All right, so good news is tropical storm. You know i love it. Did that really happen? Yes, it's all right. At least it's this time of year.

You know yeah, you know it's, okay, it happens, it happens, stop it doesn't make any sense. Just stop all right. So we're going to talk a little bit this morning about some practical things that maybe get missed in the summer, that we want to make sure that we reset and pay attention to in the fall, and winter and, broadly speaking, like we've talked about a lot. If something does not become a habit, if you don't build it into your process, you will never do it.

Um and one of the nice things about being in the hvac field. Is that you're? Not you don't have somebody looking over your shoulder all the time right? Who likes that who likes not having somebody look over their shoulder all the time? Hey this guy, the bad pencil. The bad thing is that you don't have somebody looking over your shoulder all the time. So if you get into bad habits, they just keep falling with you.

So a few things from a theory standpoint. What are some things that cause motors to run hot and or inefficient? So i'm gon na i'm gon na. Let you guys make a list of things that cause a motor to run hot or in efficient. Is that how you spelling decision i, before e, except after g, something like that that rule doesn't apply that doesn't work? There's no g doesn't make any sense.

No refrigerant bert, can you smack that phone out of josh's hands, i'm thinking? No, it's there. Oh you're taking you know so good. Oh, the actual temperature of the motor itself, the motor. What are some things that cause a motor to run hot or inefficient? A low capacitor, a weak capacitor? Oh, you had a problem with low yeah.

It is whoa wow respect for we were just talking. I was just talking to my sister-in-law, rachel who's, a missionary by the way about how youths are so disrespectful. Nowadays, these were talking all about all you, wow wow, that's cool, all right, so we capacity what else airflow airflow interesting one we're gon na do. Airflow question.

Mark what do you actually know question mark? So, under what circumstances does airflow cause a motor to run hot or inefficient? I don't know like clogged, okay, but we got ta be really specific, because this is not always true build off on the things okay yeah. So, let's, let's yeah! So let's do that if you have a dirty blower wheel, carlos or a clogged coil, those are all things that can cause low, airflow, double filter, uh, okay, double filter, all right, we're coming up with a lot of good ones. Here, let's say a filter, that's just too restrictive block return. All right block turn wrong size, wow, it's just going to keep going there.

I really didn't enjoy writing that much one of my weaker topics. I think you just lost audio. I think that's what just happened. That's okay, um all right! So when we say airflow causes a motor to run inefficient or because we're not talking about the system.

We're talking about the motor does low airflow cause a motor to run inefficient or hot if it's a normal blower motor. So not an ecm blower motor with a clogged evaporator coil. Did you hear what i just asked for because i'm not getting any like response on your face? I actually didn't hear it. I recognized it.

Okay, we're gon na try it again. So does an airflow restriction on a regular psc? Does anybody know what psc stands for permanent split, capacitor old-school, blower motor, not variable speed? Does an airflow problem like a restricted, evaporative coil caused that motor to run hot or inefficient, and the answer is no? No with the caveat because of course it is an air cooled motor, so i'm sure there would come a point at which it would cause it to overheat, but with a traditional blower motor, you have poor airflow and you have high static pressure. Does the motor draw higher current or lower current lower current? It draws lower current. So if you take an old school air handler old school furnace and you put a dirty filter in it and you're monitoring the current of that motor, that motor will actually draw lower current because that motor that blade design is loaded based on airflow, meaning how much? How many cubic feet of air, or how many pounds of air more specifically that motor is moving not by static pressure, so the static pressure goes up, that motor is not working harder.

It's working less hard, we're talking an old-school motor now flip the script, change it to a ecm motor, which is what a lot of you are used to nowadays, which is why it's sort of become a little forgotten about the older motors. If you have a dirty blower wheel or a dirty blower wheel is actually kind of a tricky one, because that can go either way but we'll say a dirty evaporator coil. You have a dirty evaporator coil on an ecm blower. What does the ecm blower do? Ramps up so now you have a variable and that variable causes that motor to run hotter and more inefficient.

