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Hvacres.Com there we go whoa dust blowing out of my face: good gosh that thing's been off for a while. Damn all right. Well, condensed fan motors work. So that's a plus! Now we need to see if the compressor works.

This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. All right, we're heading to a service call right now, it's uh saturday about 408 pm in the afternoon or evening. Whatever you want to call it, i got a call from a customer one of the restaurants i service and they said their walk-in freezer's, not working, apparently um. It's been high in temps since this morning up and down, or something like that, so i asked her if it was iced up.

She couldn't really tell me so we will see what happens um. This is, i, you know just thinking about these jobs before this is uh a really old, omni, temp refrigeration rack. That's really beat up, i believe, there's only two compressors still running in this rack. Everything else has been removed.

This system is a walk-in freezer. It's a r502 system, so i went ahead and swung by the shop real quick, because i happen to have about three quarters of a drum of 502 and just threw it in the van just in case. I don't really want to have to be doing any big conversions tonight or anything be honest with you that refrigerant isn't doing me any good sitting in the shop. So if i can get a use out of it i'll go ahead and use it.

If i can so yeah we're gon na get on with it and uh, let's see what happens when we get there. Let's open this guy up and see. What's going on here, so evaporator fan motors are running. It's cool! It's not super cold in here doesn't look to be any ice on the back of the coil, but the coil is just bashed.

Look at that. It is beat down. Um suction line. Look at this liquid line.

It's beat to crap that looks like it um. I wonder if this thing is hanging down like this. I wonder if someone yanked on the liquid line and broke it in the attic completely that's kind of crazy. So, like i said, this is a really old omni temp rack, um condenser fan motors are running so uh walk-in freezers on this side.

Right here, open it up. This is my sight glass. It's beat down. It needs to be changed.

Look at that! That's like an oem filter, dryer or it's really old, that's crazy! Okay and uh. Compressor is red hot and it's not running. That's not a good sign. Taking a look inside this old electrical panel breakers, don't seem tripped now come to think of it, though i don't know if this motor is running because it's not moving air, it's almost like it's running backwards, because it's being sucked by that one um yeah, that's not Good, that's the walk-in freezer contactor and i believe it's pulled in.

We need to get in there and check voltage all right. Well, on one phase, i got 2 11. on another phase i have 212 and on the last phase i have 211.. So i have three phase power.

Coming to this compressor and, like i said, it's really hot we're going to turn it off check to see if we have continuity between the windings cool it off, maybe get it to stop. Maybe it's off on thermal overload could have something to do with that fan cycle control. I mean not that fan not working. I don't know okay, i have the compressor turned off and i'm set to continuity and we don't have any continuity across those windings.

Let's check all three nothing on that one and then what about the last one to the last one. So we have completely open line or ol on uh all three legs. So, let's hope that the compressor is off on thermal overload, so we're gon na go ahead and grab a water hose and try to cool this guy off real quick. I went ahead and shut down the whole rack and yeah.

This motor was spinning the wrong way, but it could be that it's bad. It could be that it has a bad cap who knows um we'll have to look into that for this right here. What i'm gon na do i'm gon na get a water hose attachment. The cool presser tool, but i want power, shut off to the rack, while i'm doing it this thing's so old that i wouldn't be surprised if there's shorts and stuff in here, so i mean uh spots where it could potentially short, i should say um, so i'm Gon na see, if i can get my meter clamped onto those three terminals, so that way i can monitor when it resets, if you haven't seen it already.

This is a little tool that i found actually on instagram um about, i don't know a while back and then they actually got picked up by subco and sub code distributes it. I think they bought the rights to it or something like that, but it's called the cool presser. You can pick them up in most supply houses now, but essentially it's got a big magnet and it allows the water to run over the compressor head. It's pretty cool, helps to cool the compressor off and you can just let your hose go.

So we're going to come up here, get a meter on the load side of that contactor. So we know when the thermal overload across our fingers actually resets. So we're going to let it run. I got my meter set to uh tone.

