Video is a companion piece to the 3d heat pump condenser install video. We've've already made the link to that video is in the description. This is a heat pump install in central florida. Some of you may object to the practices and materials common to our market.

But it's still valuable to understand a common code compliant install in central florida in order to do a proper air handler. Install you need to follow many of the same practices. We showed in the condenser. Install video including brazing drawing the alloy into the joint proper leak detection proper recovery and of course proper vacuum.

Let's start with preparing for the job before you leave the shop ensure that you have the correct equipment that the model numbers match up with the proposal and that you have all of the proper accessory materials condenser pad. If needed hurricane straps heat strips thermostat float switch circuit breakers line set tubing insulation duct board mastic fab tape silver tape plywood line set protective cover a line set if required let's do a quick overview of recovery make sure you properly recover all of the refrigerant from the system. While weighing it out be sure to purge all of your hoses of air. Once you've finished recovering don't leave the refrigerant lines open for an excessive amount of time if the system stays open too long air and moisture can enter the lines for your safety always wear proper eye protection and be sure to use a respirator when working in contaminated areas and when cutting duct board.

Always lead on a drop cloth and prepare the space to remove garbage without making a mess. Make sure. The circuit breaker is off and test each leg of power to ground to ensure there's no voltage before proceeding make sure you clean the outside of the copper tubing before you cut it cleaning the copper after it's cut can cause contaminants to come off and enter the system. So always clean with sand cloth or emery cloth.

Before you cut cut pvc with a dedicated pvc clutter with a sharp blade and keep the ends square disconnect all of your low voltage control. Wearing carefully when cutting the duct board from the system make sure to use a level and cut it square here. We show some of our common tools. Our straight cut duct knife.

Our shiplap blue duckboard tool and our v. Cut. Red tool. We also have a duct square.

A tape squeegee a bottle of rubbing or isopropyl alcohol. Rags drop cloth silver tape. White. Fab.

Tape. An outward cinching staple gun with extra staples mastic and a mastic brush. These are standard tools. We use for cutting duct board here at our company in florida.

There are many other tools that may also be used refer to manufacturers literature for duckboard or the naima manuals for reference. Now you can go ahead and cut the ductwork square. Then you may remove the unit as shown previously we like to flush the lines with the hillmore line set cleaner tool. This tool attaches to a nitrogen tank.

Which will provide the force needed to push the cleaning pig through the line set you may also add a little bit of line set cleaner such as pro flush into the line set for additional cleaning tie. The pig catch bag to the other end of the tubing and set it in an oil pan to catch any oil and contaminants. That may come out of the system. Allow nitrogen to flow to the tool and pull the trigger to release the pig.

Which cleans out the line set repeat this process with the suction and the liquid line in the event that the pig ever gets stuck you can blow it back the other direction. But this indicates a severe kink and the line set should be replaced in many cases. We'll be replacing the old return box. That's often because moisture has damaged the return box from backed up drains and there may be damage from rodents or other animals think about where you're going to position the air handler.

So you have proper clearance on all sides and a minimum transition to the ductwork here. We show removing the wooden supports for the duct board and replacing them with metal studs. This is my preferred method because i prefer to use metal in contact with the wood and concrete in a potentially damp area. Follow whatever your company procedures require now we're going to show the basic procedure for cutting one and a half inch duct board.

Keep in mind that i'm not going to show exact dimensions. Obviously that varies depending on the size of the box. And there can also be two inch r8 sheets of board that are used in some locations. We're just showing the basic principles for cutting an assembly when cutting with a v cut tool recognize that the area made up by the v of the tool will be unused and discarded in the fold.

So when you're measuring measure the inside dimensions of the duct and subtract out the v. Everything you'll be doing will be based on the inside dimensions with an inch and a half on every side. Representing the thickness of the duct combined. It will be three inches in each direction.

When comparing the outside diameter to the inside diameter. Some installers may choose to leave a larger foil overlap than what the shiplap tool allows. This is a matter of personal preference next. We can begin to assemble the box.

When assembling here we're showing using tape first that could also be done with staples first during assembly tilt. The box over so that the duct board comes together tightly on the outside. This will allow it to finish square. If the duct board is at all dirty use some alcohol and a clean rag to wipe it down first before applying any tape.

