Right so we are headed over to the house of x pro basketball player bo bo outlaw play for the magic and a few other teams. I met him at golf tournament. And he told me that the upstairs of his house is not comfortable. So.

I said hey i'll go out and take a look at it all right so i'm using the thermal imaging camera. Which this is the nice flear pocket thermal imager. Which i like because it's very rugged um. Just to kind of look at insulation coverage.

And just see if we have potentially an insulation issue. Because we got a really hot attic. One thing. That's interesting though you'll notice the ac is currently off and you can actually see it's hotter around the vents than it is anywhere else and some of them you see that pattern more around the edge and others you see it in the center.

And when it's in the center of the vent that represents duct gains and when you see it around the edges. That's an indication that we have infiltration around the edges of the vent. Which is you know i always talk about this in terms of heating loads. Reducing infiltration gains.

Reducing convective gains from addicts is the number one thing you want to do because attic air not only is it very hot. But it's also super humid. So you have that latent load associated with that so that's one thing. We definitely want to look at and it's a really simple thing to do you just take the vents down make sure they're all really well sealed around the vents.

Make sure they're well insulated around the vents. But we also yeah. That's that's that's a that's a big piece of it and again. It's not that's not going to fix the whole problem.

But it's slow hanging fruit. Yeah humidity is a big is a big issue you can see this one here. I mean look at that one yeah 80 86. Degrees.

That we're getting up through now again when the ac is off the ducks start to heat up and so that air does begin to does begin to heat up in the duct and you'll see that but you see around the edges. Where we have this whole pattern of uh of infiltration from the attic. Yeah. It's only it's only going to get worse yeah.

And you can see all the way around we've got an 83 degree 84 degree ceiling and we definitely have hot and cool spots in the in the attic. So there's definitely opportunity through insulation to help again sealing around. I want to look at some of these can lights in here can lights are usually really bad. Yeah.

You can see here actually. The cam lights aren't as bad as i would expect but you see on the edges. We've got significantly hotter around the edges again. I'm surprised because often we'll get a lot of heat around can lights and these ones are actually pretty well pretty well sealed so not too bad.

Yeah. The vents seem to be more of a more of an issue and you can see them kind of kind of hanging down all right oh okay yeah. So we've got the we've got the old black ductwork and that's part of the reason. Why your vents are warmer.

Because you get radiant gains in this black ductwork. Oh yeah you can see yeah. There's whole spots. Here.

Where we're missing insulation and sure enough right around the edges. Where i was seeing those hot spots. We have bad insulation it looks like looks like we may have had a roof leak in here or something yeah. It's right over.

Here. It's kind of over. Where your um. Where your master bathroom is is that right yeah.

That's where it was and they didn't put the insulation back either okay. We got another. We got another fun. One here.

We got a duck chase you can see over here. They pulled back insulation. And didn't put it back. And again like no one of these single things is going to be a huge issue.

But it's cumulative convective loads. Meaning attic air coming in from around the vents around the can lights. We have radiant gains in all of this black ductwork. We can see this duct is completely unstrapped sagging on the uh.

See they tried to use some metal strap. There. But it's really inconsistent and then the one that really gets me is where they have this chase for this duct going down in and i don't know where this is going i'm gonna have to figure this out. But it's all completely open into the attic so in terms of convective gains.

All this isn't uninsulated. But it's seeing attic air. So that makes a big difference. See if i can figure out where this is going there we go thank you you know what what is going on i appreciate that i am looking pretty good.

I was really i was really back in there man. Y'all. Came out looking totally different look at me. Look at me.

Look at me all right so he's going out to check the refrigerant side. I'm gonna go ahead and turn on this other system okay so i'm gonna i want you to just look here. So one of the things. What they've done here is this is so this is all um non metallic uh jacketed black flecks and so in the attic.

We're getting a lot of gains on that but then you see they just did a flat top box on this and it went into a piece of flex. But then up above it and i didn't get a good video of it there's a uh. There's just a triangle so rather than building a straight up plenum which i don't know why because as you can see they're going up through rather than building a straight up plenum and tying in they have a piece of flex then they have a triangle on top that's going off to all the ducts which you know in terms of static pressure in terms of system performance. It's pretty pretty rough well.

I'm talking to a technical audience here you know everyone is like so. What if we got beginners like me okay. So a beginner like you air handler. All the air comes up through here and pushes up pushes up here okay so it's all drawing into the return of the system.

