Ah, it's time to chill out and get ready for a mediocre q, a 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. So well, hello, hello to everybody. I hope you guys are all doing well.

I have uh not very much to complain about myself um, i'm very fortunate, and i realize that and i'm thankful for that um. You know, there's a lot of craziness going on all over the place everywhere. Right all around the world and uh uh really makes me. You know appreciate the fact that uh i have electricity and i have a house and uh.

I have a safe, healthy family to come home to um. You know it's just kind of crazy, just kind of puts things in perspective for sure you know so i hope you guys are all doing well, i hope uh, you and yours are all safe and healthy, so uh to start off this stream today, uh. I definitely want to address a point that robbie robbie had asked about uh sending uh true tech tools, affiliate links to him, and i will address that too so um, i do have an affiliate program set up through truetech tools. If you guys are interested in purchasing any tools through truetech tools, you can use my offer code, big picture.

One word: uh it'll, get you an eight percent discount on checkout and then, if, furthermore, if you send me an email - and let me know what you want, i can generate an affiliate link. You can send me an email to hvacr videos. Gmail.Com. I will tell you a trick, though, because i'm really bad on responding on the emails lately, because i'm super busy what you can actually do is um go to any one of my videos and look in the show, notes and there's affiliate links in there.

You can actually click any affiliate link as long as you're logged into your truetech tools account and i'll get credit for whatever you purchase as long as you click one of my links. So, even if it's not something you're going to buy, if you just click the link and it takes you to truetechtools.com, make sure you're logged in and then whatever you purchase, i'm supposedly supposed to get credit for it. So um but anyways yeah be sure to use the offer code. Big picture too so hello to everybody, uh carl k says: are there any new field piece tools coming down the pipe um? Not that i really know of uh.

I'm sure there is, but i'm not in the i'm, not privy to that information. So in the past um i have done beta testing for field piece uh and of course, if i was doing beta testing, i couldn't share that information um. But i have nothing to share at this moment, um, nothing that i'm you know able to share. I know that there's all kinds of stuff that they're always working on, but i have nothing that i'm allowed to share or that i know that they want to share at this point in time.

You know it's something. That's interesting! That i've started to notice is that people associate me with field peace and in reality i honestly don't work with field peace that much they're a great company. I know a lot of their people and i've worked with them in the past, but i mean i can probably say that, like they don't pay me like a sponsorship fee or anything like that. I've just done projects with them like i was a beta tester and then i've i've done projects where i make like a video series about certain tools that i use or something like that.

But genuinely i mean i'm not really associated with field peace, but it's funny how people associate me with them. You know the funny thing: i'm not a very good uh business person right uh. When i started these youtube videos. You know i don't i don't like squeeze every company and different things like that.

So if you guys i mean realistically, i can tell you right now. The only people that have ever paid me have been field piece refer, uh, i refrigeration technologies and um uh spoiling. I i show tons of tools all the time and i don't get paid. I i just i just like to share the little bit of knowledge that i have um.

I've worked with those people in the past. It doesn't mean that i work with them all the time, but yeah it's just funny, because i, when i said i'm a bad business person because i promote stuff all the time without even like getting paid or anything like that. Like you know, i promote the heck out of certain things, just because i like them, so i just like to share. You know the little bit of knowledge that i have and i like to share what i like and what i don't like, and i like to you know, be as honest as possible.

So you know it's just kind of funny, but it is what it is. Uh real quick before i forget stickers are coming soon to the website a couple different ones, um still working on some different designs. This is the first prototype, um and uh. This is probably a keeper, but um there'll be some more too so working on some different ones, they're not gon na, be there probably within the next couple weeks.

It probably won't happen, but i got a big box of these ones right here, so they will be available on the website. Hvacr videos.com soon um, let's see uh. Let me see so a let's see joseph hopkins hvac, our edu a good school. You think you're just starting it today.

Hvacr.Edu is a online platform, um an educational platform. Yes, it's good, it's what you make of it. Okay, i've done classes through hvacr edu or it's about. Q is a california subsidized portion of hvacr edu, but yeah i've done classes through them.

It's an online platform. They have like a whole structure and stuff, but it's really about what you make it, because because it's an online platform you're going to have to discipline yourself to make sure that you're following up and and doing things in a timely manner. Me personally, i didn't do very well with being responsible for my own destiny. If you will right, i do better in a structured class where i sit down and someone tells me you have to do this and you have to do that before this date with online stuff.

I get distracted and you know - and i just i go off in a different world, but i know it's great for people that are able to stay disciplined and focused for sure yeah, it's a great resource. I mean any education is better than no education. That's the way that i put it, you know anything you can have to better yourself can help you to be prepared more for things in life. Go for it do it.

You know for sure all right, i'm looking through the chat right now, if you guys have questions or comments that you want me to cover, please put them in the chat, put your questions or comments in caps, lock that you want me to cover um. That way. I can remember to look at it so um, looking through seeing what i'm missing. I already answered that one uh put the email in caps um, looking through just kind of glancing through the chat cool, not a whole lot going on in here.