When applying silver tape always use a tape squeegee now lay down. The white fab or mesh tape use the staple gun to assure that it all stays together next make your end caps end caps are simple and will leave a foil overlap in all directions again use the outward cinching stapler on the overlap to attach the end caps and make sure everything stays together next add silver tape squeegee. Fab outward. Cinching staples and later on mastic here.

We show assembling the boxes together in order to have enough area to make it to the return now we show how to apply mastic because the duct is concealed. We don't need to be using masking tape. The mastic lines will not be seen apply mastic liberally across the joints and allow it to dry before the final installation. When possible.

This is a very florida typical installation other markets may not see this type of platform installation and may even have side returns into the side of a system extend the copper and drain up through the top of the platform and make sure. It's properly supported to prevent double traps in the pvc drain. Whether you're flushing or replacing the line set make sure to seal. The chase pipe or any other external penetrations next.

We show how we cut a plywood platform top in our market. Make sure that the plywood is properly secured on sawhorses or other cutting area here. We show the use of a cordless circular. Saw to cut the plywood and do plunge cutting regardless of what you do wear proper eye gear and wear appropriate cutting gloves to protect your hands in general when cutting use cut resistant gloves.

Always keep the material of the gloves away from rotating parts gloves should not give a false sense of security. Many technicians and installers prefer plunge cutting with a circular. Saw keep in mind. That circular saws are for right handed operation left handed users must take extra care pledge.

Cutting can also be done by pre drilling a hole and using a jigsaw or cordless saw saw here we show facing the platform with plywood. But this could also be done with paneling or drywall. We show how to fasten. It with basic screws now we cut out the opening with our duck knife.

We place some wood strips around the edge in order to give the unit more height of the platform top this makes accessing the filter much easier different contractors may use different materials to rise it off the top. Many people will just seal the inside edge of the wood in the duct board with mastic. An alternate method that keeps the return air from coming into contact with the wood is to use a metal c. Channel.

That wraps around the top of the wood. All the way to the bottom of the duct board. It's fastened in place to the edge of the plywood platform top or the base strips regardless apply mastic to at least the top edge before placing the filter base or the air handler in place before working on the supply. Duct clean off the existing duct board with alcohol and a clean rag.

If the air handler is perfectly placed with the proper dimensions of the supply duct. It may be easy enough to cut the box on the floor. Without holding it in place and marking it some may even assemble the box completely and put it in place. We find that it's often easier to do a four piece configuration.

Where we cut four distinct pieces. Here. We show using the ship laps and the foil overlap on the front and back you may apply mastic to every edge of the duct board in order to get a better seal. But this can be messy and interfere with taping.

We then overlap the foil using the outward cinching staple gun apply. The ul listed tape with our tape. Squeegee and fab and then use the masking tape. So we have nice clean lines after applying mastic pull the masking tape off before the mastic is allowed to dry here we show what to do when you have an offset.

Which is going to be more common than a system directly underneath the duct you measure the height between the unit and the existing duckboard plenum and you make a piece that's cut to the height. But is much longer than the width that allows you to set the duct board in place and mark all of your dimensions. You can use the shiplap knife. But many technicians choose to cut the duckboard by hand with their duck knife.

Which requires some additional measurement to cut out the ship lamp be sure to use plenty of overlap on the foil. Backing again holding the pieces up in place before marking the edges. And then cutting on the ground is an easy field method for making difficult transitions and in some cases. You may choose to apply mastic to all the edges just take care that you don't over apply.

Which will make taping. Very difficult now follow up with the same taping and stapling procedure on the side of the air handler. Make sure. The fab tape overlaps the edge of the silver tape make sure that everything is clean and squeegee down when applying silver tape once again.

Apply masking tape mastic liberally and then pull the masking tape off before the mastic dries. Here. We also show sealing. The base using fab tape masking tape.

And then mastic. This can also be done with caulk next. We show the procedure for flowing nitrogen removing our schrader cores. Attaching our nitrogen to the suction line and allowing it to flow in braze mode.

