Ductless expert Jesse Claerbout talks about his best practices for maintaining ductless air conditioners and heat pumps part 2
Read all the tech tips, take the quizzes
and find out handy calculators at https://www.hvacrschool.com/
Read all the tech tips, take the quizzes
and find out handy calculators at https://www.hvacrschool.com/
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He walks up to you in a bar is a little too close and then starts talking to you. You try to ignore it, but he doesn't take the hint he starts in about total nonsense. Now you know what he's talking about stuff about enthalpy lines and mallya done that's right. Alright, this is part two of the podcast from hvac school, which is my podcast.
So when you happen to be listening to you right now about ductless AC systems, ductless heat pumps and their maintenance, because what we found is is that ductless systems require maintenance. The worst thing you can do is sell a ductless system without telling the customer how necessary maintenance is - and we cover part two here of all the steps that we take when doing maintenance and some of the best practices of maintaining a ductless system. So here we go Jesse Clarabel talking about ductless maintenance. The next thing is condenser coil cleaning so on the outdoor units, when we're doing the preventative maintenance, what I've found is the condensing coils actually stay very clean other than grass clippings.
That's pretty much the biggest issue that I've seen and again. We don't have cottonwood if you're in an area that ice cottonwood that's a huge mess. But here that's the main thing. Yeah, I mean most of the homes that we're doing are in subdivisions where they've cut down every tree and all they have are these little baby trees that they're trying to grow and they'll finally be big in ten years from now.
So that's what we see a lot of times, so what causes the grass to get on the coil would be a strip of grass behind the condensing unit. So, whenever you're setting the pad, however much grass there is behind it, it would be a good idea just to take that grass out and suggest putting some weed mat down and some rocks or mulch. Whatever the customer chooses again, you don't want people trying to get back behind the system with a weed whacker potentially hitting that condensing coil and then also throwing the stuff up. So if grass clippings are your primary concern, then when you install these systems, getting cleaver ass away from it a little bit having a little bit of a border and some weed mat under and some stones or mulch or something is a good thing to do.
But when you do need to clean them yeah, so when I do need to clean them, for the most part I haven't had to use cleaners, you just use water, so just take a water hose I'll, take a rag and wipe down the actual housing of the Condensing unit that will get a little bit of algae growth, just so scrub that off and then just spray. The whole thing down with the hose the housing and the fins get the grass clippings out they're a little bit tough, the grass clippings to get out you could use a vacuum. What I like to do is just use the water hose and then just like a little braze rod or something you can kind of fish them out towards the outside and get it perfectly clean. Yeah cuz none of the ladies in a matter of getting it clean functionally, but it's also making it look clean. Yeah again, the grass is on the bottom, five six inches. It's not gon na make a huge performance change when you do a maintenance. You clean the unit and that's involved and then drain cleaning, two types of drain cleanings. So when you have a gravity drain, usually what I will do is actually hook up the shop back to the outside of the drain line immediately, so pretty much right away when you're starting to take the inside unit apart, you already have the shop back hooked up.
The reason for that is, you will have standing water in that drain pan. So, if you take that front housing off like we discussed previously drop the pan, and now you get 2 cups of water, which everywhere we know you have that drop cloth there. Alright, it's not as big of a deal, but still we still don't want to be spilling two cups of water. I mean that doesn't look like a professional or someone who's actually thought through this right.
So this will be able to help. You know the process. What you're getting into so? Hopefully, you can go and do one of these preventive maintenance and look like you're a professional and like you've done it a thousand times, no matter what type of maintenance you're doing you want to run some water through the drain. You want some water moving with velocity through the drain.
Some people will use co2 cartridges or nitrogen or some other type of pressure and that's okay, but I still want to see water moving through that drain because, if you're moving a gas through, it doesn't have that kind of scrubbing velocity of water moving through. And we generally use shop-vacs, which obviously the industry is torn between using shot backs, are not using shot backs we're in a market, but that's practical. They make sense for us, we're draining the water outside on the ground, and so we access the drain outside. We want to get that nice and clean ductless systems aren't trapped in most cases, so you can use.
