This was a call on a Carrier package unit that had a low voltage issue, and it needed some cleaning to say the least.
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HVACR VIDEOS
12523 LIMONITE AVE.
440 - 184
MIRA LOMA, CA. 91752
00:00 TEASER
00:40 SPONSOR CARD
00:46 VIDEO START
02:55 LOW VOLTAGE CHECK
03:18 FOUND THE SYMPTOM
08:04 IT ALMOST RUBBED THRU THE COIL
09:11 GOTTA PULL THE WHOLE THING APART
09:56 GOTTA DISABLE THE HEAT FOR SAFETY
10:37 CLEANING TIME
12:07 SPLITTING THE COILS
17:09 BE CAREFUL TURNING IT ON
23:09 CLOSING WORDS
HVACR TOOLS CHANNEL- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO-nk0rPOkp_tCS5diKpa-Q
HVACR VIDEOS NEW MERCH WEBSITE - https://www.hvacrvideos.com
Please consider supporting my channel by
Becoming a Patreon member - Patreon https://www.patreon.com/Hvacrvideos
Becoming a YouTube channel member https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Pnrxqqg4BLTsfsUzWw5Pw/join
By purchasing tools via my affiliate links below at TRUTECHTOOLS.COM and use the offer code BIGPICTURE to save 8% on your total purchase (exclusions apply)
Visiting my website and purchasing merch https://www.hvacrvideos.com
HVAC OVERTIME CHANNEL LINK - https://www.youtube.com/c/HVACOvertime
Social Media
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/HVACR-Videos...
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hvacrvideos/
For any inquiries please contact me at chris @hvacrvideos.com
Mailing Address
HVACR VIDEOS
12523 LIMONITE AVE.
440 - 184
MIRA LOMA, CA. 91752
00:00 TEASER
00:40 SPONSOR CARD
00:46 VIDEO START
02:55 LOW VOLTAGE CHECK
03:18 FOUND THE SYMPTOM
08:04 IT ALMOST RUBBED THRU THE COIL
09:11 GOTTA PULL THE WHOLE THING APART
09:56 GOTTA DISABLE THE HEAT FOR SAFETY
10:37 CLEANING TIME
12:07 SPLITTING THE COILS
17:09 BE CAREFUL TURNING IT ON
23:09 CLOSING WORDS
I watched a manufacturer's video on carrier the other day and they were talking about cleaning condenser coils and they said nothing was a manufacturer's representative like a distributor that does youtube videos and they didn't say anything about splitting a coil, and i think that's something that manufacturers, Don't do a good job of letting people know because you read installation instructions and it says oh yeah, just clean it. You know no big deal real short ice machine manufacturers. Do that too they say: oh yeah. Our machines only take this much time to clean.
It's a lot of baloney because, realistically, probably once to twice a year, this condenser needs to be split like this and cleaned this video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. We have a call on a bar ac that is not working properly. Now this particular ac has actually been down for a while what's wrong with it. I don't know, but i know that when i changed that ac i'd say about a month ago, maybe two months ago, i noticed this ac wasn't working, but it wasn't very hot outside yet and the customer, i guess, was reluctant to put in a work order.
So now, all of a sudden, you know it's getting warm and they need to know what's going on so we're going to dive into this. They also have a few other ac issues, but we're going to start with this guy now uh from first glance, this thing's a piece of junk the panels are broken. You know all that good stuff, but you're not getting ac's these days, so everything's basically getting approved as far as repairs, so we're gon na go through it and see what's up open up the electrical section, compressor section. The first thing i'm like: oh, no there's oil, but no that's just condensation um, definitely old those contactors and everything.
But i don't see anything jumping out at me. As of yet i'm not a fan of the aftermarket condenser fan motors and aftermarket capacitor location, but not saying it won't work. We come over here to the disconnect switch where we're going to start and let's go ahead and test voltage so see what we got going on here. All right so line one to line two 204 volts, two to three: 205..
1-3. 204.: let's go down to the bottom. 204. 205 204..
So we got good fuses, no problems there. Let's go across just to make sure nothing, nothing! Nothing! So we have um fuses. Are fine, don't see any issues there. Let's go to 24 volts, so we're going to come right here and we're going to check from common to r and we have nothing.