So it'll give me an audible tone theoretically when it resets, but it's kind of hard to get it in there too. So hopefully it actually grabs on there, but we'll let it run for a little while see what happens there's times that these universal hubs really come in handy. So, if you don't know this, one has three screws: they're machine screws and the hub stays on. You can pull it off, so that makes it nice to be able to get in here.

So look right here, there's a big old hole in that conduit right there and the wire's got a big old hole in it too. Okay! Well, that's not good, but where does that wire even go to it's not going to the motor it's going into that box? Hmm interesting, the motor's, not hot, at all, it's actually cold. Let's open this up! Maybe the capacitors are in there and this thing just reset. So we're going to let it keep cooling for a little while because sometimes the compressors can reset and then overheat again right record right, quick, i should say stumbling over my words, so we're going to let it run with the water on it for a minute.

While we investigate this a little bit more, so it's interesting because uh manager just came up here kind of freaking out because he's got water pouring downstairs. This happens a lot especially on these old racks, so they're, like is the water coming downstairs, have something to do with you, and i said yes, but you got a roof leak somewhere, because i'm just you know, i wasn't even like going crazy, just getting the top Of the compressor wet and somehow it's leaking into the building, it says quite a bit, so who knows could be over here could be over here anywhere, because all this water that i just did right now is just pooling somewhere. So this place is a mess right now, but yeah stuff happens, i'd be polite about it, but just tell them you know: it'll it'll stop when it dries up, because there's not much, i can do about it. So all right, so compressor has been reset for a while, i'm just still trying to dig into this wiring there's a couple different spots where we have some burnt stuff going on.

There's one right there, i'm trying to make logic of this like what is this wire? This looks to be some sort of a common if you trace it back, it's going right there, that's interesting this thing's a mess. These little racks can be a mess, so this here and here is 208 single phase for the motors and as best as i can tell it's one single source running back, but i don't know we'll see i'm going to try to clean this up first and see If i can repair the electrical shorts and then test the capacitors and then we'll put it back together and hopefully that compressor will restart, let's hope, cross our fingers, because i would love to change this system. But i don't want to change it on a saturday night. I would rather because i'm not going to get condensing units and evaporators tonight, so i'd have to do an emergency compressor replacement which would suck um i'd rather put in a whole new condensing unit.

You know man so from the looks of it. This is a common for one of the motors, because this blue wire, which is only going to the yellow wire for that motor - and we got to have two sources of power here. So that would explain why this motor is not running, because if the wire's completely broken but look at how that wires ran just running through there. What the fudge is that about, and then it blew a hole in that which has the main power for the other motor.

So, of course, i got ta fix it all and i'm supposed to be on the hvac overtime show right now, because uh we rescheduled for the day after christmas, fun, stuff right all right. So i rewired in here um. I went ahead and went with some so whatever cord uh - it's not perfect but, like i said this thing's gon na get replaced soon, but it's going into here we have a proper connector and then i need to wire this in over here where the wiring was At so a little bit at a time, it's getting dark and i'm currently live with my friends right now. So, okay, so i tied in uh the fan motor put the guard on it temporarily, the it's a mess in here, but i tied into the power uh.

We need to turn on the rack to see if the condenser fan motor turns on um and then after that, we'll turn on the compressor. Let's go ahead and pull this over here, stand back and don't blow up and i'm pretty sure we lost a neutral because nothing happened when i turned on the power all right, so at the the wires for the condenser fan motor there's actually no power. So we need to trace that back and see where that's gon na energize from um. Oh, you know what there's two fuses right there.

I wonder if it's those okay so to to get me going again we're gon na have to come back and figure out the fuse situation. I don't have the patience to do it tonight. Um i tied into the the main contactor right here. So again, don't blow up.

In my face there we go whoa dust blowing out of my face: good gosh that thing's been off for a while. Damn all right. Well, condensed fan motors work, so that's a plus! Now we need to see if the compressor works. All right guys, here's the moment of truth is this compressor gon na restart? Yes, i'm standing in a puddle of water.