Uh. Let's see jason johnson says rscs, so rscs.org, he is saying, is a great place for educational training. Yes, it actually is so. Rscs is a training organization that was started ridiculous a long time ago it was basically rscs was the first hvacr training program, uh educational program.

So basically rcs was created because at the time the only places that you can get training in hvac was to go to manufacturers direct training. So you go to syracuse for carrier and different places for the different manufacturers and there was really no private training per se. So rscs was kind of made as a private training organization and uh. You know they definitely are not as strong as they used to be, but the value and the resources alone on their website are amazing.

The sam manuals with rscs i mean they're such a great resource that people even to this day still go back and look at that literature to kind of set their their curriculum and stuff. Ironically, too, rscs was a key person in writing. A lot of the trade certification programs too, a little story that i heard i don't know the exact uh truthfulness. Things may have been embellished over the years, but i did hear a story about nate.

For instance, nate is an industry, training, certification, right and uh. You know every training certification has their their weaknesses and their strengths and whatever. But the rumor that i had heard was that rscs um they were approached to make a training certification, but their test was way too difficult, and so they dumbed it way down. And then they created all these other tests and certification programs because they wanted, you know, majority of the industry to be able to pass these tests and uh.

I personally i haven't tried in many years but uh to take the the rscs cm exam uh. I failed it two times i think, but to be fair, i'm not a person that likes to study for tests. I always like to just kind of go in there and see what i can do. I know that's not a great way to do it, but yeah.

I filled the rscs cm exam two times uh. The cm exam is so difficult, though, because you're tested on everything all at once: you're tested on oil, gas, steam, um, refrigeration, airflow, like all this stuff, all at the same time on their basic tests and then once you pass the cm exam, then you can go In for the specialist exams and then go way into depth, but rscs is a great organization. Technically, i'm still part of rscs. We have a local chapter here in southern california, but our chapter is not active.

It hasn't been active for about two years now, but it is the arrowhead chapter um. I was an officer in the arrowhead chapter two, but honestly since i started doing these live streams and these videos, i really haven't had time for rscs, so you guys are all responsible for me not being part of rcs anymore, so good on you guys good on You guys right so anyways all right, um looking in here, see uh zero. Fun says what sort of music do i listen to? Oh, i listen to everything. Then it just depends on the time of the day: uh country, music, uh, old, school rap um.

The super bowl halftime show was like my childhood for sure i was just watching that like in awe absolutely amazed, but i listened to everything rock pop punk. I've gone through phases all over in my life high school. I was a big nofx fan. I went through a bunch of different phases.

I was a no fx fan for a while lincoln park fan for a while blink182 fan for a while. So i listened to everything all kinds of good stuff all right, so i really wanted to start about or start the stream off to talk about how we, as technicians, can better ourselves. This industry is changing every single day. It's changing and uh.

I recently just did a a talk at the hvac training symposium uh for hvc school in florida a couple weeks ago and um. You know i. I had a bunch of key topics and things that we covered in there, but the biggest thing uh that i kind of want to talk about is how we, as technicians, need to be responsible and need to take charge. We need to take control and stop delegating.

So much stuff to other people, because unfortunately the way that i see it is there's so many changes it's so hard to keep up with the way that things are going and there's new regulations. New flavors are refrigerant, insert name of this regulation, and this one and this one and this one and this one it's so hard to keep up and we have an employee shortage right. Just like everybody else, we have an employee shortage. Well, the supply houses have that same employee shortage and it's getting harder and harder for the supply houses to keep up on their training, to be able to educate us as technicians on how things are supposed to be done, and the supply house is slowly.

I don't want to say dying off, but they have more competition now right, i'm still a firm believer in a brick and mortar, but i'm old school right, so younger generation probably doesn't care whether or not they order online or they order in a brick and mortar. I still have connections and relationships with supply houses, and so i still feel kind of a obligation like. Of course, i want to support a brick and mortar because it's a physical location, okay, so um, you know, supply houses are struggling and it's hard for them to find people and in the past us as technicians, we would rely on the supply houses to educate us And give us the information that we needed well, we can't really do that anymore. I discussed this at the symposium and i've discussed it ridiculous amount of times, but you know we can't necessarily trust the supply house to size our equipment anymore.

We can't really trust them to tell us or educate us about new equipment. I can't tell you how many times i walk into a supply house, even before these videos turned into anything i'd walk into the supply house, because i was active in online communities uh before facebook was a thing i was active on the hvac talk message board um That was a big one for a while, and then facebook group started, and then you know all that stuff, but i would walk into supply houses and be like hey. Do you guys have this new tool and they're like what they've never even heard of them, and that became a trend where i would go in all the time and be like hey check this out? I got this new tool and they're like wow. How does that work? Maybe we should look into that so supply houses again, there's good and bad things about supply houses, but they're losing touch in a way with with things.

So we as technicians need to be a little bit better and business owners at knowing what we want finding the places that we need to go to get, what we want and understanding how things work and how they should be installed. Reading the installation instructions from the manufacturers is key okay, so i talked about this at the training, symposium and i'll talk about it. Now, too, we have some new standards. The awes standards right, the department of energy basically is coming at the refrigeration, the light commercial refrigeration site.