What they did was rather than taking this duct. That's the full size of the unit. And just going up into the attic. And then tapping ducks off the sides.

What they did is they took and built a little tiny box on top they squeezed it down to a piece of flexible ductwork. Which is less air less air and then it goes up and attaches into this little tiny triangle right that then has ducts coming off of that and so what happens is is not only is it a factor of the fact that there's less area. But there's also a lot of turbulence so when you have these weird shapes. The air is moving and spinning and all this kind of stuff.

It's warming up yeah and so not only and and so when we talk about this black jacket. A duct. Too you know in a space. Like this where it's dark.

And it's not and it's cool who cares if it's if it's a dark color. But up there you have all of this radiant heat. The sun's beating down on the roof and that transfers into the duct right and so you know in the early 90s up and through up until about yeah up until about 2000. This was the kind of the standard new construction duct work that they would use um and again you can get by with it.

But now you've got to overcompensate with more equipment so on a local compensate with a higher bill needs higher power bill. Exactly. That's. Yeah.

Translating translating. There. You go. There.

You go. Yeah. Y.'all. Newbies.

Like me. Right right. And then again. Like in here.

It's fine um. The other interesting thing is this unit. It goes it runs. These ducks up it goes all the way across the attic.

With this black ductwork warmer and warmer and warmer. And then it goes all the way down to the back wall and transfers down. And there's one duct that goes through this opening. So if you imagine.

There's an opening that's in between this bathroom in this bedroom. Probably in behind a closet or something. And this duct goes down through there. But this the top is open of this big square okay into this super hot attic.

And there's no insulation in the walls inside this big square exactly so that heat of the inside that chase duct. Which is behind one of your closets is just radiating heat into the into this upstairs space. As well that's not a big that's not a big problem to fix you just take a piece of duct board. And you seal up that top piece.

I'll be educated icy amazing 101. So this one might be like level 102. Foreign. Yeah and this is uh.

The goal here is fairly obvious we're just trying to keep the heat from the attic in the attic and uh and there's a lot of different types of heat getting attic air into the space that's what we call convective. We want to keep the attic air up there and we also want to keep it from conducting through the yeah exactly and we want to prevent radiation so you know three different types of heat conduction convection radiation. We've got issues with all three in this attic radiation is heat. Being transferred through the walls of this duct from the from that hot roof deck conduction is spaces.

Where there's insulation missing completely where they repaired the roof here. They didn't put the insulation back so there's just big gaps. There and then you have um. What did i miss convection and that's around your events and everything wherever.

It's unsealed. We want to make sure that's sealed properly so that way that heat doesn't come in and it's not one thing you add all of those up you also add up that the equipment isn't producing great airflow. Because of the way. The duct system is designed and that leads to high power bills upstairs.

More money out of your pocket and less comfortable. See there it is yeah more money on your pocket less comfortable all those things you say add up to up top. Yeah. That's it that's it yeah.

What is going on which one of my kids do i need to yell at now. I know i'm just going to look at how it's constructed here. Okay yeah. So this is all built out of duckboard uh.

And that's no it's fine. It's fine um. You could probably use to be cleaned out a little bit. But no it's in pretty good shape.

They used uh a gray mastic to seal the edges. Which is a little abnormal. But yeah we've got a we got it we got a nice clean evaporator coil. So we're good once again don't know yeah.

It's all right so. Here's another interesting fact you look at these air filters this shows our air flow rate in cfm and the static pressure drop across that air filter. So here we have a three ton system so in florida rated. It's going to be 1050 cfm.

So we go here whatever the closest. One is to 1050 so it's going to be this. One here we're going to be somewhere between. 02 and 029.

Static pressure drop across this air filter. What does that mean that means that these nice expensive air filters that you buy from the store. They create an air restriction. Even when they're brand new and clean so if you look so this is this this is actually pretty easy math okay so you so you see here you're right there in the 029.

Range okay. So that's the total amount of pressure drop that can exist across the entire system both in the intake and the output. We look here let's see if i can find it our test. Static what this system is was tested for and designed for total is 02.

That means that if it had no duct work on it whatsoever and the only thing it had in it was this filter you would already be behind the apex mine is not exactly so well so 02. And you know point point zero nine. In this case. Yeah.

You're already behind. Yeah. You're already behind a lot of this has to do with you know the fact that manufacturers are doing this sort of thing where they use test statics that are that low because that's just goofy. I mean you're not going to have even at a perfect world you're not going to get a system that performs there.

