Ah, it's time to chill out and get ready for a mediocre. Qa live stream if you're old enough grab yourself your favorite adult beverage and if you're not stick with apple juice, put your feet up and relax. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat and now, let's queue up the intro music hello. How are you guys doing this evening? Hopefully you guys are all doing well.

It is warming up a little bit here in Southern California. Our temperature. Today was like right in the low 60s and I think we drop into the like high 40s tonight and then I think, later on throughout the week, we're gon na hit the 70s. So this is our slow climb out of our what we call our winter, which I realize is nothing compared to you guys in the Midwest and back east or up north.

You know our winters are super mild, but this is our slow climb by April and May we'll hit typically about a hundred to 110 degrees and then come June July August will be 110 115 degrees ish. You know, depending on the severity of the summer, that we get so, but hopefully you guys are doing well. For those of you, I want to kind of introduce myself. I've been trying to do this more often for those of you that are new, ok, my name is Chris.

I'm an HVAC are service technician, business owner and I make these videos on YouTube to just share the little bit of knowledge that I have ok. I started making these videos about a year and a half ago, I think, ish. I think that's what it was and never really anticipated this happening doing what it's doing with this channel, it's kind of it's very humbling. I do have to say that very interesting.

So you know that's who I am and that's what I'm doing, and the whole point of this stream is, is to answer the questions that I get and try to answer the live questions to there in the live chat for those of you that don't know the Youtube chat if you're watching on your phone there's a button that says live chat if you're watching on a computer. You should obviously see the chat popping up if you're watching on your TV, you're kind of Sol, because I don't think there's a way to watch the chat when you're on a TV other than looking at your phone and watching the chat. I know that may sound weird to some of you guys, but at my house we typically we haven't had network TV for years, so we watch YouTube on our TV all the time when I watch a live stream I'll go into my office just so that I Can participate in the chat but anyways um now that I kind of go off on those little tangents. I tend to do that.

A lot too so got a couple things on my list right here see a lot of familiar faces or familiar Green names. I guess I should say down in the chat, so hey to everybody really appreciate you guys taking the time to come in here again very humbling that you guys actually take your time and come listen to me, jabber for an hour and a half or whatever it. Usually lasts so definitely want to cover some topics and then I'll definitely get to you guys's questions in the chat. Okay, do me a favor? So what happens when I'm doing this is I'm focusing on the camera and I'm focusing on my monitor in front of me.

I'm I need to set up another webcam, so you guys can see what I'm talking about, but I'm focusing on my monitor in front of me, and it has my list of things that I need to talk about every once in awhile. I glance over at the chat, so if you guys do put a question in the chat, do me a favor, please put it in caps lock. My moderator Justin's in here he's gon na help me to try to make sure that I see them, but things may go by because I tend to go off on tangents and talk for five six minutes. And then the chat has gone by like crazy, and I don't see your question anymore.

You're not gon na hurt my feelings: you're, not gon na piss me off post it again. Okay, I'll, be honest with you. If it's a question, I'm not gon na answer. I will usually say I'm not going to answer that.

Okay, so feel free to keep posting it. That way. I can try to get to it. If I miss your question during the stream throughout the stream, my moderator bot is posting.

My email address. It's HVAC our videos at gmail.com feel free to send me an email, okay. Some of the questions that I'm covering today are because of emails, and I try to go over them. Okay, so really appreciate it, and thanks so much for everybody.

That's coming in here, um! Oh great one, I'm gon na I'm going to answer that one right now I happen to look over and I saw something Isaiah. I don't know how to pronounce your name and I'm sorry, I'm a. I don't know how to pronounce your name, but your last name but anyways great question Union versus non-union guys. I have no opinion either way do what's best for you and your own.

Okay, I live in Southern California. We are not a union strong state. Therefore, it wouldn't be the best decision for my family to go Union okay, but I have a very good friend, that's Union and he loves it. So I have no opinion either way: there's good and Bad's to both Union and non-union, there's good and Bad's to union workers and non-union.

Okay, there's lazy union workers, there's lazy, non-union, there's amazing union workers; there's amazing non-union workers. It's both ways, guys it's really about we're! All humans, you know and nobody's perfect right, so whatever is best for you and your own. I suggest doing it if you live in a state or a certain part of your state that is Union strong and that's the way to go then go for it. Okay, there's gon na be good things and bad things here in Southern California.

Union work for the most part, not knocking anybody, but union work for the most part is gon na get you government jobs, it's gon na, get you institutional jobs and it's gon na get. You big like contract work, but it's not gon na get you into my little niche, which is restaurants for the most part, you're not going to get into restaurants. If you union - and unless you work up in like San Francisco or something like that, and even there it's kind of hard so anyways, I have no preference either way whatever is best. Okay, whoever offers the best training and offers the best benefits package, but understand something.

Just because someone says that they're gon na give you this great benefits package, can they follow up with the work? Are you gon na stay employed and that goes for union or non-union? Okay? So I have no preference either way same thing or I guess I should say you know in the past. I realized that unions used to be way super strong, okay and in some parts of the country, they're not as strong anymore, and you know we really really needed unions to protect the workers. Okay, it's become a lot easier for workers to be non-union and still have good benefits. So again it's just whatever's best for you, okay, you know some places.

