This episode of the HVAC school podcast is made possible by our sponsors, refrigeration, technologies at refrige, tech, comm, air, oasis makers of fine indoor air quality products that you can offer to your customers and feel good about made in America. Out of American components find out more by going to air oasis.com /go fill out your information there that'll. Let them know that you came from HVAC school air, oasis.com /go, also navajo Bowl, nav and navigable comm. Navin makes all kinds of goodies.

Manifolds vacuum pumps cover machines, lots of stuff that you can find out more by going to true tech tools, comm TR, you tech tools, dot-com also, I have to mention our longest-standing sponsor carrier and carrier comm thanks to all of our great sponsors, for making this free Podcast content possible and now your host, the guy, who checks the air filter of every single hotel room right when he walks in, but still can't change his own filter when he's supposed to Brian or hey. This is the HVAC school podcast. I am Brian, and this is the podcast that helps remember some things that you might have forgotten along the way as well as helps. You remember some things that you forgot to know in the first place and today we're talking all about manifolds, manifolds, analog and digital.

I did a video on this, but I want to talk a little bit more about it. There actually is some stuff here. I know it sounds sort of like a fluff topic, but there actually is some reasons that you may consider one over the other that maybe you hadn't thought of and I'm glad to have my good buddy James Bowman back. I used to talk to James quite often when he was with rector seal now he's with nav ik, and I'm excited to have him back on again.

James is a good guy and we're gon na talk a lot about manifolds here, analog-digital and everything in between alright. So it's been a while, but today we have my good friend in yours, James Bowman, back in the podcast thanks for coming on the podcast James. Well, I'm glad to talk to you again Brian. It has been a while and it's been interesting year.

Well, we've got a lot of good things happening, so I'm gon na give you a chance to talk about your new role. What's your up to nowadays, I have joined nav AK incorporated HVAC tool, division as a regional sales manager for the central region, essentially the central part of the country, of course, Texas, being the center of my universe and northward, it's been real fun. This is an awesome line of products, good quality premium, unique and I'm real excited about it. We're the largest vacuum pump manufacturing a world, as a lot of you already know, listening to some of Brian's previous podcast with my colleague Kevin Mayer, and, of course, besides having just vacuum pumps, we've got a lot of other tools.

We've got recovery machine, that's a real good quality recovery machine, an entire line of manifolds different tubing tools, flaring tool. I think you just released a podcast recently on the cordless flaring tool and flaring in general, which I have not had a chance to listen to, but I will, over the next couple of days and of course, tubing tools such as our tubing expander. That is also a very extremely popular product, not just extremely but very extremely popular, very extremely alright. So a couple things did you hear there? James is now working for a manufacturer of tools which is pretty cool, and we also learned that he's over on the dark side now in sales.

I always told James that he had a little bit of that in him, but he's given himself over completely to the dark side, so keep him in your prayers. But one thing to remind everybody of is that James came from the field. That's why we like him on the podcast he's down-home technician type, who understands what the fields like and understands what we go through, which is why I'm always happy to have him on, even if he is wearing the black mask. You know my black mask goes well with my white hat.

That is true. You do have a white hat. Actually I've hadn't forgotten about that yeah at ahr. James is sporting, her a really smart, looking white, cowboy hat so which goes along with the Texas thing.

Actually, that was a black cowboy hat, but Oh was black isle crap, since you identify the color. My mask is black. I thought I would throw that out. There yeah shoot boy.

I forgot yeah. I was black now that you mention it alright. So today we're gon na talk about manifolds, and this is gon na, be quite to the chagrin of our often guests and now guy who works at kalos Erik Mele, because he is absolutely incensed by the possibility that anybody would use anything other than digital manifolds. But I want to talk through it because it's a common question: it's something that comes up a lot, there's a lot of opinions about it, and I want to kind of go through step by step why you might choose a particular manifold over another and how a Lot of technicians tend to think about this, so I imagine James when you were in the field, you were probably using analog.

Manifolds. Am i right? Yes, I hadn't. I got into digital, I get out of a truck in 2005 and I'm not for sure. I guess there were some digital's for starting back then, but being a poor technician back then I didn't invest in those high-priced new tools like I should have well.