So i think it's walking coolers at 3, 000 square feet or less. You have to have certain energy efficiency requirements just like we have on the sea ratings right. Department of energy says that we have to have certain seer ratings for residential and light commercial air conditioning systems well same thing's happening to the refrigeration site, okay, so they're implementing all kinds of changes, and us as technicians and contractors, and - and it is us okay, as Technicians and contractors are not doing our due diligence and educating ourselves. Okay, i can't tell you how many times i've seen it on facebook, where someone will say insert name of whatever refrigeration, manufacturer and they'll complain about how they they installed a micro channel condenser or how they install the head pressure control valve that bypasses at too low Of a pressure and they're blaming the manufacturer, realistically, it's not the manufacturer's fault.

The manufacturer doesn't want to do any of this stuff because what they were making before worked, but because regulations get involved they're having to do certain things, and if we read the installation, materials and read the the you know up on how that equipment works. We would know that we can't just simply install this condensing unit anymore. We may need to, in certain situations, replace the expansion valve at the same time. You know, because of certain you know the new head pressure, control valves, they're floating the head pressure down, so we may need to replace the expansion valve because maybe they didn't have a balanced port valve before we're doing uh.

You know, electronic expansion valves are really really popular and when you're installing electronic expansion valves, you need to be so careful about debris in the system, and so we as technicians will tend to say. You know what i hate: those electronic expansion valves, because they always go bad well in reality, what about them went bad now, i'm not saying that expansion valves don't go bad, but i would argue that majority of the time an eev goes bad, there's, probably something stuck In it, because someone didn't follow a proper practice when brazing or doing something and they got sediment or junk and it it's it's plugging up the valve, it plugged up the strainer who knows okay um, so we need to be thorough and read installation instructions. We need to better ourselves by being better educated, we have the power. We have these amazing phones.

We can literally open up an installation and service manual and read it now, i'm just as guilty as majority of you guys too, by not reading the installation materials. Okay, i i don't - and it's bitten me so many times that i read it now, because i'm so sick of these silly things. I can tell you a story. I installed a manitowoc ice machine probably about 10 years ago, installed a uh indigo manitowoc ice machine.

Okay, a remote quiet, cube machine and i was with another one of my service techs and uh. We opened up the box for the line set because uh this was customer ordered equipment. Okay, so we installed an evaporator. A head unit downstairs a condensed unit on the roof we piped in the line set and we went to go start it up, but it was funny because when i was opening up the line set box, i opened it up and there was a you know.

7. 8, 3. 8 car 7, 8, half inch, copper and there was a thermostat wire in there and i'm like what the heck they sent us a residential air conditioning line set. I took that thermostat wire and i threw it away and installed the ice machine well on the indigo ice machines.

They actually take that thermostat wire and they have communication between the upstairs unit and the downstairs unit. When i went to go turn on the ice machine, it didn't work, long story short, i figured out hey. You know that thermostat wire that i threw away. I actually need that, go get it and we had to install it and that simply came because i didn't read the installation instructions.

I assumed that it was going to be just like the previous models that i'd install hundreds of them, and then you know again. It's so easy to become complacent and just stay in your little zone and just do your thing and not understand the changes that are coming down: the pipe okay um. We have new refrigerants every single day and we, as technicians and owners, need to better ourselves and educate ourselves right. We have lots of different methods.

We have several different youtube channels: hvac school, we have my channel um hvacr survival, my buddy rick. We have the advanced refrigeration podcast, which also has a youtube channel, there's so many different methods right, um, there's uh, i mean there's so many different channels, and i know i'm missing a bunch of them right now. If you go to my recommended on my channels, you'll see the channels that i recommend right and there's probably more too because every day, there's a new channel coming out and there's great valuable information that we as technicians there's nothing better than a podcast right. Because, when you're driving down the road, what else are you gon na? Do listen to the radio turn on a podcast educate yourself while you're driving, you know so many things we can do when you go to the gym turn on a podcast do whatever right.

So we have to do better for ourselves and educate ourselves um i saw a super chat come through. Let me see right now: uh chevy 2564.. Thank you very much for that super chat man. That is much appreciated.

I know i missed a bunch of stuff in here: um yeah, exactly uh. So michael is saying: hey look extra pieces, yeah exactly um, and it's funny because i made a comment about that. I still have a parts bucket in my garage from when i worked for a body shop and it has a crap ton of extra nuts and bolts and all kinds of stuff, because whenever i put cars back together, i'd always have stuff left over yeah shouldn't. Be a big deal right, i don't know you know, but we need to read.

We need to understand. We need to educate ourselves, okay, all right, so let me see what i going in here. Um, let's see anthony marino, says, hope you all notice. The 25 true tech tools, coupon in your bag at the symposium bunch of people didn't notice them.

That's really cool um. I was a speaker, so i didn't get a normal bag at the symposium, but uh anyways yeah regardless that's all cool but yeah. There's there's always good stuff out there: okay, uh dale says: what's the main difference between ac and refrigeration, what makes refrigerant or refrigeration so much colder. Okay, fundamentally, there's no difference between air conditioning and refrigeration.

