Well well, well, here we are here. We are again on a Saturday talking about air conditioning myths and controversies of all things, thanks for thanks for joining me here. I appreciate it. Let's see here, maybe maybe you care to see me probably not but too bad.

I got a haircut a little bit of a quarantine haircut in case you can't tell, but we're gon na talk about some quick controversy. These are not the these are not the heavy-hitting controversies, but these are some that showed up on the list on Facebook. If you have any controversies that you would like us to to hit upon then join the HVAC school Facebook group, it is our super secret society. We have a.

We have a secret handshake, a secret hug that we're we don't use right now. Neither of those right now, the only virtual versions of them so yeah everybody who's in the chat, feel free to chime in as we go at the end, I'm gon na bring chat up on the screen and we'll answer some questions or get some of your feedback. If you disagree with my conclusions here, so we're gon na do this quickly, though, because we're not gon na we're, not gon na drag these things out too much. As I am known to do so, first thing: do we break our or why that is the controversy, and you do have some different opinions about this, whether to break our or why out there.

So here's the first thing to consider that maybe you haven't considered and that is that when you break are you have a higher current load, so you're breaking more current and does that matter? Well, we'll talk a little bit in a second about why that might potentially matter or it may not depends on the application - let's go ahead and get rid of this here. So if you take a look at this kind of typical connection diagrams here, one of them is from rector seal. A lot of you are familiar. They make a lot of switches in the one at the bottom is from a particular diversitech switch, so you'll notice that one of them is suggesting that you break why to the condenser, and one is suggesting that you break red.

Now, if you read into the data generally they'll tell you you can do either/or, but when you break are you are braking at higher current and so what happens when you brake at higher current? You do get a little bit more of an arc in that switch. At least potentially now you have time delays, so you know, but then you also have a little higher current moving through the switch, and so it's more likely to cause the switch to fuse. Somebody says I thought we were talking over current. We are gon na talk over current.

Give me a second here. The next thing is to break ARRA. Why is, do you want a blank stat or not in the old school way of doing this? We kind of some people like to blanked that some didn't. I was in the camp that would always argue that a blank stat was a good thing, because you wanted the customer to know you wanted them to know that something was wrong, and so they would call sooner rather than later, especially since condensate overflow, you know, can Be a pretty severe problem now obvious if it's tripping the switch likely not causing too much damage or anything.

But let's say it's in a secondary pan and a horizontal application. You really don't want that water sitting there for a long period of time. So I'm I'm a little more prone or I was a little more prone to say, break our and and blunt and blank the stat. Now we have all these battery thermostats and so then the question became you know.

If you, if you have a battery thermostat, do you leave the batteries out so that that way the thermostat will go blank and I've I've been on both sides of the fence. With this again we're talking residential basic stuff. Here, I've been on both sides. Defense of this, and now I come into the side of the camp that says, put the batteries in, and the reason is, is that, as you have thermostats that have more and more settings, you run the risk of it losing those settings when you have power off, But even more than that, the customer just has the assumption that if it's supposed to have batteries it needs to have batteries in it, and I've seen nuisance service calls just associated with customers getting cranky because you don't put the batteries in.

So I'm on the I'm. On the side of things currently in our market that we break our and we leave the batteries in so what happens is, is the equipment goes off? The blower goes off and the condenser goes off now. The question is: do you want the blower to not in our market? I don't want the condenser cycling with the blower staying on under those conditions, because you're gon na get really what will happen if you break why condenser will go off, you know the blower will keep running. It may dry out the drain pan a little bit and then it may uh.

Oh YouTube, saying it's not getting enough. Give me one second here. Let me check on something here. Bear with me one second here yeah: I'm not sure why I'm not sure why YouTube's complaining at me here anyway, we'll just we'll just keep going um, let's go ahead and bring this up real, quick and just see if I can make that work.

Bear with me. Yeah, I'm not fully sure why YouTube's griping at me here. This is partially a test run for my livestream later today. It's real quick! Is anybody having issues with the screen going in and out on you? Let me know real, quick, all right, fair enough, I'm not exactly not exactly sure but anyway I'll just keep going all right.

