Hey thanks for watching this is a class from the second annual hvacr symposium from my friend tony gonzalez, from field peace he's going to talk about how to take better measurements and high quality measurements out in the field as an hvacr technician. Big thanks to field peace. For being involved in the event and for sponsoring everything that we do at hvac school to find out more go to fieldpeace.com hope you enjoy today we're going to talk about wire, hvacr wireless system, troubleshooting better and faster than ever. My name is tony gonzalez and i'm the technical training manager for field piece instruments and um, like i was saying prior to class, begin we're going to have a quick 50 minutes, so i'm just going to hop right into it.

Many of you are already familiar with field piece as a brand kind of what we do. We design and manufacture products specifically for the hvacr industry, not for anything else, and when we develop a product there has to be a reason to develop the product. We would never come out with a me to product if we're going to come out with something it's, because we have a way to make it help you do your job easier, faster or or better okay. So today we're going to talk a little bit about wireless system troubleshooting and how it helps you run, how it helps you in your business.

So first, let's start with the goal of any service company is to have happy customers right. A happy customer will stay. A customer and a happy customer will bring in new customers and that results in happy customers bringing revenue into the business and a business that is bringing in revenue. Revenue is a happy business okay, so it all boils down to.

At the end of the day, we want to have happy customers, because that'll translate into a happy business now. What does that have to do with system troubleshooting? Well, first, we need to understand what a high quality measurement is. Okay, now we're going to talk a little bit about what it is and then why that's important, but first um, you guys take measurements all the time on your jobs constantly dozens of times a day and it's extremely important that you take good high quality measurements. So what does that mean number one you kind of have to have an understanding of the issue that you're looking for in order to take a high quality measurement.

You know you got ta know. Well. Am i trying to find an air flow issue or a charge issue, because if i'm looking for an airflow issue, i'm not going to be measuring pressures and temperatures at the outdoor unit? Okay, it seems obvious, but there's a process to this. Secondly, after we understand the issue, we need to understand what type of measurement we need to help us troubleshoot that issue.

So if i suspect that there's low incoming voltage to a system, i'm not going to take an amperage reading, okay, we have to match the measurement to the issue that we're looking for number three. We need to know the best location to take a measurement. Okay, if i'm taking a measurement, because i suspect a refrigerant charge issue - and i want to take a sub cooling reading, because i i have a txv metering device, i'm not going to take pressures and temperatures on the suction line right, so location is key. Also.

Well. That's enough on that, for now, after that, we need to choose what is the appropriate tool for the application that we're on okay. There are different types of tools that could take the same measurement. So if i want to take an airflow measurement inside of a duct, i'm not going to use a vane anemometer, it's a pretty big hole.

I'm gon na have to get in there and it's just it's just not gon na work, so choosing the right tool for the application and, finally, the right time to take the measurement. Okay, again going back to the scenario of, if i suspect, low incoming voltage coming into my system, am i going to take a voltage measurement with the system offer on on right? If it's off, that's not the right time to take that measurement, because it's not going to help me figure out what's going on so when we're going through our jobs and we're taking measurements, let's just stop and pause and think am i taking a high quality measurement. Do i understand what i'm looking for what measurement? I need what tool i need to make that best. Is it in the right location and am i taking it at the right time and the reason that's important is because we talk to homeowners.

We talk to customers, so let me walk you through this process. You have a homeowner that is explaining to you what the issue is: okay, they're, giving you information as a technician. You are processing that information in your mind and you're using your senses, your knowledge and your tools to help troubleshoot that issue take a bunch of measurements and find out. What's going on after you have this data, you are processing that information in your mind and you are communicating to your customer how their system is performing, where you suspect there are issues and then that customer is using or that customer is making a decision based on The information that you're giving to them and then they are spending money on that decision that they make based on the information that you gave them now.

What happens in the scenario where a technician gives the homeowner incorrect or non-complete information based on not taking high quality measurements? What happens not everyone at once? I can't i can't focus on one absolutely absolutely. In the short term, you have the customer, maybe make a decision to do some work. So in the short term, you got revenue in the long run, that's not going to work because something else is going to go wrong with the system. Customer is not going to be happy and probably going to lose a customer okay, so the importance of taking a high quality measurement helps helps keep happy customers.

Okay. So if we look at it that way, we want to provide the homeowner with the most accurate information. So they can make the best decision for them and they can be happy okay. So now that we've laid that foundation, let's talk a little bit about system troubleshooting because who doesn't love a flowchart right? It's kind of half joke guys come on.

