow, there's no chlorine in it. There's nothing in there to treat it, and so it backs up other markets. They don't do it that way.

Other markets. They do something like this and again it's usually like a lot of cases. It's going to be in a basement and they're just draining into a floor drain, something like that, but if they were going to do it this way, if they were going to have a system on a platform, what they would do is they would go here. They'd, have their clean out they'd build their trap right here.

They'd have a vent right here and then this would just kind of drain out the wall, and so here's a wall - and we just have it here and then it would just go down. So there would not be an additional trap. You'd have one trap at the unit and you'll see this a lot of times in horizontal applications like on cubesmarts. That sort of thing the trap will be at the unit.

It'll be trap, clean out, trap, vent, does event, stay open or closed open right. That's why it's called event and it's after the trap. Does the clean out stay open or closed closed right? What would happen if we leave a clean out open? I mean yeah. What would happen if you leave the clean out open suck air in right, because there's nothing to prevent there's no seal of water here, this seal of water prevents us from sucking air back in if we leave the vent open.

So it's okay to leave a vent open. Does the depth of this trap matter that shallow that deep? Does it matter how deep the trap is go ahead as long as it creates a seal not as long as it creates a seal and the pressure associated with that column of water is great enough to overcome the negative static pressure of the system? So that means that you've got to have enough of a column that the negative static pressure, because again our blowers on our fan coils are here. Evaporators are here, which means that our evaporator is on negative pressure. Therefore, our drain's on negative pressure, i.e our drain sucks right.

It wants to suck back air and if the static pressure is great enough on this system got a dirty filter got a small return whatever and our trap is shallow enough. It'll actually suck the water back out of the trap. If the trap is too shallow, so there is kind of a a standard trap size that you need and a lot of people say well. What is that? Well, it really depends on the system for our typical systems.

You take your typical kind of p-trap couple inches. That's enough! Is there benefits to this type of sys layout to what we have in florida, typically yeah, because there's far less water and if we want to clean this out, all we got to do is take a little brush or something and just that's it right. This is what gets dirty now is that to say that this doesn't get dirty at all. No, i mean that can get dirty, but it's very, very unlikely that that is going to clog.

What's going to clog is the traps generally speaking, but let's talk about again. Go back to kind of our standard florida layout here, let's talk about where we run into issues, so we got our trap here goes outside right. So what would happen if, in this trap section here, if, in this trap section it went up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down before it went out what would happen to the system? You say double traps. Multiple traps system doesn't work with multiple traps right.

Well, that's actually true, initially, when it's dry, but once that is full of water. If that is full of water in the trap section, it doesn't matter how many times it goes up and down. As long as this is a solid, continuous column of water, it will still drain, but what happens when we suck it out, and now we've got all of these traps. In there now air pockets get trapped in between the columns of water, and now it doesn't drain anymore and really the reason that that is there's a couple different reasons, but the main reason.

So there is a, but, but you have the buoyancy of that air that wants to travel back up the other direction and that prevents it that buoyancy opposes the uh the water and creates this. This trapped air and now it doesn't drain. So that's what we would call a double trap, but, generally speaking, the most common type of double trap that we run into in our market is because we got a chase pipe down here, right that it's got that it's got to go into and a lot of Times the drain doesn't line up directly with the chase pipe. So let's say the chase pipe is up here and it's above the the ground they'll push the drain down to the ground, and then they go back up and then into some version of that.

That is our first trap, and now we have a double trap and that's usually why that happens. So if you ever run into a case where all of a sudden the system is double trapped, especially after you've re-piped it it's usually because this piece here got pushed down after an install or whatever. So often what you can do is go ahead and cut the tee off, pull that drain up a little bit. Reconnect it, and now that's going to pull this out and make it go so that way it's pitching down.

Does that make sense? It's something you run into a lot in residential new construction. We just don't do a lot of that, so we don't see it as much, but that's often the reason why, when it's this application, just trying to make this really practical in terms of cleaning. What about this section right here, this little horizontal section of pipe this little guy right here? Why does this get clogged sometimes because the pan is dirty while pan gets dirty? It's right there by the pan right from the pan. Low pitch is a big one right.

If the slower that water is moving in that section, the more likely it is to build up crap in it now, why can't we generally pitch that section very much if it's on a platform like that, sometimes the same right there right there? What were you saying? Yeah, you don't have a lot of space right, you you often don't you only have the fall of the filter to kind of work with. So it doesn't give you much. Usually it's tight. It's really.