You know I would consider in the past, and even so today you know the Union tended usually offered the best training packages as far as proper apprenticeships. Right I mean even the term, I think oh, no, not the term but anyways. They offered proper apprenticeships and ways to grow within the industry. Better.

Okay, but again it's all regionally specific. You know I mean here in SoCal: it's you know it's kind of a give and take so no opinion either way, just whatever is best for you, okay, so I want to jump into this right off the bat and answer an interesting question that I had don't Take offense to the way that I'm gon na answer this question: just listen to the words that I'm gon na tell you okay. So I got a question from someone and they said how do you determine pricing for a business and this particular person that emailed me said because and I'm and again I could be paraphrasing his email and I could be taking it wrong. So again, I'm not digging at anybody, but his email implied that he's never worked for a company, but he's done HVAC for five years now.

The way that I understand that email is more than likely right after school, he started his own business and or whatever reason started his own business. So he's asking me how to price you know: expansion, balance walk-ins, what kind of stuff that is! Okay, so I'm gon na answer this, the best that I can first off, I don't quite agree with someone without proper experience, starting a business. Okay, it's very easy to hurt yourself and to hurt your competition right and what I mean by hurt is underpriced. Everybody in your area to get the work, but then you're really hurting yourself in the long run.

You may make a couple bucks by being the cheapest person in town, but are you really making money when you look at the big picture when you look at how the business works overall, you know, are you really gon na be doing well or are you gon Na be so busy that you can't keep up and your business fails, because you can't keep up with the demand or you price it so low that you're not making a profit. So yes, you're busy! And yes, however many employees or just yourself, is going crazy. Putting out fires, fixing things and I'll cut all sorts of things, but you're not making a profit. So I like again, I'm not digging out anybody, but in my opinion, you need to work for a company for a certain amount of time.

You need to learn how business works. Okay, business is not something that you just pick up and jump into unless you're some crazy, crazy, smart unicorn, I mean really. Business is difficult, running a business by itself. You know I really don't get into the business aspects of things, because I don't have confidence in my ability to discuss how I run my business and all that stuff.

Okay, so I focus on the technical side because that's my specialty. Luckily, I have a partner that I work with. The partner happens to be my dad, but I have a partner and we equally share the business responsibilities and my focus is the service side, the company side, the customer relations you know, so I really think that a person needs to have proper experience before they start A business now: okay, in your situation, the person that email me well, you don't have proper experience, you're up creek. You need to know what to do.

The best advice I can give you is read every single business book out there take every waking minute and read how to run a business. Okay, my buddy tersh Blissett over at the service business mastery podcast does a really good job of talking about running a business of exposing his mistakes of showing the way that he does it, and also of interviewing other business owners. And/Or, coaches and different people like that that helped to increase the education and let people know the proper ways to approach certain situations in subjects. So I'd highly suggest bud that you reach out to my buddy tersh again: tersh bliss it at the service business, mastery podcast and i'm gon na go ahead and put his email in here and for those of you guys that have business questions or are interested and And maybe he wouldn't answer your question, but maybe he can direct you to the right people? Okay, so I'm gon na post that in the the chat right now feel free to send tersh an email - and I did clear this with him.

So he is cool with me putting his email in there. He does a really good job of you know bringing that side of the trade to the social media outlets. You know he does some YouTube stuff, but more of his stuff, his podcast form, but definitely a great person to reach out to and if he doesn't and II have. The answer like I said he can direct you.

You know towards the right place to get the answer. Okay, but the best thing I could say is is read books and again, there's no perfect way for every single person to start a business or run a business. Okay, my method of running a business is to not leverage myself to run that business. Okay, I am not perfect and I'm not saying this is gon na work forever, but we run a cash business right.

We really, you know, we have credit at supply houses, but we don't use it. Okay. We we basically put everything on a credit card. We pay that credit card off every single month, so we don't take out business loans.

Now I realize some people have to do that and that's just the way you have to do it, but that's how we choose to do it. So it's gon na be different for every single person, okay and every single situation. But whatever you do, I can guarantee you this. It is not a good idea to leverage your life to run your business, meaning that don't mortgage your house, don't mortgage your cars.

You know: don't do all this different stuff to keep your business afloat or to start your business, because what happens? If something fails, yes, it may work out and you may hit the lottery and your business may succeed and you may make a bunch of money. But there's a really good chance and the odds are against you without working. So if you leverage your life to start a business or run a business you're setting yourself up for failure, in my opinion, okay, but again reach out to my buddy tersh. Maybe he can give you guys a hand.

Okay, all right. I'm gon na look at the chat here and see what I'm missing and then I will there. You go man, someone already got the coot-tha tombstone quote. That's awesome that one was for you, Joe HVAC.