All we are doing is transferring heat okay um. Ironically, we don't make things cold. What we do is we remove heat okay, because there actually is no cold, there's only the absence of heat. So when you remove heat things become cold right, cold is just kind of like a term that we use, but air conditioning and refrigeration, fundamentally still the same concept you're transferring heat from one place to another.

That's all you're doing, okay in refrigeration, it definitely gets colder. So we add some more controls into the system. Uh, you know: temperature controllers, the thresholds are a lot lower temperature controller, thermostat same thing, thermostat's, just a programmable temperature controller that has logic built into it. We also have temperature controllers for reach and coolers that have logic built into them too.

Okay, some of these temperature controllers for the refrigeration equipment. You can launch a damn space shuttle with because they do so many different things all right, but there's really no fundamental difference between refrigeration and air conditioning air conditioning discomfort, cooling. I mean it's really just the temperatures at which we're maintaining, but you still have a compressor. You still have a metering device, you still have a evaporator and you still have a condenser of some sort: okay in even the most complex supermarket refrigeration systems that are doing all kinds of different stuff.

It still breaks down to the fundamentals: compressor evaporator, condenser metering device. Okay, now you add all kinds of different things in there to gain energy efficiency, to control defrost to do different stuff, but fundamentally they're still the same. So there's no huge huge difference. Okay, people get afraid of refrigeration, that's too complicated.

It's really not, and and if you start from the basics - and you build your way up - it's really not that bad. It really isn't. Okay, so um. Let me see what else we got going on in here: uh refrigeration mentor, my buddy trevor matthews.

If you guys want to learn anything about refrigeration, go check out. Refrigerationmentor.Com trevor does uh company-wide trainings. He does individual trainings trevor is making waves in the industry and i'm trying to be his friend, so i can just ride his coattails as he's just gon na blaze through everything. Okay trevor is a cool dude he's a really good friend of mine and another thing that people may or may not know about trevor matthews is.

He is one of the nicest people that i know i mean genuinely. The guy messages me probably two to three times a week, just to say: hey chris how's everything going how's your day going and not only does trevor. Just message me to say how my day is going he'll say: hey chris, when we talked the other day, you said you were having an issue with this how's that going have you been working on that, like he's a a true friend that questions me on my Weaknesses, you know that i've admitted to him and then he says: are you working on that? You know i mean he's a genuine good guy, so trevor matthews is a person to watch in this industry for sure. But definitely if you want to find out more refrigerationmentor.com, so um has anybody seen the new klein hvac tools, hvac multi-tool uh.

I don't know that i've seen the multi-tool, but man there's new tools coming out every single day, there's so many different channels, but there is a good one uh tool pros. If you look them up on youtube, they have they're on instagram brent, ridley, billy noth. They do a good job with more hvac side tools. They do a pretty good job kind of talking about all the new stuff coming out.

Um uh: let's see what else we got going on in here, all right cool, so i'm gon na go ahead and get to my list of things to talk about. I'm not going to be in here like forever tonight, because i want to start cutting these things. A little bit shorter but definitely got some stuff. So i had a question on a recent video where i was de-icing a walk-in freezer and the person said: hey how come you didn't use a hair, dryer or a heat gun, and the reason why he said that was because i was probably talking about how, when I'm de-icing a walk-in freezer.

You need to be so careful not to get water on the floor. Okay and i get people all the time in my comments in my chat number one, you should use a torch. If you want to talk about using a torch, you need to talk to my buddy or listen to the story from brett wetzel on the advanced refrigeration, podcast he'll tell a story um and if he hasn't already, i'm sure he'll tell it on a new one. Coming up or something like that, he'll tell a story about someone using a torch to melt an industrial walk-in, freezer evaporator that was iced up and some really bad stuff happened because someone was using a giant torch like the giant torches that you use when you're roofing.

You know connected to giant propane tanks, yeah someone was using that and it was an epic disaster, so check out the uh advanced, refrigeration, podcast. I'm sure brett will tell that story at some point, maybe on a live or something like that, but regardless i don't like using a torch because there's a lot of things that can happen. You can actually melt the aluminum fins on the evaporator very easily, even if they're covered in ice, you can still melt them to where they disintegrate aluminum has a low temperature melt point. So we need to be careful about that.

The next thing, when you're using a torch, is that heat has to go somewhere and there's a lot of electrical wires and different things that can become damaged because of that heat. And then, on top of that, you have a combustible gas and there's byproducts of that combustible gas. Once it's gone through the combustion process, oftentimes there can be those combustible. Gas byproducts can build up in the walking cooler depending on the size of it, and it can actually cause a breathing problem for you that stuff can get into your lungs displace the oxygen in your lungs.

It's not a good thing. Okay, so trust me from experience. You don't want to be in an enclosed space with the torch running for very long, because it can cause some serious issues now: a heat gun and um a hair dryer things like that. Personally, i find that water is the fastest most efficient way to melt ice in an evaporator, but you got to be careful not to get it all over the floor.