So those of you doing installs or working on newer equipment that has ecm motors in it of which most of what we install nowadays, if not all, has ecm blowers, either x13 or true variable and those applications you're going to see a motor get inefficient with low Airflow and then the other side is your condenser fan motor. Your condenser fan motor. If there is a clogged, um return, quad return. What am i talking about my brain is my brain is thinking about three things at once.

If there is a clogged, condenser coil, with a prop fan that you have on a condenser that will result in higher amp draw and less efficiency, so a prop fan, what's the correct name for it, that would be a axial fan. No, a radial fan a radial fan a prop fan um. When you restrict that coil it is going to run inefficient. So, from a practical standpoint, low airflow, equal bad either way, but one of the reasons it equals bad is not just that low airflow impacts.

The refrigerant side of the circuit impacts, your suction pressure, all that it also impacts your motor temperature and efficiency. In most cases other than a vsc blower, okay, that was kind of an edge case. It wasn't actually even expecting to go there, but that was it was good, all right, so weak, capacitors, low airflow generally. What else can cause hot and inefficient motors? What else? What else what else sam a squirrel? That's not it! That's not a very good answer.

Yeah i had to scroll on yesterday. One couldn't turn off. It was stuck inside the blade watch out for squirrels that'll. Do it um another thing would be uh bearing wear right.

Fury, no, this is an a that's, an a it's like a bear, rawr in where that'll cause it and so checking for play in bearings. Listening for noises, looking looking looking for signs of oil leaking out of the bearings, those are all things to watch for that can be signs that signify bearing wear what else can cause a hot, inefficient motor? That's it no improper applied voltage, meaning that anything that would cause the voltage to be either too low or too high for the motor's design can result in hot and hot or efficient motor. You, okay, kyle you're, just chilling i'm valuable! Okay are you? Are you listening to something in your earbuds there? That's like yeah, i'm listening to you. Are you, okay, all right all right? It would be weird if you were in a meeting and then you were listening to a podcast, a different one that you liked better.

All right and proper applied voltage. So what is one of the most common causes of improper? A pro applied voltage to a motor and again we're saying a motor could be a compressor motor condenser fan motor blower motor any kind of motor. What's the most common cause of improper applied voltage, low capacitor? Now, oh boy, a poor connection is probably the most common but any sort of issue with the conductors leading up to the motor. So it could be what other than a poor connection could also cause.

Uh improper apply, voltage specifically low, applied voltage transformer transformer okay. Under what circumstances i mean, if you're talking about a transformer at the road that has a problem possibly well, when he said level, it sounded like 24 volts, oh improperly low voltage applied to a motor. So we're talking the high voltage high voltage, that's too low. Let's be specific about that.

That did that help, i don't feel like. I don't know. No, no, you know what class is over. Give up.

Does everybody leave improperly sized wires and properly sized conductors? That could cause it yeah improperly sized conductors. What else can cause that it's not just sizing what else potentially wire length wire length there. We go all right, so we've got a list of things here: four connections for connections, wire size and length and then a contactor or relay would be another one which would go into the port connection category. But we'll put it here, whatever's responsible for doing the switching.

If it is adding something to the circuit that it's not supposed to be, that can cause it, and what is that? Something that a contactor or relay can add to the circuit that can result in a problem, resistance which is measured in what ohms got it good. See we got we mixed a little theory in there like how we did that wow um so and a lot of these things here are adding resistance, in fact, all of them poor connections, where size being too small length being too long contact or relay contacts, not Making good connection - those are all things that can lead to hot and inefficient motors and in terms of there's a reason why i'm doing this little exercise, and that is that i want you to get your head really clear when you're communicating to a customer specifically about These problems, because a customer doesn't really care so much about the technical name for the parts that you're replacing. Of course, they want to know you're, not scamming them. So that's why we don't make up names for things.

You know, there's a new practice in our trade. I don't know if you're familiar with this, where people change the names of parts so that customers can't look them up online, i'm not going to throw shade on anyone, i'm just going to say we don't do that and the reason we don't do. That is because i don't want a customer to ever feel like we're, trying to take advantage of them like we're, trying to trick them with a different part name. But what we can do is focus more on the result that we're providing than the name of a part, because, ultimately, that's the reason why we're replacing a component that needs replaced right.