Are north, I was hoping you would guess tombstone, because you're supposed to have watched that movie already Joe. Have you watched tombstone? Yet we that's that's an inside joke between HVAC north, my and and a bunch of other YouTube guys about yeah anyways. So that's just funny, but yes, the movie is tombstone one of my favorite favorite movies. That's an all-time American classic right there.

So let me see what else I got did I already talk about the calls for last week. No, I haven't, and I'm about to get to that right now, so the two videos that I released from last week, first off, I did kind of a bonus episode. I do to another HVAC our life episode, and that was the videos that I'm doing with my wife. The reason why we're doing those videos was originally and then it kind of turned into something else, but originally I was getting all these comments.

You know in the past saying you know: how do you do it? You, you seem to have everything made you seem to be. You know this great technician. You seem to be well-rounded, I'm not guys, I'm a person just like everybody else. I screw up.

I'm diagnosed a bunch of different things. You know I'm self diagnosed a bunch of different things, I'm human, I make mistakes and I screw up a lot of stuff. Okay, the one thing I will say that I think doesn't make me better than anybody, but one thing that helps me to be the best that I can be is the fact that I learned from my mistakes, or at least I try to, and I try to Recognize my mistakes before I get called out on some of them: okay, so the HVAC our life series just is kind of talking about some of the things that my wife and I did because my thought was, you know I make these videos based off of the Mistakes that I made the service call videos right and the little tips that I've learned. So why not share the little bit of knowledge that I have about the way that we run our lives, not saying that my way is right for everybody, but you know what works for me.

The biggest thing about the the the HVAC our life, video that we talked about was our finances right, and that was my wife and I got married at a very young age and we made a lot of mistakes. We made silly mistakes. We bought a house in 2004 right before the market crashed. We paid way too much money money that we shouldn't have been able to be loaned.

Essentially, because we were, we were given an interest-only adjustable rate stated income, meaning that we didn't have to put any money down. We didn't have to prove our income, all that stuff right and we never should have had that loan and for whatever reason we didn't lose. Our house, but a lot of our friends and family and neighbors, did because they were in the same situations as us. You know I thought, because the bank was gon na loan me money that I could spend it, but I didn't have the money so anyways.

That's why we make these videos is to share the little bit about. You know the mistakes that we've made and we covered some of that stuff. I covered talking about in some of those videos with my wife, I'm talking about my wife's illness that she has, which is a hypothyroidism specifically Hashimoto's disease, and mine is just you know, just normal mental stuff that everybody goes through, that a lot of people hide, but I'm very open about it because I realized that hiding my anger problems and my anxiety ended up, causing more anger, problems and more anxiety. So I just share that little bit about myself, not saying that my way of solving things which was going down the path of seeing a therapist and taking medicine is not necessarily the right way for everybody, but but just discussing that kind of stuff.

So we're trying to I I don't know if it's are correctly a word, but I try to humanize myself and make myself look vulnerable and show my mistakes and my weaknesses. Okay, so enough about the HVAC our life series, the next video that we released was the video on the qrc walk in install that I did. Alright, we had a beer walk in that wasn't working properly talked to customer. I think I made a video while back the condenser was all rotted out Tom.

The customer went ahead and replaced the equipment and we went did an install. Everything was going smooth on that one it was. It was awesome, I mean other than finding a mistake with the electrical when I had another technician, miss wire, the contactor, he wired the line voltage into the load side of the contactor. So you know - and I pointed that out you know people make mistakes.

I talked to him about it. He learned from it and but it's really important to when you're starting the equipment up. You don't just turn it on and walk away. Just because it's running you don't just clear the sight, glass and call it a day.

You stop, you wait, you do a proper startup, you do a proper commissioning. You check the vitals, you test the limit switches, you test the pressure controls and because I was doing that stuff, I was able to find a problem. I was able to find that the the compressor contactor was incorrectly wired, because when I bumped the system down to check the receiver level, you know it didn't it didn't turn off and in that situation had I not waited for it to turn off or not checked. The the pressure control I cleared, the sight glass I could have just walked away and then maybe a would've been at wal would have been a call back.

It would have been an issue, it would have had a nice step, walking cooler, probably well, actually, no, because I had a solenoid valve, but eventually we wouldn't ruin the compressor. So you know going through your equipment and being thorough is very important right. Another really important thing is understanding the sequence of operation right when we're doing preventative maintenance is that's the best time to learn the sequence of operation, of course, talking to the company that you work for making sure they're. Ok with you spending in some extra time play with things feel things watch the unit operate, learn how it works.

Ok, when I'm doing that install, I have no business installing that equipment, and I'm saying this to all you general contractors out here, they'll watch this right. I don't think many do, but I've come across many walkins that were installed by general contractors. Just because they have quick connects doesn't mean that you can do twisted on and started up right. You need to have the proper people installing this equipment.