Let's loosen up a bit in here um, so the way that i like to look at troubleshooting at a very, very high level, it's pretty simple at a high level, you have four steps number one step, one. We need to understand the problem. Next, we need to find the problem. Third, we need to fix the problem and, fourth, though, a lot of people don't think this step exists.

We need a test system operation after we fix something. Okay at a very high level. That's what system troubleshooting is it's not that complicated, but if we break it down into its components, number one? How do we understand the problem? Well, we need to ask questions. We get on site, we talk with the homeowner, we talk with our customer and we ask questions.

We let the we let the customer talk to us and, most importantly, we listen to what they're saying now you have run across this many times. A homeowner is not going to innately know how to describe their issue in a way, that's useful for you in your job, simple example: you go on site. What seems to be the problem, mr homeowner, my ac don't work to them. That's what they're experiencing right.

So as a technician, it's it's important to be able to know how to ask follow-up questions, so we can get useful information out of our um out of our customers. That's going to help us do our job, uh, faster and better. So something like well. My ac system doesn't turn on that's useful to us.

You know that gives us a little bit of guidance on where to start, or you know my system turns on, but the air is not as cold as it used to be before. That's also useful. You know that can help us know where to where to begin to troubleshoot, so understanding the problem is key, because if we don't understand the problem, we're going to waste a lot of time downstream in the troubleshooting process. So talking to the customer listening helping helping extract the data, that's useful to you now this is where the magic happens.

Finding the problem. This is probably where we spend the majority of our time in this flowchart. Finding the problem is what separates great technicians from average to poor technicians. A really good troubleshooter can find a problem faster and easier and there's a couple ways that we do that, based on the information that a customer gives to us, you know we might do some visual inspections check a filter check the condenser unit outside.

Maybe it's all dirty check some duct work, you know see if there's any major pinches or anything like that, but a bunch of visible visual inspections are usually easy and then, at some point, we're probably gon na have to start taking some measurements. Okay and the way that we measure performance of an hvac system comes in basically three categories: airflow electrical and refrigerant charge. We're basically looking at those three categories to determine how an air conditioning system is working and based on what the issue is. It will help us know where to start on a particular job here: okay, after we've and and we'll get into this step more as part of our class today.

But let's just finish out this flow chart here after we found the problem you tell me is fixing it the relatively simple part compared to finding it depends on the repair, but it's not something that you kind of have to figure out. You know how to do it, but it just might take time right. So we repair the problem or we replace the problem and then finally, and sometimes overlooked, is um test your system operation. We need to ensure and verify that the repair or the replace that we made actually solve the root cause of the problem.

I know sometimes we got so many jobs to do in the day that we just got to get to all of them that this might be overlooked, sometimes because we're fairly confident that we found the problem and we fixed it. But it's extremely important in order to maintain a happy customer to confirm that what you did actually worked and using wireless technology helps us do this a lot quicker than before. So it's not something we have to skip due to time. Okay, let's, let's, let's do a little role play now, so we have mr technician arrives on site starts talking to a customer and what he gleans from the customer in this time.

Is you know what my my air conditioning system doesn't turn on? Okay, so you as technicians, you hear that which one of these three performance criterias, are you going to start in airflow electrical or refrigerant charge electrical, so what kind of measurements might we take based on? The air conditioner doesn't turn on check voltage? Okay, that's typically one of the most basic things right. Maybe um check some fuses, something like that. Yep continuity, things like that: okay, so let's talk a little bit about e-electrical. So just like just a couple of um basics.

When it comes to clamp meters, many clamp meters are going to have auto ranging capabilities and what that means is um back in the old vom days, when you measured voltage, there were a lot of different ranges on that dial and you had to set the dial To the range that that you anticipated, your measurement was going to be in so that you can get it a good reading. Now the majority of clap meters are going to have auto range capability. So what that means is that when you connect your test leads to measure voltage, the meter might need a second to find the correct voltage that you're trying to measure, but then once it sets itself into that range, the reading is going to be instant and it's Going to be accurate if you have a good, accurate meter, okay, so that's just something to keep in mind now for extremely low voltage measurements. Many many of these clamp meters like this one, has a manual ranging feature as well.