No 24 volts from common to r so looks like we got a little circuit breaker right here, but it doesn't look like it's popped kind of hard to see, but it doesn't look like it's popped. Let's go to the transformer direct to the transformer right here and we'll go ahead and test here to here. We've got no voltage coming out of the transformer and let's verify that we've got voltage going in that guy off that guy off and let's go right here. So we have 204 volts going into the transformer okay, so we're going to shut off the disconnect switch and we're going to ohm out the transformer. It's low voltage, we'll put our meter on resistance, we're gon na text test. The coil yeah looks like this guy's gon na be a problem here. Go here and let's go here. Let's check the top too and see what we got.
Yeah looks like we've got a bad transformer, but before we change the transformer, we'll put it back in so we don't forget how it's wired and then before we change the transformer, we'll uh we're going to chase down a low voltage short now. These carrier units are notorious for having low voltage shorts on the indoor blower assembly, so we're going to check that out now you don't want to assume this is always the problem, but on these carrier units a couple places where they commonly short for the low voltage Side is pressure controls, okay, now this one we actually happen to have wired in a way that it's not going to touch because we used a double zip tie method, but it still theoretically could touch right there, but i don't see any issues all right, we'll clean That up, maybe but just kind of looking up here. It could also be a bad contactor different things like that right circuit board certainly doesn't look the greatest we come in here. Uh thermostat wiring looks like a thermostat wires ran over here now, one of the more common places for these is when on the original, oem wiring, it runs across the blower assembly like right here, see this this one.
They they rub out on the top. Now look right here that could be uh. It doesn't necessarily look like it broke the jacket, but we'll look into it. My i'm suspect that one is a freeze stat, that black wire running up there and i'm very suspect of that freeze stats should be coming through.
They're, typically wired in series with the uh low pressure and high pressure, so we'll investigate that guy. That might be our culprit. Look at this uh limit switch is completely rotted out. That's not good! This thing's a mess.
This thing's dirty inside too blower assembly has big old chunkers in it. Look at that just falling out. This guy needs to be cleaned. Dang dang gina was a damn gina.
What's that from man? Did i just date myself? That's a 90s sitcom right there, um first person to guess that, send me an email and i'll send you a sticker! If you guess it right what 90 sit column, that's from all right, um! So we're looking good in there all right, we're gon na get in here, i'm gon na, probably pop the top on the unit have a look at that uh freestat before i go too crazy. I just came over here to these free stat wires brought it over. Here this is one end of it and we'll test uh test it to ground, and we have a direct short to ground on that low voltage wire. So more than likely that's going to be the cause of the transformer issue now. The next thing is: why did it ruin the transformer and not blow the control fuse? Maybe it did blow the control fuse? Oh yeah, it is blown yeah, it's got a burn mark in it. Oh, that's interesting: why would it ruin the transformer if the control fuse was blown? I'm intrigued by that one? Oh well, anyways we'll go through it. I thought this was interesting. It's actually not even rubbed out on the top of the blower, i'm not touching any metal until i get all the way over to that evaporator.
Now it's actually like in the wiring over there somewhere or even the switch itself, is shorted very interesting, went ahead and popped the top on the unit. That way, i can have a better look i'll fix all that capacitor stuff they're lucky that rubbed out, but it didn't hit a copper line. It went in between the copper lines, it's kind of crazy look at like how deep it went, but there's no copper there. That's crazy, crazy, nuts, but um it's kind of a pain in the butt.
I wanted to pull this side off, but you got to get these screws that are back down behind this blower assembly bracket. It's really hard to get those without moving the blower assembly bracket, but at the same time we really should clean that blower wheel. So maybe i will do this um before i clean the blower wheel, though, because again this unit needs love right, but i hate to go down the path to spending three hours: cleaning the blower wheel, pulling that out and then find out. We have grounded compressors or something so, let's go ahead and uh test the compressors test.