It's really tricky, which is another big reason why i want us focusing on media filters as a really great option. Now again, it's actually not even ideal to use a media filter. That's underneath the unit. This is kind of another thing like it's better.

To put it. If you've got a return, riser to put a larger size, the bigger the filter we can put in the better. This idea that like well, it's what fits under the unit. So that's the right size, it's kind of just something we get in our heads, the bigger the square inches of the face of a filter, the more effective that filter is going to be the better it's going to work, the less it's going to get dirty right.

So if you can, if we can kind of blow out the return riser and put it in the return, riser, that's better, but there's something to be said for getting that air handler off the platform top. The easiest way to do that today is to put the media filter under it right. Media filters are not that expensive, i mean heck. We could actually put two and then not put a filter in the one underneath the unit.

Of course. That would create confusion. Then customers would put them in both and then we'd have an issue, but if you got low enough static pressure drop, that's actually not even a problem. Sorry we're gon na i'm getting off here.

That's a big reason why it's nice to put a media filter in there because we can get a little fall. So if you can get more fall, give more fall. Does anybody know the amount of fall that we want to see? What's the kind of the standard amount of fall that i always repeat that we want to see on a horizontal portion of drain line, one quarter inch per foot, so that means, if you take a foot of so let's let's say: we've got four feet of drain. All right, we got four feet of horizontal drain here.

This is four feet long. How much fall do we want to see between this point and this point four quarters right, four quarter inches, which would be one inch right so now we want to see one inch of fall from here. To here i mean my car. Well, all the way down here: are you going to actually measure that? Probably not, but you want to make sure visually that that's what you're getting and in cases where you've got longer drains, that's what you're looking for.

So if it's a horizontal unit right up in an attic and we've got a drain - and this drain is going this great distance - we have to make sure that we get that quarter, inch per foot run out and now again some people say well. It's actually eighth inch per foot in some code books. I know i'm just quarter foot is what i always quote just so that way we're safe. We have to make sure that it's strapped properly, so that way we don't get sag kind of a good standard is at least every four feet: minimum every four feet: good solids, bracing of some sort.

That gives you your proper pitching. This is also true if you're on roofs you're draining a roof drain, something like that same sort of thing. You have to make sure that it's actually got on stands and, if you're running a really long distance. That means near the unit.

You need to get it higher up. So that way you can get more fall before it gets all the way over right over time. What tends to happen? If you go to a system, that's been running a long time and now it's having drain issues a lot of times. It's because over time you lost a brace or it was never braced properly in the first place, and they were just relying on the pvc and what does the pvc do starts to sag over time, and now you start to get double traps triple traps whatever and It'll run okay, as long as the trap that you get doesn't cause a column of water to actually seal as soon as it seals as soon as that column of water fills and fills the entire tube and seals off.

That's when it stops working. So when we go to systems it's like, we keep going back and cleaning the drain and i'm sucking water out. It's not that dirty. You probably are dealing with some sort of a double trap and every time you go and clean, it you're just cleaning that little tiny bit of sludge out and now it's working again for a couple days and now it's backing up again.

So, in those cases we want to try to find the double trap and in some cases you can start to get where it just gets so clogged that there's just this tiny little hole in it and that's where you want to use either. You know either replace the drain in some cases or use something like drain solve very carefully with gloves and glasses, and all that kind of thing and let it sit in there for a little bit and then flush it out to make sure that you're getting those Harder deposits out another question: we got an air handler, we got our float, switch right, ooh. That is a very crooked air handler we got our float switch. What do we do with our float? Switch? We take it and bring it down to the platform right and we kind of place our float switch here on the platform top right.

Why do we do that? To create a water trap closely? It's not really a water trap per se. It's so that! Well, so so what zach said so water doesn't go back into the system um, but it's that is part of it. So that way, when water does go into the float, it stays in the flow right. So that way the system shuts off.

We want it to shut off, but the main reason is is that if imagine that i took the float switch - and i put it right here at the unit - and i just set it right out the front just got that flat bottom on the float switch. What has to happen in order to trip that switch? The actual level in the pan has to rise above that right. I could actually get a little water starting to back up in there and it wouldn't trip the actual entire level, because if it, if the level goes back down, it'll flow back in right, the actual entire level in that has to get high enough to trip that Float float, switch manufacturers have gotten better about this um and, if they're designed to go in there, they can go in there. A lot of people argue with them.

