All right so we're gon na get started. Thank you all for joining us. This is one of my weird webinars that we're doing whatever you want to call it. I think that might be the official name actually at this point is whatever you want to call it, and so Michaels here with me.

Well, what's the correct pronunciation of your last name, concise budget McAra McAra got it so michael has a lot of experience in the commercial installs a lot of different types of equipment. He was on last week and had some really unique stuff that I didn't want to jump into, because I know very little about it. I thought it'd be cool to just talk through some of these with him, so he sent me a bunch of photos and we're just gon na talk through some of the projects and he had already introduced himself and that will be in the replay version of this. So if you go back later, you can hear that, but I wouldn't mind Michael, if you just give a quick overview of what it is.

You do nowadays, absolutely I am a commercial industrial technician and I mainly work on startups, commissioning, Zoar new projects and I still run you know routine service calls here they have some maintenance, um unique maintenance accounts. I like to take care of stuff, but I'm primarily I'm focused on new installs and commissions and for people who are maybe in the residential side of things. When you get into larger commercial projects. First off they take a long time.

That's one thing and there's a lot of detail that has to be tended to, and so you need somebody with his service technicians, kind of mindset to help deal with those details and these bigger jobs. And so I would think, based on your experience, that you probably could be a service technician if that's what you chose, but this is just maybe a better fit for you and your personality. Yeah most of my career was a service technician. I loved being a service technician.

I wasn't dealing with them, so I customers and certain accounts and just service was oh my mind - was always on service. Since the day I got into the trade, and all I was doing was insulating ductwork in the shelf. Then what do you want me fabricate this? Let me insulate - and I still had service on the mind right, yeah, and that was the same way like there was a period of time early in it kalos where I we did a lot of commercial projects, and I was doing the pipe fitting myself and the Installation myself - and there was parts of it that I really loved, because an install you kind of can get into a zone which is really there's something. That's nice, there's more workmanship, so there's something to be said for it.

The only downside is. Is that I'm an extremely ATD person, so if a job takes too long, I start to get kind of bored. Do you ever find yourself, maybe drifting a little bit on jobs that take a while, actually just just the opposite? For me, I'd like to take the required time, because when I leave a project I want it to be hundred percent. I didn't miss a beat.

I didn't miss a stone unturned. I know that when the technician takes over that at his account, quality's been done, he has nothing to worry about because I came from when I got into service and things weren't. You know as quality and the tools we didn't have the tools we had five years ago. Ten years ago, technology's changed so much the service guy was always here.

This is your account. We just installed it and you kind of had to do all that quality in on your own. A service account after the install was done after the project was done. Going back and trying to change things that were missed is very difficult when it's too late yeah agreed, and that proves that you have a a workman ship mindset.

That's something I've actually always struggled with. It hasn't been my strength and in order to be good at projects, you have to have a detailed mindset where you don't leave any stone unturned, so to speak. So that's great and I'm glad I have you on because it sounds like you've got the right mindset to do a really good job at it. So, let's, let's start with what we're looking at right now.

So what do we see in here? What is this guy? Those a change out you know customer upgrade. I think it was a 20 or 25 ton split system to stage so I walked on to start my commissioning process. You know my pre checks I like to do pre checks before you know even touch the thing before. Even take it to take the tool bag out for certain pre checks that you should do, and I don't want to get interactive you want to give.

I don't know if anybody cannotice issue with this picture, or if you can, I like interactivity. Let me see, I'm gon na have to really don't have to spend too much time on it, but if you can, if you wanted to take ten seconds and see if you cannotice anything right off the bat, so first outfit, so what is this? It was. This cut out of something - or this was this - was a this - was a liquor line manifold from a two-stage system. It was on when I first thing I walked up on the job.

I went to go check everything actually I'll, go one step further. When I, when I say my pre checks, I went up to the job and I just verified what was to be there. If someone told me hey, we installed 20 tons, we actually had to change outs on this project. Someone said we're installing a 25 Sun replacement and we're doing a 25 tonne replacement same systems.

I walked them in the job and I checked the condenser first thing I did was I checked the nameplate tag. I check model serial make sure the voltage is right, make sure you know it's not a 208, and you know we put in a 460 things like that. So first thing I noticed, was the tonnage in the model number and then, when I went up to the TX V's and I checked the size of the TX B's, it didn't add up. So I had to make a couple phone calls long story short.

There was an issue at the riggers yard because we had identical unions that looked identical. It was an accidental swamp and we they put in the wrong unit. They picked the wrong unit on a weekend, so we had to end up swapping them. Luckily that was found during the pre check and not after the install Muniz been running.

So when I went to do the pre check, I went up to the manifold. This was so the vertical pipe coming down was the liquid line yep from the line set. Okay in the horizontals that were cut out were the connections on the dual stacked coils in front of the TX VSR solenoids that were staged the first stage. Second stage cooling.

So do you notice anything about the way that everything's been laid out? Well, it seems it seems odd to me that the solenoids are, after the valves, I'm trying to think here correct why that would be the solenoids were it was it was. It was just. It was a mistake. It was no light, it wasn't done on purpose.

