Welcome to bert life, we're doing a maintenance, i'm going to teach you everything you need to know to do a proper maintenance on a residential system, hello. This is jana hey. This is bert, with caleb's hi. How are you good? Are you ready for us now we're all ready? Okay, great, so i'm probably about 10 minutes away when you first show up to a maintenance, your first impression is going to be how that customer sees the whole company.

A key thing is actually being courteous and professional. Like don't walk across the front of the lawn shoe covers, put them on your feet before you go inside, then another key step is actually communicating with the customer. Do you have any issues? Do you see any problems? First thing we're going to do this time here, because this fall we're going to turn in heat and check out how the heat works. Now nest has a lockout in that they don't bring on the heat strips unless it's actually cold outside and we're not going to change that function.

We're going to test our heat pump and then i'll just uh force on the heat strips at some point. To actually call that first things, first just turn on heat. Maintenances are really important for the customer and for us for us, because it keeps our relationship with the customer and we can actually um show up. They see our faces.

Often they connect us to their system. So when bid things big things go wrong. We are their people as we're getting ready to start our maintenance. It's important to just kind of get an overview overview visually of everything, so you check out where everything's going to be outside.

If there's any unusual stuff, like our carpet, is kind of buried in the gravel and the insulation looks like it's starting to get tore up, we have this really ugly wire slice here. These are all things points of interest that we're gon na have to look out for when we're doing our maintenance. I've already seen two dead lizards in there. Let me get this guy out of our way.

This maintenance already getting interesting because we have heat calling inside at the thermostat, but heat pump not actually running right. Now, i'm just gon na check real quick to make sure that our p strips are crawling should be, and i have 23 amps on my heat strips, so that would be the equivalent of a 5kw and it looks like that's exactly what we have. So we have a 5kw heat strip from the system, which is small for this tonnage. Backup key closes up or anyways noticing a couple problems here: um code wise, you actually need the ability for your backup heat to be able to keep the size of this house, and five pw is not enough.

Okay, so zero volts, that's right! Checking the ground is the only way to actually check safety if you've got zero volts to ground, then you're safe to touch because you are ground. The other visual check that needs to be done is actually to check our contact here to see if we have fitted in and honestly that contactor looks pretty clean. My process for doing the maintenance is this time of year show up check heat. We did that the heat's working we confirmed heat strips are working, we've burnt off any dust that are on them.

Heat pump is actually running it's hot out, so i'm not like testing refrigerant and heat. I just want to make sure the reversing valve switches i want to make sure that it actually runs without pumping down on the the heat mode txv and i'm good at that point, with checking heat we'll do our refrigerant checking in cool mode. This is actually gold. Man he's just about to move into his own van, so we're at the final stages, i'm riding with him for training.

This is not my van, which is why it looks so beautiful. He has a nice organized maintenance bucket. It's just a bucket with some of the cleaners we use and a jug for flushing water, an empty jug, our vacuum, making stuff's quick to grab what we're using for our cleaners, this viper on the evaporator and inside this is self rinse from from viper. If the condenser is really bad, really clogged we're going to bust this out and use it with some form of a foam or pump sprayer on the condenser to clean that.

The way i like to do a maintenance is all of the cleaning and power off checks. First, capacitor power off check, cleaning the condenser coils evaporator drain, all of the cleaning out of the way, and that way when we go to test the system, we're working one on a clean system, but two having the final steps of the maintenance be actually checking the Equipment means that more technicians are not going to make the easy mistake of oh, i tested everything. Then i checked capacitor left the wires off or then i cleaned the drain left a breaker off or then i filled the trap and accidentally filled a the float switch and because testing will be our final step in this process, then we can be confident that we're Walking away from something that we haven't missed anything stupid part of a maintenance well done is always taking off the top cleaning out whatever leafs and crap we have down in here i'm gon na. Just when you take the top off the condenser, you can actually check the wires to make sure they're not rubbing on copper, really common issue tie that up insulate the copper wrap your wire to that.

If that's an issue, you can check your compressor terminals. If it's not a plug, you actually have terminals. There you make sure they're, actually look good they're, not rusted out that'll. Tell you about the condition of the compressor make sure they're actually tight.

The other reason for taking it off is so that you can properly clean the condenser, which is washing it from the inside out. The real best way to do this is to actually clear out the very bottom so down here to actually start by clearing out the drains of your system, so that as you're cleaning, the water has somewhere to go on the condenser coils. If they're this clean already, which they are relatively clean, i'm not going to be using any cleaners on them. I will actually use cleaners on the condenser when there's a lot of dirt or hard impacted stuff or a lot of corrosion that i'm going to try to.

Like uh, wash off or not corrosion oxidization that i'm going to try to be washing off an insert is clean. That's how it should look when you're done really important when you're taking fans off these actually need to come down through their tracks. They don't get pinched here like if you're working with a train or linux, they actually have a channel for them to fit into that. You slide them into.

Condenser is done as far as cleaning goes and checking everything visually, noting anything that needed to be quoted. We won't be back here until it's time to check our chart, i'm going to put as a minimum when i do a maintenance, i'm doing flushing, two gallons of water through my pan, and that will get all of this section as well. Help that be flushed out and then i'm going to dump two gallons of water down the service port directly. You can usually get a little bit more force to push uh stuff through the drain line by dumping through the service port there, with the funnel.

So two gallons in the pan, two gallons and the service port is a minimum and then at that point i will be checking the vacuum open. The top of the vacuum. Look at the water is it clean? Is there still chunks in there if there's chunks? Let's keep going, let's keep flushing this grain out. If it's clean, then four gallons of water is fine.