Well, i've done it this way, 20 years and it's just certain brands. The pans are shallow enough that the water level will go up and it won't trip the float and so just as to be super safe. That's what we do is we run it around the edge we put it on the platform top so that way, if any water is going into that float, eventually it's going to fill that float, switch, we're not relying on just the pan level to get it up, Because we're pitching the horizontal portion, it's going down into the float, eventually it's going to trip now. A lot of guys will take the the float and on a system, that's that's tripping and they'll.

Take it and pull it level. They'll, take this and they'll pull it up and they're like all right. It was tripping. Now it's fixed right.

What's the problem with what i just did a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more right! Now, it's not, of course it's not going to trip and you may take away the problem, but did you really solve the problem? No, you just solved the symptom. All you did was keep the float switch from tripping. That's not the problem. The problem is, why is water going to the float switch, and i understand it's frustrating sometimes because it's like drain's not backed up, but what's another thing that can cause water to go into a float switch.

That's not a backed up drain. It isn't a double trap. Platform level right, that's a big one right platform level. I love the one where they say.

I've seen these notes before, where it says platform starting to sag may want to replace in the future. Anybody ever seen notes like that before platforms, starting to sag may want to replace in the future. Why don't we say platform sagging quote to replace: do you know why we don't do that? There's there's a psychology here to why we don't do that, because every call that we don't have to talk to the customer about money feels like a win to us right because it's not fun. It's not our favorite, but we need to learn to make it our favorite in the words of uh.

Wait. Who is that? No? No! What movie is that from work is work. Is your new favorite? Oh, it's uh! It's uh! It's uh, elf, yeah and he's like christmas is my favorite. It's like make work, your new favorite, so platform level is a big one.

If your platform is starting to get out of level at all, starting to sag at all quote a new platform. Don't get a platform quote quote the new platform, get the price right then, and quote it with the customer, while you're there what's some others that can cause drain issues, static pressure, static pressure. So if you have high negative static pressure, what tends to happen? Is you start to suck in air all over the place, all kinds of places that normally wouldn't have enough airflow? So all these little ports and gaps around it starts sucking in air. You start getting turbulent flow in there and water starts splashing all kinds of places.

It shouldn't splash having air flow problems, is a big one, but also make sure everything's properly sealed, make sure there's proper grommeting and everything all around that area. Anything that's drawing air in, and air is moving in in directions it shouldn't go or that air is more turbulent than it normally would be, or it's sucking back against the trap that could cause that problem right. You can start to get those little. You know currents and then water starts kind of popping into the float switch.

What else anything else you can think of? That's a pretty good list, making sure things everything's level. Now what about in horizontal applications? What's a cause of objectionable condensate condensation going places it shouldn't? Go same things we mentioned level right airflow, but there's another big one, failing to install that pan properly, because when you have different configurations in different brands, you have to actually reconfigure the pan. You've got that little gooseneck and on the carriers that has to be laid in there properly and has to be connected to the top. If that's not done right, then water is going to just start going everywhere and it's a pretty significant issue.

So if you go to a horizontal unit and it's like where's, this water coming from stop either call somebody who's installed a lot of these things or read the even better read the install manual. So that way, you know the right way to reconfigure these horizontal drain pans and you know how to do it properly. Make sense like that's if they're like, if you didn't hear anything else in this class, hear that part, because that can cause major damage. Let's say you go to a system and maybe it froze up or whatever, and the insulation is all just soaked on a horizontal unit.

All that side insulation is just saturated. What do we do bert, sam anybody, saturated insulation inside of a horizontal unit? What do we do? We try to find out why, right we got to figure it out. We check if the coil orientation is right. Orientation is right, clean the drain, all that stuff, all that all that.

But then, when you get done, what do you do you really have to replace that insulation, depending on the brand? What's that it's never going to drip just dry out right? It's just not! We've done this a zillion times. So what do you do best thing to do? Is home depot lowe's get the foam board. The sheets of foam board cut those you try to use duct board, but then duckboard is likely to get saturated again anyway. This way, if you do it once then you're done we actually that was one of the presentations in the symposium rick sims talked about this.