I'm just saying because when I saw it, I thought of it, there's got ta, be a reason there but yeah. I guess if the solenoids are sized for the pressure drop on the liquid line, they're - probably not going to function properly on the what would be now. The expansion line, part of the evaporator coil right, yes, and now your equalizer on your external equalizer line, which are field installed on commercial valves or equalized lines now feeding constantly into your suction. Even when that solenoid is closed, that was right off from the pre check.

So those were a couple things I had I'd found just a flipped off the pre checks so that that instantly put the start up on a complete hold. You know you have to come back to the drawing board. That's why I I say it's important to not just do your pre checks on a commission, but to constantly be just you know, double-checking yourself, pre checking yourself has the projects going, because you don't want to get too deep into it, and then you got a take Five steps back when you just went three steps forward, yeah and and always asking the question you know like when you see something like this asking the question you know: okay, that's that's odd. What possibly could white white could that possibly be, and then obviously, when you look into it, you find out, there is no good reason why it's that way! Cuz, that's happening a lot to me and that's actually something that might my dad's not in air-conditioning he's in construction, but he would always say that when he would run commercial job sites, so the types of job sites that you're working on he would say a lot Of people just assume that somebody else did it right or figured it out, but this real secret isn't asking the question that nobody else is willing to ask and absolutely that's huge Jim and I was actually having a similar conversation with a co-worker today about that asking Why why didn't you ask why yeah some people are something honestly.

Some people are trade to ask. Why yeah some people don't ask alright cool. So are we done with this one yeah we can move on to the next one. It was just still part of the same project.

So yes, so this is the after. This is the starting of making a new manifold, so we had put a new manifold. You know little things, you know just service aspect, things adding a sight glass that wasn't there before adding a good picture of it, but there's a quarter dryer at the top of that riser. So, instead of having a 90 elbow, we added a dryer to protect the elements and make an easy change.

Refrigeration, ball valves! Are there too that's one of the things, a lot of commercial equipment. When you read piping diagrams, these units come pre charged with nitrogen, not refrigerant. You have to calculate your charges and use most of the time at the field supply your service valves. They do not come equipped with the unit.

They're just raised capped off ends with some nitrogen to thinking about supplying your own valving is really huge and that's actually I've heard that on the v RF and v RV market. So that's a really big thing too. Is you know adding in lots of valves? So you can isolate really easily versus you know, because they don't they don't come with them. You've got to Adam, I think, in all cases, lots of valves, especially when you get into these uh, like the Mitsubishi to City, multi, style, V, RF systems where you have buildings and they're, just putting hundreds on top of hundreds of branch boxes.

And it's like a giant Domino set, you just keep connecting more and more and linking and linking and so the more valves. You have easier isolation, because I've seen guys go weeks months, trying to find a small pinhole leak on a system that has miles of refrigerant piping. Just out of curiosity, what type of alloy are you using to make these joints on? Those was using a braze filler rod. I was using a 15 % 15 %, okay yeah! That's what yeah, I usually.

I usually use 15 %, nothing less if I'm working on a compressor - and it requires like a 56 percent - stay civil - something like that. I'll get that, but I'm a big fan of the 15 % mean now. Why is the sight glass pointing away from us here? Is it it's hard to tell the orientation here, but is that um yeah there's a little tough? The side glass is pointing away because of the way that unit isn't that room. When you approach the unit, the sight glass will be facing you, it's one of the first things I'll stand out at you, the door, the doors not really behind me in that room.

So, that's why okay, the unit's kind of tucked away in a corner. So that's another thing too. I like to put things in sight, easy view. You know, you're approaching a unit and first thing you're gon na see is hey.

Is that side glass flashing is a comma liquid. I, like your ideas of non-invasive testing, I'm a big fan of that myself check everything first before you got to touch the system internally and I'm assuming you're flowing nitrogen when you actually start joining all this. Absolutely I probably went I couldn't tell you how many canisters and nitrogen it took build out that manifold, I'm a huge fan of nitrogen. I can't believe people, sometimes don't do it from what I hear from my connections at the supply us and the managers.

They said guys are not buying a lot of nitrogen, which scares me out there a little bit but um yeah, I'm a huge fan of blowing nitrogen and then even when you're, not on the joint running it through. I have a. I have a regulator that has a braze purge and test function on it. So when I'm not brazing, I'm a big fan of purging just constantly keeping flow, keeping every bit of moisture.

I can out of that system because makes vacuum time a lot easier. Yeah - and this is where this is, where the big boys play you know so for those of you who maybe do later commercial stuff or residential, I mean you'll, say like yeah, you don't need to flow nitrogen. You can often get away with it in residential, but in this bigger stuff you see all these connections and if you're burning each one of those joints and you're building a cupric oxide on the inside of every joint. That is a significant amount of copper oxide.