That sounds safe, it's running, but we have a problem. My head pressure and my suction pressure are almost identical. That's i'm using smart probes! That's cool! Nope that's problematic. This is not going to be a fun night.

It doesn't add up, though i wonder if my probes are messed up, because it's compressors discharge line feels cold, so nope well yeah this sucks man bad compressor, and they have to have it replaced tonight. Uh, it went off on thermal overload. Again i did find, which was interesting, is up on the top. There is the discharge line coming out and there's a service valve up there and that service valve was like halfway closed, so that probably contributed and that's the discharge line valve.

So it was restricting the discharge pressure um, but it wasn't closed completely. So gas was still getting through, but yeah this thing it still has gas in it, but it's got a bad compressor, so this sucks, so i got ta, try to figure out what i'm gon na do and where i'm gon na get a compressor from right now. So we're gon na have to convert it to uh more than likely over to 404 tonight, and then we'll have to do some. You know stuff later or whatever sucks.

So i was able to convince the customer to get a freezer truck, which gave me a little bit more time to be able to handle this complete equipment change out that they approved so we're going to go ahead and get started on that and uh. The job is actually going to be mainly done tomorrow, but today we're going to be doing a little bit of busy work just to make tomorrow go smoother all right, so they emptied out the box. They've just got a couple cooled items, but basically this is just open to their walking cooler at the moment. So we're going to be removing this evaporator today recovering all the gas disconnecting getting ready for tomorrow when the equipment will arrive, we'll have a crane to get the equipment on the roof and all that good stuff.

So just a little bit at a time. Sometimes we get lucky with these ones and when they get a freezer truck, it makes it go a little bit smoother all right, um. My penetration is going to be somewhere in this area right here and we're just going to run the lines. It's not the greatest.

Looking attic but we're going to run the lines over here all the way down over to there is my walk-in freezer. This motor. I was making noise again so i shut it off while i'm up here. I was originally going to put the unit right here, but i started thinking about it and instead of running it on this right here, i think i'm going to put the unit right here.

The penetration is going to come out literally right here right in this area and if i put the unit over here, that's a lot less of a line set run a lot less of an well. The electrical run will have to come over there, but that's fine! That's not a problem, so the penetration will happen right in line with this on the other side of here right there, and then i need to decide whether or not i'm going to put the unit here or over here here. If i put it here, i could do that, but it just kind of puts it kind of close to the ac discharge air going into there. So now i think we'll put it over here right in this area right here, we'll get some four by fours down.

Yeah it'll look nice. One thing leads to another, so i got the penetration drilled, moved it over there and went to go turn this condenser fan motor back on and it's just like leading to a nightmare. So this thing the screw one of the screws had fallen out. I don't know why, so i went ahead and just grabbed a new hub, put it on started it up and only one motor started out.

But when i got here both were running but capacitors blown apart for the far one from the rain pain in the butt. So i'm getting the capacitors, i got two new capacitors and i went ahead and took that wire that i temporarily put hot and ran it to a disconnect right here. That's not being used anymore and we'll put some fuses in that, so these condenser families will now be fused literally when we're done with this today, there's only gon na be one compressor still running in this rack, so this is literally for a tiny little bar reaching Good grief, i ended up having to change the motor the far motor anyways okay, so this whole rack is collapsing, so i don't know if you guys saw, but there was like some weird piece of metal that thing right. There was holding up the bracket, so i ended up doing washers all the way across again.

This whole thing is trash, but i did washers to space it out because the middle right there is collapsing causing the blades to hit and everything. So we took care of that. I'm just cleaning up my messes and now i can get back onto the walk-in replacement. So i have another person with me: that's been demoing downstairs taking down the coil and stuff um.

I don't have the equipment with me today, but we're gon na try to push down the line set and uh get started on that now. My idea is the line set's gon na come up 90 90 over and go this way and then we'll probably make a bend and go that way when we set the condensing unit down we'll know where we need to bend it to go into the the unit. All right, we got the general idea of what we're piping, we kind of got it set up a little bit, i'm going to go ahead and braise it. The nitrogen flowing through we'll do the suction line.