Everything else out as best as possible, real quick, make sure there's no other major issues make sure they actually have refrigerant in them. If they do, then we'll proceed with pulling the blower assembly so that way we can get that bracket out. We might as well clean it when we have it out and then we can get in there and change that free stat man, my allergies, stuff's getting in my nose man, this thing's dusty, look at that drain, pan too it's all full of chunkers. So, let's pull this guy out right here and all the way down to here and see if we can see, is that the short or is there more to it than that it could be internally shorter too.
Who knows it's somewhere in there, though all right? Well, one thing that sucks about these units is when you pull this, that whole blower panel, like sags, and these things never go back together the same, but we're going to keep on trucking, pull the blower assembly and then we'll clean this unit up too, it's amazing How quickly you can tear these units down once you start pulling things apart, but yeah we'll get in there and clean that blower and vacuum this area out as best as possible. There's a lot of nastiness. It's not going to be perfect. It's really polishing the turd, but we'll get that evaporator cleaned up the evaps, not that bad, actually um get this vacuumed out. We're gon na have to shut off the heat, because that's all grease and that's a fire hazard. So this uh unit's gon na need to do heat exchanger before the next heating season. I don't even know if we can get a unit before then, but we'll see so we'll we'll disable the heat permanently on this guy um and then keep on going. What i'm using is the refrigeration technologies foam gun with the brightener cleaner, eventually, we'll do the evaporator cleaner.
Now, their gun is actually different than everybody else's, and it's specifically made they have a new one. Okay notice the shape and everything it's specifically made with the concentration amounts for their cleaners. You see that you should be getting eight gallons out of that of cleaner okay, so you don't just pour this in and another thing too, i think there's a lot of misconceptions. You don't fill this with water, you just put it in there.
You set the dilution ratio and you don't it doesn't take a lot like. I have more cleaner than i have a pretty big amount of cleaner. That's a lot, but we've got to do the blower assembly, the condensers, the evaporator like and normally i don't want to use this on an evaporator either, but because it's so dirty we're going to break it down rinse it sanitize it and then we'll do evaporator cleaner. But we want to get a lot of this stuff off we're also going to start vacuuming and we'll split this condenser while we're at it.
But yeah. You want to make sure if possible, you use an air cleaner and you want to make sure you dilute it right. Look at the stuff coming out of the evaporator. I just put a little bit on there like not even full strength.
I'm just kind of we're not looking for shiny we're. Just looking for penetration drip, i'm going to give it a rinse with the shower wand, just kind of working on cleaning the drain pan out. First, that's the first thing: get that draining properly look at that gunk. Coming out, look at all the chunks of stuff um.
I also put some on the blower assembly so we're letting that soak then we'll give it a rinse too here in a minute. So, for those that don't know pretty much, it's safe to say that anything, five tons and above whether it be residential or commercial, has a double road. Condenser. Okay, a lot of people don't even realize that second one's there i've seen people no joke condem equipment because you know: oh, the condenser is restricted or something you know, and they don't realize you can literally just hold the condensers apart and clean them.
So we're gon na clean this one. This one isn't horrendous, but it's pretty dirty. So i've seen a lot worse than this, but we'll get in here and uh get this guy cleaned out real, quick and then once i do that then i'll switch my chemical over to the evaporator coil cleaner, because we got this guy kind of. I got the bulk of the big chunks rinsed out with the brightener cleaner. You want to be careful about using the brightener cleaner on evaporators too, because the smells and stuff there's no customers in the building and there won't be for another two hours. So we'll get the evaporator cleaner on there, get it sanitized and then start assembling and putting things back together. Look at how gross the stuff is coming through this guy, pure mud, pure mud. So what happens is if you wash the outside in then you just get the stuff.
You push it through into the middle of this coil and it gets stuck, and vice versa, if you wash just from the inside in so the only way to thoroughly clean this coil is from splitting it. I watched a manufacturer's video on carrier the other day and they were talking about cleaning condenser coils and they said nothing was a manufacturer's representative like a distributor that does youtube videos and they didn't say anything about splitting a coil, and i think that's something that manufacturers, Don't do a good job of letting people know because you read installation instructions and it says oh yeah, just clean it. You know no big deal real short ice machine manufacturers. Do that too they say: oh yeah.