That's then getting into your dryers into potentially your valves and everything else, so it makes a huge difference in these applications, maybe even more so than in some residential applications. Just because of the sheer number of joints that you're making, especially with the wide the line set, sizing line, sets are much more bigger than they are in residential, especially now it's known for 10, a ounce like I've, seen a on residential or smaller equipment. You know you run 7/8 3/8 for the most part unless you got a really long line, but these are: I've worked on 7/8, liquid lines, 7/8 inch and 5/8 or bigger suction lines, a lot of joint heating. It's takes a lot to fill that joint and you want to do it right the first time and you don't want to have a mess actually on this particular job.

I think somebody forgot on a joint during the change out process, because, when I had cut apart to put in isolation, valves service valves, I'd cut a 90 out and I nitrogen clearly wasn't used. I blew into the pipe and it looked like confetti came flying out. All from the inside buildup yeah, like funeral confetti exactly was a hose black black rain accidentally unlawful. It was a helper that did it or somebody they didn't use a tubing cutter on one of the pipes I cut apart and there was a lot of burr.

It looked like they ran a sawzall to cut the pipe or a hacksaw, so that between that and the burned elbow that immediately prompted to get the large oversize cord Rider just for protection on the new TX views. Yep and when it comes to dryers. Baker is generally safer capacity, wise all right cool. What are we looking at here? All right here looks like in the car to you to me normal rtu.

It's I believe, that's a 17 and asked on this was an interesting project. It was at a building where they had an existing, very outdated. I mean some Smith Smithsonian style equipment in there they had a chiller in the basement with a large boiler and some old air handlers, and they decided to just completely can the whole system and they went with new rooftops new curbs new ductwork new Vav s for Residential guys kind of his own zone, damper zone system and new everything, so the interesting part about that there was a couple interesting parts about this project, so I mean the install went well the controls work. Everything went well when it came to commissioning time we're going through a pre checks.

These ones had to uh had to get converted to propane, because it's in an area where there's no natural gas, so they had propane on-site for their boiler. These units came shipped for natural gas. They had to get converted over. As I was going through the conversions and testing pressures.

I thought I had an issue at first. I, my my manometer. I never had this happen before went to oh well kind of like on my meter, reading an open line. I said: well, that's weird, so I kept claiming my manometer kept checking the settings I kept going crazy.

I couldn't get my my digital to work, so I always keep an analog spare compound gauge in the truck I put the compound gauge on. I got two psi that is not inches of water column. That is oh, no, I'm sorry, 10 psi! No, not not inches. Of water column, 10, psi of propane pressure.

I think, if you go to the next picture, I can explain what happened there. So, as I'm tracing out to the system, I noticed there was no regulators on the rooftops. Well, I saw regulators by the tanks, I'm not a propane guy, not a propane service or a delivery company, or anything like that. So, coincidentally enough, when I was investigating this a delivery guy came up to me.

He said I just asked him a question. I said hey, what do you guys uh because run in here? He goes, he was all well, you go. He goes the delivery guy was like. You got your high pressure off the tank that red one right.

You got high pressure off the tank. We used the red regulator to step it down to 10 psi, and then we have the green regulators which go from 10 psi down to your 10 12 14 inches of water column, where you can adjust from there converts to the water column and lowers the pressure. I said oh so it was a situation where, luckily, I didn't just come on site flip, the unit gas valve opens up. I don't think most people know what happens.

If you put 10 psi to a standard gas valve, I don't there, I don't know what happens, but I would have loved to have seen. Is that picture in the next one? No, I was getting excited yeah. I know nobody wants to replace brand-new gas pumps. What happened was they tapped? They thought when the company was running the gas, that they were tapping off a regulator, because it was just a different color.

You know to certain installers, you know you see colors, you see you're just running the pipe, but god I see the colors here. I'm told to cut it here and cut it here. Not ask any questions. You know.

What's the difference between red and green, we got tapped off the high-pressure ended up having to had regulators at the rooftops to step it down to your proper manufacturer, respect the gas pressure interesting. I wanted to go back to this one real, quick, because I noticed something: you've got a copper drain, and this is this. May because I'm just I don't know anything about northern climates. You've got a copper drain and it's draining on the roof.

Is that pretty standard? It is pretty standard yeah most rooftops in this area. You will see elder strain it on the roof. Some people drain it to a some people drain it to a roof drain or something like that. But when I've seen that guys just kind of lay the pipe on the roof and expect it to go what's flat, it's not pitched it cakes up really easily.

It's just Morse more serviceable. As long as you set your depth, you know there is specs again going back to reading the book, depending on the tonnage of the unit and your capacity in your coil size. There are manufacturer specs on how deep to set the trap. Yeah, that's a static pressure thing.

A couple people are asking so is this: is this little regulator here? Is that the step-down regulator you added? That is a step-down regulator. I saw another comment: if you take your cursor arrow and follow that gas pipe right fun of that root flute, there is a shot off there. Your wait, they know, go the other way other way here, yeah you keep going, keep going right there. Oh, that's a little bit.

That's what yeah it's hard to see! Cuz it's the body! Oh, they got painted yellow too so and then the question about a drip leg, dirt leg. Whatever they sediment trap. We don't do that in New England because of our frozen climates inspectors don't like that, and that is an interesting thing, because that it is very regional. Some people think that it's like code everywhere, but, for example, in New York City, they absolutely do not allow it because they don't want another place for people to tap into traditional appliances off of it's the reason why I've heard they don't so I think that is That is yeah and the freezing thing is an issue it gets cold.