In fact the code is changing. With this. We have to start using waterless traps, but they're not traps, so they don't have as much standing water. So most of it is gon na be the drain.
Pan itself isn't really most of the junk is, but no matter what you want to run some water through it. So, even if you're not dropping the pan and everything you're, not gon na drop the pan, probably on every single maintenance of every unit that you work on. It depends on the company you work for and what they want done, what the customer is paying for, but regardless you want to get some water running through there, which is also a nice application for the sprayer or whatever you're, using to spray that into that pan. So that way, it can be drawn out of that drain. Yeah after you have the shopvac that gets the excess of water out of the drain. Pin you're dropping this drain pan to get access to the blower wheel and cleaning the whole evaporator coil in the housing. Underneath of it at that point, when you drop the pan, even though you have the excess of water out, you're still going to get some water. So what I have the amount of water left in the pan can be soaked up by out a rag.
So I'll have a rag in my hand as I'm lowering it, I'm just dabbing up that little bit of water. It's a couple tablespoons! So that way, it's not dropping on to the drop cloth or floor of concrete. Whatever may be there. When I flush the drain out, though so the time I actually run water through the drain pan and through the drain line, is at the end as I'm reassembling it, because you clean out the whole drain pan with a rag, make sure it's all clean.
There's no gunk buildup in it once I'm putting the system all back together after cleaning everything the blower wheel, the evaporator coil, the housing. The front cover filters. All of that! That's when I dump a gallon of water into the pan and let the shopback suck it out and make sure I got all that little bits of dirt and stuff that I couldn't get with the rag flushed through and then that actually gets the drain line as Well, we know the drain pans clean, but really we're focusing on that drain line at that point, and do you refill because you don't have a trap, so do you at put a little water in the drain pan I don't, but before I leave, I'm gon na Make sure it's draining so if it takes me taking that spray bottle of water and putting in 2 cups of water to get that drain level up to where it needs to be so I don't have to wait an additional 10 minutes for it to do that. I'll do that and obviously we're in a market that has high latent load and we can run air conditioning 11 months out of the year in other places.
You're not gon na be able to run air conditioning a lot of these times. So you just want to observe drainage just to make sure nothing's changed when you were just assembling and reassembling and making sure nothing's dripping anywhere, which is another thing that I mentioned with ductless systems. In addition to the blower wheel, cleaning condensation kind of rogue condensation are the most common issues that we get, and so, when you walk up to a ductless system - and you see a little bit of staining where you can see that there's been some dripping or there's Some peeling on the wall right at the base of the unit look carefully at any signs of anything, that's uninsulated or drains that are coming apart or where even the insulation on the drain is missing or the insulation on, because again, on a ductless system. Both lines have to be insulated with the suction and the expansion line, and so you have to make sure that everything is well insulated to make sure that you're not gon na get even small amounts of condensation. Obviously you all know this you're professionals, but any condensation. That's not contained in that drain. Pan will cause nuisance issues. So obviously you have both the copper lines.
The expansion line, as well as the suction line going back then you're gon na have the drain line. So those are the three things you're looking out for that have to be appropriately insulated outside of the coil yourself. This whole process, where we're pulling and cleaning the blower wheel, it may sound super involved. It is - and this is the conversations we have with the homeowners to explain the additional labor and the additional cost involved, whatever you and your company find, you need to charge for that additional labor that you're performing you guys come up with that, and some people are Gon na be more prone to say, needs to happen once a year, no matter what and some are gon na be more prone to say: do it as need and either one is fine as long as you're carefully looking at the piece of equipment and that's what Gets missed a lot of times in maintenance.
Is people just start to check boxes? You know directly in the drain, yes, and what they mean is they sprayed a little bit of stuff in the drain pan and they just get a little sloppy with that where, if you're looking at the blower wheel, you can tell whether or not it's dirty. Yes, it's not that hard. If you want to run a little rag through it or maybe a q-tip or something through it, to see how dirty it is, you can see that and if it's dirty, then it needs to be cleaned and you have two options to clean. It.