Same thing goes for a general contractor that that just uses his handyman to do the plumbing. You know what you need to read the instructions. You need to know how systems work you need to know sequence of operation before you just start plumbing things in the one of the biggest things that I see, and I have videos on it where ice machines are installed improperly drain lines are literally plugged up solid Because they weren't piped correctly, ironically, I have a video, I don't know the title of it, but it was it's probably one of my most popular videos where I have a brush that I shoved up into a nice machine tube and it looked like a poop stick When it came out anyways, that's one of my most popular videos and on the back of it, I pulled it out because the drain was plugged up and there's a big fat sticker on the back of the ice machine that says how to plumb it and how To put the p-trap and I'm looking at it when I had to fix it, I'm just looking at that sticker going the guy couldn't see the giant sticker like it. We're not talking a tiny and sticker we're not talking an instruction manual.

There's a fat sticker on the back that says this is how you pipe the drain and it's like geez people can't see that. So, in my opinion, that's someone who doesn't know what's going on. You know just performing a task because it looks like they can just throw PVC on something anybody conclude PVC together right, but there's an art to what we do so, following the instructions. Understanding the sequence of operation is very, very important.

Okay, I'm gon na get to the chat and then I'll look and see some of my other things I got to talk about so did that quick qrc unit have a time delay on startup, Oscar, so yeah the qrc units, okay, so, first off, let's explain what The qrc is so many years ago, heat craft, a refrigeration manufacturer, one of the bigger ones out there, probably if not arguably one of the biggest of pre-made refrigeration equipment, they've bought basically well. They became heat craft when they bought almost every single company and they merged together and become this giant conglomerate. That's actually owned by another conglomerate, and now did you know he. Craft is actually owned by Linux industries now or whatever they're all one big company now very interesting, but anyways.

He Kraft came out with a beacon system many many years ago. The beacon system is a fully communicating system where the condensing unit communicates with the evaporator downstairs. All kinds of safety controls, electronic expansion valves. It was way before its time very advanced system.

Well, one of the complaints. This is my understanding and I'm paraphrasing the description that was given to me, but one of the things was was the beacon system was a little too complicated and people wanted the efficiency of the beacon system without having to go with full communication and all the fancy Stuff, so they made the qrc the quick response controller. What the quick response controlled system does. Thank you very much chad for that super chat.

That's awesome and i really appreciate it, but you're cool dude, dude thanks man, so on the qrc system, basically uses a beacon board, but it doesn't have the communication with the condensing unit on the roof, okay or our downstairs, or whatever it's a self-sustaining system. So it has the electronic expansion valves, it has the temperature sensors. It has the efficiency of the evaporator section with a normal condensing unit. Okay, so learned a lot of lessons on my first couple: q RCS, which I've done quite a few and I've never made the mistake that I've made on this last one but I'll get to that.

But one of the big things about the qrc systems is: you have to make sure that there is no other time delays within the system. So what I mean by that is is if you get a standard heat craft condensing unit, the way that they ship them. Just a dry heat craft condense unit, they come with a defrost clock. Well, if you order it the right way, it comes with a defrost clock and a time delay in it.

You have to take that time to lay out the time delays can't be in the system with the qrc. Thank you very much Joe. I really appreciate you bud you're awesome dude, the qrc systems. You can't have a time delay other than the time delay.

That's already built into the board, okay. So to answer your question, the qrc evaporator controller has a time delay built into the controller, but you have to make sure there's no other time. Delays within the system. The standard heat craft, condensing unit comes with the time delay.

You have to take it out of the picture or you will run into problems. Okay, let me look down and here and see what I'm missing. Okay, I'm gon na keep going you guys if I miss and your questions post it again. Okay, all right! I probably losing track of where I was at, oh so on the qrc, walk and install.

So one of the huge mistakes that I made was. I was following: proper refrigeration practices. I was braising with nitrogen, I pulled a proper vacuum and then I did a pressure test with nitrogen and I made one simple mistake: I pressure test it. I think at 174, psi of nitrogen on the high side in the low side and on the side of the evaporator there's a giant sticker that says, do not pressure test higher than 150 psi.

Now I have heard from a lot of people that the the the I'm brain fart here right now, but the sensors, the pressure sensors on the heat craft units are prone to failure. But in my situation I could only associate the fact that the pressure transducer failed was because I over pressurized the system with nitrogen. Again, don't know if that's the exact cause, but whatever okay, I ended up warranting the part, but when I started it up, I noticed I was going off on low superheat and at first it looked okay. But then, when I went downstairs and checked the pressure at the evaporator and then found that the the actual controllers pressure reading was slightly higher than I think 20 30 psi higher than what I was reading.

I knew I had a problem and luckily, for my sake, my local supply house was still open and they had a pressure transducer in stock, so I was able to swap it out. It wasn't a big deal. The lesson that I learned is it's super easy to pull those pressure transducers off, so every single install. I do from this point forward, I'll just simply unscrew the pressure transducer.

Do my pressure test, do my vacuum and then put the pressure transducer back on. It's that easy, I'm just gon na do that. From now on, I actually have three more installs of the new system. That's replacing the qrc, and that is the intelligent, which is he crafts new fancy system.

I know they keep changing it, but they have an intelligent system. It's supposed to be, I don't know whatever the next best. You know system who knows: it's got all kinds of crap on it, so we'll figure that out too and I'm sure I'll make mistakes on that stuff too, all right, but it's very important to properly Commission stuff. So that way, you can catch any problems that might arise and you can fix them before they become a service call.