There's nothing worse than getting water all over a giant, walk-in freezer floor right and if you guys have ever worked in a giant walk-in freezer you'll know what i'm talking about. But if you work in the smaller ones, like i show in most of my videos, yeah you get water on the floor, there's some things that can happen, but for the most part you can prop the doors open. You can thaw out the floor, but when you're in a giant industrial size freezer, if you get water on that floor, just because you're melting the ice on one evaporator doesn't mean that the temperature is going to come up very high at all inside that industrial freezer Right, it can still be negative 20 degrees in there, even if you're standing there with a torch okay, because it's just such a giant freezer and it's probably got multiple evaporator coils running it. So you get ice on that floor.

It's going to instantly freeze and then it's a giant slip hazard and a disaster to clean up okay. So but then, on top of that, once you get ice on a walk-in freezer floor, it can actually get underneath the flooring and then, when that happens, it can actually freeze and then it'll lift up the flooring and cause catastrophic damage to the structure of that walk-in Box, but i personally find that water is the best most efficient way to de-ice a walk-in freezer evaporator after i've removed all the fan motors and everything that i can i'll get in there and just blast it all off with water trying to keep it off of The floor, maintaining or paying attention to the drain making sure it's not going to overflow and then i just stop and let the drain catch up then start defrosting again. So that's my personal preference is to use water whenever possible. Hot water, preferably but cold.

Water is just as effective all right ever use a steamer, no steve. I've never used a steamer. If someone could give me a compelling argument and show me a steamer that would actually work and wouldn't freeze when you're standing in the walk-in freezer, because you got to remember you're in a cold space right there right. So you have a steamer with a reservoir in it.

Is that water going to freeze what's keeping the water in the steamers reservoir from freezing like that kind of stuff? That's what you need to think about um all right. Let me see what else we got in here. Am i still interested at all in servicing, hot side equipment or no jk nah, never really been too interested in servicing hot side equipment. I stay busy enough in the refrigeration side, so um.

I have lots of friends that do the hot side, but just not my thing, um, what's worse than water, on the floor, poop on the roof. Did i tell you that story, alaska, there's been a few times? Actually, you know, sometimes you got ta go when you got ta go so you got ta, be cautious about that. If you guys wan na hear more about that one, you definitely need to come over to my uh other show that i do with my friends on the hvac overtime youtube channel, because that one's where i'll go into depth about some other crazy things so um. Let me see what else uh what else we got going on here? Um have i worked on heat craft beacon systems, john deere? No, i have not worked on a traditional beacon system.

I've worked on intelligent qrc, which are all just kind of dumbed down beacon systems. Really, the only difference between an intelligent and a beacon system, i mean technically an intelligent, i think, can become a beacon system, but it's really the communication. My my systems typically don't have communication with the rooftop equipment. It's just a slave or a dumb, condensed unit on the roof, with a smart evaporator.

Basically so um yeah, exactly okay, so i'm going to uh cross this one off the list. Um bam done there. I already cr. I got a list in front of me of things that i want to talk about, so i made a short i've been doing these little shorts to kind of talk about like quick things where i don't want to make a full video about them, and i made A short talking about gfci, uh, receptacles and gfi breakers, and i said how much i don't like them on refrigeration equipment, now, full disclosure - and i said it in the youtube comments too - i'm not a genius when it comes to the electrical theory.

Okay, i have a general understanding of how gfci works. I did make a comment that i don't like uh refrigeration equipment on gfci, breakers and or receptacles, because what i i what i said was i don't like these compressors that have high in rush, because i noticed a lot of problems with the gfcis and i was Quickly corrected by a lot of people talking about how it's not actually the in rush that causes a problem with gfci receptacles or gfci breakers. Okay. I agree that you know i'm ignorant on the fact of the the true science and and reading the comments.

People did explain to me, but the bottom line is my experience: any refrigeration equipment plugged into a gfci, breaker and or gfi receptacle, gfci receptacle sucks all right. I've had nothing but so many nuisance trips and i realized there's so many people out there saying. Well, maybe your compressor is going bad. Maybe the heating element there's so many different things, but i'm telling you at multiple different restaurant locations.

I can't even keep up with the amount of problems honestly, my customers, don't even call me half the time, because before i even get there, they just go in there and reset the breaker. You know reset the gfci breaker, oh, i have to do it three times and i tell them stop resetting breakers, but they don't listen to me. Okay, but regardless. I have nothing but problems with gfci breakers and receptacles, and i tend to notice the older they get.

The more problems we have now again, i'm not super well versed in the theory of exactly how they work. I understand they're there to protect an electrical fault they're to keep you from getting electrocuted they're typically used about around moisture sensitive areas, and they trip faster than a circuit. Breaker would trip essentially okay, i get that concept, but still all that i know is whenever they're on my refrigeration equipment, they absolutely suck, and we have so many nuisance trips. So i did want to address that i was.

I was wrong on some things, but i'm still right in the fact that they suck okay. So recently, two i made a video where i sent a uh blower assembly off my recent video from the sunday i had a blower assembly that i sent off to get rebuilt by a motor rebuilding shop. So, first and foremost, i thought i addressed it in the video but i'll address it again. I can rebuild those blower assemblies myself.