There's really only two good options: option: a pull it out option B, get a kit so that way, you can do it in place and do it that way. Yeah! Look at what you're doing you're gon na want to shut the unit off. Take a flashlight look up through the veins open. The veins up.
Is it dirty? Is it clean? You can visually inspect these blower wheels and it takes you ten seconds go across the whole blower wheel? Is it dirty as a clean is a little bit dirty? Is it affecting the operation of the system? Is the blower wheel being pristinely clean important to that particular homeowner? Those are things that you have to take into account. The next thing is condensate pumps. Okay, when you have a pumped application - and this is - we despise condensate pumps, so that sometimes it's a necessary evil. Mm-Hmm there's a lot of different products on the market that do pumping Aspen pumps for certain applications, blue diamond for certain applications. We utilize both in certain cases and we work on both regularly. So what are the ways that you deal with cleaning a pump to system? It's a lot of work. So, even though it's pretty straightforward, your technicians are probably going to tend to cut corners and stressing the importance of not cutting corners. I think's big every time I've cut corners in that area.
It comes back to bite me. So I've learned you don't cut corners. You can't to be a good technician. You just can't how its installed makes a big difference as far as the accessibility of the reservoir and everything so how these pumps are designed.
You guys all probably know, but I'm just kind of a brief overview. You're gon na have a tubing that comes off the drain, pan that hooks up to flexible tubing that hooks up to a little reservoir that has a sensor of some sort that tells the pump when to pump the water out the pumps either located in the elbow Or up in the but the actual reservoir is behind the actual unit. The best thing you can do as an installer is actually make sure you have a piece of tubing that can go all the way from the drain line connection that comes off the drain pan into the elbow portion. So if you can get that reservoir that condensation pump reservoir in the actual line, hide or 90-degree elbow - that's really ideal, because now you don't have to be trying to pull the system off the wall to appropriately clean this condensation pump.
There's a lot of em line covers as a slim, duct fortress there's a lot of different brands, but they're all there to get the copper up into whatever space you're going overhead with and we're talking about our market. So in some markets you may be pumping through a basement there's a lot of different applications. So you're not always gon na have an elbow. Some pumps are designed, so they can theoretically be installed behind the unit.
That's very difficult in most cases, and so usually we'd tempt to get it out and into an elbow or we bring it up the side of the unit as much as possible. You want things to be in a place that you can get to and that's the advantage of putting it in this limb duct in the actual line cover itself. Yes, so then, at that point, the biggest thing, let's say best-case scenario: it's in the line hide to the right of the unit. You pop off that 90 degree elbow you pop off the line hide cover, whatever it may be.
Now you have access to this pump reservoir you're gon na pop off the top portion of that clean it out, then you're actually going to disconnect that reservoir from the right poly tubing. That's going to the drain pan and to the left. Poly tubing! That's going to the actual condensation pump, you have to have a shot back for this. You take your shopback hook it up to the tubing going to the actual drain pan, and then you just clean that out.
Like a normal drain line, you run a gallon or two of water through it take a little Panduit, strap or something fish it through the drain, pan make sure that's all cleaned out really good and by noise you can kind of tell if something's kind of getting Caught in there is it pulling through easily or not so after you're done cleaning that portion of it, then you're gon na clean out the reservoir. If you're dealing with an Aspen pump, it's going to have a screen. This catches, large debris and stuff and you'll see some algae. That's actually caught in that screen. So you're gon na take that out clean that out. Just gently be careful with it then you're gon na clean out the actual reservoir itself. This particular pump has a float on it that goes up and down. This is going to indicate when the pump actually turns on and off.
This will have a little bit of algae growth on it too, so clean that off biggest thing to know. Is you put that float in a particular way it has to be put in properly at the top of that reservoir? It's gon na show you. It has a little diagram how that little float supposed to go in it. So keep that in mind, if you put it upside down, sometimes it works a little bit, but the water level has to be so high before it kicks on that sometimes it'll overflow and leak.
So just put that in the right way, then what I do is actually hook up to the smaller line going to the pump portion of it. If the pumps right there, you can disconnect it from the pump and actually just suck that line out. I don't usually don't run a ton of water through it, but I'll at least suck it out. So if there's any gunk, that's made it through the pump.