Okay, like you should have, I mean that's up for debate, but let's talk about that. To start with, and that's the subject of price, so you can still go out and get a set of analog gauges, set a manifold set with hoses and everything for pretty reasonable amount of money and nav act makes some analog gauges for people who want that sort Of thing, the more value-based side of the equation - and I think it's important - that we recognize that some types of equipment, some types of jobs - don't necessarily require that level of detail, whereas the professional service technician who's out there, setting superheating sub cool on a lot of These more modern pieces of equipment may struggle a little bit more on the analog side, as those numbers become a little bit more detailed. You have anything to weigh in on there. I talked to a lot of guys and the guys are like no, no analog.

That's the only way to go, and they just trust, because in the early days when I was still in the field and even as a service manager, digital tools weren't as trustworthy as they've gotten to be. You didn't know when they need to be calibrated. These tools hit the field without a lot of training around them, and so a lot of us old-timers. We just didn't trust the digital and a lot of guys today, still don't.

They still think that, like my personal, if I'm gon na check air flow, I personally I go back to Magni legates. I love my magnetic gauge but by the same token, guys trust what they've been using for years, but for years we had equipment. That was not what we considered critical charge. So if you know the accuracy of your gauge - and you know the resolution and you're not dealing with something that a few ounces can make a huge difference, then having a good set of analog gauges.

It has absolutely nothing wrong with that. What we're problem we're having is is that now guys are taking the analog gauges, that they've had for years and they're moving over to micro, channel systems and to other critically charged systems and they're doing the same thing. And now, if your gauge is off, I mean because let's face it, that needle might be on one two, three or four and one two, three or four might be close, but it also might throw you off by two ounces of refrigerant. That in turn affects the performance of your critically charged system.

So that's where digital has a much better advantage over Antelope there's some interesting nuance there. When we talk about critically charged systems, so an example would be Douglas. Douglas is critical that we get the charges right where they should be, and a lot of that just becomes because you have lower internal volumes. I think some people are confused about why all of a sudden everything's critically charged and why all of a sudden, it makes so much more difference.

But one of the big factors is that when you have a lower total charge, that means you have lower total internal volume inside the system. So, as a percentage, a couple ounces can make a huge percentage difference, whereas you may have previously been working with a system that has significantly larger charge prior to micro, Channel and there's even products that aren't technically micro Channel but still are running smaller tubing than they Used to runs so there's a lot of different factors there that can impact why a charge is a critical charge. But ductless is an interesting case where in ductless we are measuring the pressures, but they don't mean as much to us as they used to because we're not setting the charge based on superheater sub cool. Now, in an ideal circumstance, we would still be monitoring our suction pressure.

We would still be potentially looking at our discharge pressure if we have access to a discharge port which a lot of the equipment does out there, and that's just to kind of tell us in general. Are we within in the safe zone of a system, not freezing or not having excessively high head pressure? But this is all coming to a point, and that is that when you're not setting in your super heat and sub cool, then you don't necessarily need a super. Accurate gauge, if your gauge is really just telling you, okay, we're in the general suction range, we're in the general head pressure range and you're, really setting the charge based on weighing in a charge the way that we do with ductless, then ductless is actually a case Where do you really need the accuracy associated with a digital manifold if what you're primarily doing is ductless and there are markets in which that is primarily what technicians are doing in the US? We don't see a lot of that, but in other markets that's actually pretty common. Well, I mean, if you get up a certain park', you get up in Seattle, main parts of Canada across our northern border, where you've traditionally had hydronic heating and very low air conditioning ductless is a huge part of their market and let's face it for typical ductless System, you don't need a cage.

All you need is a way to take refrigerant from a drum and put it into or out of a system and what you need. There is a very good digital scale and a calculator and a sharp pencil and common-sense understanding of how it works. But the purpose of your manifold is really only to give you a way to control the input and output of refrigerant. I would add to that and say that as a technician that blows my mind a little bit, because I don't like that, and so, if you still want to be able to see what those pressures are, even if they don't mean as much as they used to Well, fine, but what we're saying is is that the superheat sub-cooled part of the equation and the part that we're so used to doing and kind of hang our hat on as technicians in the ductless field.