That's in that particular job was in a very cold climate in the wintertime. There was definitely some cold days there on that project. So this farmers - I saw another question that that trap is for the AC drain. Someone said as a compensate acidic the rooftops knock on and say think it's not like a high-efficiency furnace on the heating side.

That's just for AC condensate right. It's just just air conditioning cool all right, so I think that's it for this one right. Oh no, so yeah! So one more unique feature of how this job was. We want to go.

Do the startup. While I was doing my commissioning process, I had issues getting a fan to run. The fan would not run on a call for just fan when you applied a call for heating or cooling. If some reason would energize the fan.

This unit came spec by the customer kind of on those design built things with a lot of features. A lot of ventilation modest see it's a public space, so you know co2 monitoring for ventilation, economizer, barometric relief, all those things - and it came with a factory drive on the blower motor. Interestingly enough, the first thing that popped out of me was when it called for fan: it stopped at 50 Hertz, it wouldn't get to 60. So I went you know and in our continent you know we run things at 60 Hertz for the most part, unless you're varying it.

What this wasn't, they weren't varying the speed on this. The reason for like energy efficiency, soft start/stop things like that make a long story short a lot of going through the unit it left the factory programmed for international. You need also first for me it was unique one and every every Drive every voltage every bowed rate speed. Everything was what you would see in Europe or over there, whatever I'm not too familiar with their power grid over there.

But I had to take about a half hour to an hour of my time and reprogram it for a North, American and North American specs, and then the unit worked perfectly fine, but that was a tricky fine. That was an interesting one. So tim is still commenting about the sediment trap, so I want to clarify again that, yes, there is reference to it in the gas code, but there is still an HJ thing. It's an authority having jurisdiction there and you are correct that you do tend to see more sediment and propane and natural gas, but just I've talked to a lot of a lot of people who work in certain municipalities certain areas that they do not they don't use Them so I get what you're saying, but we've had this conversation many times in the group with different people from different areas.

Yeah and this job was inspected by the town because of the the gas line was all knew it wasn't existing. It wasn't a change out. Everything was brand new, so it had the hold of pressure test and be inspected by the local jurisdiction and that's what they wanted all right, so moving on, so now we're going into a computer room air conditionings. This is really interesting to me.

I've never done any data center, so you can give me a brief rundown of what type of facility this was. Obviously we can't get too specific because it's a customer, but yes, I'm speaking. What is this believe it or not? This was we will get to data centers. This was a data room for a specific company office company.

You know doing they had a little more we're than normal because of the type of work they did and they were very over-the-top and wanted to invest into their equipment to make sure it was well protected. Well cooled! Well, humidified on that it was you, don't see this a lot anymore, because these type of systems are incredibly custom, SPECT and very, very expensive. Believe it or not, a lot of people are going now, it's just like if they can get away with a ductless Mitsubishi with an inverter driven, compressor and wind baffle. You know it's good enough for them, but there are certain customers that still pay attention to the temperature and the humidity is huge because you know any sort of data room lab whether you're manufacturing plastics, whether it's servers at 35 %.

You run the risk of creating static electricity and static. Electricity does not do well for circuit boards. It's not it's. What makes dust collect you know their shelf and the TV in your house and plastics if you're manufacturing plastic.

So that's why Hugh midde tea is also very crucial in this application. This particular job. It was a change out from existing system. Some complications with this were on line set.

Length was an issue because of it was in an office building and the condensers were a parking garage, and the manufacturer is very specific on the line set length for this particular type of equipment. For the most part, it's just um. I do like computer rooms. I do like data rooms because it's quiet, you know it's usually good working environments, not too much is in your way it's in the cleanroom and it's very secure customers do not like um everyone in the company having access to this one room, especially in the world.

We live in now this particular one. What I really wanted to hit home on was these um. A lot of people walk up to these. I've had a lot of guys.

They walk up to a unit like this. It doesn't look standard and they get nervous. You nervous at the touchscreen they get nervous at the fancy lights and the controls inside. If you want to go to the next picture, I think that uh guys took a picture of the inside of the cabinet somebody's asking.

What the normal setting would be for these types of applications like what would the normal temperature, and that varies because in this particular room this was an existing data room and where you really need to start is on. I know you've touched on this a lot, especially in your climate, with sizing air conditioners. You got to look at the envelope of the room. That's probably the single most important part of data rooms and server rooms is the envelope.

If you talk to design manufacturers like this particular manufacturer here, if you talk to their design engineers when you're filling out pre checklists for them to design a piece of equipment, because these these units are built to order, they don't sit on a shelf. There's lean times. Once you order it and you sign for it, you want it. There's no returns, there's no, nothing.

They want to know that you have a vapor barrier, that's huge when keeping the humidity contained. They want vapor barriers of plastic and they want to feel like r35 insulation. As far as temperatures I like to see, I'm probably around that 50 % range is like pretty safe. 4550 all depends on your envelope.