So you can log in a range into a low voltage range and then take the measurement, because you know the measurement that you're going to measure is low voltage and in an instant you get the reading there. Okay, a couple of helpful tips there now on amperage on the back of a clamp meter, clamp. You are typically going to see some arrows. What do those arrows mean? Does anybody know yeah? So, typically, what these arrows mean on the back of a clamp meter is to help you follow best practices on where to position a wire when you're taking a measurement to get an accurate clamp reading.

So, typically, you would want to put the wire in the center of the clamp to get the most accurate reading. However, one of the benefits of you know the fill piece clamp meter is that the clamp was designed. So the accuracy doesn't vary much, no matter where you put the wire in the clamp and that's particularly useful, because you don't want to have to be holding your clamp meter and not moving it on the wire surrounding about all these wires. So you that that you make sure you get it right in the middle right, you want to clamp, it hang it and just let it do its measurement, okay.

So a couple of helpful tips when using a clamp meter. Now we already talked about some of the measurements that we would do if we suspected that we had a problem of a system not turning on. So i want to talk a little bit about variable frequency drives now at a very high level. What a variable frequency drive system like a mini split does: is it's not always easy to get a high quality voltage and amperage measurement on those types of systems, because what those systems do is they take an ac voltage signal coming in? They convert that ac signal into a dc signal right and then they converted back into an ac signal, typically modulated ac signal before it's fed into a compressor and a fan, so that so that those compressors and fans can vary their speed based on the load.

Now, what happens during that ac to dc to ac conversion is that a lot of electrical noise is generated in that voltage signal and with the normal, true r, ms meter, you may not get an accurate voltage or current reading due to that noise that it generated In the signal, so you want to find a meter that has a low pass filter built in for voltages and amperages, so that when you take those measurements, it'll filter out the noise of that signal and help you get a more accurate measurement on on variable frequency Drives and when we're talking about picking the right tool for the job variable frequency drives on the circuit boards have what kind of plugs molex plugs, and typically the standard test lead tip, does not fit inside of those molex plugs. Sometimes they do if you jam them in they're, really hard right, but typically they don't we're going to develop a product product. That's going to help you do your job easier, faster and better, and so they come included with the molex tesla tips so that you can easily got me twice already: bro you're, not getting me again, all right! You plop off the top. You insert your probe tip on on both sides.

Typically, and then you can easily take your measurement on. Molex plugs comes with them. You don't really have to. You know, purchase anything separate, okay.

So the last thing i want to cover in terms of electrical to help maintain a happy customer and a happy business is a power consumption reading. So so the job link power, clamp meters, um, have a switch position where it's labeled w and that measures watts kilowatts in real time and it's a very simple measurement to take. All you need is to measure voltage and current at the same time. So i wanted to be able to do a little demo here for you guys, but it's not really conducive to the visual, so i'll, just kind of um act it out, for you like a mime but i'll be talking.

So a good way to do. It is use a couple alligator clips. You want to clamp it on to the incoming voltage at the outdoor unit l1 l2 and then you take your clamp meter and you clamp it on either l1 or l2 wire doesn't really matter, and then the meter starts displaying to you kilowatts in in real time. Now, what can you use that for? Well, you can use that for sear um.

You could also use that for feedback that we got in from the field. Is you know you go to a site? Maybe you have like a maintenance contract with customers right, you arrive on site. First thing: you do take a power consumption reading document it down in your job link report things like that for before. Then you perform your maintenance.

You know you clean some stuff. Maybe you get the charge right, adjust airflow all that stuff. You take a power measurement power consumption reading afterwards it's lowered. So now you can show your customer.

This is what your system was consuming before i did my maintenance. This is what it's consuming now and translate into that into energy cost savings for the customer, so that helps them so that helps validate the work that you've done, making them happy and keeping them as a customer. Okay, so any ways that your tools can help your customers be happy and generate revenue for your company. Um is a good thing to have okay, so and by the way, if there are any questions along the way, please feel free to you know, raise your hand um.

Absolutely so. Do you have one or you're just telling me that okay, all right awesome, perfect, okay, um, awesome, they're? They came out last year, so the beginning of 2020, so part number is sc680 and then there's a smaller version without lead storage and without swivel clamp. Actually, the swivel clamp is really cool. We thought it was a gimmick at first, but it's really convenient when you clamp onto a wire at a weird angle, and you can just rotate to be able to see your screen without having to like bend over and do all that stuff.