We don't replace a weak capacitor, because weak capacitors just need replacing right. We replace weak capacitors why this is an integer, because no, we replace peak capacitors, because weak capacitors result in hot and inefficient motors and ultimately untimely failure of either the motor or the capacitor itself right if the capacitor is getting weak. It's also a sign that it's beginning to fail which can result in them being without air conditioning, because this is what the customer cares about right. They care about their unit, not drawing too much power and not breaking on them prematurely right, not having a hot night.

Let's be specific, so at least not that kind of hot night. You know what i'm saying anyway. So when we're talking about these problems any of these problems, we can pin it to the fact that it results in a hot and efficient motor. It results in untimely failure of the system and that's what we're looking to prevent and that's real like it's not pretend now.

Could it be pretend, could we tell somebody that they need a contact or when they don't need to contact contactor sure? Can we tell somebody that they need a capacitor when they don't need a capacitor sure and that's what we call immoral, so we're not going to do that, but what we do is when it does need one of these things. For a reason. The reason why we're presenting it to the customer is because it prevents heat and inefficiency in a motor, and that is all true right. You don't just replace a capacitor when it's 10 low or suggest replacement, because that's just a company policy, you do it because a capacitor, that's 10 or more low results in a hot or inefficient and inefficient motor operation make sense and in terms of what? Even really what you need to know, that's almost all you need to know.

Frankly, i mean we can get really into the weeds of how capacitors work and what they do and all that stuff and that's fun, and it's good, but more than anything else just know when a capacitor runs weak. You put one, that's too small. It results in a hot, inefficient motor right cool, so i wanted to. I want to talk about that.

So what are some things that we do on maintenances and service calls, especially in the winter that help solve this problem. When i say especially in the winter, i'm it's, we should do it all the time, but the reality is we have a little bit more. We can. We can spend a little bit more time on the systems, or at least we don't feel that constant pressure of the summer clean coils all right.

So we can. We can clean coils, look at coils recommend cleaning right. Those are things that can help efficiency and longevity of the equipment. What else? What else take out the double filter? Okay, remove or check for double filter? Okay, that's fine! So where do you check for a double filter? Yep, you check it from the return grill and the ceiling or down low.

If it's a, if it's a direct return, you look in it just because there isn't a filter back return. Grill doesn't mean that somebody didn't jam a filter in there, because that happens. A lot right all right, so what are some other things that you do you check capacitors right? We already should do that, but we check capacitors. What are the two different ways to check capacitors under load or not under load? Otherwise call bench test you just either.

Unhook the wires and you use your capacitor tester or you do it under load, which is the whole. You know, 52. The old thing of the lobby, which some of you should probably just go ahead and use the calculator on the hvac school app because that'll make it a lot easier. So you don't have to do math, but you have to know how to do it.

But there's lots of videos and things on how to do that if you haven't done it before so check capacitors what else look carefully at the motors. So if you look more carefully at motors there's another thing that we didn't cover here, but especially on air over motors like lower motors, even the end belt being dirty, can result in that motor running hot and inefficient right. If the motor body gets dirty and air doesn't move through it as easily, that can cause a problem, but also looking at motors for bearing wear look at them when they start to get especially, you know, a little bit can be normal as the motor gets older, But when you see a lot of oil leakage at the end at the shaft end of that motor, that's an indication that that motor is losing lubrication because that lubrication started inside the motor. Now that doesn't mean that you tell the customer.

Oh my gosh, you need to change this motor, but it is something depending on the attributes of the customer. You can go ahead and mention it there's nothing wrong with that. That is a sign of of an emerging problem and you check for shaft play shaft play. Is this way not in and out right as soon as i said it, every there's just faces out there, that's how you have to do it unless we have a motor.

We i need to keep a motor here just for that purpose. All right, stop it, i'm a failure as a leader, all right, so look carefully at motors. Let's look carefully at all of our connections and where is where are some of the most likely places for connections to be a problem top of the capacitor top of the capacitor, and why? Why top of the capacitor? That's where people have been taking them off? People have been taking them on and off so a lot of times. The four connections had a capacitor are user caused or technician caused because you're pulling them on and off the test, and you don't put them back on tight, don't ever leave play in connections.

