This video is brought to you by Sporland. Quality, integrity and tradition. Al Holiday it is. Uh Tuesday December 27th today I believe and uh, we had over the holiday.

Uh, beer walking? Go down. Now The customer chose to have us come out on Monday December 26th but we had a skeleton crew working literally one guy and we were just putting fires out kind of a thing. so he had to come out here on this beer walk and he said it was low on refrigerant. Um, so he topped off the charge and today I'm back here and we're going to try to find this refrigerantly So kind of looks like looks like he's not quite feeding evenly.

Um though I don't know what's up I Almost seems a little oily in here. Yeah, it seems very oily inside here. right in here. So we're gonna go up top, check out the condensing unit and then do a proper Leak search on this system.

All right. Well, this is my beer walking condensing unit right here. I Get here this morning and it is running and the sight glass is clear so the sight glass is literally a window into the system. It's helping us to ensure that we have a solid column of liquid or or 100 liquid going to our expansion valve.

Now it's not ideal that it's installed all the way up here, but sometimes you got to do that depending on the systems so the actual system just satisfied if you guys can see it there. So what I'm going to do is before: I apply any service gauges we are going to head downstairs. We're going to make the system call, but I'm going to shut off the condensing unit on the roof Now in this particular situation I Understand the operation and how the system was set up. There is no communication from the condensing unit to the evaporator.

So if I shut off the condensing unit, there's no valves or anything up here that will shut or close. And then if we get the evaporator to call, the system, pressures are going to equalize while slowly equalize. When the solenoid valve, the liquid line solenoid valve downstairs opens up, then, uh, it will have better odds of doing a leak search without the low pressure that we have currently in the suction line. So let's turn this condensing unit off.

It says breaker seven and nine. end of rack. All right. Got this guy shut off right here.

Beer walking. So now, let's uh, head downstairs and open up the door. get the box to warm up a bit. All right.

I Have the door propped open to the point that the thermostat came up above the set point temperature and turned on the solenoid valve which is right here. So now the condensing is not running. so we have a path for the high side pressure which isn't that high because it's just static just sitting there for the high side pressure to work its way through the valve and equalize out with the low side pressure. So at this point, um, we're gonna let it run for just a few more minutes letting the pressures equalize out.

and then we're going to shut off the evaporator fan motor and, uh, start doing a leak search on this guy. All right, zero out my leak detector outside of the box. that way it can truly pick anything up that's going on. Okay, yeah, that lighted tip really does help but remember I Stuck my finger in there and felt like it was oil.

That's where the sensing bulb goes in. So yeah, there's a significant leak there. so we're going to get some of that insulation pulled off. Let's try it up in here, see if it's coming through.

it doesn't seem to be coming through. Oh yeah, it is coming through right in here. So okay. Well, we'll get that insulation pulled off so we can look back in there a little bit better.

All right. So I've got some of the Viper Big Blue from Refrigeration Technologies and we're going to spray the braised joint liberally with a steady stream. Doesn't matter what falls on the ground here, but you always want to be aware of your surroundings. You don't want to, uh, upset the customer.

So we're just spraying steady stream up there. and then uh, I'll spray a steady stream up here on the Schrader I'm hitting it back in there and we're just going to let it sit for a few minutes. Um, I'm not seeing a bunch of oil right here, so I'm thinking maybe it's going to be up in here. so I'll finish spraying down this whole coil in here.

might as well I'm just spraying a steady stream. The Big Blue does a great job of letting you know where the leaks are. By spraying the steady stream, you're able to see micro clusters of bubbles. Really common spot is right here in the top of the TXV on the top of the solenoid valve right in there.

so we're going to let that sit for a few minutes and then we'll come back and look for a leak. All right. We have been running for a little bit now just sitting there letting it and I have not seen any bubbles. Okay with big glue.

You'll know because you're looking for micro clusters of Bubbles and then if it's a big enough leak, you'll see big bubbles. So let's hop up top and get in here. Oh I can already see it. Look at that on the bottom of that Schrader right there.