So any little thing that helps you do your job better! That's what we think of. Yes, sir! Absolutely on the side. Inrush rush button, you put it on the amps feature, just press inrush put it on the wire before you fire up the system, fire up the system and it captures that peak peak amperage. For you good question: if you have yeah you mean height, i'm not sure i've never measured it 18 yeah! This is probably like a foot.

I mean i think, of like an 18 inch burrito that i had like a while back and it was a lot bigger than this thing. So i don't know that was a bet type of thing. So don't don't ask me about that? I won by the way in case in case you were wondering yeah, i won all right. Let me tell you: i want to care about it: um, okay, okay, some more specific questions about the clam meter um.

You could talk to me afterwards or at the demo time tomorrow, i'll i'll have all the tools set up and go like that but perfect. So we covered a little bit of the e electrical side. Now, let's do another little role play now. We arrive on site.

We talk to the customer and the customer tells us you know my system's on, but you know the air is just not not as cold as it used to be okay, so at that point we're probably not going to be checking continuities first i mean i mean We could, but we're probably not going to do that - we're we're probably going to look more into something like airflow and refrigerant charge, but i like to start with the non the non-invasive techniques first and see if i can figure out the problem. So let's go to airflow now airflow is oftentimes overlooked, but with the right technology with the right tools, there are some very simple yet powerful, informative measurements that you can take to help. You understand the performance of the system. So when we're talking about measuring conditions of air, we're talking about measuring first temperatures and humidity so having a good cyclometer having a good cyclometer to measure, temperatures and humidity is vital to have, and we can perform a couple different tests here.

We can do a delta t test, we can do a target evaporator exit temperature test at the same time and we have to determine the best location to take the measurements either induct or at a register now, typically in the real world world, what is going to Determine where i take these these measurements, what do you guys, typically accessibility, right right, um, you know. Ideally, it would be great to get in duct every single time, because that would be a more accurate measurement, but many times it's just not accessible or it's a real pain in the butt - and maybe it's just not worth it. So we might want to decide to hook up at a grill or at a register. Now it's a very simple measurement to do.

Let's talk about delta t and target evaporator exit temperature. You have two psychometers. You have two psychometers one set at the return and one set at the supply. The jobling cyclometers have switches on the back that are labeled return and supply, and you have a color indicator, red or blue, indicating which one you're at that way.

The app knows exactly where to put the measurement based on you know how you set these up they're, both interchangeable. They don't have to be on one side. So if i'm going to go induct, oh, i could probably use this for that. There's no holes all right.

Let's just go register grill, so you can hook it up somewhere with a strong magnet there into the return airflow and then out the supply with the magnet there and with two of those things you were getting your dry bulb, your wet bulb your humidities. Your dew point, your enthalpy and your delta t all in the palm of your hand, and it didn't take more than a couple seconds also. What the app does is that it performs a target evaporator exit temperature test, which means it looks at the humidity and the temperature on the return side, and it calculates what the supply air is supposed to be on the outside. So we can look at the air going across the evap coil in two different ways.

We could look at a straight delta t and just looking for a differential, and we could look at what a target is supposed to be and then compare it to the actual value there simple. Now, if you had a situation where you weren't going in duct or there just wasn't metal, so the magnet wouldn't be effective, you can slide the magnet up and there's a hook on the back. They that you can clip it onto a fin of a register. As you put it inside and it just stays there, okay now it's probably willing to do for something like this, usually something that's on a roof um, but yes, so any way that a tool can help you take a high quality measurement is valuable to you to Make your job a little bit easier and a little bit faster? Okay, so those are delta.

T quick, uh, quick, two quick checks: you can take to help check the performance of your airflow. Another way that we can check performance of our air flow is measuring static pressures. Okay, now, sometimes static pressures can be like a hassle. You know to to measure, got to pull out a whole spaghetti ball of of tubes.

Put them in a you know the right location, but static pressures are very, very useful to take because they measure the amount of restriction to the airflow in your ductwork and across your equipment. So there's a couple different tests that we can take when we're measuring static pressures. You know we can check pressure across a filter drop pressure on one side pressure on the other side um, although typically you know we can see when the filter is dirty right um, but we could also do that. There's some other usefulness in measuring the pressure drop across your evap coil, but one of the most common ones is the target target external static pressure and what's useful about a target external static pressure measurement.