Our machines only take this much time to clean. It's a lot of baloney because, realistically, probably once to twice a year, this condenser needs to be split like this and cleaned all right. I sprayed evaporator cleaner all over this guy. Now you don't really want to rinse the evaporator cleaner unless you're using it to clean.
In this case, i'm using it to sanitize, and then it has enzymes that can help break things down and help inhibit uh growth and different things like that. So we're going to leave the evaporator coil cleaner on there. Natural condensation should rinse it, but i am going to go ahead and rinse out the foam from the drain pan that way, we're not all foamed up in there, so just kind of working on that and we're just slowly putting the unit back together when you're done Clean up your work area, get the cleaners and different things off the ground. So that way they don't become a problem for the roof and then also you rinse, all your debris and stuff away from the unit, preferably down the drain.
That way, it doesn't dry out and then suck back up on the condenser, so nice and slow just clean your work area get all this nastiness out of here, plus it makes it easier to work too. Obviously, gon na be careful because i got a motor right there, i'm eliminating the rats nest of uh um wiring and i'm extending these wires. Putting heat shrink connectors that way they can make it all the way into the blower assembly cabinet. We'll do the same thing for the capacitor wires too, and there won't be any wire connections outside of the condenser fan motor assembly.
Also uh. I wasn't able to get a freeze stat, so we're just going to run without the free stat for now we'll just isolate it and we'll just have high pressure and low pressure controls, so yeah we'll just eliminate it completely and then we'll wire in the economizer assembly. Um we're currently, i have someone putting the unit together, um and then once he's ready for me, we'll put the blower assembly, then we'll put the top on very last and then change the transformer and all that good stuff blower assembly all put back together wires. You know tied in as best as possible, they're not perfect, but these units never are. We made sure we put everything back in um. Put a new transformer in took the freeze stat out what the free stat was doing was actually just breaking the common to compressor. One, it was interesting um, so we took that out and then put this jumper common um condenser familiars are all prepped and ready. I extended the wiring over there so once we get the top put back on we'll put condenser fan motors back in, i went ahead and got rid of the dual cap that wasn't being used.
Relocated. The capacitors put new ones up in here, so we're going to wire direct into the capacitors and hopefully be done with this guy. We are ready to energize, but this thing has been down for a long time now. Granted we did vacuum everything out and we cleaned the blower wheel.
We have to send someone downstairs and i'm gon na have to bump start it just a little bit at a time, because we don't know if this blower is just gon na blow the whole dining room full of dirt. So got to be careful about that kind of stuff, but we're all in it's not perfect. It's polishing a turd, but two new capacitors wiring's, all under there, nice and safe, we'll put some zip ties and go from there now um i send someone downstairs. We just did this test, i disconnected r, so the unit can't turn on the thermostat can't turn it on, and then i just grab this contactor and i slowly once stopped for a minute and then just had someone watching all the vents just to make sure that We weren't getting anything dust blowing out or anything like that and if you do have dust you just do it slowly, a little bit at a time a little bit at a time, but no dust everything's fine.
So we're going to continue hook up r and then finish troubleshooting the unit i jumped it out. The indoor fan came on and both compressors are running. Both condenser fan motors are running. Everything make sure the fan motors are running in the right direction.
They are everything's running in the right direction, so we're gon na put the panels on we're gon na. Let it run for a few minutes, make sure nothing. Funky happens, then we'll gauge up and check the stages and everything all right. Uh first stage is looking pretty decent, not seeing any big issues.
Um sub cooling is a little bit high, but it's discharge pressure. So that's not too bad super heat's kind of moving around don't see any major issues. Temperature split airflow looks wonky, but i'm not worried about that right. Now, um, okay, let's go to circuit two and let's go back here so circuit two is looking pretty much the same. I mean not too bad we're gon na. Let that superheat run for a little bit longer. Let's hope it drops down, because that is a little bit high um, but i mean everything's looking pretty much in line here. It's really not that bad actually airflow says it's pretty decent, actually yeah this guy's looking good.