If that's primarily, what you're doing do you really need a high accuracy set of digital gauges and the answer, is you don't as much it's not as critical? Now the temperature side is still important, so the ability to measure what is my suction temperature, the ability to measure what is my discharge temperature, for example, to make sure that you're not in a critical range. As far as discharge temperatures, where you're gon na break down oil, those are actually more critical things and so focusing more on the temperature side and making sure that you have a well calibrated accurate, high-resolution temperature gauge. That's going to make more difference. But the point is here: you have two different camps.

You have one camp that says: I've been using analog for 25 years and I don't see any reason why I should use any different and that's not the whole story and on the other side you say anything. But digital is ridiculous and that's not the whole story. Either that's where I want to kind of land that is sort of the general conversation. I want to get your opinion on this because again you're a guy who came up through the field you used analog and that's how you learned and one of the really common things that technicians, especially old-time technicians and educators, say, is that they would rather, that technicians Learn on analog, what are your thoughts on that? I agree because if the problem with where we're at today and I'm as guilty of this as anybody is we relying on technology so much that we really don't have knowledge? We have prime example.

I drive to the airport frequently I know how to use to the airport ten different routes to get to the airport, but I still use my GPS primarily because of traffic patterns, but as a result, I kind of don't pay attention to what I'm doing. I just kind of take off and opes. My GPS is: oh, you got to exit up here and say: okay, we're not really learning and memorizing and understanding we're just following directions. So learning on an analogue you at least have to learn what superheat subcooling is.

You have to learn how to interpret and read your temperature pressure charts and have a better understanding and once you have that better understanding, and then you go to something that actually does the calculation for you, hey, awesome, fantastic, but at least you know what it's telling You yeah there's a couple things that are sort of tacked old on a set of analog gauges that are kind of nice. One case would be, if you have valves and a compressor that are leaking by you'll, see that extreme jittering on your needles. That you're not necessarily gon na see because it doesn't happen, quick enough on a digital and that's one thing that you'll see kind of tacked aliy on the set of analog gauges. You kind of see that hunting of an expansion valve or the needle goes up and down and you'll see that in your numbers too, on a set of digital gauges.

But it's there's something kind of nice about that, especially for guys who have done that. A long time - and I think those are the things that you miss as well as in analog - and this may be the biggest thing I know it was the biggest thing with me when I made the transition, because I'm one of the ones who fought kicking and Screaming to go to digital and that just is dealing with batteries and screens and menus and buttons, and all that stuff you're just used to taking a set of analog gauges, hooking them up Virgin Airlines, and then you just taken measurements you're not having to worry about Doing any settings or anything other than just purging your hoses, maybe having to calibrate in the needle to the zero point and there's something: that's just nice in mechanical to that. Whereas when you go digital, it does feel a little bit more sterile. So I understand that emotion and I would be one on the who would take the stance that you can certainly learn on just digital.

If that's all you got, but if you're going to do that, I would still encourage educators and those who are learning it to not go straight to the auto calculation of superheating sub cool, but rather to look at your condensing temperature. Your evaporator temperature. Compare that to your line temperatures and then manually kind of figure that out even using a PT chart. In some cases, a lot of PT chart maybe grab the refrigerant slider app from Danfoss.

Something like that and actually do that calculation manually, because it is a little bit more work and that helps it lock it in to your brain a little bit better. So I think you can do it either way, but I would be an advocate of saying that if in a school environment, I think it would be nice to still use analog not as the end goal, but as a way of learning. The trade and I personally visited having digital analog on my truck in certain environments. You might not want to connect up your nice digital Gaye if I'm an installer and I'm gon na be recovering refrigerant.

I definitely wouldn't use a digital gauge manifold set to recover because there's usually a lot of junk, that's coming out of that system through your hoses and your manifold. Some of these situations, like you indicated, looking at valves, etc. So we see advantages and disadvantages of that. Besides accuracy on the digital side, look at the number of refrigerants that are coming out now, five or six refrigerants a year.

We can only put two or three refrigerants on a manifold and analog gauge to be able to read saturation. I see the advantages of having digital with all the new refrigerants coming out because of the volume of refrigerants we can put in so depending on what you're working on you have access to that. So I see advantages to having both of these tools in my toolbox. Yeah - and I can tell you exactly what I have on my - I still want to call it a work van.

