So so, 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 so, hello, hello, my viewers, that's an old school reference right there, hello, my viewers that is uh, let's see if someone can get that in the chat. Who is that um? I saw a good question come through right now and uh jyphc said what will happen if you mix poe oil and mineral oil well, when fortinet was first coming out in the mid 90s early 90s, it was you know concept, but when it was really starting to Come out there was this theory that, if you mixed polyester oil and mineral oil that the system would just die like oh my gosh, you need separate sets of gauges and separate hoses and all this stuff.

Okay. In reality, it's not the end of the world, but the thing about and i'm not a chemist right. I don't know all the science behind it, but basically the the issue with the oils, the polyester oil and mineral oil - don't quite mix correctly. But the real issue is that they don't travel right.

Mineral oil tends to travel with certain refrigerants versus polyester oil tends to travel better with certain refrigerants too. So it's really about how it reacts with the particular refrigerant it's working with and that's the problem. So i'm sure you can talk to some chemist, sciencey people and they can give you a much more in-depth answer than the other than my dumb logic, one but um yeah. That was a that was a mystery in the beginning, early 2000s.

It was like, oh my gosh. What are we gon na do for today we have to change the oil like, oh all, this stuff, and it's like yeah. That was a bit hyped. Okay, it's not! As big of a deal as they made it out to be for sure, i certainly don't carry separate sets of gauges for every refrigerant or anything like that.

I have two sets of gauges actual manifolds in my van. I have a testo manifold that i don't think i've ever used ever since i made a video with it. It's just a backup manifold because it's super small and it hangs on my rack and then i have my field piece, s-man manifold that i use all day long and i have my job link probes, but i use them on all different refrigerants poe mineral oil alka-benzene. Whatever that other oil is pat not packed, that's an automotive one, but there's another oil too.

I can't think of the name of it right now, but yeah. I was a bit over hyped about the whole mixing of oils thing so um. Let me see, let me see, let me see so um lots of good questions in here uh. Some, oh, some interesting questions before the chat too.

So. First off welcome to the hvacr videos live stream for the new people that are here. My name is chris. I'm an hvac service technician here in southern california, also run a business and started making these videos for my employees, and it just turned into a thing, and it's i used to say a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, i think we're At like four years or three - i don't know - we've been doing these forever november of 2017 is when the channel was first started.

So what is that? 18, 19. 20 21 holy crud we're gon na be five years this year this november, this youtube channel is going to be five years old wow. That is crazy. Time has flown.

You know i have never planned on it doing anything. I have always just done my own thing and, and it just grew it isn't until recently that i've started thinking about putting more effort into this channel. I've always just kind of let it do its thing um, i'm i'm thankful for that. You know, but like i never wanted this channel to turn into a job um, but i'm starting to have more fun with it, i'm starting to get new ideas, and i definitely run this channel the way that i want to run it.

I can't tell you how many times i turn sponsors and different people down, and it's not because i'm loaded with money or anything i'm not, but i just don't want anybody telling me how to run my channel. I don't want to be owned by anybody. Don't get me wrong, i do have sponsors and people that i work with and stuff, but they're all very cool and like the way that i do things right so anyways i've never been one to kind of follow the norm. I've never been one to do.

Click baity titles per se like sometimes there will be a title or a thumbnail that i'll use, but it's natural right. I don't like to do manufactured stuff and nothing against people that do that. It's just not my style of things to do so. Um.

Let me see uh, let me see what else we got going on in here. What am i missing? So if you guys do have questions, do me a favor put them in caps, lock that helps me to be able to field the questions a little bit better. If i miss your question, feel free to send me an email to hvacr videos, gmail.com, okay, um, so uh. Oh, i wanted to bring this up right now bam.

I showed this on instagram check this out now: youtube's, probably gon na flag me for my ray gun here. This is a robin air leak, detector - guys, if i haven't shown this on here, yet i don't know what pictures i've posted on social media. This is a vintage robin air leak detector from the 70s. Is that not the coolest leak detector? You have ever seen.

I love this thing. This was given to me at the hvac training symposium by a gentleman named chris edes, and it was really cool of him. He heard me talking about old tools and he offered these up, and this is like a highlight of mine. I want to see if i can make this work now.

This was really meant for chlorinated refrigerant, so it's not very useful. Today you have a sample tube for um. You know that stuff or um. You know for r11 refrigerant, i guess more so so that way you can use it as a and there's a little screw right there that you can loosen and use it on the leak detector to test to make sure that it's actually working right.

So that's cool but i've yet to figure out what style of leak detector. This is it kind of looks like a heated diode or something i don't know, i'm still trying to figure that out. Look at something unscrews whoa check that out. No, it's not a heated diode, i don't know yeah we'll have to figure that out.