Most of the time. It's a time thing right, go, get shafts, get them. Custom cut, get bearings, get all this stuff spend hours on it when i can just drop off a blower assembly. Have someone fix it for me and come back two days later and it's good? Okay.

In hindsight, my motor shop was completely slammed and it took like two weeks three weeks, whatever it was to get the motor uh shop to rebuild the blower assembly. I should have done it myself and in hindsight i would you know, but i just figured. I was super busy at the time so regardless, but the main question that i want to cover was: i had a question in my comments and it wasn't uh. No, the person that asked this question wasn't criticizing me.

They were just curious, okay, and so i explained in the comments, but he said hey since you took that blower assembly out and you took it to a motor rebuilding shop. Did you pass along the cost of the rebuild or he was asking? Did i mark up the cost of the rebuild and sell it to the customer and to answer his question? Yes, i marked up the rebuild, even though the motor shop did the work. I marked up the rebuild and the logic behind that. I thought i should explain it because some people don't understand.

Okay. What was interesting was i sat down with my wife after i read the comment and then i explained it to her and she goes well. Her thought was too that i should pass on the cost and not mark it up, because i didn't do the work or she said. Maybe i should pass it on, as you know, not mark it up as much and pass on the cost, and i explained it to her and i explained it to the person that asked the question too all right, i'm in business to make money.

Okay and yes, i did sub out the work to another person right. The motor shop rebuilt it, but i still take ownership of the work. I still warranty the work. Okay, i warranty labor and i warranty the materials now the motor shop warranties, their materials for so much time, but they probably don't even warranty their labor okay, but i still warranty it on top of that.

My customers don't pay me the moment. I walk out the door, so i'm financing my customers and the type of customers that i work with. Sometimes i might get paid in 30 days. Sometimes i might get paid in 60 days and then guess what the way that it works is if the person that processes my invoices messes something up, guess what that 30 or 60 days it starts back over from the day that they process it the right way.

So sometimes it might be 90 days. Sometimes it might be 120 days before i get paid and if i simply just passed on the cost of that motor rebuild shop to rebuild that blower assembly to my customer, then i would be losing money because i would be paying the motor shop within 30 days. Right or my credit card right because i put it on my credit card and i pay my credit card right away so but then the customer wouldn't pay me for x number of times, so i'm financing the customer too so heck yeah. I mark that up and i make a profit off of it, because i'm still gon na be financing the customer, and you know it is what it is so um, but the person that asked me that he wasn't being hostile.

He wasn't criticizing me or anything, but it's just interesting how some people think and don't understand the concept of you know: financing people because they're not paying you in a timely manner or it just simply takes 60 days to get paid. Well then, i'm then financing them for 60 days now. Theoretically, i didn't pay my credit card for 30 days, but then there's still the extra 30 days after that that i don't get paid that i did pay. My credit card so always got to cover your butt.

When it comes to that stuff all right, let me see what else we got um, let's see. What am i missing in here um? If something goes wrong with sub work, i will give away my time to replace oh yeah. I warranty the work so i'm, even though i had sub work done, i'm still going to do my typical 90 days, labor warranty on the the workmanship um and then i'm going to do typically a one-year parts and labor, depending on the manufacturer of the part that I installed or the motor shop put their parts in or whatever so yeah, i'm still warranting all that stuff so got to get paid for that. So um all right, uh, yeah, uh, dave johnson, says corporate po approvals and invoice submissions has to pass through too many emails.

Oh that's exactly the truth and then um. We learned this over the last couple months. There's shortages in the corporate offices too, of these chains and companies and things so someone's off because they're sick because of covet or whatever and uh. You would think that their all their paperwork and their workload would be passed on to someone else.

But that hasn't been happening very much so sometimes stuff gets really pushed back all right when it comes to belts. Someone made a good comment and i thought it was a really good point and i agree with it and actually do this and there's oftentimes a lot of things that i do that. I don't even think to express when i'm making a video, okay, so um, i'm gon na, be blatant and honest, and i think i said this recently too um i own a belt tensioning tool, but i i typically don't use it dale maher. Thank you very much.

I really appreciate that super chat bud. That is amazing. You didn't have to do that. That is very generous of you.

Thank you so very much uh. It says you understand it's removing heat, so would a resi ac unit be able to function as a refrigerator refrigeration unit and vice versa? Is it a cfm issue? You've serviced frozen, ac coils, so as far as a residential air conditioning unit could it function as a refrigeration unit. Yes, to a certain extent, okay, because there is btu limitations and the compressor is typically on a residential air conditioner. Even though it's a compressor and it's still compressed compressing the refrigerant and just moving heat, it's set up for a certain amount of work in refrigeration takes a lot more work than air conditioning, so the compressors are typically designed and set up differently for refrigeration.

So yes, in theory, an air conditioning compressor could cool down a room. For instance, you could buy little like devices that turn a window, shaker air conditioner into a walk-in, cooler, refrigeration unit right and all that it's doing it's not that it's. This amazing thing that this manufacturer designed they took this little device and it has a bunch of temperature, sensors and different things, but essentially all they did was take a window air conditioner and put a temperature controller on it and ran it. A lot colder.