I'm screening everything and headed its way towards the pump itself I'll just suck that out, and then it's just really putting it back together appropriately with the poly tubing a lot of times, you'll see that the tubing may not have a snug enough fitting. So do you need to put a little hose clamp on it, so keep those things in mind when you're putting it back on make sure that the reservoir is gon na sit perfectly level, because if it's not sitting level, that's problematic mm-hmm, so actually going from the Pump out periodically, you may want to blow that out with co2 or with nitrogen or whatever, and actually it's something I've been thinking about. We haven't tried it yet, but in a lot of cases we use 3/8 copper for those drains. That's the most common thing that we use and in different areas, you'll use different things for that drain on the outlet of the pump.
But I was thinking about using the pipe wiper for that we use the pipe pipe or for flushing out copper, and so you could actually use that to blast through that 3/8 drain line. If you were ever having, I mean again those drain under pressure and intermittently. So they don't tend to clog unless maybe if you had scale or something in your water, possibly but a mud, dauber or something yeah, maybe a bug or something is up there. But the portion on the outlet of the pump didn't generally doesn't clog. But if you ever had a case where you were concerned about that, that would be one way. You could really make sure to flush that through yeah just a thought - and you know if it is copper if it's Paul tubing, if it's tubing running all the way out, not copper. But you have a potential of kinking that so keep that in mind. If a pumps just not working, why is it just not working, obviously on the outside make sure it's not buried in the dirt? I've actually come across those before they mulched and it just got buried and then decayed and buried indicate over years of time.
Now it's trying to jet this water into the earth and it's just creating back pressure, so floats reservoir screens. Those are all big things. Is there anything because we do use the Blue Diamond quite a bit? Is there anything special with that brand, so the Blue Diamond? Does not have a filter or a bobber on it. It has a sensor what I've seen a lot of times, though it has like four prongs and then a sensor right in the middle of those four prongs that heats up and as it cools down due to water being in the reservoir.
That's when it indicates to the pump that it needs to kick on what I've. Seen, though, is that it does tend to get alga on the actual four prongs in the sensor itself, so that algae has a tendency of keeping that sensor cool, which therefore can cause that motor to run quite often Morgan. I should correct, even though the water level goes down, you still have this algae growth on the actual sensor, making it think that it still needs to run so on top of just cleaning out the reservoir and the drain pan and tube going to the pump. You also want to make sure you clean that sensor off it's a sensitive sensor, though, so you don't want to be like blasting it or scrubbing it, or anything like that.
Just gently make sure it doesn't have any algae growth on it. Also, all these pumps are gon na have breather tubes coming out at the top, and you want that breather tube to be above the drain pan level. Keep that in mind whether it's going looping around to the right and then up that 90 degree elbow you want that above the drain pan level. No, it's the same thing like with a vent on a regular drain.
The top of the vent always has to be above the top of the drain, pan yep and that's pretty much it on the pumps. That's the process and you put it all back together, make sure everything's good not leaking properly insulated. All of that stuff, then we get into sort of the test phase of the unit and obviously you can test amperages on a ductless system. Are you gon na check blower amperages? Generally? Not it's not easy to get in there with a clamp.
In most cases. Do you do that? I don't check like perfect blow amps. You can check the the wire going to the indoor unit at the outdoor unit as you're. Doing your testing outside good point. Good point: Co! That's all I do so you can check it that way but see you checking amperages compressor, amperages canister, and that goes for thing, but on the blower itself, the biggest thing in my opinion is just to listen and watch it. If you hear anything rubbing or any noises a lot of times when you reassemble things, if you don't have the set screw set in the exact right position or you don't get the bearing reset in properly, you can get goofy noises on the system. So just pay attention to that watch the blower wheel, make sure everything sounds right and then the same thing on the outside, you know just make sure you don't have any abnormal sounds and then check the amperages and the functionality of the system. Ductless systems are definitely one that I'm gon na suggest the checking charge without gauges, because what are you really gon na check anyway? And you can check superheat? But how do you know what the superheat should be? Its varies quite a bit on the operation of the system and the manufacturers.