So let me see what I missed it in here storm. How do I negotiate with customer to get in when you want most want us in when the kitchen is closed, very early or midnight great question storm, so I run into that all the time I deal with Restaurant refrigeration and most of my restaurants. They want you in at certain hours of the night. Here's the simple thing: I luck out right, my customers.

First off, I don't do very much night work every once in a blue moon. I used to do a lot more, but it's just very it's very difficult. As a contractor to do night work, because when you look at it, let's say you give a guy a night job right for the most part, here's another thing: I don't comfortably like to do night work without having two technicians on-site, because I've heard too many horror Stories of someone getting hurt - and I shouldn't say too many - I've heard one horror story of a gentleman falling off of a ladder and passing away, and they found him the next morning right because he's working at night nobody's calling to check on him. Dude just fell over, I don't know if he hit his head or had his heart attack whatever there could be a wives tale, but that's something that I'm afraid of.

So I don't like to do night work unless I quote it for two people and at overtime rates. I typically don't like to do night work at general rates right because it's difficult and then for the technician that does night work unless he wants to work Friday night, which nobody does or Saturday morning he's ended up being his week is all screwed up. So, let's just say, a technician works a five-day workweek right, but instead he works Tuesday night right well. If he still wants to get that five-day.

Workweek he's gon na have to work another day during that week and nobody wants to work Saturday at straight time. You know so it just it creates a problem, so I really don't care to do night work unless we really really have to but I'll price. My night work at overtime rates, and then I just put it in the customers hands. If you want me to do night work, here's what we do it's going to be this much an hour.

It's gon na require two technicians to do that. Night. Job versus you guys getting in here early and usually what I'll do is I'll talk them in so like, for instance, tomorrow morning I have an early-morning job. I have to change an exhaust fan motor, adding a five horsepower motor to an exhaust fan, and I have to change a VFD.

I know it's gon na. Take me a while, and the customer wants their equipment running by 10:00 a.m. so I have the customer coming in at 6:00. In the morning, xam they're gon na be on site and we're gon na get in there early, and in fact I can't because it's on top of a shopping mall.

I can actually get there earlier, but I just try to coordinate the stuff accordingly and put it in the customers. Hands I'll gladly do the night work if they want to pay the rates we'll deal with it, but for the most part I'd rather not so, hopefully that answers your question there storm all right. Let's see all right, I'm going to go ahead and go back to my list right here: cold rails. I want to talk about cold rails, so I got a question from anyways.

I'm not gon na go into that, but I got a question about how cold rails work when it comes to prep tables and what kind of tips I could give to diagnosing cold rails. Here's the difficult thing, the short in the short answer was every manufacturer makes their own cold rails and they beat to the tune of their own drum, meaning that there's not really one rule of thumb I can give for working on a cold rail system. Okay, the the most common cold rail system is and what we mean by cold rails. You have a prep table that has a refrigerated section down below, but you they have pans up in the top and they want to be able to access the food easily without having to open a door.

And they want that food to stay cold and they don't want to keep a lid on that food. Okay, so what they tend to do is they have a cold, wrap or a cold well, and it has pans set inside of it, and it's refrigerated the way that it's refrigerated for the most part, it's actually a low temp system, but because the food is not Covered on the top, it maintains the proper temperature. Okay. So just barely enough you, you can maintain your food at like 40 degrees.

Okay, one of the biggest problems with cold rails is ambient intrusion right. So you have a kitchen. That's, let's be honest: okay in the summertime, our kitchens, you know, if we're lucky, they're 80 degrees, if not 90 degrees, if you're in a horrible climate. Well, when you have 90 degree ambient air beating down on top of an open pan, that's only refrigerated from the bottom.

We tend to run into a temperature issues right. The surface food is going to be warmer than the food underneath the surface food, so each manufacturer kind of has their own method of combating this problem. The biggest advice I can give when it comes to cold rails is, is you need to reach out to the the manufacturer and learn the sequence of operation and how they design their cold rail to operate? For instance, I'm very very comfortable and deal with the a lot is the Chi RAC blue system, cold rails, okay, the Chi rack blue system uses it's essentially a tiny chiller and it has a condensing unit with a flat plate, heat exchanger and the refrigerant stays within The condensing unit section and there's a small glycol pump and it pumps glycol throughout the refrigerated base section and throughout the refrigerated, cold rail section right and it acts as a chiller. There is no fan motor in the cold rail up top, so it just uses the the surface of the refrigerated space touching the pans and the the cold moving around.

You know that that basically makes the unit operate properly. So there's some other manufacturers like delfield. One of the other manufacturers that I deal with a lot that doesn't have gly or doesn't use a glycol pump, okay, but they actually still use glycol and they're just using it to get even heat transfer basically, and they have a refrigerated pan. That just has a 3/8 copper line.