That's what they do, they're a florida contractor. If you run into cases where you've saturated the insulation you're going to have to strip down the air handler, you're gon na have to put in the sheets of foam board and tape it in the edges. You know whenever you're gon na another quick tip whenever you're gon na tape anything make sure to use a little spray bottle with some alcohol in it. It's really easy to get, and do i mean it's a piece of cake.

I want you to all have little spray bottles with alcohol in it. Rubbing alcohol rubbing alcohol, not jack daniels, that joke always plays squirt down the surfaces and then wipe it down with a microfiber towel before you apply any tapes because they're going to stick so much better in those cases and that's that's true: anytime you're taping fittings duck Fittings anything like that, taping to an air handler same thing, spray it down, wipe it down. It's going to make that and then use a tape. Squeegee, that's another thing! So when you're doing this on this edges and seams, so that way you don't get air in.

Behind make sure spray it down and then use your tape squeegee and go in and get make sure everything's in really good in in in position use a little spray glue on the back side of the surfaces. Spray glue is a contact cement. So those of you who never paid attention to how you use contact cement, you spray both surfaces, you let it tack up and then you press it together and hold it until it bonds. It's not something that you just spray it on both sides and then just jam it together, real quick right, or only on one side, both sides, let it tack up press it together, make sense cool.

I think we've covered a lot. Oh another thing is: if you ever have a horizontal air handler, this kind of this kind of drives me crazy. You need to make sure that we overlap in every direction by at least three to four inches in every direction, every direction and then that horizontal drain pan needs to be in position so that it can't move easily. If it's the sort of situation where somebody can just go up and walk into their attic and just bump it and the thing falls off, it's not good right, it's got to be kind of kept in place and it's not like it's got to be absolutely solidly Kept in place, but just something to hold it so that way, it's not going to move easily make sense and the plenums need to not be sagging away from the supplies and returns so that the overflow doesn't just ride down the ductwork correct.

I mean this comes down to when you're attaching to a horizontal unit. This is where it's a issue with how we do this. Sometimes, if this seal does break this, duct shouldn't fall off. If it does, it means the duct is not properly supported, so this duct needs to be independently supported within a few inches of the equipment, make sense it's got to be independently supported, so the easiest way is, however, you're supporting the unit go ahead and support the Duct the same way, you know 10 12 inches away from the unit, just to make sure that if there is any issues that duck's not going to fall off and again you just, they fall off a lot because they literally are just taped in place and then Eventually, just with vibration over time the ducks fall off, but another thing that bert's saying is: don't have it so the way the ducks are pitching away from the unit have the ducts either level or even pitching towards the unit just slightly so that way, if there Is a condensate issue? The condensate issue stays here where it can drip into the drain pan rather than running down the ducts and creating all kinds of damage and chaos and heartache and pain and suffering.

All of the above. All of the above. The main thing that we need to do really well is far simpler than everything i talked about, and that is clean drains really well clean them until they're clean, clean, the horizontal portions clean the drain lines clean the drains. Do that really really well every time? No excuses: well, i don't have a proper tool to do that.

We've got those brushes that i handed out a while ago. I think we probably still have some in a box somewhere. Those are the ones that jessica brought up um, nobody likes them, no use a pandora, strap tip a panda strap to the brushes. I don't care whatever you come up with get because every drain's a little different too.

You know like it depends on whether you have a sweeping uh trap or how long it is, or you know what it's like to get into depending on brand, but just do a good job of cleaning them get in the habit. As part of your regular maintenance procedure, i mean a regular service call procedure of just looking down the tees, because if you have a really dirty drain, a drain that hasn't been cleaned in a while you're going to generally see that kind of goo traveling down into It if you see that if that drain isn't pristine, if you don't have a reason to believe that drain has been cleaned recently quota drain cleaning as part of that as part of that service call, that adds, gives you a little more time on the job time To assess the equipment and makes the job more profitable right and that's a benefit to the customer just is now if we were just there to do a maintenance two weeks ago and you come and you see the goo just go ahead and clean it right, but Prevent those service calls from happening before they happen, we don't want to keep going back. The customer doesn't want us to keep going back. We don't want to keep going back.

We would rather be there once fix a bunch of stuff collect a good amount of money. Say see you later see you on the next maintenance and life is good right. Any questions about any of this. Nothing else all right.

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