What you're going to get as far as temperature goes. There's some sticky excuse me there's some sticky situations with temperature. Nowadays, manufacturers of the equipment are designing around like a 75 degree temperature. Most people are learning now that you have to go by the hardware, whatever server you have whatever brand you have.

You have to go to your manufacturer and say: what's the highest Inlet temperature that this server chip microchip device can handle, and then you kind of design around that most of this equipment is staged. You leave some leeway for adding additional server guys IT guys called hardware. That's done I mean when I refer to Hardware additional heat loads, because on some of these rooms, they're, nice and comfortable, you go to turn the system off change the filters within 10, 10 plus minutes, your your patient temperature, 510 degrees, you're, tripping off someone's alarm and The IT guys coming in screaming his head off, because his bosses about the jump that was throw because the servers were gon na overheat really depends. I've talked the guys at the factory they like to design around 75, some of the old-school.

It guys still believe that they're safe at like 65, but that creates huge complications when it comes to humidification, because you're getting colder and you're, maybe you're overworking your humidifiers old air is dry air. You know the the colder the area is the less total moisture content there is in the so that makes it tricky exactly and on this, the last note on this picture, like two E's like I was saying before some of the guys that you know don't look At a unit like this would walk up to and get nervous, especially if it's a younger apprentice and he's hat or younger, not apprentices, a younger tech and he's on, like I'll say, he's the on-call guy, and this happened to come in after hours. You know just labeling things, I'm a huge fan of a label maker, if you don't have one by one, they're, relatively inexpensive and just doing things like hang in the dorky and like that was all done by me. That was done by the manufacturer.

Next, to that is a piece of plastic where I put all the manuals so they're, either in no chronological order, just anything you could do to make the next guy's life easier he'll. Thank you for it. Absolutely one question: that's been asked a couple times is in these types of rooms. Is there lead lag types of configurations? Absolutely this um.

This particular configuration is a lead lag. The unit behind it is labeled crack number two, a lead lag based on a based on a timing schedule. Actually this customer had existing automation, so the automation company has a built-in timer. I think it's weekly.

They try to alternate like on every Tuesday, like a non-critical time, whether it's like 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, though they'll rotate the unit, if the other unit fails to start it'll recognize that, based on the temperature demand and will run back to the other Unit and it'll also not only lead lag. It's built-in redundancy if one unit is struggling for whatever reason someone left the door open whatever it may be, the other unit will come on as support yeah. We did that in in some telecom applications. Any time that's mission-critical, you want to have a lead lag, you know configuration it's, it just makes sense, and it's actually something that, if you're ever in a position where you are advising somebody who's coming up with kind of a smaller set up, but their server is Still very mission-critical, I've gotten to the point where I won't even do it unless they go with some sort of a lead like configuration, or at least backup, at least having some sort of secondary going back to the commercial line, the commercial aspect of our trade.

You see a lot of um a lot of a lot of redundancies, a lot of backup parts on site like I'm in commercial. We don't run around with a lot of parts. When I did residential, I was set up to fix everything, but a compressor. I had blower motors TX V's, multiple Tia everything, but commercial is just completely different because the parts are completely different, they're hard to get so a lot of customers want that redundancy need that redundancy, if that were done, they'll willing to pay for it.

If it's gon na affect their businesses bottom line all right, so let's go to the next one here, so this next photo is actually the inside photo of that unit. Going back to like, I was saying a lot of guys. I have a lot of guys come to me. They'll, walk up to this unit and they'll just get nervous, they'll see all the wires they'll see, you'll, see a controller microprocessor control or they're.

Like I thought I worked on a scene on computers, I'm not a computer guy. I just wanted to you know rest assure to everyone looking at this photo, it's just about being comfortable wiring diagrams and knowing that the theory, everything is just there's contactors in there there's circuit breakers, which are acting as on-off switches. There's fuses, there's just everything you would see in you know a residential or smaller unit, just on a different level, just more safeties, more redundancies, more features, there's you know pressure switches for clogged filter, but you know if your filters gon na get clogged up or your Filter needs to be changed just little additional things and just rest assure if you take the time and you don't freak out and start making phone calls before you even know what the problem is. Take your time with it, and I will say when you're looking at a unit like this on a commercial level, a lot of these circuit breakers and fuses, there's little dials on them and they're set for amperages, and a lot of issues I have on startups is A lot of the manufacturers want you to amp out whether it's your fan motor, your compressor, and they want.

You have set it at an acceptable level. You could get a lot of nuisance service calls a lot of nuisance, callbacks and trips on a new unit. If you don't take the time to really commission it and set amperages and going back to like we said, take the proper time with the install make sure you don't just hit the switch a it's cooling, my Delta T's good, I think we're fine. It always comes back to bite you yeah and for technicians who haven't seen this before.

This is just a mounting system called a din rail, so everything is organized so that way, everything's neat and you use a lot of terminal blocks for connections which is actually a nice thing. Once you get used to it, din rails are actually great, so these are what you would call din mounted breakers and didn't mount it contactors relays all that and that's it's actually a nice thing. It looks kind of European, but this here looks like it says, made in the USA, I'm pretty sure it says made in the USA, so this particular manufacturer Stults they're not to get the brand specific but their competitor or Liebherr, and they make all their things in There us a plant on this side. They have other plants across the way German made, but they manufacture all their American stuff.