Is that the manufacturer sets a value at which that equipment should have so typically, they set the value at 0.5, inches of water column. Okay, now to take a total external static pressure test, it's important to know where to hook up the measurements, so in this particular piece of equipment we got a furnace and a air conditioning vertical right all in one now what we don't do to take a total External static, static pressure measurement is, we don't include the heat exchanger, the blower and the evap coil. That's not how you properly take a total external static pressure. What the manufacturer specifies is what is the pressure differential before and after the blower and the heat exchanger? That's it that's what they specify as total external static pressure, so you would have two manometers transmitting to the screen in the palm of your hand, a p1 value and a p2 value, and it looks like if you guys want to help me out here a bit Um, what's behind this thing right here, blower perfect, then we would want to insert one of these probes before the blower.

Okay, it's not a hole here, handy so i'll, just leave it like this for now and then after the heat exchanger, which is probably right here. Okay, but before the coil right, so we would have a hole. We'd put this in there and we'd be taking p1 and p2 values. Now something useful to know many traditional dupont manometers have one sensor in there, which is a dual pressure sensor, which means it can measure the difference between two different pressure points, but it doesn't show you what just one is or the other one is.

Unless you pull out one of the tubes - and you have one tube like it - ambient and the other one inside, measuring something okay, so the convenience of having two single port manometers that function as one single port, manometer or dual port manometer, is that you get to See what your p1 value is before you get to the equipment, what your p2 value is, after you get the equipment and what the difference is so in this scenario here, if the manufacturer is, is recommending 0.5 inches of water column we're at 0.95, that's nearly double. What it's supposed to be okay, so in an ideal world we would want to see if it's supposed to be 0.5. We would want to see 0.25 here and 0.25 here right on the return side and on the supply side. Both 0.25 will give us our 0.5, but we know we're at 0.95 now, if i only have that information and not this on top.

All that tells me is that there's an issue with restriction in the air flow, but it doesn't give me any indication on where to look for that issue. Now the fact that i can see both p1 and p2 - i can see well on the return side, i'm at 0.65, it's kind of high on the supply side. 0.3. That's not too bad, so i know now as a technician.

I probably am not going to use too much time searching for issues on the supply side, but i'm going to focus my efforts on the return side so being able to see individually what the pressures are on. Both sides will help you as a technician, save time by focusing your efforts in the areas where you're going to find where the restrictions are. So it's very very useful to be able to see that differentiation and the fact that make your job a little bit easier. Too, you don't have to play with a bunch of really long six-foot hoses, and hopefully you can get them right to where they're supposed to go.

You could have short hoses that come with static pressure, probes insert directly into the duct now going back to accurate readings. Does it matter which way we insert this probe into the duct? Absolutely right, so one thing is um. This static pressure probe has a magnet built in right here. So when you stick it into the ductwork, it holds there hands-free and on the part, that's external.

There's a red arrow and that red arrow helps us orientate the tip in the correct direction in the duct work, which is parallel to the airflow okay, you want the air in order for the manometer to take a accurate static pressure. Reading there there there are holes on the side of a static pressure probe. You want the airflow to be going over those holes not directly into the holes, which is why you don't insert the probe perpendicular to the airflow, but parallel to the airflow. Now, if you're asking in or against airflow, it doesn't matter all that much but against airflow is what most people recommend and we'll just go with that.

Okay. But the more important thing is that you are parallel to the airflow. Okay, that's a simple way to take a static pressure, oh and extremely important before you enter it into the ductwork. What should you do? Zero, it right and with the job link probes, it's pretty simple once you power it on you just tap the power button at once: it blinks blue and that zeroed it for you.

So it's ready to be inserted into the ductwork and switch on the back p1 and p2. So the app knows where to map the value automatically into your application so going back to airflow these. These measurements are very simple and don't take a lot of time to do, but they deliver us a lot of information and understanding of how the airflow is working and when it comes to system troubleshooting, we want to be able to take good measurements fast. We don't want to spend a lot of time trying to find the problem understanding the system.

However, we can do it faster, better and accurate is going to help you do your jobs better and have a happy customer and generate more revenue and finally, with static pressure. Readings you could also use them to convert into cfm by you know, looking at a manufacturer fan table and um, you know finding out what your cfm value is for that, if you needed to do so so back to our role, play scenario, airflow or the the Air wasn't coming out as cold as it should. We confirmed it quickly with a delta t test here and with a target evaporator exit temperature here, and we found you know a good amount of restriction here on the return side. So we probably maybe we replaced the filter and did some stuff there to help improve things on the return side, and we did that and now, since our probes are already hooked up and transferring the measurements, we see that you know we've improved it, but we haven't Fixed the problem, yet you know they are still not coming out as cold as it should be so now, in this case, we're probably going to have to start measuring some pressures and some temperatures at the outdoor unit.