So so my reasoning for breaking red is because I want the blower to go off. I don't want it. Reading that condensate. That's in the drain pan and then potentially causing high humidity or having it keep doing that.

I would rather it go off because I want the customer to know more quickly. That's all pretty straightforward. I mean the sort of decision making is. Is it's pretty straight forward? The question then becomes: is there more to it and there is actually more to it, and it goes to the first point that I'm just made here, which is that breaking R has a higher current load.

Here's something that I found in some of the notes from diversitech, which is interesting as we have more and more communicating systems you're, actually not breaking our or why you're breaking their proprietary connection or putting a call in the proprietary connection. So a common one is, like carrier, uses the G terminal, and so you can set up the G terminal as sort of your condensate overflow point and so, and so that's something to consider. But but diversitech saying here is that they were actually running into cases where the switch being used in the float switch was actually not functioning properly with a communicating type signal, and so they actually said that, if you're having issues with the test where it doesn't shut, The system off, then they want your wiring it through a relay like a 9340 9380 type relay, which is interesting and kind of, tells us a little bit something about how the switches are in float switches. I think they call them reed switches and that they really don't necessarily make or break the connection in the same way and with the same gapping that we would think of when we think of a like a 9340 or a contact or whether there's points really go Open and closed, and because of that, that causes an issue and that issue that we've been seeing our cases where float switches are staying stuck closed.

Now, that's not specifically with this communicating system thing, but this is just an indication that obviously, if it's making and breaking properly with the contacts in a relay and it's not making and breaking with the contacts in the float - switch that those contacts aren't providing the same Level of clearance and sort of make and break the reliability. Let's see here so the question is: are connected flood sensors potentially better. The reason why I like connected flood sensors is you can do a lot more with them and you get a lot more data out of them, and so, if you take a Wi-Fi connected flood sensor, I'm using one I think the name of it is sensibo. This is the Wasserstein.

You can connect these up and actually use a connected relay through something like apple, homekit or alexa, or something like that to make and break shut off the equipment. But then it also provides this alarm. It can be audible and notifies your phone that that's what's happening and you can do setup the same thing with a lot of communicating systems. But I particularly like these because they're battery-powered and you can put them wherever you want to put them and you can put multiples in and you don't have to worry about how they're wired and you don't have to worry about the making and breaking so so that To me is that to me is pretty pretty important.

I keep getting. Somebody keeps asking a question about the HVAC school app crashing all the time. Yes, we're having issues with the app right now. You can read all of the tech tips and listen to all the podcasts by just going in your browser and typing in HVAC, our school comm we're having a problem with the app it's a free app.

I'm sorry that it's not always working perfect for you we're working on it, but we know the issue and it's probably in an Android app just want to get that out of the way, because the questions keep coming alright. So I prefer I actually prefer looking at using some of these connected type Wi-Fi flood sensors in the future. I think these could be the future to kind of solve a lot of these problems, as well as notify us notify us better, and then you can break whatever circuit. You want to break, but again to answer the initial question.

I'm a fan of breaking our keep in mind that these things don't open and close with, maybe the clearances that were used to in a relay, but now actually I wanted to show. I guess I didn't include this here. It is here, here's the slide. One thing: that's really interesting about these: a lot of these switches is that they're only rated for one and a half or 1.25 amps on the switch, and so, if we think about that, let's go back oops, let's go back and think about a 5 amp fuse.

So a 5 amp fuse is designed, in least in our minds, to protect the low voltage circuit to protect the wires and everything in the low voltage circuit. But does it protect the transformer and the answer is no, it doesn't fully protect the transformer. If you look at a typical for TV, a transformer which is what we see in residential applications, most often for TV, a transformer divided by 24 volts that gives us what the rated amperage on the secondary of that transformer is 40 divided by 24 equals one point: Six, six, six six! So that's roundup, one point: six, seven amps and so we're putting either a three amp or a 5 amp fuse in this thing, and it isn't necessarily protecting that that secondary. So what is it protecting? Well, it's protecting the wires.