I just did a video recently dissecting a delfield, so you guys can see how that works, but it's just they make their own evaporator with a copper line wrapped around just to Noel. Basically, and then people put the pans in there and they bring the temperature that down to a certain temperature to allow for the proper temperatures of the box. Now, there's some tips that go specific, which each different cold rail most cold rails out. There are TXV systems so they're more than likely gon na have a receiver.

I don't come across very many cold rails. I used to not as much anymore that what capillary tube okay, they did work, but they were a little bit different, but for the most part we run into TXV systems. So you know you're. Basically, as long as you have a solid column of liquid go into your expansion valve and you're, not overcharged, then what you're gon na do on those cold rail systems, once they're close to being down to temp you're gon na adjust the superheat you need to reach Out to the manufacturer to find out what that superheat is one little tip.

I can give you on a cold rail is that - and this is on a prep table if you have a cold rail in a base section that have the same compressor. So it's a multiplex system. You have one compressor, two solenoid valves, two TX V's, the top sections, one section and the bottoms another often times it will be difficult to troubleshoot the refrigeration section on that cold, rail, okay. So the best bet I can give you is is that when you're diagnosing each individual and the bottom versus the top is to isolate that section, meaning that, if I'm working on the top once I know that the refrigerant charge is correct, I have a clear sight.

Glass, we have the proper sub cooling, whatever it may be. Then I'm gon na turn off the section I'm not working on and I'm gon na diagnose with just the top running, okay or vice versa, just the bottom, because they tend to run into issues where the cold rail will steal the refrigerant. It's it's kind of tricky. You know when it comes to that, but basically just understanding sequence of operation.

The best advice I can give you is reach out to the manufacturer and pick their brain. But if you're gon na call a manufacturer make sure you have your information in front of you? Don't call him and say what do I do? You know call him and say look. This is what I'm observing go to them with some logic and say this is what's happening. This is what I think is happening.

What are your guys thoughts? You know come to them prepared, so that way they can help to answer your questions all right. Let's see what else I got missing in here, I'm not seeing anything yet guys. So if I'm missing your questions, throw them in caps, lock I'll, definitely try to get to them. Okay.

Ah, so I ran into an interesting problem guys we have to use our brains when were when we're dealing with stuff right, and we have to use logic and think about things. What I ran into the other day was my my supplier and I posted something on Facebook. If you follow me, maybe you guys saw the conversation going on, but my supplier, that gives me my r2 90 or sells me my r2 90 refrigerant just changed manufacturers that they supply. Now I heard all kinds of reasons as to why they change, but we're not gon na get into that, but they change manufacturers.

They used to sell me a 14 ounce can of our 290 and now they're selling me an 8 ounce can of our 290. So when my supplier, when I asked him for a can of our 290 and they said well, here's the new can - and I looked at it - I go - that's only 8 ounces and he goes yeah. What's wrong with that, and I said you know that potentially can pose a problem and here's the problem guys have you ever have you ever charged a system? You know with, let's just say whatever refrigerant r22 and you notice that there's a point at which the system won't take any more refrigerant from that cylinder right and if you don't hook up a recovery machine to it, there's always going to be leftover refrigerant within that Cylinder of r22 and the reason why is it? Because there becomes a point when the system pressure, evaporator pressure, suction pressure gets higher than the remaining refrigerant pressure? That's in your tank! Okay! So when you have an 8 ounce can of our 290, I'm not saying it won't work, but you get to a point where it gets very close that you're not going to be able to get that remaining refrigerant. Out of that can and potentially you might not be able to charge your system and the reason why I say that we have a charge limitation in the United States right now on normal archie 90 systems of 150 grams, which i think is like 5.2 ounces.

So if you have an 8 ounce, can we need to put a maximum of 5 point 2 ounces in that system? There's the potential that you're not going to have enough refrigerant in that our 290. Can that only has 8 ounces to get all the refrigerant that you need into the system? So the reason why I'm bringing that up, I realize that you know it might work in some situations, especially if you can warm up the can or it's warmer outside, but the colder that that can gets the harder. It's going to be to drive that refrigerant into the system, so what I want you guys are. What I'm trying to explain is.

Is that I'm trying to think about things before someone just hands me something and says here: this is what you're gon na use. Now I think about it logically and I try to analyze it and I say: wait a minute that doesn't seem like it's gon na work. Now I could be wrong, so I'm open to but III make it a discussion. I talked to the supplier, and I say I don't think this is gon na work, because this is what I'm running into.

What do you guys have you know? What are your? What are your opinions on? What's gon na happen here, you know and then I reach out to other people like I posted on Facebook, and I put it out to the people hey. What are you guys doing in this situation and it doesn't sound like many people have really had the issue. Yet because I think this is a new change, that's happening, so it's an interesting one and it's very important. I try to stress you know looking at the big picture and looking at stuff like this, so that way you could potentially not run into a problem.

Another issue that I'm having you know with the are 290 systems, and I think I pointed it out on my latest. Video is an interesting one, where the scales that were using aren't necessarily accurate enough to measure the refrigerant down to the right measurement. So I think the recent system that I was experiments you know - and I think it took a hundred and thirteen grams and my scale only read in increments of five grams. So basically I had to guess right.