Don't generally publish that, so it's important that the charge is set properly in the first place, based on line length and manufacturer testing procedures. But after that, your best bet is to really just take a our temperature split on the inside, so to talk a little bit about what you do there the best way cuz now at this point you know your blower wheels clean we're assuming the blower wheels clean. So we're getting the appropriate airflow now you're gon na set the system to if it has powerful mode you'll set it to powerful mode. Not all models have that, but essentially the highest setting possible on that particular piece of equipment right.
So in some cases it may be high and then just drive the temperature way down. If that's what you needed yeah and that works, even if it has a powerful mode, it doesn't matter just set it to a very cold setting with a lot of air flow. That's pretty much it so keep it simple at that point, you're gon na want to check your line temperature. Usually those are gon na when it's running full blast again.
These systems take a while to get into the high stage, so it may take ten minutes before it's actually producing at full stage, because if it's gon na go through the stages before it hits that full speed, and so in many cases just to be safe and Let it run 15 minutes and that way everything can dry and get back to. It should be 15. Some people even say 20 minutes before you do these tests and then you're taking line temperature yeah, you know, take your line, temperature, it's gon na be pretty cold. I mean obviously it's gon na vary a little bit as far as the inside temperature relative humidity.
They get pretty cold. You usually see them from 35 to 45 degrees, on the suction line. Checking the suction line best way to confirm that we're operating properly and producing the appropriate output and our refrigerant levels are good, is actually an air temperature, sweat, so you're gon na take the return temperature and that's just gon na, be at the top of the unit. Whatever that may be, and then you're gon na take that temperature probe, what I like to do, is you don't stick it in there like into the blower? Don't don't do that because then you're gon na break the blower wheel, so that's happened. I said. Actually, oh, not by me, okay, fair enough yeah! That was a free, blower wheel, replacement anyways. So then, there's on most temperature probes, you're gon na have a little clip that you clip in your pocket or something and it works great. Then you got the two little breather holes on the bottom, so it doesn't have to actually be removed from that holder clip.
So I take that clip and actually just clip it onto the end of a vein, whether it's the right or left side. It doesn't matter and just let it sit there three minutes we'll give it enough time to get an accurate reading and you need to have anywhere from a 22 to 28 degrees split and that's gon na tell you this systems operating properly. If you have below 22 degrees split on these systems, when it's set all the way down and really cranking out, then there's an issue. The charge isn't dialed in something's going on and I have a leak whatever the case may be, and so then, if you suspect that you have a leak, then the next thing to do would be to weigh the refrigerant out, and once you weigh the refrigerant out, Then you know how low it was, and then that gives you really good information to tell the customer, which is a process I mean you're gon na, have to quote for that, but that's part of it cuz the way to charge it is to weigh it in And so once you are quite certain that you are low once you've done your leak, detection or whatever, then the only way to charge it by manufacturer specifications is to weigh it out and then weigh back in anyway.
So at that point, then, you know exactly how low you were exactly, and the reason Brian is wanting us to check it without gauges is because this is an inverter driven, compressor controlled with the XV. It's not like. You can set it to ten super heat because it's monitoring its own super heat. So, if you're trying to set it to a particular super heat and it the system's thinking differently than you, it's gon na choke that system down and achieve what it needs to achieve.
And even go into different stages to achieve what it's trying to achieve, there's just too many moving parts by the time you have the EEV doing what it's doing you, the condenser fan motor, changing speeds. You have the blower, you have the compressor multi-stage and it has a algorithm in there. That's doing what it's gon na do, and it's very hard for us to know that, especially when you go to different brands, you may get a feel for a particular piece of equipment, which is why it's still a good idea. If you suspect that there's a problem, you can hook up the suction line, if you're at the stage, where you suspect, there's a problem. But but how are you gon na know what it's supposed to be you're, really gon na have a hard time knowing that right. But when you take that split in conjunction with your line, temperatures in conjunction with the suction. At that point you can know, but I'm not even suggesting hooking up the suction generally, because now you're gon na have refrigerant loss and these things run very critical charges, you're charging them to the ounce, so don't waste refrigerant right and so, as I've installed. Hundreds of these over the years we weigh in additional refrigerant per additional five feet of line set depending on the manufacturer specifications a lot of times as these systems are running, you get one degree superheat to degrees, superheat, 0.5 degrees of separation, and that's what they're designed To do, but if you're looking at this as like a traditional air conditioning system, you're gon na think, oh, my goodness, it's overcharged, let's pull out some charge, let's pull out half a pound and now you're significantly under charged right exactly so.