First, it's open downstairs and then we'll do the liquid line. So, oh uh, so so so so so so nothing about this is ideal. This whole roof is just a giant cluster because we're trying to pull everything from that rack and trying to you know deal with it, and i had originally thought about putting the unit over here, but it just seemed like it was gon na it would. I would love it to be further out from everything, but it was just going to be more of a pain, um electrical and everything so plus there's a big soft spot in the roof over there and just it's a pain.

So i decided to go here now. The downside to going here is this: is a low spot in the roof you can see where the water puddles uh. That's why i went with the dura blocks. I didn't want to go with wood because i thought the wood would rot away.

Really quick. I made sure that my penetrations weren't in the low spot - it's not ideal, you know i'd love for there to be more room in between the line set in the unit, so you could work on it. But again you know it's not perfect uh. We could put a cinder block and sit on it if we need to once you pull the top off the unit.

It'll be a lot easier to work. So again, you know we have to deal with what we have. So this right here is my uh electrical for the communication or basically the coil power um. We've got a temporary conduit right here that we're going to run temporary power to the rack width.

I already got it in there, we'll just have to strap it down temporarily. Uh the customer already knows that an electrician has to come after the fact. The rack's breaker is big enough to support this condensing unit and most of the stuff. Well, actually, there's only one other condensing unit, two other condensed units pulled off the rack, but there's several compressors that have been disconnected in the rack.

So we have plenty of available power within the the breaker size for the rack to temporarily run the condensing unit and then, like i said, the electrician will have to come in and i want him to run a dedicated power source to this condensing unit. Eventually we, when we pull the last compressor out of that rack, i'd like to talk the customer into. Let me lift that rack off the roof, because it's done essentially but that's a whole nother day's problem. So that's why i'm really pushing them to get independent power source for this condensed unit.

So uh we've got a lot of it. Pre-Piped from yesterday we're just gon na um start installing hanging the coil and all that good stuff, just kind of getting ready for brazing. You know this isn't perfect, but it works we'll clean it up a little bit. We made some offsets again, we'll we'll straighten it all out.

Once we get everything put together and you know we'll get it clamped and everything and it'll straighten the lines out. So we're getting ready to braze it right now. Moving along, we got the brazing all done downstairs. I'm actually just doing a pressure test with some nitrogen right now, so i've got a solenoid magnet downstairs, opening the solenoid valve or pressurizing on the high side, and it's coming back on the low side.

So that's what we want it to do, we're going to let it uh, build up pressure and then make sure we got no leaks. All right, i'm attempting to go with a one hose set up. Let's see if this pulls down fast enough. It's doing pretty good right now, we're 7000 microns i've got the gas ballast open, so i've been really having a hard time with the vacuum core or schrader core removal tools all leaking doesn't matter what brand all brand new too.

It's starting to. Piss me off! So um this time i went without a serrated coil removal tool, so i'm pulling from the king valve on the receiver and just have my vacuum gauge on the low side. So, let's see, if that does us uh we're just going to do some pickup work start taping up where the insulation is meeting, that kind of stuff put the fuses in we're all wired electrically. We've got temporary power.

This seal type back here is temporary uh and then, when the electrician comes in, he can run permanent power into the disconnect switch. This right here is permanent. That's my uh evaporator coil voltage going into here. So i got to say man, i'm really liking these russell units they're very well put together so far, so very, very nice.

All right we're getting ready to turn this guy on and i just came down and put the solenoid coil on. I really dig how these guys use quality components all spoiled and stuff the vap's. Looking pretty good um. We just got to still we taped up those holes, but we got to foam them so everything's, nice and good going up so yeah drain line heaters here.

So we're just kind of getting ready to start it up right now. I've already got five pounds of gas in the system. We're gon na open up the receiver and uh hope that everything else works and nothing blows up all right. It is running we're gon na add some gas side.

Glass is empty uh. The compressor was going in the wrong direction. It's weird, though, because i checked phase rotation before at the disconnect switch, so they just didn't. Have it wired correctly at the compressor but anyways i switched.