I bet you if I pull that cap off, we have a bad straighter. Let's look at the rest of the coil because I did spray soap bubbles all over it not seeing any at the bottom of the T I mean the top of the TXV distributor right there. Nothing. Everything looks good.

all right. Don't see anything. so let me pull that cap off that. uh, super heat access port right there.

Foreign pressurized. What the heck is that about That's not good. That's like a complete failure of a Schrader I gotta go up to the system up top and pump it down to a slightly positive pressure. We'll pull that out and put a new Schrader in it.

I bet you the Schrader just completely got stuck all right before. I Turn the system on and apply service gauges. The one place that I wanted to look really quickly was on the service caps up here. So it helps that we have the lighted tip on this leak detector.

Nothing. Nothing. You typically would see oil accumulation and a lot of dust and dirt if there was a leak there. We're just looking on the basic service caps because what happens is sometimes there could be small leaks at these Schrader cores right here, right? Or the cap could have a bad gasket and when you take your caps off and put your gauges on it, you fix the leak by putting your gauges on it.

So then you'll search the whole system and you can't find a leak. So you always want to check your caps if you think or you suspect the system has a leak before you take them off. I'm not seeing anything. so we're going to put these guys on.

now. when applying service gauges, you always want to purge your hoses. So once you put them on, you, then want to purge to make sure you get all the air out of the system. That one's good.

Now let's do this one. Okay, and if we look here, we have 81 PSI on my low side and 155 on my high side. Now, normally during normal operation, your suction pressure is going to be in the 50s ish depending on the temperature of the box or something like that. maybe the high 40s, But um, it's important to understand.

You know, like I said, I'm reiterating that you need suction pressure when you're doing a leak search. You don't want the system to be satisfied and pumped down because your suction pressure might be as low as 5 PSI And oftentimes it can be hard to find a small leak that way. So that's why equalized out the pressures. Now we're going to go ahead and, uh, take the cap off this King valve.

This is on the outlet of the liquid line receiver and we are going to front seat the ball valve. So that way we can pump the system down. So we take a refrigeration service wrench right here and we're just going to front seat the valve to where we're completely shutting off the refrigerant flow. And what's going to happen is the system is going to try to pump down.

Uh well, it's going to try to run, but the gas has nowhere to go because I shut off The outlet flow of the receiver. so therefore the system pressures are going to keep running and running and running until the system shuts off on low pressure. Also, that compressor sounds a wee bit rough, but we should be watching our pressures right here and remember that refrigerant is pumping through the discharge line running through the condenser, out of the condenser, into the liquid drain into the receiver. but it can't leave the receiver.

But yet the compressor keeps pumping because it's going to do so as it's backing the refrigerant up in the receiver and storing it in the condenser for a pump down. Now, we're not looking for negative pressures here. I'm just looking to get down to about 5 or 10 psi. so I can go down and change that Schrader Under Pressure I Want to do a hot swap if possible because if I open the system up and completely pump it down and open it to Atmosphere I'm going to have to change the liquid line filter dryer and if I can get away with it I Don't want to have to do that so we're just waiting for it pumped down.

Notice that high side pressure came up, but then it's starting to come down. That's actually a good sign. Whenever you're pumping a system down, you always need to be monitoring high side pressure because you do not want the high side pressure to be getting higher and higher and higher to the point that it hurts the compressor. And that can happen if the system is overcharged.

So let's see where it naturally pumps down at. We're almost there. I'm actually just going to shut it off right there now. Sometimes the the suction pressure might rise a little bit.

It's okay, we'll let it kind of. as the refrigerant's boiling out of the oil in the crankcase of the compressor and there's still maybe some. With a little bit of oil down in the evaporator, it's natural to see it rise. We may need to turn it on again for a couple seconds to get the pressures down a little bit.

Turned it back on for another couple seconds. It's about 11 PSI 10 psi now. Oh, there we go. We satisfied on low pressure.