It's not really a van. I kind of drive this goofy grocery getter now, but I still have my tools on it and I've got a set of digital gauges, a digital manifold. On my truck, I've got an old set of yellow jacket, analogs that I've had forever and I've also got some wireless probes and they all sort of suit different things. And again I don't use the analog that much, but you've made a great case for one reason why you would want analog, which would be they are less expensive and if you have a contaminated system or maybe you're just recovering at a system.

You don't know whether it's contaminated or not. You don't know if somebody's put some crazy leak seal in it or whatever, and you don't want to contaminate the sensor on your better gauges. That makes a lot of sense because again, when you're covering you're just looking at a rough pressure, you don't need to be exactly in. You just want to get it within 2-3 psi to know that you've hit the zero point.

That's basically it! That is a good case, and I think it makes a lot of sense, because now you've got an extra set of hoses that are on your truck in case you lose the seal, you can swap hoses. It just gives you a lot more flexibility. Speaking of those, especially I'm a big fan of having a couple of two feet hoses on a plastic bag set aside for when I'm charging a ductless unit. Just so I know I'm not contaminating it.

That's off topic but thought I'd, throw it out there and I think that's the bigger thing is having all of the tools in the toolbox that you could potentially need, and a lot of this has to do with things that we've talked a lot of it on The podcast having a dedicated set of large hoses that are designed for evacuation, there's a lot of wisdom to that. So that way, they're not getting contaminated with boe and now you're having to try to remove moisture that there's those sets of hoses, then you have some couplers we're going to talk a little bit about where you can use couplers different adapters for different sizes. You may have the 5/16 ports that come with some of the ductless units and you need an adapter for that and you need the big tank adapter for when you've got the giant tank and a large refrigeration application. There's a lot of different cases where you're gon na want these different tools and those all go along with the same conversation that you don't always have a one-size-fits-all solution.

It's not like you can just grab one set of gauges and say this is my go-to yeah. Maybe if you're a maintenance guy at a facility or something that may be fine but for a professional technician, who's working on a wide range of different products, maybe a see one day, ductless and other ice machine and next and then commercial, Rivard, commercial refrigeration, that the Next, those all kind of require different strategies in order to accomplish that, and I think analog still fits in there somewhere again. I think a lot of us still have a set of analog gauges on the truck. We don't maybe use it as much as we used to, but it still makes sense in a lot of cases.

Is that if you're doing primarily ductless a single port, gage analog gauges, all you need, I mean you go around the world where ductless is the norm. That's a very common tool for port to valve for valve to gages I mean guys, don't use that on ductless, and I think I may be leading into where you go next on this. Let's bring that up. We're gon na talk a little bit more about resolution and accuracy here in a little bit.

But let's talk a little bit about that because now makes some interesting products. I showed some of it on social media already, but they make part of their NRM line, which is their gauge line, their manifold line. They make a couple different products that are just single port and it still has a valve, so you can still charge and recover, but it's only designed for one port or the other, and you were talking about how you think that might be a fit for ductless Or maybe even some other applications. I talked to a lot of old timers old timers different term that it used to be pretty much anybody's, been in the trade now over 15 years is starting to be considered an old timer with the change in our industry and our culture.

But I talk to a lot of guys have been the Phil for a while and they have gone out and they have purchased a single analog gauge a ball valve and a tee and put it together and they keep it in their tool bag. So when they go out and need to service something - and they don't have their manifold handy, they can check it real, quick. Another thing is the rise of the probes, the digital probes and what-have-you. Are these things are taken off fast because of the theory is, and it's not really theory, and I mean impractical, it's a good idea, don't put hoses on a unit unless you absolutely have to I hated putting hoses on it.

How many of us have customers that every three years you got to put a pound and a half a refrigerant in it? It's got a small leak. No you let out a couple of ounces of refrigerant every year, when you put your hoses on it. For no reason, so one of the things that I'm really excited about is our single port single gauge digital manifold set. I look at this as being something I can throw in the truck.

I can throw them a tool bag, I'm on a rooftop. I'm crawling up on top of a cooler whatever wherever I'm at. I don't have to carry well how many 15 feet of hoses and this big old bulky manifold in case I might need to check the pressures I just pull this out simply attach it. Reading put it's digital, you put on high side or low side.