The rotation sounds a lot better. Take this uh micro engage off here and uh yeah we're just gon na charge it up now. Uh this unit max charge is 14 pounds. So we'll look and see.

I don't know if they should have put a tag saying how much to add for the winter charge, but we'll see all right. We are charging the system up right now and i just pumped down the receiver to check the liquid level and we're right at about three quarters. Eighty percent of the liquid level, so we're gon na go ahead and mark that for the next guy. So that way he knows where the liquid levels at it's about - i don't know 10 degrees in here right now, so i went ahead and threw it into defrost um and uh we're just testing all the heaters to make sure that they all work correctly.

Just want to see current drawn every heater yeah, and this is the last one right here yep. So all the defrost heaters are working um, there's quite a bit of steam going on. It seems like it's a little warm in here, but all right, so we know we're good. In defrost, we have the uh drain pan here or drain line heater hooked up to uh four and in because there's no sense in the drain line heater running when it's in defrost, so yeah we're looking good um, i'm gon na uh button.

This up in here turn it back on, went ahead and secured these guys some clamps again, we got some spray foam coming out, we'll clean that up in a minute, but it's currently at uh 20 degrees right now. So it's coming down when i do these. What i start with is just trace them with uh a marker and then i'm gon na put the the mastic. You know an inch in so that way when you push it down, it smushes out also we're gon na put the mastic all around the hole down there to create a barrier, and then we'll put some up here too.

So sometimes they turn out pretty. Sometimes they look like a pile of crap, but it won't leak um. I always tell them to get the roofer out anyways, because i'm not a roofer. You know i'm not going to guarantee no leaks, but we make sure that we put it underneath that seeps out.

We put screws in it, it's not going nowhere. Um we've got a couple little things left to do, but i'm i'm not really going to worry about it tonight is i got to get some clamps to put screws into those, so my box is well. It was at 10 degrees, but now it's at 12., i'm gon na try to dial in the superheat a little bit because uh our super he's extremely high. So we're gon na put a couple cranks on that valve and uh.

We don't want to go crazy because we still quite aren't a set point, but we're getting pretty darn close. Okay, walk-in freezers are always fun, but we want to bring the superheat down. So we want to bring the stem out of the valve okay. One two three four six quarter turns we're gon na see what that does for us: okay, the superheat, slowly dropping we want about six to eight degrees on this guy, so we're looking pretty good.

Superheat is looking good we're going to go ahead and let the system run um. Let them go and load up. The box i'll probably come out tomorrow morning just to follow up on it, but uh yeah we're down with this one now kind of funny. They uh told them to get a freezer truck, it's not a freezer truck, i don't know if they can get a freezer truck or not, but they have bags of ice on everything to keep it cold.

This thing's only maintaining like 33 degrees. Oh well not my problem, all right. We don't always luck out that way, but here's how i got them to hold off and let me do a system replacement basically bottom line. They knew that the equipment needed to be replaced okay, but it was just a matter of do.

They need me to change the compressor that night or not so what i did was. It was already late in the evening by the time i left and the box temperature. By the time i got there was like 37 degrees, okay, so it was already but the same temperature as the walking cooler their product inside the freezer was already ruined, or at least thought out. Okay, so um, when it came to changing the compressor.

That night, i said, look there's really no point like at least let me wait until sunday morning. You know, and then i got a hold of the facilities department and they said okay they'll wait until sunday morning. I just opened the cooler door because it was the same temp as the freezer and then uh sunday morning i sat down and gave them a quote. I i sat down at my computer, wrote up a quote to change the compressor and uh.

It was going to be stupid, expensive and i told them i said, and i got a hold of facilities and i just said look: this is ridiculously expensive. I really don't want you guys to put this money into there. I think it was going to be like almost 6 000 or something because it was like overtime and getting the compressor. It was a pain in the butt.