So I'm just going to shut off the breaker and then we're going to head downstairs. I'll get a new Schrader and uh, we'll swap that guy out really quick. We'll try to kind of tight up here. All right.

we're gonna pull out the solenoid valve coil so that way I can get in there a little bit better. Oh, there we go. Important not to energize the solenoid valve with that coil missing I'm going to pop this guy see how bad this leak is. Oh wow, yeah, the Schrader is just completely bad.

I Don't think the Schrader core removal tool is going to do this job. We might not. Even that straighter might even be stuck in there. We'll have to see I need to grab a different tool.

Tricky Tricky Yeah, that's not good. I'm gonna have to like move the side panel. The side panel is really in my way too. maybe just the drain pan.

If I take the drain pan out then I could bend the panel out of my way. Oh, it is tied up in here. Okay now the system's still under pressure so I'm keeping it capped. so I can just throw a new Schrader in there and hope that it'll seal it up.

Turned out to blow it out there we go. Perfect Good gosh. that was a chore to go upstairs and make sure we're still under positive pressure. Got a new cap for it? there we go and I got some new caps for on the roof.

So I'm going to assemble this and then we'll get back up there, make sure we're still in positive pressure and hopefully start it back up if it's not in positive pressure. It's not a big deal. we just pull a vacuum and change the dryer as just trying to be lazy back up onto the roof. It's got a 5 PSI on the low side so we never hold the atmosphere into the system.

I would also make an argument for the people that want to say I'm wrong and maybe I am. but I'll make an argument that if we were to pump the system down and pull a vacuum, that we would lose more refrigerant than a simple hot swap like I just did where you lose minimal amounts of refrigerant compared to what an evacuation is going to do, completely dehydrating the oil of refrigerant or at least attempting to. But it's a conversation for another day. So um, at this point because we're still in positive pressure, we're gonna go ahead and, uh, turn the breaker off.

Okay, it's still off right there and uh, we're gonna open up the king valve. let the system pressures it kind of equalize out so we can go do another League search and make sure that there's no more leaks down there. So now you'll see the suction pressure starting to come up because I'm naturally letting the static pressure push it through the system meaning that there's not a compressor that's accelerating the refrigerant movement. We're just having natural static pressure flow meaning that it's just the pressure in the system and it's just equalizing out.

High side has 149 and we're open on the solenoid valve. So naturally, we're going to try to equalize those pressures out of the system. Okay, came down here, sprayed a little more big blue and we are not seeing the refrigerant leak that we were seeing earlier, so all is good with that now. I Need to get back here and put that insulation back on that I pulled off and I'll get some foam tape and we'll clean it up.

We are ready to turn this guy back on. Okay, so we're gonna let it run for a few minutes. Make sure that the sight glass stays clear as long as the Side Glass stays clear. There's no head pressure control valve or anything so we don't need extra refrigerant, no winter charge, so we'll just watch it come down in town.

All right, it's been running for a bit. We're stabilizing out about 19 degrees saturation. It's probably in the 30s in there right now. Um, TXV Actually, no, it's probably in the mid 40s, but the TXV is probably over feeding just a little bit because it's coming down at 10.

saturation temperatures. Nothing's really too concerning to me. Sight glass is clear, so I don't think I need to add any refrigerant. Um, all is well.

We're going to wrap this one up. Make sure the time clock is correct. It's a 9 54. it was correct when I got here.

I've just had it shut off for a while. Not very heavy, but we got to get this swamp cooler up under the roof so we're going to use our mechanical lift. It's just big is all that it is, so we're just going to use the lift to get it up and then we'll carry it across the roof once we get it up there. All right, we've got it on there, so I'm gonna head up top, have someone lift it up and then I'll just slide it onto the roof.

Edge And then we'll uh carried across the roof once we get it up there to slide it right onto the roof. Easy peasy! All right. this is the cooler in the rack. This is just to cool the rack.

So I took the panels off temporarily because the cooler had bad bearings. New ones up here. We're gonna slowly start disassembling this one. It doesn't look like it's a big deal.