So, let's move on to that, let's talk a little bit about refrigerant charge, so in essence the main way that we measure refrigerant charge is, i mean we all know: sub cooling and superheat right based on the metering device that we have determines, which measurement tells us More about the refrigerant charge um, but the reason that we're taking pressures on a system is to get saturation temperatures and then saturation temperatures get compared to pipe temperatures to give us those sub cooling and those superheat values. Now, when we're talking about location and timing of pressure measurements location, we don't have too many options. We have service ports and that's pretty much going to dictate where we, where we measure high side pressure, where we measure low side pressure. However, if we're, however, we're talking about accuracy, it's nice to have a pressure sensor that has a built-in barometer to adjust to different elevations.

Now that might not be used useful to everybody, but for many that have to go to different elevations as part of their job. It's just always nice to know that your pressure reading is always going to be accurate, based on the elevation that you're in and that your probes are meant to be rain, resistant water resistant and be able to work. In the you know, the all the all the weather that you see out in the field so accurate pressure readings. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about measuring temperature on a pipe now it.

It seems a relatively simple thing to do, but there's a lot of complications that can cause a not so accurate measurement. So, on your typical surface plate thermocouple, you might run into some issues measuring temperature of a pipe now when we're when we're trying to calculate superheat or or sub cooling, let's make a a distinction here. What are you trying to know? Are you trying to know the temperature of the refrigerant inside of the pipe, or are you trying to get the surface temperature of the pipe? What are you, what are you trying to measure trying to measure the temperature of the refrigerant inside of the pipe? Exactly and in an ideal situation where you had a very clean, copper pipe with no debris and there were no ambient conditions around it that could affect or change the temperature of that pipe from the temperature on the inside then you're good. To go with the surface plated pipe clamp to get that measurement in the real world.

You guys see those conditions, no right right over here on demo units. That's why i love demo units. This makes job a whole lot easier right in the real world. On these pipes, there's going to be a lot of stuff, that's going to affect the temperature on the surface of that pipe gunk from insulation.

That's left behind corrosion if the pipe is wet, if you're taking a measurement in direct sunlight and it's hitting the plate of your thermocouple. All that's going to adversely affect your temperature measurement and not give you the most accurate temperature reading and that's important, because that could be the difference between calculating eight super heat versus i mean um, eight sub choline versus maybe four or five, which is a big deal. Okay, when we're trying to give the customer the best information for them to make the correct decision for them and their home, we got to give them the most accurate data for them to do that. So that's why phil peace has invented and pata did the rapid rail sensor technology to help overcome all of those problems and give you guys a fast, accurate temperature reading in the field? So i just want to talk to you about how do you use that? So when you open up a rapid rail sensor, you'll see two sensor strips here now, i'm going to turn this one on and you'll get a flashing green light.

Now, when the, when the clamp is closed and those two thermal strips touch each other, you get a single beep and the temperature circuit is closed and it's measuring temperature right now. It's measuring temperature. When i open it up, you get a double beep and you get a flashing yellow light indicating that it's an open circuit now, so it's not measuring any any temperature. So why is that useful? Well, when i, what a what a rapid rail sensor does is that it uses the conductive properties of a copper pipe to close the thermocouple circuit and the pipe becomes part of the sensor.

So no longer is it a sensor on top of a pipe measuring surface temperature, the pipe becomes part of the thermal center here, so you get an accurate reading instantly when you're measuring a pipe temperature. Now what this requires is at least one point of connection onto a pipe now, what if i put it onto a piece of a pipe where there's just a lot of crap on there and there's not good contact with the copper. Both of you are correct right. So i put it onto a pipe and i get a double beep and it's yellow crap.

Now the first thought is well this clap. Well, this clamp sucks because i don't get a temperature reading. Okay, but what we don't realize sometimes is we don't want the reading in that location right now, anyways, because it's not going to be as an accurate representation of what's going on in the pipe because of insulation, dirt debris, whatever the case may be. So what you could do for a first resort, just kind of wiggle it around a bit kind of like cut through that and then, as soon as you get like, a contact with copper, you'll, get your single beep and you're getting measurements.