Okay, but the question is: how much run time does that compressor have in that window, air conditioner and how long is the life cycle of that compressor? If you take a a small condensing unit or refrigeration, very you know undersized refrigeration equipment and you put it into a space that needs to be cooled. It will do some sort of cooling, but if it runs too long, there might be some ramifications from the compressor running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Eventually, that compressor is going to die and then, on top of that is it set up to handle uh. You know the the types of compression ratios you're going to run into when you have lower temperature higher outdoor ambient temperatures.

I mean there's so many different variables that go into it. So, yes, it is refrigeration equipment. Yes, a residential air conditioner could cool a refrigeration equipment or a space, but it can only do so much. It can only remove so much heat dependent on the size of the compressor and the size of the evaporator and condenser coil um, and all of them have to be sized appropriately and work together for them to cool a space.

Okay, so uh. Let's see there was another super chat, the 98 deville again. Thank you very, very much for that super chat that was very generous and um. I'm i'm humbled by your guys's support.

Thank you very much. It is awesome thanks for so i it's it's cool, but you know you haven't been in here for a while, but that's awesome man. I. I really really appreciate it so um this.

It's very very cool, okay, so back to what i was talking about: proper belt tension, okay, so um someone had brought up a really really good point that you need to be careful oftentimes. So i had started out by saying i do have a belt tensioning tool, but i really don't use it. Okay, i have learned with the type of equipment that i'm working on, that i can get away with tensioning. My belts to what i know is the right tension.

Okay, now there's ramifications and uh, especially the bigger the equipment you get, the more conscious you have to become of uh the belt tension and the pulley alignment and different things like that. I mean it matters either way, but you know you can get away with a lot in light commercial without having to go crazy with laser levels and different things like that to align stuff and there's actually a lot of stuff. I would argue that there's certain ways that i can use points of reference when i'm looking at a pulley or a sheave and a belt. I can look at different points of reference and i i would argue that i could get pretty darn close with proper alignment.

Okay, now i know that my eye is not perfect, but there's certain things that you can do by literally just finding a reference point and using that you know when you're looking at different things kind of like - and i brought this up recently kind of like using A site right when you're looking down a barrel and you're looking through a scope or and you're using a site, you the way that you use a site, is by finding a point of reference right, um and it's kind of the same thing. You can look at how a belt is riding in a pulley and you can tell when a belt is going at an angle or you can tell when a motor is not aligned properly. So but when it comes to tension, we need to be careful right because there's a couple different people that will tell you what the proper tension is and if we're listening to the belt manufacturers, which oftentimes a lot of people, do listen to the belt manufacturers. That can get you into trouble because the belt manufacturer is telling you the proper tension for their belt to perform as best as possible, but they're making some assumptions that the bearings in the motor can handle that type of tension.

And we can all i'd. Imagine agree that quality has gone down the hill lately right significantly when it comes to everything that has been manufactured. So would it be fair to say that, potentially, the bearings that some people are using these days may not be as high a quality bearings as they used to be in the past, so it takes experience from us technicians to know this is too tight for this Particular motor this is not a high quality motor. We don't necessarily want to tension this up to crazy, crazy tension.

Okay, there's certain things when you're working on a evaporative cooler right, those things are meant to throw away after they break their junk. If you try to tension up a belt on an evaporative cooler to what the normal tension would be on an air conditioning or even an exhaust fan, you're gon na burn out that motor super quick you're gon na wear out one of those sleeve bearings you're gon Na i mean there's so many different things, so we as technicians have to know the type of equipment we're working on and we have to adjust our practices to the types of equipment that we're working on following manufacturers best practices. Okay also, i brought to the point that, if we're listening to the belt manufacturers, we need to be careful that, because you also need to lean on the manufacturer of your particular piece of equipment and ask them what kind of belt tension they want. Keeping in mind is the motor that came in that equipment still the same from the oem day.

One it was installed. Has someone changed the motor three times and are they using a motor that isn't as high a quality doesn't have as good of bearings inside of it? So it's not just as simple as follow the manufacturer. Follow the belt manufacturer. It's look at everything.

Okay, look at the motor manufacturer then talk to them um, so we just need to do a better job of researching and figuring out what we need to do for what we're working on. Okay, if that makes sense um. Let me look inside uh jonathan uh august. I don't know if i butchered your name there bud so he says: can i explain how to adjust an ori head pressure control valve for low ambient conditions? Jonathan, so i don't have a lot of experience dealing with ori valves hold back valves.

I would highly highly suggest that you reach out to brett or kevin from the advanced refrigeration podcast, and they can gladly i'm sure they will gladly help you and they probably already have a podcast. I don't know if you're still in here, brett um, but brett probably has a podcast already talking about adjusting ori valves. Okay, so i would highly suggest just uh if you can send an email to advancedrefrigerationpodcast, gmail.com and i'm sure, brett or kevin will get back with you and direct you in the right direction. Okay, i would also highly highly suggest that uh you look up.

Spoilin hold on just one second spoilin 90-30, i think, is the tech document. Uh. That's charging um hold on just one second uh 90-30. I don't want dash one.