Looks like maybe bolt right there and bolt on the other side. So no biggie. we're gonna get some electrical disconnected. The cooler had these two bolts holding it in from the top and then we have Tech screws just temporarily holding it right now so we're loose.

We're disconnected electrically and everything. so we're just going to, uh, drop this guy down, then try to figure out how to get the new one up. Whenever we do these Lift jobs, it's always a two-man operation, if not a three-man operation depending on how difficult it is. One person is always Manning the lift.

Even though it has a break on the winch, we still don't trust it. We've always got a hand on it and then this one. This is light so I'm able to slide it on. but normally we'll have three people here try to be as safe as possible.

All right, it doesn't take much. We've got big bolts on the top holding this guy up I Ended up putting an extra screw in the top right here just to hold it and then we ran another screw down here. It doesn't need any more than that, That's good. So then we're just going to work on getting water lines over to it.

This is going to be polishing a turd. It's not going to be anything crazy so we'll get a water line ran over I may redo that. And then we got to worry about moving stuff because this guy right here was originally mounted on that end and we're going to move it to this end right here. So I'm going to drill some holes I have my electrical hole from the last one.

Knockout right there. These little bits for electrical are awesome. If you've never seen these before, it has a step on it and it's made for drilling into electrical panels because it doesn't let you go too far. Once you drill through, it stops you right there.

So they're really nice to have in your van. and they they do really well. It's not going to do a whole lot. We went ahead and put a filter on it.

Um, these floats are junk. I'm gonna use the one that came with the cooler for now. We'll eventually have to change it to the adjustable ones, but you got to bend them to set them. So basically we're just filling it up to make sure it looks like maybe we need to tighten this on just a little bit more because it's kind of Dripping right there.

But that's okay. we'll tighten that on and then everything here looks good, looks good. So we're just about ready. to start this up.

We got to oil these bearings. We're probably going to do lunch and then we'll oil them and start it up. Got the temperature controller installed up there except for about 80 degrees. Capillary pulled out here with a rubber o-ring Same on this right here.

All right we are put back on. We did have to adjust it because it was over amping slightly. Uh, we're allowed to run 10.8 amps and right now. well, that's what the water pump running.

We're running 11.6 but it was running 10.5 without the water pump. so that's fine. Um, because we were at 10.5 and we're rated for 10.8 so everything's good. There, water floats, set.

all is well. We're putting the covers on. we have it set for 70 degrees so anything below 70 degrees, the water pump shuts off and it just draws outside air at 70 degrees into here to push all the heat out. And again, this will have all the panels on it when we're all done.

So this guy's good to go. Bearings are all oiled up and everything's cool. All the condensing units are running, this one's not in use anymore. All of them have Clear Sight glasses.

That's this guy right here that indicates that we have a full column of liquid going to the expansion valve. That's good. Also, checked all the defrost timers. The times are all set correct.

Everything's good on that. So we're going to start putting all the panels on all right. This janky rack is put back together now I Have plans to eventually eliminate this. We are currently in the process where they are in the process of doing a remodel and they're going to be getting rid of the bar cooler condensed unit right here.

It says bar coolers. They're going to get rid of both of these cold rail condensers right there. so all that's going to be left in this guy is a walk-in cooler, beer walking, and walk-in freezer when that happens. I'm likely going to, uh, talk them into slowly starting to change out the walk-in condensing units and I think we're going to pull them out of this rack.

Okay, so this is just a temporary replacement of a evaporative cooler. Um, the way that it works is you have all the heat. It has relief vents right there and right there. It allows it to mix, absorb the Heat and blow it out.

You can see all the line sets come out right here. It's been like this forever. So Eventually I'd like to start deleting these and what I'd like to do is set up a some 4x4s right here with three condensing units and walk-in cooler, freezer and beer walking. and then eventually we can pull this rack completely out of the picture and delete it because there's it's really useless.