I don't know what type of leak detector it is, but it is the coolest thing i have seen in a very long time. I wish they made stuff like this. Still, it was funny, i was at the training symposium and i showed this to a few of the people from field piece and they were like. What is that thing - and i was like you guys - need to make something like this, and i just lost my little vial at the top uh chris had also given me this leak detector too.

It's just so cool to see these little itty bitty leak detectors. These things are awesome. I love old tools, i'm gon na start collecting them more. Add these to my collection of stuff that i have in the back all right, so uh chris actually and i'm gon na give him a shameless plug.

I have nothing to do with them. I mean you know, there's there's those those are cool, but there's really no value, but i'm going to give them a plug. Chris actually has a product, he was showcasing a product at the hvac training symposium and it was a pvc condensate system right and it's actually just these tees that have these removable caps and these little plugs for cleaning out the the condensate lines so go check it Out at acezt.com it's pretty cool little system, i think especially for the residential guys. It doesn't really fit in what i do, but for the residential guys, it's a really neat little system so check it out all right.

I'm gon na look in the chat um. Chris anderson superheat question from the walk-in freezer video circa like a year ago and uh yeah. I actually got that written right here chris. So chris asked me a question.

I think it was a walking cooler. Was it not, but regardless the whole point, chris's question was um. I was working on a r. I believe it was an r448a system and he was curious if my desired superheat would change with the refrigerant, and the answer is no.

Okay, i'm aiming for on a walk-in freezer as low as you can safely get the superheat, usually between six to eight degrees of evaporator superheat is what i'm aiming for on a walk-in freezer and on a walk-in cooler anywhere from eight to 12 degrees superheat. Depending on how the system was designed, okay and - and it doesn't really change with refrigerants - okay - we're gon na try to maintain the same superheat for every different refrigerant so insert whatever flavor. You want r22. 404.

134A. All these different ones, i'm still going to aim for that same superheat, because the superheat you're trying to get as much efficiency out of the evaporator but you're also trying to maintain some sort of a superheat so that way, you're ensuring you're not getting liquid refrigerant back To your compressor, that's the biggest thing! So if you have zero degrees, superheat at your compressor, you're flooding liquid back to that compressor, so you need some sort of superheat. Obviously, at the evaporator coming back to the compressor is typically going to be really high. Now, if you have um a super low superheat at your compressor, you've got some serious issues because typically you're going to have a lot of heat gain on the suction line, from the evaporator to the compressor, because that silly insulation you use on the copper lines is, Is not really that great, so you're typically going to have, i think copeland wants like what 20 something degrees superheat minimum at the compressor, i think, is what they say.

I think if i remember right off the top my head, so let me cross that question off my list. So when i do these live streams, i typically go through my emails and my youtube comments, and i just find questions that look interesting and i put them on my list of things to talk about. So if you guys do have a question and i miss it, shoot me an email i'll generally throw it into the live stream for the next one. So, let's see what else do i prefer heated, diode or infrared leak detectors and why i've used both they have both worked for me in different instances, uh right now, i'm using which one am i using i'm using the field piece dr82 um hold on a sec, Dr 82, i got ta remember what kind of leak detector that is - and i don't even remember - i think, that's a infrared leak.

Detector actually uh. Let me see, but i have used the yeah. The the dr82 is the infrared leak detector um, that's the one. I've been using for a while on another note, though, someone had asked me in the chat or no someone had emailed me or something they were asking me a question about the field piece leak, detector or, if i thought they needed to buy the inficon stratus leak.

Detector, it really depends on what you're working on now. Personally, if i was to buy a leak detector now i own the stratus and i own the field piece and they both are pretty neck and neck as far as performance that i've used them for the stratus is a bit overkill for what i do personally, because It has the cloud hunting function in light commercial refrigeration. We typically don't need the cloud hunting function. You typically just need the standard leak detector.

So if i was to encourage someone to buy a inficon leak detector, i would probably for the money, if you're doing light commercial, i would probably suggest you buy the dtek 3, which still has the same sensor in it as the stratus. It just doesn't have the cloud hunting function. So that's what i would say to do. You can save yourself a couple bucks, but i'm a fan of the field piece now i will say something that i found out recently with the stratus and i've yet to order it, but i'm going to order it apparently with the stratus.

You can change the sensors for co2 and or for hydrocarbon, refrigerants or flammable refrigerants, so i'm going to order the sensor for the stratus for the flammable refrigerants and i'm going to give that a try, because currently i have a uh inficon gas mate. I'm not a huge fan of that leak detector. So i'd like to see how the stratus does with the hydrocarbon refrigerants when you have the the flammable refrigerant or the hydrocarbon sensor in it. So i'm definitely going to order that and try that out.