But the point being that if you look at the data. And you say all right this system is going to produce this tonnage. It's going to produce this capacity to cool the space. If it basically has no ductwork and no filter in it right so that's what those opposed no ductwork.

No filter right and so now uh. We put a very good filter. There's nothing wrong with this filter. It's just that you you're kind of already up against it you're already restricting the airflow.

Yeah. That's the point and then you add in a supply duct that's not well designed and it just makes it worse. And worse. Yeah.

And that drives the power bill up on and on this system too it's even worse because it's going up and then it's going all the way around it doesn't even go straight. It has to go around the corner go that way and all the way. It's picking up heat. Okay so we're looking right now we have he has tools connected outside and they're bluetooth connected.

So we're actually looking at the pressures of the refrigerant commonly called freon freon. Okay all right you know free right and so we're looking at the pressures. And we're looking at some other readings. So we're looking at a thing called superheat.

Which tells us the temperature of the gas that's going back to the outside unit. And we're looking at something called a sub cool. Which tells us whether or not we have a full line of liquid coming back on this so that's what we're looking for we want liquid coming in here and we want proper temperature gas going back to our compressor and right now. Neither of those are right our suction pressure is very low not see if you're it's low for the temperatures that we've got uh and oh we just disconnected so regardless uh.

We'll probably. But but we need to figure out what the airflow situation is here because normally speaking it had this hole here we would take our our temperature and humanity or humidity humanity. What's wrong with me you think everything's all right with me you think maybe. I got an issue a little humanity.

Yeah okay so i need some humility that's what it is no so we normally you feed through there and you measure the temperature of the air leaving the unit well he wasn't measuring any temperature difference and so he took his screwdriver and pushed through and there's something else on the inside of there. There shouldn't be something else on the inside of there. So my hypothesis. Which means no no no no okay hold on hold on obviously not with what you're seeing in terms of pressures and in terms of readings.

The fact that you're getting a 20 degree split. Means that you also have an airflow problem because low air flow equals higher delta t. We're talking about delta t. Here.

Right okay right you with me lower. Airflow equals. Higher delta t. Based on our refrigerant readings.

We should not have a 20 degree delta t. You're right the fact that we do have a 20 degree delta t. And poor refrigerant readings also indicates likely and the fact that we have all these thermal gains to our ductwork means that we we almost certainly have an airflow problem. But what we'll do first is go ahead and get it to the rated.

This is a txv system. So go ahead and get it to the rated subcool go outside. And do that when we get done we'll then look at what our split is our delta t. And then once we get done with that then we'll pull the heat strips out and see what we find okay okay cool.

I'll go do that now go do that that'll be great see. The fact the fact is is that your air conditioner is still blowing cold air right. It's not broken. So the fact that right now we're finding identifying some things.

That's all just helps with comfort and is going to help with power power bills. No matter. What we do we're going to walk away today without doing anything else. And it's going to be working better than it did before so that's good news.

Right. That's not bad news. That's good news end result is great. Though yeah.

That's that's good yeah. Yeah. That's that's basics yeah. But you know your bow outlaw.

So you know this stuff all right. I want to look at this return box too while we're here. I will oh. It doesn't look good okay all right one of these things is not like the other i learned that in sesame street.

Okay there we go yeah yep there we go there we have it well here's another thing so you see this right here you got you got water there most likely given what we're seeing that's probably not due to a drain backup. Usually the most common thing you'll get would be these drains. Oh well we're going to clean your drink too before we leave uh. It's it's got a we got a little build up in the bottom of the line.

So we'll get that cleaned out too. But most likely that's occurring because of a freeze up so your evaporator coil is probably building up a little bit of ice and then it's dropping some of that dropping the temperature. As well yeah. Yeah and again that's not ice isn't a good thing.

We don't want ice on the evaporative coil ice is ice is no bueno. But this is also creating an air restriction. Because again you got the same kind of filter. Same ton as unit.

You've got six tons of air in this house. What is the do you know the square footage of your house. Yeah yeah. So so you've got massive amounts of air conditioning going into this house.

You should be having no issue cooling this place. In fact. You almost certainly have too much air going into this house um. So.

But that's what i'm saying is you're not you're not seeing it you're paying for it. But you're not seeing it um foreign this one's the same thing now these two systems are new yeah they both are newer. They're both uh uh 2000. It probably installed in 2008 late 2008 early 2009.