But if we were to run loads on this 40 amp transformer that were in excess of one point, six, six amps for any significant amount of time, the transformer could fail, and the same thing is also interestingly true, because whereas this is rated at one point, six Six amps, if you go down to the two, this load switch here, which is very common for these. It's actually rated to carry one point, two: five amps, that's what it's designed for and you'll see some that are a little more than that. You'll see some that are a little less. Actually I don't know of any other a little less, but we'll see some that are rated for a little bit more.

But that's an interesting, interesting thing that we've got on float switches which makes me think that the this is an application where you would want to only break. Why? If you have a system that, for whatever reason you've got, maybe you're running some accessories on it, which generally you should run a secondary transformer for that purpose, but depending on everything, you've got going on in the low voltage secondary side of that transformer, you may need To you may need to look at either putting another secondary transformer and/or only breaking. Why, in those particular applications, because the result is such a disastrous one, which is that, when those contacts carry more than the rated amps, they end up fusing shut and when they feel shut, the system doesn't shut off in an overflow condition and that's a very serious Problem so when we look at the common misunderstanding that you can run a low voltage secondary of a transformer at five or three amps, because that's what the fuse carries well, now we're really going to run the risk of not only burning up transformers but also fusing Our low voltage, safeties and so or in this case our float switches, are over flow switches, whatever you want to call them and that's the reason why I coupled these two myths together, so myth one is, and it's not really a myth. It's just a controversy.

Do we break Y or R and then the second is about? Does the fuse protect the transformer and the answer does it doesn't? It also doesn't protect the contacts in the in the float switch? So an interesting thing also that I've noticed and - and I talked to actually Joe Shearer's in the chat - and I talked to him about this once - but you'll also notice that on most transformers that we see they are rated at 240 volts. This is a multi-tap primary transformer, but they're rated at 240, and most of them that i've looked at are rated at 240. But what's interesting is that equipment itself is actually rated at 230. You see 230 here, let's see where this is that's the compressor but 230.

Here this is a 230 volt, so you see they rate equipment at 230 and they write transformers at 240, which to me, is just an interesting. It's kind of interesting reality when they talk about over-voltage and under-voltage and what ends up happening in a lot of cases and joe had actually seen this, and maybe you can mention this Joe, but some cases where the low voltage was having issues the controls were having Issues when the utility was driving up the voltage - and I think he had said that he had seen a transformer that was actually rated at 230 rather than 240, and that would definitely do it. If you had a incoming voltage, that would say you know 240 or 250, or something like that now, your secondary voltage is also gon na be higher because that's how it transformed her works. When you increase on the incoming side of the transformer the primary side, you also increase the voltage coming out of the secondary.

If you had significant over voltage that could be causing the problem that we were that he was seeing with with the low voltage circuit. So answer to the question: the fuse doesn't protect the transformer cuz, the transformer. If it's for TVA is only rated at one point: six: seven! If it's got 24 volts coming off the secondary, that's all it's rated at and secondly, the one thing we do need to look at, even though I'm a fan of breaking red, because I do want the blower to go off, you may have some areas where people Don't care if you're working in a furnace market, where you're really not running air conditioning very much and you don't really maybe it's dry, and so you don't care about Reeve, apparate, Amoy sure than braking. Why it's probably fine! I'm interested I'm gon na open up chat here and you guys can tell me your opinions and your thoughts on what we're covering here in just a second.

But those are my conclusions, but I'm very interested in the current rating of the contacts on a lot of these float switches. Because what I'm seeing is is that they're generally well under the fuse rating of the of the circuit itself, which means that potentially, you could overload the contacts resulting in a pretty significant problem when those contacts fuse and then the thing doesn't open up. When you have an over phone, you have a flood type of situation, so I'm gon na go ahead and now open chat. I did want to mention quickly.

We are gon na do more of these. This is kind of my first test one in this vein. So it's a little choppy there, I'm still working on my home internet and YouTube. So thanks for bearing with me on that, but the way to make sure that you are notified is to subscribe to the channel and click the bell.