Doesn't matter, you can do your checks. If you need to add refrigerant, it's got a ball valve and a port when you get to will get your refrigerant drum you bring a hose with you. I see that as a simple little tool. It's not bluetooth doesn't have temperature probes.

You don't have all of that. It's just a digital manifold with a ball valve. That's it simple. They also make one that's just an analogue to so we're measured in that water as well yeah.

If you really want a simple, quick and dirty measurement, then that's another way of getting it. So this comes down to preference, some guys don't mind, pulling out their phone and using bluetooth and using a probe, but some do and I'm gon na be honest, I'm the type of person. I don't like messing with my phone: when my hands are all greasy and nasty, some guys will have separate devices. They'll have one device that they use to make phone calls and then we'll have a separate Bluetooth device that they use for making their Bluetooth measurements.

And frankly, we all understand that the Bluetooth is kind of the future because of the processing power that you get on the device. But there is something to be said for a simple display or gauge where it's just right there and it does make it kind of easy, Zach C Oda talks about the Z manifold used to just take a single gauge and hook a hose kind of like what You were saying - and this is sort of that idea, but it's just taking it a little bit to the next level, because now it's got a built-in port right there, so that you can add or recover. If you need to, and of course with it being digital, it is nice that you could use it on both the high side or the other side of the system, and it wouldn't make a difference and a lot of these guys that that are using the Z Gauge of the Z manifold, as you describe it, is some of these guys still have flip phones. A lot of them are using cheaters as reading glasses, not an electrical cord connection for some of you guys and so using the phone constantly plus with everything we do.

Our use our phone for there's got to be constantly charged. I mean there's so much so a lot of guys just don't want to use their phone for everything, and so that's where I see is having just a single port manifold, whether it be digital or analog, or I was corrected on this. I'm gon na correct you, ours are not analog. They're compound, they are not analog.

I'm gon na have to so compound just means that it can go into the negative or the positive pressure measurement scale. Ok, whatever we're gon na move on, I'm not going to get into an argument about a compound needle based life-form gauges. I don't know yeah. I know we all still refer to them, but I just thought I would throw that out there.

You can do a whole nother tech tip on the difference between analog and compound. Then you're welcome all right. I appreciate that. So that's one option now I want to talk quickly about because sometimes guys will talk about the accuracy and resolution, and this is an area where digital does have an advantage in both the accuracy and the resolution side.

But I want to talk quickly about the difference, and so we tend to use those terms, interchangeably, we'll say: well, the accuracy resolution is better, but accuracy means is it giving you a correct measurement, meaning is the measurement actually accurate? And so, if we said, for example, that it was a hundred psi was the accurate measurement with no dots and no point zero, zero, anything just 100 psi, then that would be an accurate statement or we could say it's somewhere between 90 and 110 psi. That would be accurate with low resolution. So it's a true statement, it's somewhere between 90 and 110 psi, but it doesn't have the resolution to say exactly what it is. Here's an example: okay.

So I'm looking at the specs on our manifold, so our analog have an accuracy of 1, so that means that it's 99 to 101, if we're looking at 100 psi, I go over to my digital and it's got an accuracy of 0.4, so it's 99 plus 6 To 100 point 4 is how I'm reading that that's a little more accurate yeah, so an accuracy spec will often be something like plus or minus 1 psi in a particular range, and then the range will change. It depends on the brand of how they'll write out their specs, and that tells you what to expect. As far as is it going to be in this range and there's obviously calibration zeroing out, and you got to make sure that it starts at 0 and check that and that's true of both analog and digital gauges, to make sure that when there's no pressure on It that's reading at 0 because we're measuring in the gauge scale, 0 psi G being atmospheric pressure. I mean you get a zero out because if you take the thing up in the mountains and you leave the park on the hose, then that's going to change the pressures and you got ta make sure that you zero it out before you start and that can Affect it, but then you also have your resolution, which is how many zeros are there after the point.

Basically that's generally, what we're talking about so you'll see this a lot. A really common example of this will be in electrical meters. Where you'll see something that says, my voltage is two forty three point, one two and you think wow. This is really accurate.