I want 90-30 yeah there you go uh head pressure, control, valves, sporelin, literature, 90-30, okay, so 90-30 uh. Will break down the operation of lac, valves, uh, oris, oroa valves and explain how to set and adjust them. So i would highly suggest that you check out sporlin 90-30 and i will put a link in the show notes of the video right. Now i mean in the chat right now, where you can uh check that out, but yeah.

I would not be the best person to ask that question. So there's a link in there right now, click that link um. Let me see what else we got in here. Uh, what's the difference between a freezer and a blast? Chiller the size, uh freezers are typically sized to maintain product temperature for the most part, most refrigeration equipment out.

There is designed to maintain a product at a certain temperature, especially reaching coolers and different things like that. Okay, but blast freezers are designed to bring product temperature down very, very fast, to fall in line with health department standards at how fast a hot piece of product should be brought down to safe storage temperature, because you have bacteria that can grow and build at certain Temperatures so a blast freezer essentially is a massively massively oversized freezer oftentimes. The blast freezers that i would work on in the past could be utilized as a holding cabinet and as a pull down cabinet, so you could literally put product in there and it would run at normal refrigeration right and then, if you wanted to pull product down, You would insert probes and all the different products it has a logic built into it, so you set the temperature at what you want that particular piece of meat or whatever it is to come down to temperature and then the blast freezer would turn on all the The heavy-duty extra fans, and typically another compressor or something, and then it just massively - brings the temperature of that product down instantaneously. Okay, so a blast freezer is really just a massively oversized freezer.

If that answers your question um, let's see uh haha. That's funny. There's funny comments in the chat right now, so, okay uh, what refrigerant is used on blast, freezers, uh really just depends. I mean what flavor they're using at the moment.

It's typically going to be a low temperature refrigerant, so you're probably going to see uh 404a. Some of the older ones, you would see 502, you might see uh 449 448. Something like that. It really just depends.

You know, as long as it can fall within that range, so um, all right, uh, all right cool! I'm gon na go to my messages. Right now so um, you know i'm not perfect and i can agree i can. I can probably assume that everybody else is the same. I do my best to try to follow proper practices um, but there's also what's practical and what you have to do to get the equipment running.

So when i'm working on a walk-in freezer, you know i may not um, you know and there's ramifications to it, but i may not be able to pull an absolute perfect vacuum because the equipment's down and we have to get it running so customers made aware of That and uh, but there's ramifications to not pulling a perfect vacuum. There's ramifications to um not properly wrapping an expansion valve before you braise it in different situations, but you also have to understand that experience can tell you. You know: hey i'll, get away with this. This will be fine, certain things right so uh in a recent video i braised on the top of an expansion valve because there was a refrigerant leak and i didn't wrap the valve.

I'm going to tell you right now, using an actual wet towel to wrap an expansion valve can be a problem when you're braising on it. Okay - and i know, there's going to be people in there to say, use paper, towels or different things like that, but i'm just going to give you my experience. If you take a wet towel first off and you wrap an expansion valve and then you go to braze that valve that towel is going to start absorbing the heat from the brazing process and the steam is going to start rising and it'll actually compromise your braze Joint and affect the way that the solder flows, so we have heat blocking compounds like uh, viper, wet viper, wet rag by refrigeration technologies and those are great products. In my situation, i was working in a shopping mall and i just didn't grab it and i wanted to get it going.

I was just too lazy and i was in a hurry, so i just i just braised it up. Okay, so was that right? Not necessarily did it work yeah and it's been months, so it's working, fine uh was there potential damage because i didn't wrap the expansion valve before i brace it yeah there was potential damage um, but i took a risk and - and it worked out you know, but I understand that i was going to be responsible if something dent was damaged inside that expansion valve. Yes, i would be responsible, mr sharkbite. Thank you very much for that super chat.

That is amazing. He said. Do i work on wendy's stuff? So, first and foremost, i don't ever name the restaurants that i work at okay, so i can either confirm nor deny that i work at wendy's, okay, um and on on the flip side. It's fine in the super chat.

It's i mean it's fine in the chat. Don't worry about it, but uh those are actually the only comments i ever delete on videos uh. No there's i take that back. Those are the comments that i delete the most when people try to guess: restaurants, right or wrong, but your comment in there, mr sharkbite, is fine.

It's no big deal but yeah. I can neither confirm nor deny that i work for wendy's. I don't ever confirm or deny restaurants that i work at. I leave that out of it um, so when pumping down a system right.

So when you pump down a system, you close off the king valve at the outlet of the receiver, but the compressor continues to pump and what it does is if the receiver and the condenser are sized appropriately. The refrigerant continues to get pumped through the system right because the compressor's still running it's still pulling the refrigeration refrigerant in through the suction side, but it has nowhere to go, but the receiver is sized for the storage, so it starts stacking it in the condenser and The receiver until the low pressure gets low enough, then it shuts off the compressor. We will often do a pump down to make a repair we'll run up to the roof pump down the equipment. Then we can open up the low side of the system.

You cannot open up the high side, you can only open up the low side, you can make a repair, you can braze an evaporator coil in something like that, and then you evacuate the low side.