Here on the East Coast yeah, I was thinking that they were a German company but yeah so anyway, and you'll see more and more of this when you get into higher and commercial stuff, a lot of din rail-mounted components and once you get used to it, you'll Actually find that it's actually really nice for organization, but you don't have the advantage of a bunch of different colored wires. You know they use the same colors a lot and they just label them, and you can usually refer back to the wiring diagram and see what each you know number is in order to kind of find where you are yeah. Going back like what you said about what your dad used to tell you, my grandfather, like I said earlier on, was a commercial electrician and he used the at a young age hammered into me when he knew this was the route I was gon na head. You know, learn wiring, learn, diagrams, learn, labeling, no matter what you do.

It'll get you very far. You have to realize a lot of these wires correspond to certain things. The letter and the number just kind of means, the location of the wire, doesn't mean what component it goes to there's no real ryg. You have to kind of navigate through the diagrams, which are tricky.

Some manufacturers they're ladder diagrams, lay out better than others, and some I can't some even when you're comfortable with diagrams or some manufacturers. I can't stand a little sidetrack. I had. I was on a job.

I had a manufacturer put a sticker on a unit saying when you plug in this to this. It's supposed to do this. Well, the unit was never wired or designed that way and asked the manufacturer why they still put the sticker on it and the guy said I don't know, and how is the answer I got directly from the manufacturer. Well, when you think about it, with these more custom-made and all big commercial equipment or high-end commercial equipment is more custom-made than what we see in residential there's, always a chance that somebody in the factory does something wrong, because it's more custom 8.

It's more bespoke to use fancy a nerd language. It is and there's on you'll see a lot on units like this you'll see like. I don't really see them on this unit, but like let's say next to that American flag down there you'll see a lot of QC stickers with signatures on it, meaning it went through this person and then they go there. Their work I verified by this person and it'll go on four or five people.

Long and you'll still have an issue. Job and you'll be like. So all you guys failed. So you have to trust.

You have to trust yourself and test and check and prove it out. Like I know I was listening to Jim Bergman today in your other podcast here, where he was saying how all his hypotheses he has to prove it out. There's a lot to be said about proving it out, don't take other people for granted, meaning letting them that they did the job right, yeah all right. So here we go.

This is the side. Yes, that is the other side of the unit. That is the condenser portion of the unit, and it was hung in a parking garage just how it was one of the tricks was on when the unit respect it had the respect for high ambient conditions, meaning they put in there's a big three-phase motor in there. For a condenser fan motor looks like a blower motor and had to be a high ambient condition unit, because it's a parking garage doesn't get a lot of ventilation.

There's a lot of cars in there, it's hot, so um. That was one of the tricks of specking. It you're zooming in on what I was about to get into next. Yes, without noticing it, those are zoom lock fittings we've been using them with success for a while.

It really helps in commercial atmospheres when a lot of these buildings want you to do everything but bring a torch into their building. And if you have to you, have to get clearances after hours. Weekend's assign a burn permit, get that signed off by the building engineer, and it's just so. We've had some good success with the zoom walk.

There are some issues in have some manufacturing issues, but for the most part, it's a decent product, I'm all about craftsmanship and brazing, and that thing, but I'm also all about convenience and getting the job done right. And I will say guys if you want to try the zoom or give it a shot and just follow all the steps. Each don't miss a step, because if you miss a step, it's gon na leak and it's not like a breeze joint. You can't go back and fix it, you have to cut it out and it's just shorten your piping pre-measured yeah and that's what I've you know.

That's what I've seen we haven't ever done any big projects with it yet, but I'm sure we will soon - and it is it's it's prep and just making sure that everything's cut super square. You don't have any burrs, it's clean seated, all the way in you know those are all the things you have to make sure you do right, so yeah, so that's the other end of the other end of the unit runs like a compressor. The only the only thing is coming back to commissioning aspect of it on a unit like this, there is on there's head pressure, controls in there and uh, you know solenoids and floating, and I guess bypasses and those things do have to get set. That is a little tricky and I still have to take my time with that myself get making sure based on your environment, you set in your hot gas bypass right.

Your pressures are good. I think this unit was for us four. Oh four, wasn't four! Oh four! Oh four, oh yes, and it was four. Oh seven see ya, wasn't 407 C units, oh yeah! You have to make sure you had to do that and going back to reading the book, because the line set length was so long.

You also had to add additional refrigerant oil based on your calculated charge in your line set line. Another aspect of commercial that I didn't see a lot of in residential is you know, adding the additional oils checking compressor amperages, you know sending hot gas bypasses. I've only had to do a few of those on a residential level. Question was: is this regular half-inch rod hung and in regular Channel anything fancy there? No, nothing fancy there there's on.