Well, no, it's actually just really high resolution, but if the accuracy is still plus or minus one volt, that additional resolution is essentially pointless because you're giving a point dot something measurement. But that resolution is essentially a farce at that point, because your accuracy is only within plus or minus one volt, whereas what you're saying with the digital manifold that you've got is if it's at point four, then that means that the point on the digital manifold actually Has a purpose so when you have that point at the end, that is actually within the accuracy range of that gauge, so it really means something, and that does make a big difference. But then you also have the challenge of your visual representation of the accuracy. So we've already established that on a analog gauge compound gauge, we're gon na call it on the one with a needle that it is less accurate, but also it's more difficult to tell exactly what it's pointing at.

And so that's where you got to have better eyes. In order to see exactly where it is so, you can have error just based on how you're reading that, needle which then further increases the perceived inaccuracy, which is essentially why the primary reason to use digital over analog a lot of people say well. It makes measuring superheating sub cool easy, that's not really the main reason. The main reason is that you are getting a more accurate measurement, and that is important, like we mentioned critically charged units ice machines, micro, channel, coils things where a few ounces of refrigerant make a bigger difference.

Oh yeah, I see it and I also think back of over the years of mistakes that I've personally made none. Then most people were making back. Then I mean one due to lack of education, well, primarily due to like, because it was even when we had the digital tools we weren't being educated on so we'd get a Nuke, a probe. K-Type put your probe, and we would just connect it to our meter and think that it's accurate without doing any calibration I'll move them things like that.

How many times have I connected a system over to my gauges up to a unit and then after I've connected and I'm thinking, did I zero my gauges? Did I even look at that to see if they were zeroed before I ever connected? So, even if we have good quality tools, if we don't follow the guidelines of how to use them understand what they do, a lot of people will take one look at our single port digital manifold and assume that it is a micron gauge. Just because it looks like a micron gauge and some people have actually bought them and got upset that they didn't do microns. So, even if you have the good quality tools, you got to understand what they are understand, how to use them understand how to maintain them. You've got a lot of these high-end gauges that have the micron sensor built into them, but that's not a really great place for it to be, unless you do proper maintenance and maintain it properly.

Otherwise, it's going to be accurate, very infrequently, we're getting into the heating season. How many times do we have so many guys out there shoving a co meter in a supplier stream and they can all looky here. Well, there's two things could be happening there number one. It could be just the temperature difference between the attic or crawl space or wherever you are at when you've shoved it into the hot supply plenum that caused the false reading, or it could be actually a refrigerant leak in the coil caused by the high pressure.

That's that more refrigerant being released by the high pressures. That's throwing your co meter off so doesn't matter what tools you have, if you don't understand how to use them, if you don't properly maintain them, the accuracy and resolution of the tools themselves are kind of meaningless and that's what you're coming in by hitting us and I'm one of those you're educating on a lot of these critical factors from a process standpoint, then, by the way, you're too humble on that, but from a process standpoint there are a couple steps that you always need to take. You always need to make sure that you're zeroing things out and the case of a temperature probe. You always have to check against a known and use ice water, so you take ice, put it in water stir it up real good check your temperature probe, and then you calibrate and, like you mentioned your k-type thermocouple and then also recognizing a k-type thermocouple and a Thermistor are different if you've got a thermistor probe, you're generally going to have a little better accuracy in certain types of measurements, and there are freestanding thermistor probes that you can use in order to measure line temperatures or air temperatures or whatever.

Just knowing what you have is a huge factor, so if you're working with an analog gauge, that's fine, but you need to know what the limitations of that analog gauge are. So that way, if you're not thinking a lot of guys who trained me back in the days of fixed metering devices being sort of the standard - and they would say all right - my chart says I need to set in a 15 degree superheat and they would sit There and obsess for half an hour trying to set in a 15 degree superheat when they're, using an analog gauge and a pocket thermometer jammed underneath the armor Flex, I'm not joking, that's how they would do it and they would think that they're setting it in well. I mean at that point between the inaccuracy of those two devices in the way that you're making the measurement you might as well just get it to within five degrees and forget it because you're not going to be that tight, and so they just keep adding and Removing these tiny amounts of charge and it's fluctuating all over the place and they're thinking, and then they go back again a month later and they see it as zero superheat and they say well, somebody else must added more refrigerant. It's like no! I mean it.