Now, if that just doesn't seem to work, maybe you can move it a little bit to find a cleaner spot, or these also come with strips of like sandpaper, that you can sand down a spot if you, if you're so in love with the spot, that you Found you know like you're, going to a dodger game and you just have that parking spot that you just got to have you know if you need that spot on the pipe there's there's a sandpaper there. You can clean it off and get a good connection on your pipe, and that ensures that you get an accurate reading every single time so that, when you're talking to your homeowner and you're, telling them about their system you're giving them the best data possible. Okay, that might actually cause damage to your pipes after after some time but yeah and what's and what's actually like good about that, is that, since you only need a single point of contact, you can even measure temperature on an elbow or like on a bend um. If, if that's all you had access to, because all you need is a point of contact on the copper and then it'll measure the temperature of the of of that pipe, this one will go up to an inch and 3 8.

now for refrigeration applications. There's the large pipe clamp also with the rapid rail sensor that will open up to 4 and 1 8 inches so end of last year, end of last year, so for those in refrigeration you got to work on extremely large or extremely large, but larger pipes. There's a large version of the rapid rail sensor that will clamp onto those pipes, so you don't have to use vertical straps or thermocouples, or waiting for the temperature to stabilize because you've used your finger to put the bead onto there, so you've increased the temperature. Now you got to wait, no clamp it on get a pipe temperature in a second aaa batteries; typically they're going to take two two aaa batteries: okay, so we're talking about quality measurements and and how that relates into the benefits of wireless system troubleshooting.

So we want to take accurate pressures and we want to take accurate temperatures in order to get good calculations in order to give our customer the correct information that they need to make the right decision for them, so refrigerant charge now to wrap it up. In addition to the to the tools being able to transmit into the job link app a lesser known feature that we could talk about more at the booth or just outside of this class is that the joblink probe can also use the s-man manifold as the hub Screen for the measurements, so if you have a manifold and you want to be able to monitor um evaporator delta t on the screen of your manifold, you can wirelessly connect the psychometers to it. If you want to be able to track your refrigerant weight from your scale, you could also view that on the screen of your manifold, and if you wanted to not have the typical wires that come with your pipe clamps, you can use either one of the job Link small or large pipe clamps to work with your s-man manifold, so you have two options to serve as a central hub for your wireless tools, but the point is so that you can be in multiple places at one time and that helps you get the information You need faster and - and it gives you a more accurate snapshot of of the total performance of that system, all on either screen, either your app um or on the screen of your manifold. So wireless data connection, some some of the benefits that help you in the field is a wireless range of 1000 feet line of sight.

Now. Let me just make this clear, because there's going to be a lot of questions about that, there has been no change done to the joblink probes. Any probe that was bought has this wireless range. Previously, we were very conservative in in marketing what the wireless range of the job link probes were.

We stayed at 350 feet knowing that it went much farther than that 350 feet at the time was fine, because no other tool even came close to that, and then other tools got new versions and started marketing that same range, and so we thought well, since we Know that our tools go much farther than that. We might as well talk about that as well. So we did a bunch of extra testing to ensure our claims and we tested competitors and everything all at the same time, which is why we're confident to say that the joblink probes have a wireless range of 1000 feet line of sight. Now, if you're within a building, maybe you have several hundred feet, maybe not a thousand, but it's still by far the best wireless range in the industry when it comes to wireless tools and without good wireless range.

These these type of tools are just like paperweights. If you can't get the measurement where you needed to come to okay wireless system, troubleshooting also helps promote safety. You don't have to sit in uncomfortable or dangerous situations, sometimes to get your measurements in a very hot attic in an extremely cold freezer. Things like that.

It helps keep you safer time savings because you aren't walking back and forth across the job site. You have all your tools set up and they're all being transmitted to you and real time, diagnostic assistance as well. If you also had applications where you had to data log, the joblink system also supports data logging. We could talk more about that later of um, leaving your tools on site, you don't have to leave your phone or your tablet leave your tools on site.

All the data gets stored into the tools you come back retrieve your tools, just upload the data onto your app email it out as an excel spreadsheet. So you can look at later and um. Finally, incorporating wireless technology helps. You grow your business.

We talked about happy customers, a customer is happy when you deliver them accurate data and an accurate assessment of how their system is performing, so they can make the best decision for them and for their comfort in their home using wireless technology. Usually, wireless technology helps increase your professionalism in front of the eyes of your customer. It separates you from joe blow air from down the street, because you have all of these high-tech advanced tools connected to the system and in the palm of your hand and with pdf reports with your own company information on top. You are communicating to your customer clearly what the issues are, and that builds confidence from them to you, and it helps you close more business at the end of the day.