Okay, visual inspection is really important on the inside of the equipment too. I'm going to be looking in my blower wheel, see if i have dust or dirt filled up, i might need to quote pulling that out and cleaning that side panels for stuff dirt to clean uh. Mold mildew, i mean uh growth, black growth, little white pores on it and then uh filter. We replace that as part of our maintenance, you can see their system doesn't pull in a lot of dirt.

This has been here since august and we're in december. That's not too bad. I will be looking at the evaporator coil and if i can't get a good view that way, then you can turn on the phone. Take a video if it's really dirty turn on the phone.

Take a video of your coil. You can also show the customer that part of my process is the green evap self rinse from viper, and if the side panels are dirty, what i'll do is just spray, just a thin sort of fog layer and then spray the whole coil down. This is pretty clean, so this is really just a light self rinse application. If it's a little more dirty, then i'll take off the top and i'll actually just pour along the pot like this, and that will then rinse down all the way through.

So this is a very mild mixture of evap, rinse self rinse from viper very mild. It's good for your coil. You don't want to use any cleaners on here. It's not specifically designed for a coil that doesn't say self rinse and the reason i say that is because you want to make sure that if you don't rinse all the cleaner off yourself, then just the system running and the condensation it's going to be fine rinsing.

That off itself, so it should be self rents. It should be designed for an evaporator or don't put it on there. I'm going to wipe down panels in here everything that i sprayed on the inside of my panel doors. Often these can be pretty filthy, we'll spray them off wipe them down.

If the insulation is starting to come off, then we can spray glue that down for really bad situations, use some silver tape and actually pull it over and secure that something to always look for. On your maintenance, visual check on here, i'm looking for things like we have this thin, copper tube or this one is actually aluminum, and is it rubbing on anything that it could wear through and actually cause a rub out. So i'm looking for those areas also the way this is run the same thing looking at my wires, how they run down. This is pretty good.

Tucked behind here we're not going to have a problem with rub outs there, all my connections up top. Are they clean and tight? Are they set somewhere like this? It's fine, sometimes they're in a really tight box, and you can see they're rubbing out in the air edges so checking for that is important. We have another connection point right here. Look at all your electrical connection, points and check them to make sure they're actually solid and clean.

That concludes the cleaning and the power off section. So next, all we need to do is turn the equipment on in cool mode and do a real, really detailed. Checking of the refrigerant air temperature split, making sure the system actually is running away, looks like we already have an access hole for checking our air split. When i turn the system on, i check the pull switch.

Make sure that actually opening that up kills power to the system so i'll run inside confirm either the thermostat has shut off or that my condenser has shut off, or i can wait here for an extra 30 seconds for the blower delay to make sure that turns Off closing out your call walk around you're, going to inspect that all the panels are closed. Everything's cleaned up your refrigerant caps are actually put back on. You need to clean up anything that you've messed up so leaving a really clean area and then try to find ways that you can improve it from where you found it. So, like wiping down the platform, we got dirt or dust in there cleaning off the face of the condenser or the face of the air handler things that the customer can actually see that.

Oh this, this equipment now looks a little bit cleaner because you could be a really really good tech technically, but the customer is never going to know that all they're going to be able to know that you did a good job. Is your interaction with them and how clean and sharp things look so remember that stuff, like filling holes in the return where you've taken your temperature broke important last step, you're going to make sure your system's all running before you leave and you're gon na make sure That your unit is draining look at that gorgeous drain. A job well done. Okay, so now we're actually testing refrigerant.

Our coils did get wet, so we're gon na have a minimum of like 20 minutes run time during this testing process. I'm going to take that time to clean up the job site. Make things look nice. Take that time to fill out.

The invoice have a discussion with the customer about added uh things that we notice that need to be taken care of something additional to the maintenance that we need to charge for uh. While the system is balancing out some of the technicians that i train, they just need a little extra push like that to drag their feet. They go slower and that's fine. You just have to learn how to push them.

It helps to inspire and encourage. If you ever see me walking that slow, you can shoot me. I went through all the details that we found the 5k heat the wires with the disconnect location talk to her about how those could be potential problems offered the solutions needed to actually take care of that. I mentioned to her what you always want to do with the customer that i replaced the filter.

I dated it so when you're thorough at the end of the job, even though you finished your work and you have this feeling inside you, like, i got to get out of here - slow down talk with your customer - make that part of the process close in a Way that again, they feel listened to and they can see that you're detailed, burt um yeah. You can be pretty pushy most of the time, all the time, actually mostly discouraging, sometimes encouraging, mostly when he's not being discouraging but uh, it's hard. It's it's a hard. It's a hard job to work with him.

You almost done joel where's, the funnel it's just all about being in the right place, the right time to impress your trainer. If you find a way to constantly improve the system, constantly improve yourself when you're on maintenances, then you're going to enjoy them a lot more, they can be really boring, they can be long and they can feel like hey. I do this over and over and over again, but if you're actually actively trying to find a way to improve anything, you come up against you're, going to enjoy a lot more thanks for watching our video. If you enjoyed it and got something out of it, if you wouldn't mind hitting the thumbs up button to like the video subscribe to the channel and click, the notifications bell to be notified when new videos come out, hvac school is far more than a youtube channel.

You can find out more by going to hvacrschool.com, which is our website and hub for all of our content, including tech tips, videos, podcasts and so much more. You can also subscribe to the podcast on any podcast app of your choosing. You can also join our facebook group if you want to weigh in on the conversation yourself thanks again for watching you.