You just didn't have accurate enough tools to actually take that measurement and do it the way the manufacturers saying and I kind of laughed, because that was me - that's what our industry was for many many years and unfortunately for a huge portion of the industry. That's still that way: yeah I'm it's just a matter of misunderstanding, hey in all fairness. When you try to read in accuracy spec on some of these products, I mean it can be really confusing and you start telling uses of MV and I'm thinking what is MV. Well, in these measured values, I'm thinking is it millivolts.

I don't know it took me a while to figure this all out once I started getting more into this stuff, so it does take a lot of work and even for those of us who have done it for a really long time, we tend to just trust Our tools, that's what we do, but from a process standpoint you've got to make sure you zero out appropriately. You got to make sure that you have them regularly calibrated or you're testing them against some other known value. You got to make sure you keep them clean. You mentioned micron gauges, I know so many guys who knew they never think to clean a micron gauge.

Well, those things can become contaminated in a second, and what you do is you take a eyedropper with a little bit of alcohol and you drip them down into the micron gauge, and you kind of turn it upside down a couple times and let it dump out And then do it again a couple times and you'll find that after you do that in a lot of cases, if you've been using it in the field for a while you'll get very different measurements than what you were getting because it's a super-sensitive device. The more sensitive it is, the more it's going to be impacted by a little bit of dirt or a little bit of oil or whatever same thing, is true of your gauges. Making sure that you're not letting um jostle all over the place and get beat all up, because it's gon na affect those sensors and then you're gon na get incorrect readings, but just fall further and further down the rabbit hole, but it becomes more and more important. The more that this equipment is expecting you to set it right in and so now we've got you mentioned micro Channel.

Now we've got these micro channel condensers, where, instead of the manufacturer saying your sub cooling target is 10. The you are actually expected to look at a chart based on ambient conditions and that sub cooling is going to change depending on your exact conditions. Well, now, all of a sudden there's a big difference between a 90 degree, sub cool and an 11 degree sub goal from the manufacture standpoint. Well, if you're using a thermocouple, that's a degree off and you're using a set of analog gauges, you might as well forget it.

You are not going to get that charging right and when you get to the high range of those ami conditions, you may have a high-pressure fault the thing they actually go out on high ed, because of the way that you left that charge set and that's why. It becomes more critical if that's the world that you're playing in that you do have a set of digital gauges accessible to you, so that you can make those measurements yeah many times the numbers we look at when we're choosing our tools are all on the price Tag well, how much is that set versus this set and that's kind of how we make our choices and we don't dig down and look and of course, sometimes the decision is made because we can't afford it. Let's face it. It's not like just starting out on the trade for a lot of guys - and I know this is a controversial statement, at least when I was in the wages and benefits have increased with the shortage of technicians over the last few years.

But when I started out, I think I started out at $ 7 an hour which was pretty good for me back then. I couldn't afford the best tools, so we did the best we could before we, but as we grow and earn more and one to earn more, we've got to invest more and that hit where we should start doing the research. Sometimes you can find tools that have better accuracy, good quality that cost a little bit less. Sometimes it cost a little bit more, but price should never be your deciding factor.

It should just be one of the many factors when you're looking at your tools from a practical standpoint, James talked about - because I got some of these now that gauge -- is the single gauge. Manifold is really interesting. They've got the dual gauge typical types of manifolds. As well with both digital's, they have analogues they've got the whole line.

If you want to take a look at it, you can just go to true tech tools, comm type in a vac and IVAC in the search product bar up in the top, and you can see everything that they've got and as always, you can use our ephra Code get schooled for a great discount, but James pointed out with the single gauge manifold. In both the analog and the digital, you can use a coupler that seemed to have a coupler that we typically used for micro engages just a little brass coupler. You can use that and attach it to a system, that's critically charged, say maybe a ductless system or a ice machine, or I mean a package unit that you just want to check real, quick. I think a lot for guys who work on a lot of RT use and are carrying in their bags up to the roof, and they don't want to have to deal with the poses and everything and I tried that out, and it actually is a pretty neat Application for that, especially for those of us who prefer not to have to look at the phone in order to do that, are there any other tricks.