I mean i want to see that that second stage superheat come down i'll, let it run for a little bit longer, but um, i'm not too concerned about this guy at all. It's looking really nice, although i will say well no that shouldn't affect that, because we don't have a very big load right now, but that shouldn't be making the superheat that high, like i said i'll, let it run for a little bit longer. This thing's been running for a little bit and, with that superheat being a little bit high and that sub cooling being as high as it is, i'm not going to add any refrigerant to this guy. I would suspect that we might have a slight restriction in the accurate metering device, fixed orifice metering device, so i will definitely talk with the customer.
Um there's really no clearing those things and um. I know people i've even tried to clear them, and i thought i had success, but once you disassemble one and realize what that accurate is made of two fixed orifices about an inch apart, you think about it. It's almost impossible to actually clear it. Even if you heat it up, you get something through the first orifice it's gon na get stuck because of the pressure drop.
It's like a mess, so um there's not much. I can do about this right now come over here. Let's let it run for a minute. More on circuit one and see how that superheat drops we'll give it a second it's interesting, because the first stage is kind of doing the same thing with that high superheat.
I don't know if it's a i mean with the 21 degree, sub cooling huh, that's interesting! The condenser is clean, the nitrofan motors are running indoor, blower motors running and moving as much air as it can. Oh, you know one thing: let me close the minimum outside air damper and let me get just building here that could be affecting our uh targets. So let me do that real quick, because that could be messing with us, because my pressures look pretty good, so i should clarify that the reason why i closed the outside air damper was to get a more accurate target. Okay, it wasn't going to change the superheat itself.
It was just going to change the target, so it dropped the target down to about 7.4 um, but we're still running high superheat, but here's the thing we've already got: 20 degrees of sub coin, we're already stacking liquid. In that condenser i don't want to put any more gas in this thing, so i'm kind of wondering if we have a plugged up metering device on this guy on both stages, um discharge line temp is decent, don't see any issues there i mean other than that. We're running the unit's doing pretty good. It's not horrendous! It's just running an elevated suction temperature on both compressors suction line, temps, pretty much identical about 60 degrees. So yeah, there's not really much more. We can do on that sorry about the line, they're kind of silly um, there's not much more. I'm gon na do about this. I'm not gon na add any more refrigerant to this.
This thing's working about as good as it can be uh we are gon na. Have ramifications because the higher the normal suction temperature, but we're gon na, have to uh talk to the customer about possibly replacing the evaporator on this, or at least just the metering device. But honestly it might be easier just to change the holy back. But it's working.
The unit's running it's hard away, main problem, bad transformer and bad free stat, but i had you know clean the unit up, got it operational made it work a lot better than it was. That panel is beat down, but they ain't replacing anything right now, because you can't even get these units so yeah. This guy's good, we're gon na wrap this one up, uh we're also having a problem with the kitchen ac. So i'll look at that here in just a minute but yeah, that's it for this one until the customer decides what they want to do in the beginning of video, i kind of talked about common places for there to be electrical shorts in these units right and It's important to understand that because of experience, i know a lot of places that potential low voltage electrical shorts can happen on these carrier package units right because i've seen them several times over and over and over again.
But you want to be careful not to just assume things just because you've seen it in the past. You always want to keep that in the back of your mind when you're trying to search for an electrical short, and it can give you a guideline as to where to look when you have a hard time. But you always want to remember to start with the basics right grab. Your meter put it on continuity, put it on tone and start testing things right when you're testing transformers put it on resistance, and i do want to cover something too.
I constantly mess up electrical terms when i'm saying things sometimes i'll say we're going to test continuity when we're when we're um. You know uh testing resistance or different things like that, and i apologize. I am not a legit educator, i'm not formally educated in hvacr i've. Just learned from the school of hard knocks right a lot of mistakes going to school myself, so i'm not a certified trainer certified teacher.
Okay, forgive me when i get terms incorrect, it's funny, because one time i was at a trade show, and i ran into an hvac teacher and his student was with him and a student wanted to meet me and he had to come over and say his little Passive-Aggressive phrase to me: you know: yeah, you have some pretty decent videos. You know they're pretty good. There's there's some mistakes, though you know and i'm like. Okay, you know humor i'm like. Can you tell me what my mistakes are? You know and - and he tried you know and he's just the instructor was upset because you know well yeah, you know. Sometimes you say things incorrectly. The terms, and you know the important thing that i think i want to get across on this channel. Is that we're not perfect? Okay instructors aren't perfect, i'm not perfect.