Spade connections need to be hard to get on and off. If they go on easy, you need to take some needle nose pinch them down, so that way they go on snug and what you're pinching, because this is this - has come up from time to time. If you look at the, if you look at the look at the face of a spade or whatever you want to call that, that's what it looks like right, you're taking your needle nose and you're pinching here and here just a little bit in order to make It grab better because i've seen people pinching on the sides and that doesn't do anything into your pinch here. Just a little bit make sense.

That should be a regular thing. You do those of you who are doing maintenances, then you feel like. Oh, this is boring. I'm just doing maintenances all the time.

Well, look for loose space, that's a very useful thing! You can do another area to check for is the contactor. We talk a lot about this. We've done a lot of demonstrations in the past about what an unacceptably pitted contactor is. What you're really looking for is voltage drop now the problem is, is there is no trade standard on what acceptable voltage drop is across the across the contactor? So you can test, you can take a contactor we're just going to pretend this is a contactor here with our little low voltage connections here, we'll make it a uh plus one pole contactor here you can check for voltage drop while the system's running by just taking Your two meter leads and going across that set of contacts when that set of contacts is closed, meaning the unit is running.

There should be next to no voltage drop across that the problem is, is that even in millivolts, that can be that's a problem. If you see a volt or more yeah, definitely a problem, but the challenge is that there's no standard of exactly what is acceptable or unacceptable, but any amount of resistance in this contact point causes what, within the contact point, the heat. So heat shows up in places of where it where resistance is so when you have a poor connection and there's resistance between those wires, the carbons build up, you get heat there and we don't want heat there. We don't want heat there for a couple reasons.

One is that heat is wasted energy, but the other reason is is that that heat is going to continue to grow, as that connection gets worse and worse and more resistance builds up until the wire nut melts off the contactor completely fails whatever the case may be. Now some people have thought that maybe there's some correlation even between contact failure and the fact that it attracts insects or whatever. I think it's just the actual coil itself, there's something about the electromagnetic magnetic field that attracts insects. I'm really not sure why that is um, but that's kind of another thing.

If you do ever have a customer just as a side note, if you ever have a customer that has even one occurrence of an insect, related failure where its ants got in it or whatever go ahead and replace that quote them to replace it with a sealed. Contactor and specifically the emerson sure switch or the uh. What's the other one called, i can't remember what it's called, but they're, completely sealed not like, because just having a cover on it, that's ants can still usually get into those covers. That's all you've got fine, but but you know we we don't want to have a reoccurrence on that.

That can be pretty frustrating for the customer and, like the sure, switch, isn't going to have that problem. It'll. Also last forever too, which is nice. So, look at your contactors when you're doing a maintenance when you're doing a service call if that contactor has severe wear, and this is part of just being used to looking at them.

So my way of looking at it is this: if you are never replacing a contactor or quoting a contactor on a service call or maintenance, then obviously you're not looking at them right, but if you're, quoting them on 50 of the maintenances that you're doing well, then You're doing something wrong on the other direction right, so you know probably in our market with as long as these as much as these systems run as much as they cycle one in ten on systems that are over six years old. That's probably you know pretty realistic. Based on my experience, anybody care to dispute that give me a different number, because i'm fine with that alex says one: seven, all right all right. What do you think bert? That was pretty good one in seven on system, six, seven years or older? What do you think sam sound about right? So that means that if you're running you know an average of four or five service calls a day, then you're gon na have a couple every week, if you're not having a couple every week, then i mean you could have just had a week where you didn't Find any, but it's probably more likely that you're not really paying attention to contactors, who here can say honestly that they pay attention to contactors, pretty religiously good good.

Let's get that number off well installers now. Could you make a little more noise with that bottle? Just a little bit yeah all right, what's another place where poor connections show up a lot inside the air handler that is yeah. That actually is a good one. It wasn't one on my list, but it is a good one, because there's a lot of really poorly made terminations field connected terminations uh inside air handlers, also within air handlers.