So i was like really you guys. If we change this compressor, i guarantee you we're going to have to change all this equipment within the next couple months, like it just seems like a waste of your guys's money, but i said i will do anything you guys want me to do. If you want me to change the compressor today on sunday, i will gladly do it, but i said i'm giving you my gut. You know uh opinion like.

Please don't do this, you know and they agreed with me. They said you know what now don't don't change it and they before i even give them a price. They said, let's just change out all the equipment, get it on an emergency rush order. Just do it and uh.

I have learned especially this last year, no more verbal approvals, i'm done with verbal approvals. They always bite me in the butt. So i went ahead and monday morning i sat down at my computer because their facilities director called me again because they ended up getting that freezer truck and then monday morning they said uh they're calling me okay. So what's the plan - and i just said, i'm gon na get you guys a quote right now i sat down at my computer started.

I went ahead and ordered the equipment because they told me to go ahead, um and uh. I did i i should say first i did a load calculation on the box and then i went ahead and ordered the equipment um and then i sat down and gave them a quote for the whole replacement. Okay and then they immediately approved the quote, and we ordered everything. So um today is wednesday, night uh december 30th, yeah december 30th, and the first call happened on saturday december 26th.

So i got it done in a couple days got everything i could have technically done. It uh tuesday yesterday um, but it just seemed like a bit of a rush, so uh yeah anyways, we lucked out okay um, so you know trying to be prepared for these jobs uh. As far as you know, when i first started the first service call, you know i was thinking about the job. Okay, this is a 502 system.

It's an old rack. I went and grabbed that drama 502.. I just like to be prepared because there's been too many times where i'm on call or it's late at night and oh, i don't have any refrigerant, you know and i don't carry any of those uh replacement refrigerants anymore for r12 or r502. I used to carry them in my truck because we used to use them all the time, but it's so minuscule how many 502 systems and 12 systems i have out there.

It's you know, there's probably three or two of them left or whatever. So i don't carry any of the drop in replacements. R409A, a mp39. I don't care any of that stuff anymore.

I have it in the shop and i'd really like to get rid of it. I was kind of bummed out. I couldn't get rid of that 502.. I'm not even looking to make a million dollars off of it.

If i could, just you know, get something for it, because it's literally just disintegrating. I mean it's not going to disintegrate, but it's just wasting. You know, being it's very wasteful to have it just sitting in my shop. I guess i should say so: anyways, i'm tripping all over my words on this one, but um.

So just try to be prepared. Uh. You know i walk into these. It's a bummer.

You know i was scheduled to be on a live stream. The the night of the service called ended up doing a little bit of a live stream. With my buddies, you know, but life happens when you're on call. You just got ta.

It's i've been doing it for so long that i just realized. Like you know, you just got ta calm down dude, you know it's. It's a service call the way that i look at it is in these crazy times right now, this 2020 year, i'm so thankful that i have these service calls. I mean you know, i'm very grateful for that.

I'm very grateful for my petty problems. My first world problems because there's so many other people that are less fortunate and i'm i'm not thankful that i'm more fortunate, but i'm thankful for the fact that um you know i'm healthy and uh. You know we have work um. You know i'm grateful.

I guess i should say: that's: that's the right way to say it, so i really really appreciate you guys taking the time to watch these videos. Please, like i said in the beginning of the video, if you guys are interested check out my website, hvacr videos.com merch available on there. It really does help to support the channel so um i definitely ordered uh. I i think i got a little um excited when i ordered this last merch order, um, which is fine.

I mean i'll, have it forever, but i have so many sweatshirts and so many t-shirts. It's ridiculous. You should see my office, it's just like these. These yellow boxes that you see back behind me at my office for work, it's stacked up in my office, it's kind of funny but anyways.

Thank you guys so very much and uh. Please uh check us out on the hvac overtime show we typically do friday evenings. I don't know if we're going to be doing a new year's show or not we're kind of going back and forth. I think we might do it, but anyways you guys, will see more announcements and then remember.

I do live streams on monday evening. 5. P.M. Pacific! On my youtube channel, uh yeah, that's it uh, consider subscribing if you haven't already and we will catch you guys on the next one.