It's not about right so yeah. That's not that new. But for you it just shows how old. I'm getting that seems new to me.

Still and uh. Yeah yeah. 13. Years old that's actually not new.

But you know all right so. This is exactly what i thought so this is kind of rubbing it in joel's face this is actually just all a facade. We look inside and it's really hard to see in there. But when you look inside it's all flex.

I took the um took the heat strip kit out and so rather than removing the flex plenum. They just boxed around it with duct board for some reason. I'm not really sure what the reason is but uh probably just to make it look like it's new. But that's definitely affecting the airflow for sure.

This is a this is an x13 motor. So it is you know probably been compensating for the airflow issue. Just by ramping up running high speed this whole time. But again that's that's power that's electricity consumption.

So one of the business. One of these one of these blowers yeah. It could be this one this one does look this one does look abnormally clean that one might be the door well that's so one of the reasons. Why these fail is when they have to run so hard their whole life because they're having an airflow restriction.

And this one certainly is is not not great. I mean. This is a tiny little tiny little flex duct inside it's not like when you have a muffler on the car. Though you want a bigger muffler to blow it so you can get more circulation.

Yeah exactly and more more area went to the house went through the attic. We got the you know we got the whole story um biggest challenges that we're facing. Because again your comfort issue upstairs is the reason that i'm here. But then power bill came up.

We found that this system was low in refrigerant. We pulled the cap off it had no seal in it and it was leaking a little bit so we got that charged up where it should be cleaning the drains just because that's a good thing to do but in terms of moving forward um. The things that we're kind of looking at are we got some attic insulation that's moved out of the way um. So we need to do that that's not a big deal.

We've got the the weirdest thing that we found was was one let me see yeah. The weirdest thing we found was that unit where they just put the ducks around an existing flex ducts uh and that's we're definitely restricting the airflow and we're seeing that in the readings. And that's probably been that way since the unit was installed yeah so uh we talked about it a little bit kind of up front. But what are your goals here like what what would you like to see in your home.

What are some of the the things you would like to achieve. I just wanted to be cooler like when the ac is running the hallways probably the coolest place because of the i don't know if the trigger points. The cutoff switch is right there yeah so when the doors are closed the hallway gets cool then ac. Says okay.

The house is cool it kicks off. But the rooms are not cool yeah. And then you saw a couple rooms are bigger. And i i don't need all of them to be ice cold.

But i just want them to be cooler. So it's comfortable like except. We don't got to have a ceiling fan and the ac on at the same time right. Yeah you want to distribute the air to those rooms evenly yes.

So that way it's distributing the outside and it's drawing in and everything's staying the same temperature. But like we pointed out when we were looking at everything with a thermal imaging camera. A lot of heat. Was coming a lot of heat.

Was coming out of the vents as soon as that unit goes off you have those black ducts and those black ducks attract the heat from the attic from the roof deck that's what we call radiant heat picks up into those ducks. And so when that unit's off. It's literally dumping hot air. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. It's kind of a kind of a neat way of looking at that and that's the advantage of your modern ductwork that has that silver jacket on it that projects. Yeah.

It makes sense when you say it now now that you say it makes sense like i said. I had several people over here doing it not one of them explained to me what you just explained. Yeah so they came in did. What the job was was required of them to do.

But they didn't say well this might need to be replaced this is older yeah. And you might want to look in this later no they just did this and left those other three yeah. It's like a minor thing you you open up you took off a plate and you saw some the filter was messed up. Yeah that place been off more than once i've seen it all yeah.

No one said nothing about the the like there's something minor like that yeah. That makes a difference of yeah. I guess who you can call and trust. People like okay are you doing the work yeah and like and and i'm always and i'm always uh sensitive to to not criticize anyone because i think people are you know they're making a living.

But the the difference in approach is you know if you're going to be if you're gonna have a professional in your house. And they're going to be working on something you might as well take it as an as an upgrade you know like um. You don't have to spend more money to make these little details better for you and so just because they show up and say. There's like a capacitor failed or there's something simple or maybe.

It's low on freon or whatever take it as an opportunity to look at everything and then go back to the client. Say hey. I was able to do this this and this it made it better and then here's some other things you might want to know about exactly. It's not that you have to do it.

But you want to know what's going on in your home. But that's not true criticizing like you said as you as a professional. I mean as a consumer. I'm saying just doing your job yeah so if you go anywhere you go to a restaurant.