Okay and then another benefit is because you're taking high quality measurements all around the system. You are optimizing the system right the first time and you're reducing callbacks. How many of you love callbacks. Let me see all the hands here.

We go, there's always one there's always one. Nobody likes callbacks. So if you could have tools and technology that will help you get it right, the first time it's going to save you so much money in the long run, and you have happy customers. That's all i got for today.

Any questions. Yes, sir. No everything i've shown here today is free to use on the app connect, your tools, all the tools. At the same time, clamp meter uh charge air weight and then you can generate that measurements report right here with your company logo and all the measurements organized by the category.

You can email that out now. If you had a paid subscription, you would have a different type of measurement report that would have some more information in it and that data would be stored in the cloud for you and your customer list and your job list. So you can go back to it whenever you want to if you had to go back, but all this is free, absolutely put it into your work. Order management system store it for your own records a little bit more yep, and it also has like inspection, checklists photos and notes, equipment, information things like that for you for your service managers out there.

If you never heard of the live, looking feature briefly, what that means is you can have your technician out in the field using the job link system, everything's hooked up, they got the measurements on their phone, but maybe they are less experienced or just can't figure out What the problem is, they can call their service manager or just a more experienced tech that tech can pull up their job link app and view live. What that technician is viewing in the field so that, when they're talking on the phone, they see the same numbers in real time rather than having to talk about numbers back and forth. Okay. So that's another of the premium features.

If you, if you have a subscription to the joblink app uh 12, a month per user or 120 per year, yep okay, did you have a question from the chat? You're gon na raise your hand um? Yes, there is i'm talking to you camera because it came from the chat. Oh so the question was um. Is there a good way to know where to put your static pressure probes so you're, not in a high pressure or low pressure scenario? I'm going to honestly say that i don't know that answer specifically. You can reach out to either like jim bergman or someone with more knowledge of that.

But i will also look that up and if you send me an email to my email information here um, i can give you more information on that as well. I'm just not going to make some stuff up. Okay, short answer, perfect awesome! The short answer is in the center of the duck: don't go corners, don't go anywhere, yeah the longest stretches okay. So the answer, though, told me right now: it's uh! You want to find a long run of duct and try to avoid bends or um pinches.

You know around there and typically, what four to six feet on each side would be would be good, okay, four to six duck lengths and, and that will ensure that you get a good, a good measurement. Thank you appreciate that. Yes, sir, in the back, mr loves callbacks. What's up yes, so that's a great question so yeah, if we're talking about 23 feet, that's gon na be pretty hard to get through right.

I mean yeah 23 stories. That's pretty hard to get through. So what you can do with the application is you'll see that there's this button that says: freeze okay, so each of these containers that for like refrigerant charge or airflow, or for whatever you're going to see a button that says freeze. So if you're, in a location where you know it's just crazy long and it's not going to work, go to one side of the system, first take those measurements and press the freeze, button, that'll lock those readings in there so that you can go to the other Part of your system do the same thing: lock them in there and generate the report with your measurements.

So it's just as simple as pressing the freeze button. Then it holds them in there. It's a good question. Thank you.

Any look, chat questions. Any other questions here. Yep one more okay, yep! Let me ask you this: are we talking about pvc piping? Are we talking about some type of copper? Okay? Okay? So so, if the pipe has conducted properties to it, then yes, you can use that to measure the the pressure or the temperature of the pipe. Now we don't have a solution that goes inside of one of those to measure like inside, but if the pipe is conductive, then the rapid rail will work for that.

Well, it's going to be measuring the surface temperature of that pipe, and the assumption is that the surface temperature of that pipe is the temperature of the water. Now, if there's reason to believe that it's not, then it's still just measuring the surface temperature of that pipe, because nothing's going inside of the pipe to measure the water right all right. Well, thank you. Everybody.

If you have any questions or comments, you can reach out to me or just talk to me throughout the symposium thanks 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 the notifications bell to be notified. When new videos come out, hvac school is far more than a youtube channel. You can find out more by going to hvacrschool.com, which is our website and hub for all of our content, including tech tips, videos, podcasts and so much more. You can also subscribe to the podcast on any podcast app of your choosing.

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