Just as a side note, a lot of really poorly routed, wires, wires that are routed in such a way that they're gon na you know get cut for damage or get abrasions where they run through the cabinet. So on this note, when you have high voltage coming into an air handler that was done improperly connected and properly connected, poorly quote the customer to redo that that is one of the single greatest fire hazards in a customer's house. Very realistically now we don't say that to the customer, we are not going to use scare tactics. You know like do you care about your children? Well, you better get this fixed right away, because your house is about to burn down.

You know we don't use that language, i'm not kidding. There are a lot that is actually somewhat common in our trade, that's sort of hyperbole, but we don't do that. But when you find something like that point it out with the customer to redo it - and this is true really of all field. Wiring, that's done poorly.

If you find field wiring, that's done poorly routed improperly looks like a rat's nest, just quote to redo it again. If you bundle this it's much easier in terms of bundling yeah exactly - and this is this - is all within the context of bundling everything i'm talking about here and not in the weird way that the amish do it, because that's that's really iffy, but in the way Of you know putting together, uh uh cut that out. We don't want to insult the amish in their practices, a demographic we can install on the youtube channel and we're safe, and you just text them every once in a while all right. This disconnects that's where we're going with this disconnects focus.

Brian. This guys are huge, so especially on maintenance. Look inside disconnects now for some people who do not have electrical licenses, and especially in some other states, this can become iffy ground for us, it is not. If you ground, we are allowed to look in replace repair disconnects because we have an electrical license, so we're fine you're all covered under that.

So if you've got wires that are coming in, that, don't have bushings or you have even whips that are coming out of disconnects and they're broken off and water's getting in them or any of that sort of stuff. You can quote to replace all of that bundle together with other repairs. This is where these are kind of small things that you can create some added value at a discount to the customer. So we want to make this a win-win, but let's address the things that need addressing while we're there and there's a couple things with disconnects the number one and the easiest is the actual pull itself.

If it's a pull disconnect that pull, if it has damage on it and this and where it goes in, has damage on it, then the disconnect should be quoted when you open up that secondary little cover in there and you look at those terminals. If you see any signs of melting arcing whatever that disconnect needs to be replaced in addition to that look and see if there's significantly smaller wires coming into it than going out of it. That's not necessarily a problem. Knowing wire size is actually pretty simple and it's based on the mca rating on the data tag, if you don't know how to do this, this is a whole different topic, but it's very simple to know what size wire a unit should have, but both going into The disconnect and coming out of the disconnect needs to have wire.

That's large enough. You know for that purpose, so it needs to be within the mca rating or be able to handle the mca rating of that. Another thing with disconnects is in a very common one that i talk about a lot. It's a nice one to bundle in because it is such a small add-on a lot of times.

The disconnects are fine, but maybe they're falling off the wall remount. That's. We should not be doing maintenances or service calls on houses that have disconnects falling off the wall, where we don't address that problem. The same thing like a thermostat falling off the wall.

Like you know some of these things coming halfway off the wall or it's crooked. Does it affect the system for the thermostat to be crooked nowadays, no back in the day when they're a mercury bulb. Yes, but nowadays it doesn't, but it looks terrible and the customer is going to blame you for not addressing even aesthetic problems. This is something we've got to get our head around: that customers home inspectors, those sorts of folks.

They view aesthetic problems on the same par with technical problems. Now we don't and that's fine, because we're professionals - and we understand the technical, but to not address a significant aesthetic problem on a piece of equipment when you're there for a maintenance. It leaves a question mark in the customer's head. So, even if you say your thermostat's falling off the wall, i'm going to take care of that as well as part of this.

It's not hurting anything, but you know it doesn't look right. So, let's, let's address this, get it mounted properly. That's a good way of of saying that, because you're not overstating it but you're, also not ignoring it and disconnects fall into that same category in terms of pulling off the wall now when they are pulling off the wall, that can cause a real problem and what Is the real problem that it can cause anybody now? What's a safety hazard sure can cause a short, because you know it's flopping around in a breeze with water can fill up with water is the main reason, that's what i was looking for, because in a lot of cases, in fact, most cases um the wires. The high voltage conductors are coming in the back of the disconnect you shouldn't say most but they're a lot of cases they're coming in the back of the disconnect and if that's pulling off the wall now, there's openings in the back of that disconnect.