You want to add there to that process. James, the current setup for our digital or single digital comes in a black plastic case with two hoses and a 5/16 adapter, and it comes with a female to female connector. But it doesn't have a valve core in it and that's primarily because it's primarily used just to connect to the 5/16 to quarter inch adapter, so anybody that has or purchases one of the single port manifolds. Just let me know let our office know we'll get you the adapter that you need to connect it directly to a unit.

I think in the future we're looking at probably including that, but it won't be this year. Another advantage that we've done with these gauges that I like is using ball valves instead of gate valves so right there it eliminates your rebuild kits. It is very durable. One of the demonstrations I do when I'm going in is I'll, grab somebody's manifold and then I'll grab, mine and I'll lean down to the floor table and I'll bang mine on the table and then I'll ask them.

Can I do that with yours because of the protective case built onto them, so there's some little features here. We have that. I really like there's a few things that I think we could improve and we will over time. But overall I think it's a good value.

We're trying to provide as high a quality and technology performance as we can, while keeping it a football for the working guy, and I think we've done a pretty good job of that from what I'm looking at yep, I'm testing out a lot of different products from Navin, have we got a whole bunch of them, and I've been impressed so far with a lot of the products that I've tried out. We've got a couple of them out in the field, letting the guys, try it and having them take photos and things so there'll be a lot more coming out on. All of that, but, like I mentioned you can find out more by going to true tech tools. Tr you tech tools, comm type in a vac, see the whole line of all the different cutters: vendors, the flaring tool, the vacuum pumps that recovery machine, the charging machine a lot of different products that are kind of interesting.

That you're gon na want to be aware of and most of all today I want to thank you for coming back on James, I'm glad you're here, and we look forward to talking to you again sometime soon. I look forward to it as well. Broom. No man have a good one.

Hey thanks for listening to the podcast I wanted to make you aware of a couple things one is is that we have a new application out new app that is available on Android and also for iPhone on the App Store. If you have an Apple device - and you can just type in HVAC school, do a little bit of scrolling and you'll find this pretty easily. I don't think it'll be too tough. You just look for the HVAC school logo and we've got a lot of nice things.

In there we've got the podcast player. We made a pretty smooth podcast player. We've got some new updates that are gon na come to it. The thing will allow you to comment.

Some other things, but in the meantime, it's a nice smooth player. You can search all the previous episodes with any keywords. You can search all the tech tips. You can find new tech tips there and then also we have some pretty cool calculators, one of them being the capacitor test calculator.

So you don't have to remember the whole 2652 thing in the math. Let's some guys struggle with just make it easy. You can plug in the voltage that you're reading across the capacitor plug in the amperage of the start winding off the capacitor and bada-bing bada-boom. That gives you your capacitance as well as tells you how far out of a spec you are, if you are out of spec and even gives you a recommendation as to when you might want to consider talking to the customer about replacing it.

So that's just one of the many calculators that are on the new HVAC school app and I would encourage you to go find that also, once again, I want to thank all of our sponsors want to thank nav act for participating in this podcast. I also want to mention solder weld solder. Weld is sort of an emerging brand in the HVAC world. You probably seen a lot from them, but they're now making a new kit that has all of the different types of solder that you need as well as some brushes and other things.

It's just a really really nice kit and you're gon na want to check it out, but one way that you can find out more about solder love products is to go to products by proz.com, that's sort of the intermediary for you to help get it into distribution. True tech tools is gon na, be picking it up soon if they don't already by the time this podcast comes out, so that'll be a place, you can get it, but we want to get it into local distribution because it's really great products and they make really Good kits, which is a unique thing and sort of the soldering and brazing alloys side of things, and they make a great aluminum product. They make an aluminum to copper product. They make a great 56 % flux coated raw for steel, to brass steel, to copper, and then they make a great 15 % round rod which I also really enjoy.

So all of their products are really high-quality, find out more by going to products by pros.com. I was thinking about making a belt out of watches, and my wife told me that was a waste of time. Alright, thanks for listening, we will talk to you next time on the hvac school podcast. Thanks for listening to the hvac school podcast, you can find more great HVAC our education material and subscribe to our short daily tech tips by going to HVAC our school comm.

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