But anyways, for now, this is what we have to do. So I mashed together two different calls here, but the first one obviously was the beer walk-in I went out after the on-call Tech had put refrigerant in the system to go find the refrigerant leak and then obviously found the leak on the Schrader. Now it's funny because like I thought about it and it's like it actually was the Schrader on this one, right? But there's a Common Thread that when people go out to do leak searches, you know and they have a hard time finding it. They always blame it on the schraders.

Um, it's not very often that it's actually the Schrader that's the cause, especially of large leaks. Okay, but in this case it was now. um, we I went ahead and replaced the Schrader I did a hot swap I pumped it down to a low level pressure and then you know, changed it. Obviously like you guys saw, You got to be careful because especially when I had the system pressures equalized.

if I'd have tried to pull that Schrader out or uh, even the cap off I Think it would have been hard to get the cap back on because it would have been a pretty big pressure coming out of it. So obviously using your senses when you're doing things right, So as I'm unscrewing the cap and it starts building or the pressure starts rushing out and it's getting stronger and stronger, it's like hey, stop what you're doing, go pump the system down. It's not just as easy as I thought it was going to be right. Um, obviously if you do pump the system down and pull atmosphere into the system right, you want to make sure that you do a proper evacuation and you change the liquid line filter dryer.

Always okay. Anytime you open up a system, it's a proper practice to change the liquid line filter dryer because especially in this system that has Polyoester oil, there's the potential of that oil absorbing moisture. And then once moisture actually gets into polyester oil oil, it's almost impossible to truly dehydrate that oil. It's really difficult.

you can do your best, but it's never going to be absolute perfect. So anyways, we went ahead and took care of that, got the system back up and running, all was well and then actually a couple months later had another service call and it actually wasn't on the Beer Walk and it was on something else that was going off on high head pressure and what had happened was the rack, the bearing had failed and the on one of the on the blower shaft basically and that that swamp cooler was just a trash swamp cooler. Those things with as much as it runs or swamp cooler or evaporative cooler. We basically changed those every two years and you know it.

Just it is what it is. It's almost like a consumable. So uh, I went ahead and took all the panels off the rack on that service call and then just let it breathe the outside air and then obviously replace the swamp cooler put it back on. So I Talked about my grand Plan Customers going through a remodel right now.

so eventually we're going to pull everything out of that rack and basically make it obsolete. That is the plan eventually. So we'll get some proper condensing units up there and build a you know, mini rack next to it on maybe some two by sixes or something or four by sixes and you know and then have a permanent place for all the refrigeration equipment. So the reason why they have that rack is because all those condensing units in there are really meant to be indoor condensing units.

They're not weatherproof. They don't have weather covers and dog houses on them. Also though, they're sized accordingly to the temperature that the The Rack maintains. Where that location is at, they regularly get 115 to 120 degrees ambient for a couple months of the year, so you have to size your equipment for that right? to save money though, and to save energy.

Oftentimes if you put it in an enclosure like that and then you put an evaporative cooler on it, you could reduce the the size of the equipment based off of the fact that it's not really ever going to see 115 to 120 degree ambient. If we put that evaporative cooler on there. we can probably size that equipment for like an 80 to 85 degree ambient because that's what it'll typically maintain inside that rack with that evaporative cooler blown across it. Now, of course, you know there can be an argument to be made that it's not as energy efficient, but this is a very, very old Legacy system and obviously, like I said, we have plans on eliminating it completely eventually.

but for now, we had to get it back up and running. So we also put the swamp cooler on there and all as well. Now, uh, that location. We actually have a lot more work coming there too.

We're going to be changing a package unit, changing another evaporative cooler on the roof. I've got a lot of stuff going on right now, so let's just hope we get to it in a timely fashion. All right. I Really do appreciate you guys making it to the end of the video again.

It's kind of crazy that you guys like to listen to the ramblings of my brain as I you know, work my way through these service calls, but it's really cool. It's neat to see all the feedback I Do appreciate it all, so thank you guys very much. If you haven't already, please consider subscribing to the channel. Uh, definitely helps it out.

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Thank you so very much and we will catch you on the next one. Okay.