They're going to offer you this this and this. But you're still going to make your own decision. So you can tell me what's going wrong. I said okay.

But let me fix the first thing you're here for but can we skip. Two and three and get to number four and fix that well yeah. But you might need to fix this before you get the phone. Okay i don't know that yeah you you have the proper information knowledge.

Just give me the give me the menu yeah let me pick what i want to get done. If it's possible to do it in that order. Yeah. If it needs to be done in certain order.

Then you let me know yeah you can't do that without doing this first. Okay. Well. Let's do that as long as it's honest.

We talked about that a little bit too that's the key. How often information that's given is based on trying to scare you into something or telling you have to do something when you don't that stuff. I have to do i need to do yeah or they want you to do it yeah. Good luck.

Yeah well you see that nowadays. When you go to like you know get your oil changed. Yeah. You know it's like all right you got this list of things.

But how much of this is really a value i got a guy. I've got a god you need to go you gotta go. I got a guy that god do no. No that's good stuff so yeah um.

So i'm gonna go back. I'm gonna kind of put together that list we got really some of the most important things done that are like super urgent um. We just showed off the vacuum now so that we're not vacuum it anymore. We're done vacuuming um.

But the main thing that i wanted to kind of communicate and the purpose of this video is just to talk about like um. I don't want to be an organization that is just competing on the same level that everybody else is what i want to do is provide a premium service to people uh that is a value you know it's not about because a lot of people will compare things on price. They'll compare things on look at value you know when you come out. And you look at everything.

And you're really thorough and you walk away and all this stuff is now resolved that wouldn't have been resolved otherwise. That's that's what value looks like well. I'm going i'm a rewind when i met you at the golf event. I told you my situation and you told.

Me i'm gonna come take a look at it i'm like okay cool and he's like no i'm gonna look at everything yeah so i'm like like everything's like yeah everything so you did exactly what you said like with no problem. I'm like that's the first like i said normally with the ac company comes through they do exactly what they're there for and nothing extra and you don't it's not even necessarily extra if you take off this this and this to get to that and you saw this and that was bad before you got to the problem. Yeah. You might want to say something yeah.

And that's that's all i'm saying i ain't telling you to dig for actually you were actually digging for extra because you know because i told you i had a problem so yeah you had no clue. What was going on so you said okay. I'm just going to do everything yeah. But if before you got here you took off a panel and before you got to the main part of you saw.

He's like well this right here is not good then he was putting something away that's not good then you got to your problems. Like that's really not good so right the person before you did that so why didn't they say that yeah. That's all i'm saying like just like you say honesty is a kid. I just man just just tell me the truth man let me let me figure.

It out for man. Just here. It is yeah be thorough. Yeah and then just like when we when like we took the camps off that's simple to check the refrigerant.

We found it didn't have a seal on the cap such as i mean what does that part cost two. Cents you know like it's it's not because youtube 392. But it might be like eight. But and that's okay because it's a necessity sure that i didn't know about yeah.

And the point is is that like if you don't mention it you put that in that leaks and now you have the problem that you have or you've got to have a service call you're uncomfortable maybe it freezes up worst case scenario. Maybe it creates some growth in the system. You know things you don't want that's better for the apartment. I mean that job security.

You know i'm saying. Oh. Well yeah. Yeah.

That job security. Let. Me. Yeah.

Let me just fix. This. I know. That's going to be a problem.

So let me fix this so i can come back later like come on man don't do me like that i think the temperatures we have in florida. It's enough job security just being in this business fair enough my god at least. So wouldn't you get tired of coming back to my house that guy's not nice. I'm really nice.

But i mean yeah. I mean if you're not frustrated in your house. Maybe. I don't know get a chance to hang out with both so anyway all right man.

Thank you so much yeah yeah we'll be back so my pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry i'm like i guess i'm sorry you got to come back.

But i'm actually happy yeah. Yeah. It'll be fun. It's fun.

It's been a good day. He says. It's gonna be fun. I'm like beautiful weather.

I mean i win that attic that was no part of fun. Yeah. The weather was not good. I saw two people go in the attic.

What came out come nothing came out sweat. I ain't gonna say who that was when i was calm i was just a little sweaty yeah. A little that's true yeah i have to get a towel for this girl yeah rough genetics man rough genetics all right brother thank you i'll find you thanks for watching our video. If you enjoyed it and got something out of it if you wouldn't mind hitting the thumbs up button to like the video subscribe to the channel and click.

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