Which is a very low three to five scfh while brazing when brazing in the air handler make sure to protect all. The sensitive components. Including the panels of the air handler. You may use a wet rag or a heat blocking putty like refrigeration technologies wet rag set your torch to a slightly carburizing or neutral flame heat the base material until it becomes a deep cherry red.

Then apply the brazing alloy and allow it to draw into the joint. Do this on all your connections and cool them once they've had at least 20 seconds to set now. We do the nitrogen pressure test and leak detection using a leak reactant or bubble. Solution.

Then we go on to our evacuation procedure. First we test our vacuum pump to make sure that it pulls down below 100 microns within 30 seconds. Now we use our one hose evacuation method putting our microengage on the far side of the liquid line and pulling down to well below 500 microns. Then we do our decay test where we valve off to ensure the vacuum does not rise above 500 microns within a 10 minute period of time again for more information on vacuum make sure to watch our full system evacuation video.

Next we release the charge and reinstall. The schrader course. Here. We show wearing in the high voltage wires.

And installing our electric auxiliary heat strips ensure we have the proper breaker size for the particular air handler and heat strip match. The wire size by the mca and ensure that we have large enough wire mca means minimum circuit opacity and the breaker is sized to the mocp or the maximum fuse or breaker. Now we're piping in our drain using nylon white on the threads and assembling our drain. Here we show a trap at the air handler that's not standard in a florida installation.

But it is standard in other markets. We have a clean out and our vent is after the trap. We install our condensate float switch assembling all of our pvc connections with a medium duty pvc cement next we wire in all of our low voltage connections o. For reversing valve g.

For blower y for our outdoor contactor w. For heat strips and dh is reserved for dehumidification mode for thermostats that allow that we need to make sure to set up our control and our circuit board for our fan coil to the proper tonnage and other system settings. This step should not be skipped here. We show an ecobee thermostat.

Standard wiring also seal the hole behind the thermostat around the wires with a putty or other type of sealant to prevent heat from the wall. Affecting the thermostat blower contactor reversing valve cool mode. 24 volt. Power heating or cooling blue for common and w2 or auxiliary for electric heat strips here we set up acc plus to function as dehumidification make sure to double check your thermostat installer setup and test it in both heat mode and cooling mode.

Even if only for a short period of time test your heat strips and make sure to check your heat strip amperage during heat mode. Heat strip current should be around 20 amps per. 5. Kilowatts next.

We check our charge and we set the charge by sub cooling. Because we have a txv system. Here we're using a charge regulating orifice invert. Our tank.

Because it's r410a. We purge our hose place our test probe on the side part of an adapter and measure. Our sub cooling note. We need to let the system run for at least 20 minutes before we attempt to set the charge and we need to weigh it in as required on the line length calculator.

We have a weigh in charging calculator available on the hvac school app. After testing sub cooling. We can see our sub cooling is slightly low just for demonstration purposes. We add a few ounces of refrigerant in this case as shown in the model.

The line set's very short so this would not be typical as most systems would be pre charged for a line set of this size after waiting another several minutes. We can see that our sub cooling has gone up to 10. Now we show some standard system tests here. We place one cyclometer at the return and one at the supply.

We check our delta t and our total system delivered capacity. Please note. That this is a summary. Many of these tests are addressed individually in other videos and content on the hvac school site here we show measuring total external static pressure by measuring our pressure in both the supply and the return 05.

Inches of water column is a typical maximum total external static pressure for a fan coil. But it does vary from system to system. It's worth noting that in the new sear. 2.

Standard all new fan coils are based on a 05. Total. External static test finally we show using the true flow grid from the energy conservatory to measure total system airflow as well as static pressure. This is the preferred method to confirm proper system airflow here.

We show first measuring return static supply static and installing the true flow grid in place of the air filter to measure total system airflow this tool reliably ensures. We have proper air flow. Which is generally 350 cfm per ton nominal for the florida market in this video. We showed the basics of installing a fan coil or air handler in a florida system install according to our standards at calo services.

Again the full test procedure is much more thorough than the one we showed fully understanding condensing temperature evaporator temperature total external static pressure amperages voltages and the like are necessary for proper commissioning of a system. Many of you may object to the use of duct board and installations in florida. It continues to be the standard and as long as it is cutting it and properly installing it is a skill worth teaching and understanding 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.

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