You have to get the charge set in right, the first time if you're walking up to a system - and you think there might be something wrong with it and you didn't install it. It's probably best to quote the customer to go ahead and do that to go ahead and weigh out the church, that's what they do with automobiles nowadays with cars. Nowadays, that's often what they'll do is the way it out you'll see what they got, and then that way, they know exactly what they have to weigh back in, which means that you got to have a good working recovery machine. You got to have a good, clean tank, but if you have those two things, it's really not that big of a deal to do it's really not again having the right tool for the job, a scale I forgot to mention so a good quality scale, a good Quality recovery machine I've been playing around my 45.
It's a great carving machine from Philippe's digital. I mean it's like so easy if you have that a good scale and a good clean tank on a ductless system, because they don't hold that much refrigerant and you're, not gon na. Have your tank heat up on you or anything. It's a really simple thing to do so you got to be prepared to do that, though, if you're working on duck lists.
So that means you got ta have a nice clean recovery machine and a good clean tank and a good scale to do that. So the other thing that I mentioned, because some people don't like that answer, they don't like to hear it - sounds like hack to check a system using an air temperature split, even though that is the truth, but if you want to get really nerdy with it. Well then, grab a couple tests of 605 ice thermal hygrometers, but one on the on the intake, one on the supply, and then you enter in the CFM. So if you look at the tables for that particular air handler, it will tell you what CFM is produced at the different modes of operation, so just drive it up to a high-speed fan or whatever and try the temperature way down. So it's producing maximum capacity and you can actually directly calculate capacity at that point again. This is assuming that you have a perfectly clean, blower, wheel and everything's functioning, but at that point, if you just did a maintenance, you would know, and that way you can tell, is it producing the capacity that the customer is supposed to be getting or is it A little shy and then generally just remember that we're usually not checking these systems in HRI conditions, so they usually will be producing slightly less than the rated capacity. If you want to break that all down to and be even more nerdy with it well have at it, but still if you're recharging the system you're just weighing in and weighing it out, just get used to doing that because, as these things get more and more Technologically advanced, it's gon na be more and more difficult for us to hit a target, superheater so cool. Unless the manufacturer gives you that information and if they do then great, you know if they're giving you a table or a chart to work off of, and sometimes they do, but even then they're generally going to tell you just weigh it in weigh it out.
Another thing you see is you're expecting to get a 25 degree split. That's pretty normal! So you're expecting to see that now you have a dirty blower wheel, the system smart enough. It's wanting to maintain a certain superheat, so it's gon na slow down that compressor and rev up that blower speed to attempt to maintain a certain split or superheat. So a lot of times.
You see that compressor actually not running at full stage, because it can't run at full stage. Otherwise it's gon na flood it so it automatically revs back. I don't know all the technology behind it, but it's amazing! You see it, so you would think. Oh dirty blower wheel, I'm gon na see a 35° flip, not necessarily or hey.