We mess up terms. Of course we strive to be perfect right. That's the best you can do is always try to be perfect, but understand you're, never going to reach that level. Okay, i never once come across, you know, or never once had an ambition to be.
You know an educator, that's not what i planned on this channel. I have no plans with this. This channel is literally i it started as me, making videos for my employees and then it's it's kind of morphing into something else, but i mean i'm just consistently doing what i do and yes, i have ramblings and yes, i have weird erratic. You know uh phrases and different things like that, but i just try my best okay, so anyways back to the video.
But you know don't get stuck in in a in in a routine just making assumptions and just jumping into things right, and you may see that in my videos, but also understand again that my mind is working thinking, things that maybe i might not be verbalizing. Sometimes. Okay, so yes, i realize that some of my phrases are incorrect and my terms are incorrect and i apologize. I try to be better because i do recognize like hey, you know when i'm in editing a video, i'm like i, i didn't actually say that right, but instead of editing the mistakes out, i actually leave them in, because i want people to realize that i'm human, I'm not a robot, i'm not perfect.
Okay, i am just like everybody else. I really am okay, it's really hard for me. I get like an imposter syndrome thing because you know if i get praise or something and whatever and people say you know - oh you're, so you're great at this or whatever it's hard for me to recognize that, because in my eyes i'm just a service technician. It's still baffling to me that all of you guys want to watch these videos.
It really does baffle me, because these are just the ramblings of my brain, like i'm not going out there rehearsing content and coming up with the script. You're literally hearing me walk up on a job starter and start talking to myself and that's how, if i wasn't making youtube videos, that's how i troubleshoot anyways is. I i talk to myself. That's how my thought process works; okay, sometimes it's verbally and vocal. Sometimes it's in my head, but that's how i troubleshoot all right, so don't get stuck in a rut, don't go in making assumptions. You always want to make sure that you're remembering to follow, fall back to the basics and troubleshoot accordingly. Okay, so we found an electrical short on this unit. I was not able to source a freeze stat, so i went ahead and pulled the freeze stat out of the picture.
Now, that's not ideal. It isn't, but i needed to close this ticket out, because i'm just so crazy right now with work. I didn't have time to order a free stat and have to wait weeks or whatever it is to get one um. So i i disconnected the free stat from the picture, but we still have low pressure high pressure safety, so i'm confident we're gon na be okay with that um going through the unit just basic troubleshooting.
I want to stress, because i did put it as the teaser is about spleen condenser coils. Now i want to make it clear right. I have preventative maintenance contracts set up with a couple of my customers, not all of them, but a couple of them and nowhere in my preventative maintenance contracts do we split coils? Okay, customers don't want to pay for that on a routine basis. Hence why the metering device was plugged up on this unit? Okay, nobody out there wants to pay for a perfect preventative maintenance.
Well, i shouldn't say nobody you get into like institutional work, hospitals, government work they actually sometimes do pay decent for preventative maintenance and they want to follow route. You know schedules especially hospital work because they're held to a higher standard by different um governing bodies - and you know that's a whole other conversation but for the most part in the retail and restaurant space. There's nobody out there doing a perfect preventative maintenance. Now, there's customers that go above and beyond what normal other customers do like this particular one, and they have me, do a monthly maintenance at their location, but that monthly maintenance does not include having two people there pulling the top off the unit.
Splitting a condenser on a regular basis - it just doesn't happen in a perfect world every six months, uh, if three, you know at least twice a year in a perfect world, you should be splitting a condenser and cleaning the inside of it. But let's be practical, most people aren't, but i think it's important for technicians to understand that it needs to be done. I can tell you the beginning of my career. I can remember some train package units that i would clean and it's like man, you just the the head pressure on the second stage was just so high and you could never get it figured out.