So when I got to 110 grams, I said well, I guess I'm just gon na go to 115 or it was something like that right, so I kind of had to make that guess. So that's another thing too that we got to think about. Maybe that was just my field piece scale that was the problem and I'll reach out to field piece, because I do have context with and then let them know like hey. This is a potential issue.

You know so it's looking at the big picture like that, while we're talking about scales, guys and I'll definitely get to the chat again too, but I'm just gon na keep going on what I'm talking about. But while we're talking about scales, I had an interesting conversation with a service technician the other day and I'm gon na I'm gon na run the scenario in front of you guys and you guys tell me what you think: okay and I'm looking for input from the Chat on this one, because I want to see what you guys his opinions are, so we went to go. Do some work on a nice machine and a service technician recovered the charge out of the ice machine, cool, good stuff. I explained to him that I wanted him to use a scale to weigh the refrigerant charge, okay and to make this make sense.

Actually this wasn't the other day this was a couple years ago and you guys get the drift right so anyways we have a. We recovered the charge right and I had to stress the fact that it's very important that, when we're recovering the charge, guys that you need to make sure you have a scale underneath your recovery, cylinder and here's why we were working on a system that took 12 Pounds of refrigerant it was a Manitowoc ice machine, okay and yeah. If you recover 12 pounds of refrigerant into that recovery, cylinder and it's empty, it's cool! It's a 20! It's it's a 30 pound recovery cylinder, but you quickly learn that that doesn't mean anything. I think you can hold 19 pounds of 404 because it's actually they call it a 30, but it's not so I think you can put 19 pounds of 34 in it or 404.

I believe but anyways. The point that I'm trying to make is, I have come up on many systems that were overcharged and it's very easily to recover the charge and overcharge a recovery cylinder and not realize it. It's very, very important that you don't do that. You don't want to ever put too much refrigerant into a system, because you run the risk of creating an issue right, there's a reason why we can only put so much refrigerant into that cylinder because of safety limits, and they don't want anything to happen.

If the cylinder was to overheat, you don't want it to explode, so it's very important. I explained to the technician that we put a scale underneath there when we're recovering now. Another issue, though, was in the technician: did he put a scale under there? He knew that we recovered the right amount of refrigerant out of the system, but where we ran into the problem was when we were charging the system and when we charged the system, I was charging my system. I weighed the refrigerant in everything was good.

We were working on two ice machines. The other technician was charging his system and before I realized what happened I looked over and I noticed that he was just about done charging his system, but he didn't have a scale underneath his recovery cylinder and I said, wait a minute. What are you doing and he goes well? What do you mean? He goes, I weighed it coming out, so why do I need to weigh it going back in, and I said, okay, I'm gon na. Ask you a question.

I said so. You weighed that gas coming out of that cylinder and he goes yeah and I said how much was there and he said twelve and a half pounds, I believe, is what it was and I go okay great. I said so how much of that refrigerants gon na go back into that ice machine and he goes twelve and a half pounds and I said, are you sure, and he goes yeah? Why and I go have same thing with the are two ninety guys, there's always gon na, be a certain amount of refrigerant left in the system unless the system so big that it can suck all the refrigerant out right, there's always going to be refrigerant leftover in That system, so when we were done charging when he couldn't put any more refrigerant back into that system, we still had to add an extra pound and a half of refrigerant into it to get the proper charge, but because he didn't have a scale underneath it. He didn't know how much extra gas he had to add right, so we ran into a problem so proper refrigeration practices using your scale is super important.

When it comes to charging the customer. We don't estimate on how much refrigerant you used. You know we we actually measure it and we were honest with the customer. So we way a lot of times.

If I'm gon na go charge like an air conditioning system right and let's just say on an air conditioning system, I can use sub coin or superheat. Whatever I'm doing okay, so I will typically weigh the cylinder before I take it up onto the roof and then, when I bring it back down I'll weigh it okay. But if I'm, if I'm weighing the charge back into the system, I'm always going to use a scale, so it's proper it's it's important to understand and in in use our proper refrigeration practices. So that way we can.

You know, make sure that we did everything correctly. Okay, so I guess that really wasn't a question, so I don't know why. I asked the chat that, but it was definitely an interesting problem that we ran into and it's really important that you're using a scale when you're going through that. Okay, let me answer this question right now: Reed, oh, it says how do open air restaurants and their equipment operation compared to standard restaurants, open air restaurants and their equipment operation compared to standard restaurants, yeah so open air restaurants are definitely a new trend.

They're getting more and more popular, I think that engineers and contractors designs, architects, all that fancy stuff aren't really thinking the big picture when they design these open air restaurants or when a restaurant decides to become an open-air restaurant after the and an engineer or an architect Or a general contractor or a mechanical contractor, didn't advise them at the problems they can run into so open air restaurants run into issues down here in Southern California. Open air restaurants are really popular by the beach, because everybody wants that open air feel they want to be by the beach right, where everybody's out there in their bathing suits and they're just walking around in their flip-flops and walking in and out of their place. They want, they don't want people to have to open a door to come into their restaurant, but then they don't understand why they get water dripping from their ceiling when it's really humid outside, or why the refrigeration equipment doesn't work. You know this open-air trend.