But i thought that was really cool because, theoretically you could have one leak detector in your truck and do normal refrigerants and or hydrocarbon refrigerants, and if you wanted to deal with the co2 stuff, you can put the co2 sensor in there. So i really like that. There's all these manufacturers doing these different tools, because it makes competition and they're all trying to outbid each other and make better tools and we, as the service techs, get to benefit from it all so um, let's see what else. What's my opinion on the h10 nathaniel hedge never used the h10 in my life.

I know there is a lot of people that swear by the h10 and i'm sure it's an amazing leak detector. I just personally have never used it. So don't really have anything um. Let's see, let's see, i was measuring superheat from the evaporator it looked like it was from the box yeah that would have been super from the evaporator chris, so yeah, i'm going to aim for the same superheat uh in any kind of a walking cooler or freezer.

You know whatever i would use with 404 i'm going to use for r22 448a or insert name of whatever refrigerant here we're going to aim for the same superheat. Typically, the superheat is going to be based off of your evaporator td. Basically so, and you want to make sure that your expansion valve sized right and you know, adjusting the superheat higher or lower, is going to affect the evaporator td. It's going to affect how cold the evaporative coil gets, how much humidity it removes and or how much it actually humidifies the air.

So i guess it wouldn't humidify the air, but how much it doesn't dehumidify the air uh. So keep that in mind engineers, typically uh um size, their equipment. That way, so let me see what else we got going on in here. I'm looking through the chat right now do i prefer.

I already answered that question um. How do i feel about testo products? Honestly um hold on got a few testo smart probes. I just saw them down in my drawer. One thing i do appreciate about the 605i.

This is their hygrometer, i think, is what they call it hydrometer, whatever you want to call it. I do appreciate that it folds and it's compact, but honestly i've never used it um. I bought it for a video and then just never really used it anymore. So i probably need to start using it.

But uh i mean it's a nice little stout. You know pretty durable probe. These are a bit big for me, um kind of kind of get in the way, in my opinion, and it's just uh like a thermal couple, thermistor whatever you want to call it um, i don't know. I i like the joblink probes, perf myself, cyborg chic.

Thank you very much for that super chat. That is amazing, but that's much appreciated. So something i wanted to talk about too is um in the the chat it was asked before the live stream. What's my least favorite equipment to work on and um? I think that as far as types of equipment that i work on would be cold rails right so or cold wraps uh, a lot of refrigeration manufacturers will have them and it's typically a static cold rail.

So it's refrigeration lines ran behind a piece of metal, the customers put pans in them and it works off a convection right. The heat transfers and the thing that i don't like about cold rails, pan chillers, whatever you want to call them depending on the manufacturer. I really dig the kyrek ones: kyrak has it down? In my opinion, hands down. Kyrec has the best pan chiller best cold rail.

Whatever you want to call it. Their blue technology is on point for maintaining temperatures. The downside to the kyrak blue technology is that it takes forever to come down to temperature, but once it comes down to temperature like it maintains that temp flawlessly unless there's problems so but on on uh other cold wraps the static cold wraps that do not have Evaporator fan motors honestly, they work if they're used properly but most of the customers, don't understand and don't know how to use them and or don't listen when you explain it to them. So when you're working on a static, cold rail - and they just have pans in there, you need to have every pan.

There can't be any gaps. The pans can't be bent. The pans need to be perfect, and then, on top of that, you can't overfill the food. You typically don't want the pan filled more than halfway with food, something that customers don't understand is most reaching coolers and cold rails for sure are never meant to bring product temperature down.

So you can't put warm product in a cold, rail and or reaching cooler. They're meant to maintain product temperature, so you get the cold product from the walk-in cooler. You put it in the reaching cooler and it maintains the temp for a while, but it's never really meant to bring product down. I get customers all the time that misuse their equipment and don't understand how it's supposed to work.

So if i had to pick one piece of equipment that i, what that i like, or you know least like to work on, it's good, it's going to be cold rails, just because the customer doesn't understand how to use them. Most of the time like on a dell field, cold rail they're not meant to leave any product in them overnight and the complaints that you'll get from the customer. Is it never maintains temp during the day, but then, when they leave product in it overnight, the product freezes and they just because it's not meant to maintain, be left in overnight you're supposed to defrost them every night, wipe them down start them up in the morning. Put cold product in them and it's just meant as a holding station for 40 degree product and it's going to maintain that temp and actually, if you read dell fields, instructions for their cold rails, their static, cold rails.

It actually says to rotate the food every four hours, so they're actually not even meant to keep food in it for more than four hours. That's that's how much they tell you they're not meant to maintain product for that long. They want you to rotate the food which that's a whole contamination issue, so customers can't rotate food but oftentimes. The end user doesn't understand that right, they're sold by an equipment salesman.