I believe, if you zoom out there's some strut in the ceiling. I believe those are manufactured Isolators. I think the manufacturer provided those holes for the or the strut or for the rod rather to hangs to do a rod hanging yeah. A lot of manufacturers will provide that I'm also a fan of trapeze and for you installers for the service, guys, please don't block doors and accesses.

It makes our lives a little bit harder yeah. It might make your life easier, but the service guys to keep going back year after year to service it so try not to block doors if you can help it. It's funny because now that I'm looking at this, I realized I've actually worked on this exact unit type before it was at a medical application. It was actually a room that serviced a small chiller that serviced a MRI machine yeah.

No, no exactly! I don't know exactly everything all the reasons why it had to be this type of unit, but when you look at it on the outside, it looks more like a refrigeration condenser than it does an air conditioning condenser. So it kind of threw me off when I first looked at it, but yeah thrill, there's actually quite I mean it's got a lot in it still, but it's it's pretty straightforward. Really it's not as bad yeah, it's not as bad as it sounds, and it's just the extra controls and how its custom built it's funny. You said that I I've had some units some.

What's the proper word on looking for a/c, like a kind of like a processed chiller fMRI equipment, this particular manufacturer just a little short bib, I'm a for this particular manufacturer, I'm also a warranty rep for them, even though I work for a company if another, one Of their customers has a warranty issue in my territory, on behalf of their company I'll go out and do the warranty work for them. They also own a company, they own, an Italy company and I had to go to one of their service calls. Once for a box manufacturer, I didn't even realize that a box engineer design engineers is a real thing. When you go into the supermarket, you see that end display somebody actually engineered and designed it to fit so many products and look pretty and fit the railing, nice and all that stuff.

So they have very large machines that make boxes and design boxes and they have large cabinets with a lot of drives and controls, and this company makes a package unit that mounts on a control box and literally its job, is to just cool the controls. There's just so many controls that it just cools the controls so another little neat thing that I got the opportunity to work on yeah and - and I think the thing to mention here when the difference in mindset that it takes to work on this sort of thing, Is that you have to be willing to go into it, not always remembering every detail you know like, and I think this is something that people who you know maybe hear about you installing or commissioning they're like oh man. He must know all of this. It's like well, sometimes you know it it's in there, but when you show up it's not like it's alright at the tip of your brain, you do a little reading.

You start looking at things and then it all starts coming back again, but it's not like. I think a lot of people think that when you're a good technician, you're just a human encyclopedia and everything's just right there at a moment's notice - it's not at least - maybe it's not for me. Maybe it is for you, no absolutely not, and I get the pearl. I said it's a privilege to be able to touch and work on so many different types of systems, but at the same time it's a curse because it's impossible.

You try to sponge everything in your mind and you just can't it's not humanly possible to remember all that and the fact that we have iPads now and the articles you put online that people get the privilege of you know. Five. Ten years ago you had a magazine rack on my truck just with books on top of books and training classes. Binders, the size of cyclopædia is and all my books from HVAC school and when I went to trade school and it's just luckily all that's digital now and use technology to your advantage, don't be a don't, be stubborn.

We all can't remember ever anything. We all need help having a community to help each other out is a really really beautiful thing: we're in a good age in the HVAC world yeah. I agree alright, so here's the actual facility itself right um. This is a separate job from a separate job.

Okay, this is another data center. This is an off-site data center can't talk about it too much okay. So it's basically there's a lot of data centers around the world. People don't know about they like to stay hidden and they basically provide secure transfers for four companies.

Whether you like, let's say you, know your business Kalos, let's say you have a lot of information, a lot of critical data stuff. You want someone to secure off-site, it's always safe, it's always cool. Nobody can get to it. It's in a building, that's 50 feet.

Above the 500-year sea level, type of industrial top-secret information - this is a wing, a new wing. A build out of that facility. Wasn't too much going on. We were contracted to set the new units in place.

We provided the new crack units and they were, they were pretty. I say basic. It's not gon na sound basic to some people, but there was um chilled water piping in the facility. This facility runs a big chiller plant with megawatt generators.

They just have redundancy on top of redundancy generators that pump out 13:8 voltage step it down to 460, all that stuff. So we provided the crack units. I I was on site to provide support for other trades too and we'll get to another slide where I really did there, but on the manufacturer, did the startup on their own equipment to provide the customer with a longer warranty, that's kind of like a thing to Manufacturers, if you let them do their own startups, they'll, give the customer more of a warranty. I think it's just way from get more work really, so these units weren't too bad.

They were chilled water crack units. So, basically, you just have a supply and return chilled water and a regulating valve regulated supply air temperature as a modulating valve, but wasn't and enclosed, and it had a just a different brand from the other. You know we went over. The still obviously has the humidification built into it.

These units did not and bring it into the when we get into the ultrasonics will explain why these units came pretty bare, pretty basic. You can order them. Yes, with humidification and, like I said, there's a lot of options: there's infrared their steam canisters, there's on e they'll, build you whatever your heart desires as long as it's within reason, pretty much as long as you can provide them with the specs. So the manufacturer we set the units.