Right now is: is it's alright, if it's designed correctly, but even designing it correctly, can lead to problems that people don't realize that other things can happen so open air restaurants, open air equipment? That's another thing, too: a lot of the supermarket's used to have open air equipment that were air curtain systems. Those are even tricky too, because if products not put in there properly, you know it's definitely an interesting challenge, especially in the humid climates for the most part. In Southern California, we don't have to deal with humidity as much, but by the coast we do, but out here in my area, the Inland Empire it's kind of desert II. You know it gets to be 115 degrees.

I don't know I don't care how well your restaurant was designed and open air restaurants not going to do well in 115 degrees. It's not gon na fly, the infiltrating heats just gon na be too much. I mean it's gon na be an issue. So it's definitely a challenge.

Dealing with the open air concepts on an 8-ounce are 290. Can can't you put the can into warm water to aid in charging and yes, HVAC rookie. You can okay, and I have done that. It's just another challenge.

So if you're gon na put the can into warm water, you have to have that warm water on the scale and you it has to be submerged in that warm water, the entire time you're charging it. So what I have done, I have it on video. I think was, I took a pan with water and then I took another pan and put water in that and put the can in between the two pans and put the scale underneath there and had the can sitting in warm water to drive the refrigerant into the System so yes, you can do it, but it just creates another problem with 8 ounces. Let's just take the ounces out right.

Let's look at grams when you're charging in grams. It's it's so easy to make a mistake there. So you have to have everything zeroed out properly and it will work, but there's a lot of thought that has to go into it, and you have to be very precise when you're using an 8 ounce can, if you hook an 8 ounce, can up to a 4 foot refrigerant hose you've got a problem because a lot of that refrigerants gon na get stuck in that hose and not make it into the system too. So it just creates a big headache.

I prefer the bigger cans. I can't wait until they increase the charge limitation or even just the supply houses guy. I prefer what I would love to have like a 20 pound cylinder. I mean I'm not afraid of having our 290, but I know there's a bunch of Department of Transportation rules and all kinds of weird crap about going with a big-ass can of our 290, which just sounds silly but whatever so alright yeah, I see HVAC Artech.

Yes, you could recover the refrigerant out of the cylinder. You could do that, but that's more complexity added to the system and if you were gon na do that you would have had to. I mean it's just another thing you got to do and recovering the refrigerant out of the cylinder. For instance, we use the I have to recovery machines at my shop.

I have the a peon g5 twin and I have the field piece. Mister 45, both of those a substantial amount of refrigerant, gets stuck inside the recovery machine. So when you're trying to get an extra fine, I hope I would be bold and saying this, but I think I'm pretty accurate if you're recovering a pound out of something you're gon na have at least I'd say pretty close on estimating to a half a pound. Stuck inside that recovery machine that you're not going to get out because of the design of the recovery machine, so again you know in that situation you would have to have extra refrigerant in your recovery cylinder to make sure that you get the proper amount into the System, if that makes sense, I don't know if I'm verbalizing what I'm thinking in my head, my head things really weird guys.

So all right, let's see what I missed in here, do I trust that vacuumed recovery tanks are actually clean on the inside. When you pick the exchange, one from the whole set a great question, Dee hard hold on okay. What I have here I happen to have this right here. I was curious about a vacuum cylinder, a cylinder of recovery cylinder, I should say - and this came out of a vacuum - recovery cylinder.

This is the tube and guys people ask me all the time. Why invert my cylinder? It's because of this dip tube this dip tube acts as a restriction, this dip tube is going to the liquid port. This goes down into the cylinder, and this is how it pulls. This is how the ports work it pulls liquid.

Now I don't know if you guys can see that that is full of crap. This is out of a clean recovery, cylinder notice, how it's not clear. This is like a brownish color the whole inside of that tank, and it was a vacuum down. Tank is full of crap and I often find when I pull a recovery tank, just shake it and you'll hear flying around inside there, just dangling around do a little a little whatever in there.

So no, I don't trust that recovery. Cylinders are clean, they're, not they're. Always dirty because I do swaps at my supply house all the time. That's how we do recovery is, I just take a full cylinder.

They give me an empty cylinder, they charge me a pump out fee and we move on, but I run into that all the time. Let me see what I'm doing in here. Oh got you, okay, let me see here and I will post this link real, quick and then hang on. I'm sorry, I'm trying to post a link to the discord server, real quick.

So let me do that and I, where is it I moved the link. I will post a link for the discord server here in just a minute. I don't have it at this moment. I didn't put it in the video that we're watching right now, so I'll do it here in a few minutes and then the person that has a question you can post it inside there for those of you guys yeah anyways, so I'll do that in a minute.

So let me get back to this. Let me see what I'm missing here. I lost my train of thought for a sec, yeah yeah. It definitely does HVAC our tech.

It gets closer to full charge for sure it's better than nothing in you guys.