You'd recover the charge, weigh it back in still have high head pressure must be a restriction in the condenser must be a bad condenser. It wasn't. It was a dirty inside coil, okay and i didn't know what i was doing. It took me a long time to realize that there was two rows and so once i figure this knowledge out, i try to share it from the mountaintop right. I'm trying to tell everybody you need to split a condenser, and that goes for residential too, and i said five tons and above and actually you might see it on three and four ton units now in residential i'm talking about a standard residential split system, you got To split that condenser, you don't just clean it from the inside out. You got to pop the top. You got to pull it off, separate the condensers and clean it. I actually just did my own mine's, a four ton unit at my house.
It's a 14 seer. Four ton r22 split system and had to pull the top off the unit. It's a pain in the butt had to separate the condensers clean the inside row. So we as technicians need to do a better job.
Okay, we need to understand and better ourselves and educate ourselves, read technical documentation, and i'm saying this to you because i did not do it as a new technician coming into this trade. I did not start realizing these things. I made mistakes and i realized i can that that feeling in my stomach the first time i pulled the top off of an air conditioner, and i saw that it was a double road condenser and i saw how dirty it was. It was like whoa flat.
You know just like boom all these images popped in my head of how many times you know. Oh, my gosh, i didn't know you know now, in all fairness, like i mentioned in the video too, manufacturers do not do a good job of educating technicians on how to work on their equipment. They don't! Okay! Yes, if you take a carrier, training class or a train training class or a linux training class insert any name of manufacturer manitowoc ice machines whatever. If you go to their full service schools yeah, they might mention it in a service school, but they never mention it.
In regional trainings or online videos, or anything like that, if you look at manufacturers trainings for or manufactures representatives for carrier for linux, for whoever, if you look at their videos when they tell you how to clean a condenser, they do not properly tell you how to Clean a condenser and i could be incorrect and i would challenge you guys if one of you guys has a manufacturer's video or training material that actually tells you how to properly clean a condenser. I'd. Be really interested in seeing that because i personally have not seen it so if you guys have that content, if you have links to manufacturer's documentation that tells you how to properly split a condenser coil, send it to me hvacr videos gmail.com. I want to know i'd love to know i'll, give that manufacturer props, but my experience is not any of them.
Do i actually find it a personal challenge and it's kind of fun for me, whenever i go to ice machine training classes, i love to see a full classroom and to hear the representative. That's up there, training on the ice machines and have them. You know spout the the the sales spiel about how easy their ice machines are to clean. I love being in those classes and getting to be that passive, ass yeah. That's where i'm gon na go the passive-aggressive ass um in the class that chimes up and just starts leading them into these questions. I love doing that. It's so fun because it irritates me that manufacturers don't do this right, so i'll lead them into a question. I'll start asking little questions hey, so you know then this and that and then i get to the point where finally, the it's so fun to do this, the manufacturer will finally say well yeah.
You know uh three to four times a year. You're gon na have to do a full teardown on this ice machine and then i'll i'll like lead them into these questions, to get them to admit it in front of everybody. In the class that yeah a proper cleaning on an ice machine takes four to six hours per ice machine like to do a thorough cleaning. They never say that in any of their documentation.
Never they all just have the sales stuff, because they want to sell ice machines, they want to sell air conditioners, they want to sell refrigerators and in order to sell things, they need to give consumers points that make them want to go with their product and so They're all just saying, oh yeah, our ice machines are really easy to clean. You just push the clean button and walk away and it'll automatically turn back on when it's done. That's not cleaning an ice machine, that's doing a a a monthly rinse. You know same thing with the air conditioning manufacturer's representative that i just watched and they were like yeah.
You know you just clean the condenser from the inside and the outside. They mentioned nothing about splitting the coils. That's that's sales. Talk because they're trying to sell how good their machine is right and don't get me wrong.
There's good things about all air conditioners, but one thing to understand when it comes to air conditioners refrigerators. Ice machines is that they take time to maintain and proper maintenance is going to cost the customer money. We need to do a better job as an industry of getting the customer on the same level as us and understanding that routine maintenance is expensive, very expensive, okay, but 10 years 15 years down the line or five years down the line. A new condenser is a lot of money right and a new compressor is a lot of money and a plugged up accurate or metering device on these carrier package units is a lot of money, and how much was it going to cost to do routine maintenances? That could have avoided that you know so enough of my rambling about manufacturers, misleading consumers, okay, so um, obviously, there's a bunch of different stuff out there that we can use to maintain and manage our equipment, okay, understanding in our brains, the best way to clean things In a perfect world, the customer changes this equipment right, but that's not practical, it's not cost effective. I get so many comments on my videos. I can't believe you put a compressor in that you're doing the customer a disservice shut up. Okay, my customers are given options. Hey it's gon na cost this much to repair, i'm always trying to push a new.