I have a 20 degree split, that's pretty good, but if you're an automatic mode on your blower speed, it's gon na slow that down and really ramp that compressor up. The compressor is gon na be running full speed and it just can't produce what it's supposed to produce, there's just so many variables that I don't even know all of them and if you have a situation where you're troubleshooting a ductless system, especially on the refrigerant side. Like if you think that you may have a electronic expansion valve problem or whatever you're really gon na be referring to the documentation from the manufacturer, I shouldn't say: there's no way of getting around it. If you work on a system a lot, I'm like I'm sure you catch certain things, but but really mostly, what we're doing is. We have systems that have failed, electronics, fail boards failed whatever in Florida, we have a lot of power issues, so you'll get that and those you diagnose electrically right. You'll have systems that leak because something leaked something corroded that you'll find with the split and the you have stuff that gets dirty. You know the compressor fail every once in a while, like every once in a blue moon, not very often, though yeah, but that's mostly yet I mean, have you ever had an electronic expansion valve fail on a Mitsubishi system and all the hundreds and probably maybe thousands That we've installed at this point I have not not once yeah, I haven't, seen it either and there may be some brands that have more of that, but we just don't see it. So when you don't see something like ever, you can be trained on it all.
You want, but when you see it the first time you're gon na, want to refer to the documentation and say yeah in a lot of cases, you're referring to the documentation, gathering data and calling tech support. There's no shame in that. Oh absolutely! Not! But again, if you don't fully understand how these systems work and it significantly overcharged, say you have five pounds instead of three, that system is gon na, be acting really weird. They have condenser coil temperature sensors to regulate things, so it's gon na be regulating that temperature.
Trying to maintain a sub cool and superheat and all this stuff, and it's just not the same as your traditional unit. So, if something weird is going on being able to just recover all of that refrigerant into a clean tank weighing it as you're recovering it, and that just gives you so much confidence and what exactly is going on yeah if you get it out - and you find Oh well, the charge is actually dead on now, you're looking more in depth at the refrigerant circuit. At that point again, knowing that it's clean and Jim Bergman talks about this all the time he has in this podcast many times that first step is cleaning cleaning is really what we should be doing most of the time. So if you're trying to diagnose a system that you don't know if it's clean or not well, then you're not doing the right thing and that's why ductless maintenance is so important.
I would say: ductless maintenance is more important than unitary maintenance. Any day like you have to clean these things, because a lot of cases they're over things they're over something that somebody cares about and that thing starts leaking or or whatever it's not a good thing. I would agree with that: 100 %. There's really the big two things are going to be blower wheel, condensation pump if you have a condensation pump, correct condensation in general yeah just dealing with condensation, even if it's just dripping off of something with insulation, all right, that's it! So thanks for spend the time Jesse I appreciate it yeah absolutely, hopefully you guys learned a little something and you don't have to go through the headaches that I've gone through and learning all of these things right best of luck to you guys out there all right. Thanks, yes, thank you for supporting the HVAC school podcast we've seen a lot of things change in the almost a year. I guess it's been probably almost 13 months at this point that I've been doing this podcast and we're going into heating season now. I've actually just saw Jim Bergman in person. We got to spend a little time together and he's committed to continue to be on the podcast, so he's gon na be talking about gas, furnaces and Russian analysis and the measure quick, app and everything you can do with that and more and more on checking the Charge without gauges, because I know there's been a lot of pushback on that.
A lot of people want to understand that more so we're gon na be talking about how to use the measure quick app to do that and all the things that can be done with that. So if you haven't checked out the measure quick app, yet though, I would suggest that you do that, so you can go to measure quick com forward, slash download now to find the measure, click app and download it on your Android device or your iPhone. They just came out where it now works with the test. Oh smart probe suite and it works really well.
We actually got to play around with it a little bit when we were hanging out and we confirmed that it does. Work works really well so, and he just keeps adding more and more updates, so measure quick is getting more and more powerful every day and you can really harness the power of the test. Oh smart probes, with the measured breakout. So I was talking to Stephen Reardon.
The other day he's got a YouTube channel on on YouTube, which you should check out, and I was asking about its beard and he said he didn't like his beard at first, but then it grew on him. Thanks for listening to the HVC school podcast see you next time, thanks for listening to the HVAC school podcast, you can find more great HVAC our education material and subscribe to our short daily tech tips. By going to HVAC our school comm. If you enjoy the podcast, would you mind hopping on iTunes or the podcast app and leave us a review? We would really appreciate it.
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it would help a lot if you up out url and picture of things you are discussing. Are you in Orleans ?
stupid question is there supposed to be a video along with the sound