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It's on my brand, we're doing something with speed, clean and that's on their brand. So you have to follow their rules, but if it's on the HVAC school brand, I'm going to put it on the YouTube channel either live or or pre-recorded. So that's the way to get notified whenever we have something new, just like you did here. So let's go ahead and open up chat and I want to get your thoughts you guys have been chatting let's see here.

What, if you have a 90 plus furnace breaking, are, should be the norm. Yes, that's a that's a good point and I I don't think in terms of 90 Plus furnaces. But yes, if you have condensate coming off of the furnace itself, then you definitely need a break are and breaking are. Is my standard way of doing it anyway? So yes, that is that's definitely true.

Let's see, we are the only reason I put in a secondary transformer in there is, if I had a longer run for voltage reasons so you're saying put a secondary transformer and in order to boost up the voltage due to a long run, you're really putting in Another transformer I'm talking in terms of if you are low voltage loads are greater, and so the VA of the transformer won't handle the low voltage load. So, for example, if you put in a UV light a 24 volt UV light or a zone damper system that had you know, obviously it's going to have its own feed that would need either its own transformer or a bigger transform with a higher VA rating, because You can't exceed that one point: six, seven amps for that for TV, a transformer. Why not make the water switches with higher contact ratings? Well, that's that, and there are some out there that are you just have to pay attention to it. That's that's all! I'm saying joe says: yes, Rheem has 230 volts in some models and I had almost 29 volts at 251 incoming.

This is really key here, and this is kind of what I was trying to point out. I don't and the equipment I work on. I don't see this regularly, but if you have a 230 volt second, our primary transformer and you've got 250 volt incoming. You could have very high secondary voltage and that could cause pretty significant problems.

Honeywell t6 is annoying when it loses powers. What frank says yeah so that and that's a reason why i don't like losing the power to the thing. Let's see here, joe's upset that honeywell stopped making the five thousand yeah, i'm i'm a fan of the five thousand. I like i like the five thousand.

He said they started again now that's good, and that is still one of my favorite kind of base. Thermostats used it for so long. They said somebody says we use 1.7 amp fuses on 40 VA. Well.

I have never seen that before. I would love to see a model number or something on a 1.7 amp fuse blade type fuse, but yeah. That's very interesting. If the system has a 3 amp fuse, but you put a 5 amp fuse, will it cause an issue down the road it could I mean, generally speaking, you're gon na see 3 amp fuses on equipment where the controls, the board, whatever require a 3m fuse to Properly protect it, like, I said it's not like you're gon na overload your transformer.

It's not like you're gon na run two amps on, and it's gon na burn out like that, but it will decrease its life and potentially cause it to fail. So the point is: is that a 40v, a transformer 24 volt secondary, is only designed for one point, six seven amps Keith says I always broke our so that it shuts the system down totally immediately or near immediately indicates an issue, and that's exactly it. I would much rather see it done that way and in fact, if they're gon na do anything with fuses, I would rather, they decrease the size so that they blow quicker. But then you're gon na have more nuisance, blowing fuses and that sort of thing, because even in your secondary, even the low voltage side of your system, you have inductive loads that draw a spiked current initially as they're energized.

Even things like you know, solenoids, you know they're gon na draw a slightly higher current and you could have these little Peaks and putting it too small of a fusion could cause that a lot of communicating systems that are out now have a dedicated terminal on the Control board for safeties, so you get an error message on the stack yeah and that's and that's good, but what I was pointing out is: if you look at that, diversitech guide. It's saying that in some cases, those the switches that they're using actually aren't working properly with communicating systems - and my guess would be that they're - probably not making completely they make it sound like they're, not breaking, which seems unlikely. But but I don't know, maybe there's some situation which that's possible, but on those switches the point is they don't have that open and close clearance like we're used to on a contact or a relay, and because of that they act a little. They can act.

A little odd, I think, that's it for now. So that's it! That is my that's my myth. I prefer to not a myth. The controversy I prefer breaking our, but I also want you to watch out for those float switches and making sure that they are actually making a breaking the circuit and to answer the question that was coming in during the chat.

Why isn't the app working well on Android, especially we know we have issues it's already in the pipeline to fix it.