You know package unit to a customer or something like that first off in these times right now, it's really hard to get package units. Second, in california, and oh, my gosh, the internet's gon na go crazy with yeah. You shouldn't live in california, blah blah shut up, okay um in california, there's there's a good things and bad things about living here, the weather's, the the main thing. Okay, the seasons are winter, it's 50 degrees.
Okay, that's that's not even cold. We don't know what cold is here. We know what hot is, though okay um, but uh. Ironically, i i love the term.
There actually is no cold. Okay, there's only absence of heat. That's that's a whole. I love that little spiel, that's a fun one.
That makes me kind of laugh inside but um, it's very expensive to change equipment here because of safety reasons of the permitting process and different things like that. So it's safe to say that whatever a package unit costs, okay, whatever i pay for it, it's going to cost the customer three times as much on the simplest change out, because if you're going to pull permits and different things like that - and it can sometimes cost The customer four times as much depending on how many hoops they have to jump through to properly permit that job if their building's not up to code different things like that, it's a nightmare, so customers usually opt to repair. That's why they fix this stuff. So you know i just do my best.
I give the customer the options, i let them make the decisions, okay and they make the decisions majority of the time i take ninety percent of the time the customers are fixing the equipment rather than replacing the equipment hey. I give them the options, i'm not doing anything wrong. I'm saying hey it's going to be this much to fix, i'm going to say it's this much to replace and you guys make the decision. Okay, sometimes the customers replace.
Sometimes they don't. You know so i'm just here to be a technician to share the ramblings in my head with you guys. It is really cool and humbling to get the support from you guys. It's awesome to see the comments, the emails, the different things like that.
So thank you. So very much it's really really cool. I really appreciate you guys making it to the end of the video um. Do me a favor? Let me know in the comments, if you actually made it to the end, it's really really cool.
Okay. So thank you. So very much remember to be kind to one another. We don't know what the next person is going through times are crazy right now we need more kindness. We truly do okay, so be kind to one another. I really appreciate you and we will catch you on the next one: okay.
Stop making excuses.
You know shit from clay, that is what it's all about. Are you in Barrhaven ?
I was taught ages ago to Never Assume when you do you make an ASS of U and ME lol
You know what you are doing. You are helping others with your knowledge without charge, what the hell do people want? You speak plenty clear, anybody who wants to fuss over slight errors in terminology is just a hater or jealous.
Why would a manufacture tell you how to clean their equipment? IT WOULD MAKE SENSE THAT THE PEOPLE WHO BUILT AND DESIGNED IT WOULD KNOW HOW TO CLEAN IT?!
But nope, just wash it, you'll be fine.
If you can't get new heating coils how would you go about cleaning them?
Martin
Easy Ice Machine take more 4hr to clean
Some of the Trane RTU's have 3 row condenser coils. One of the benefits of microchannel is that it's only a single coil. Even mini splits and VRF units have multi-row condenser coils. Here in the NE the cottonwood, which happens in June will plug them up solid.
Ice machines definitely take 4-5 hours to clean properly. They aren't the easiest to service or work on. Lots of tubing to remove and little parts and pieces. Cleaning and sanitizing has to be done in separate steps and 30-45 minute cycles for each. Service area Nepean??
Martin, obviously.
I almost shit my pants when you grabbed those 200v connectors on the transformer with your bare fingers
Martin
Martin
Martin
i would email you but im in denmark.. europe… good serie thoo
Thats from the show Martin! Made in 1990s! I dont remember much from that show, but he used to say it to his girlfriend/wife i believe!
im tempted after watching these and knowing a lot, To setup my own air con for my shed that is a house to some servers. Lots of heat is made in there and needs to be cooled. Now iv watched these for about a year. Id probably feel better setting one up than i would of just watching a video on youtube
Me again Service area Orleans??