So disconnect should be firmly fastened using a proper connector for whatever proper screw, for whatever the substrate is, if it's concrete or stucco or whatever you need to use tap ons. If it's wood then use wood screws whatever right, but then you should also seal the top down the sides of that disconnect with silicone. Okay, we've talked about this a lot. It's not hard at all.

So long as you have a gun and you've got a tube of silicone and you've got one of those little caps that you put on the end of it. After every time, you use it immediately alcohol and you have alcohol on your truck and again, alcohol has gotten a lot easier, because if you have hand sanitizer even hand, sanitizer will work just fine put a little hand sanitizer on your tastes, just as good. What's that it tastes just as good yeah yeah, that explains what's wrong with you. That was a joke.

If you were amish, then i could continue that joke. Actually, my mom is, is she wow i feel bad? Can i make fun of her jean skirts? Next, all right, so using a little bit of silicone around down the top and down the sides, it's just a standard thing, and so anytime, you see a disconnect where the wires are coming through the back, and it's not sealed on the top. That's a great opportunity to add a little value bundle it in with your other stuff that you're doing and you know, gives a little extra benefit, because it is a real thing. In fact, a lot of problems with disconnects corroding out happen because of water getting into them water and electricity - ain't buddies.

You know they were friends in high school. They had falling out, got ugly, they don't talk anymore. You know, i think water tried to steal electricity. Squirrel, it's the story that i heard all right, try to focus um.

Another thing that i want you to another thing that i want you to look at that we've talked a lot about, and this will be kind of the finishing thing which is just a little side. Note are float switches and issues related with float switches and the drains at the air handler so horizontal portions of drains that air handle are not insulated, that's something that should be addressed because they do sweat drains improperly pitched at the air handler. So if a drain is perfectly level - and there is a way to get it pitched properly - that's something that should be redone a lot of times. You'll see that where it's perfectly level right here, but then when it goes back and returns, there's plenty of space.

They could have pitched it more. You know and that's going to result in a better long-term result, systems that don't have load switches. That's a big one float switch is improperly wired. That's a big one, float switches that aren't working you're, not shutting the system off.

That's a big one, so that's another thing to be looking at regularly so in terms of summary things to look for things that cause hot and efficient motors, weak fasteners, airflow problems bearing wear poor connections now again in terms of something that i want you to check Regularly, i do want you to check the voltage on equipment while it's running. That is a really good test to do. In fact, it's more practical for most purposes than even measuring amp draw, because it's very rare that we're going to replace a component strictly based on amtrak - that's very rare. But often you will find low or high applied voltage and that's something to investigate.

Further high applied voltage happens because the power company is just applying too high voltage, which is something that they've been doing a lot lately, and we can deal with that by using a bucket boost transformer and again. That only is something that we really do care enough about when it's, you know infinity system systems that have inverted drives in them that can be affected by that voltage, connections again spade connections and then uh spent a lot of time. Looking at disconnects as well a lot more time than we are, that's a that's one that, in terms of things a lot of the stuff you're already doing, but in terms of things that i know that, probably most of you aren't doing is paying attention to the Disconnects and that's a big one going into this next season, because again, what is our goal here? Our goal here is to provide the customer with significant value for the work that we provide. We don't want to walk away from a customer's house, either having not provided them a value or having them feel like we didn't, provide them a value.

You know where we just did a bunch of checks and we didn't actually do anything in their mind and so doing things like washing coils really well when they need it doing things like we've talked about in terms of maintenance cleaning, the bottoms out of condenser coils. Doing things like fixing wire abrasions doing things like whips that are improperly done or disconnects that are coming off the wall, taking care of that insulation pulling off of air handler panels, fastening that better taping it in place checking float switches, checking capacitors. Those are all things that add value, because our goal is to prevent that system from failing number one and number two to keep it running efficiently. So the power bills aren't going up cool.

Any questions no nope. The latest video on the hvac school youtube channel has sam in it. If anybody wants to listen to that he's a real all-star this guy over here.