Interestingly enough, I don't know if a lot of people know the for in this data room as a raised floor, meaning each one of those 2 by 2. Tiles that we're looking at comes up and there's probably two to three feet below the UM below the ground and the whole floor is your supply ducts. You basically pull a tile out put a grill in and that's your supply. Duct returns come in from the top and that's how they circulate these data rooms.

At one thing, you know when this data room is finished, some people do it some people don't to increase efficiency, they do what's called hot decks and cold decks. Kind of that goes that goes two ways so there's I actually used to work on systems that had a true hot deck and cold deck, but what in server room related amines you're supplying the air curtain in front of where the the hardware, the servers are gon Na take the air in and you're, exhausting all the hot air into your return, and you have sheets of plastic or barriers not to cross that air, keep it pretty pretty well contained, and so what we had to do. What I had to do here was these come with these particular models were ordered with EC fans and the fans had to be dropped into the floor from the unit and that what that does is that just increases efficiency, blowing the air into the floor and creating Your supply that way now the fan is in the floor and it could fan out a larger area of airflow and make you know, spread more air more efficiently and allowed to. You know better produce into the space, so the fans had to be what's called the lowered, you just drop them into the floor bracket them down, and that was pretty much it.

We uh wasn't much going on in this one. Just a lot of a lot of support on this one. So, let's see, if I can imagine this right so you've got all these were of servers, and you have this. Some people are saying hot I'll, cold aisle.

Does that sound that? Yes, sorry, I've had that cold deck on the I'm totally because I was wondering I was wondering, but okay yeah, so you have a hot aisle in the cold aisle the cold aisle. So you essentially blow air up it's drawn through the equipment and then it comes out and returns down. The other turns down the other side. Right, wait, wait! A second which side is the the supplies in the ceiling.

The returns from the floor or the opposite returns are in the ceiling. Supplies are on. The ice applies in the floor, okay and then so you mount these electronically commutated blowers, these ici blowers down in or fans in the floor, and those then are what actually provide that supply air drawn out of the floor up into the front of the the row. Right yeah and your your your isolating you don't want that hot or cold out mix.

You want all that heat to be rejected into the return area into the hot aisle, which then goes into your return, and you want to keep that separate from your your cold. Aisle just for efficiency purposes, got it. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah cool the.

I learned something new. I always liked it when I learned something new which is everyday. Here's the for all the guys that SAS commercial guys don't get in the attics. You know we got to go on the floors, so everything you are in some grocery stores.

Just another quick go: we used to work in some grocery stores that had a trench because they had all underground line sets, and that was a nasty thing to have to get down into to to run your line sets and all that you'd have this giant pit With all of them coming in from the cases out in the store so lovely, so we used to have fun with that too. Overhead is a lot better you're already living a swamp. I didn't know you can go below the swamp. Well, yeah generally can't there's a very few exceptions to that so cool.

So yes, so this is the interesting photo, but I think sparked your attention last week. These are these are ultrasonic humidifiers. What this particular customer did was they mounted the ultrasonics instead of like we're talking about having the humidifiers built in the system, they mounted ultrasonics on each side of the world, these particular ultrasonics. So I guess for people that don't know the difference.

Ultrasonic is on it's a humidifier that mechanically uses high frequency vibrations that basically forced the droplets of water into a very fine mist finer than steam. I think it's like point one maybe double check on that and then there's a pullover that blows it out into the atmosphere because you're such a fine mist and a high-frequency, it's better absorption into the air, and you use a deionized water which is demineralized water. There's no hardness no contents, so the better part is because you're using the ionized water and a high frequency you're using about 7 %. I think around 7 % of the energy consumption you would as if use a traditional steam, whether it's electric or gas, generated humidifier and you get better efficiencies out of it and you don't have to uh.

You don't have to do a real flush cycle. Like you. Don't have to like constantly flush and clean the drain in the water, because that hardness, so what is it? Actually? What is the water? Do you know what the water is actually going through? That's exciting it with the ultrasonic waves like how does that? How does that? Actually work as far as the deionization process - oh just the actual, the actual excitation, in order to make it into those tiny droplets, because obviously ultrasonic means that you're using sound waves to vibrate it really fast. That's yeah! I can't I wouldn't know the full details about the mechanics to this particular system, but that's what you're doing you're using ultrasonic vibrations to literally move the water so fast that it creates the droplet effect and in creates that fine, mist and then you're.

Just using essentially a blower there's a blower motor in there, that's just blowing it out. I can't get too specific on exactly that particular process, but that's the extent of what I know as far as how it goes what it was. What else was I gon na? Oh, I know what I was gon na say. This is an interesting fact that I learned recently.

That's actually just something I've never thought about is that when we see what we call steam or mist or whatever we're actually looking at water droplets that are condensing and so true steam, meaning superheated steam steam, that's actually fully vapor water, that's fully vapor! You don't see and then ever for whatever reason that just never registered with me before that, if it was actually still steam, meaning it wasn't condensing, then you wouldn't see it. What you're seeing are actually water droplets in the air once it begins to condense anyway, just a weird fact that it just yeah exactly this is cold steam. This is hard. I shouldn't say steam.

You know, cold, vapor, vapor the program would say yeah, there's um.