That says this works perfect. Nobody reads the instructions, nobody knows how to use it and then the refrigeration guy's there on a friday night trying to figure out why the food's at 50 degrees. So you know those are my least favorite ones to work on for sure all right. Let's get to the chat, see what i'm missing in here um.

Let me see you're a testo guy. Send it your way, jason johnson, i bet you you are my friend. I bet you, you are uh. Let's see play with that little r! Okay, so is that shirt available on my website mike b yeah man, i'm wearing the shirt right now, uh hvac our videos, and then you flip it around so that shirt.

This hat another shirt design. We have women's shirts in this design right here, they're a v-neck. We have sweatshirts, we have beanies they're all available on my website, hvacrvideos.com uh. We have all the merch here, my wife packages, it we ship it out.

So it's a great way to support. The channel keeps my wife busy doing stuff so well, i shouldn't say, keeps my wife busy. My wife is probably busier than me by the way right. I got to give credit where credit's due she's running around all day long dealing with the kids taking them to school, dropping them off different schools.

Grocery shop, like my wife, is amazing. If you guys don't follow her on social media on instagram, it's at hvac, our wife um and she posts periodically about how we do things. I was gon na try to get her on the live stream today, but it just didn't work out so um. Let's see right on cyborg sheep man, i just saw your super chat.

Come through again thanks. So much man, that's awesome. I appreciate that super chat and it was cool talking with you on the overtime show. So if you guys don't know hvac overtime on youtube, we do a show on friday evenings and this last week we're gon na.

Do it every once in a while. Not every week we brought a bunch of people on and we had like a hangout. Actually, it went well after the show ended. I think they were on there.

I got off, but i think they were on there for at least another hour or so just talking and hanging out and talking, you know just whatever so uh. Let me see, let's see what else we got in the chat right now: um logo - tattoo, no, no logo tattoo, but we do have these coming soon. These will be available on the website very soon, making a few changes uh, but they'll be up there soon and we'll be shipping those out stickers so um. How do i feel about new calgon products versus viper, uh, gabriel lopez, so i've been a user uh viper and they actually sponsor my channel, but at the same time to in all fairness, if you go look at all i i started having sponsors spoiling and field Peoples, fieldpiece has never been a sponsor that i've just worked with them on projects, but refrigeration, technologies and and uh spoiling have always you know, been sponsors of, or not always, but they've been sponsors of my content for at least two years now and before that, though, The previous two years before that i was still promoting their products using them advertising them even before they were paying me anything right.

I love their products in general, okay, the refrigeration technologies, products, they're, safe uh. You know, there's thought that goes into them and i appreciate them very much now. I love using their products. Uh they're local to me, they're, a local business in california, uh john pastarello, mike pasterello, run the business john pastarello's, the founder he's, the chemist mike pasterello's, his son uh both great great people, and they are just the nicest people um you know mike burke, is the Sales guy just great great people, every time i go into their shop they're, just so welcoming so nice, they want to talk.

They want to shake my hands every time you see them at trade shows they're the nicest people they're just great people. So, yes, i do love refrigeration technologies, products for sure um do have. I ever worked on shrouds. Are you talking about like um uh, the um josh howell? I used to do some shroud work a long time ago.

I used to do work for applebee's and they had cold rails and then they had a shroud on the top, a refrigerated shroud above it that had a cold wrap. And then they had like a fan in there circulating air across the top of the food, and then they had a cold wrap down below. So i don't know if that's the type of shroud that you're talking about um, have i ever uh. Let's see uh yeah uh bloody, shot, hvacr yeah.

I do remember meeting you at hr too. That's awesome: bud did bill ever send me the gifts you sent him to give to me guys, probably not eh hamilton. I didn't see anything from bill man. You you best be asking bill.

What you were supposed to send me because i didn't get crap. Have i tried the tesla leak, detector, nope um? Let me see what else we got going on in here: uh all right: they don't defrost them. You uh the ice build. You can store only one french fry and oh so, jer jury, refrigeration, you're talking about the cold rails, yeah, exactly the customers, they don't ever defrost them.

The ice starts to build it acts as an insulator. You all know that ice is going to be at 32 degrees. Then the customer wonders why the box doesn't work. Well, it's all encapsulated in ice and they're like well, but that should be great, no it shouldn't, because on the delfield cold rails they get down to 17 degrees.

Where the pans are at right. It doesn't get the product to 17, but the air or the the cold rail down below the pans is 17 degrees. That way it can have quick heat transfer. So if you have 32 degrees and you're trying to maintain 40 degrees in a pan, there's not enough of a temperature differential there for heat transfer to happen fast enough and your product's not going to maintain proper product temperature.

So yeah there can't be a massive amount of ice buildup. There can be light frost around the cold rail, but that's it all right. Let's get to the chat um yeah, mike b. It's really hard to get a lot of the supply houses to carry the refrigeration technologies products because they're so in deep with the other manufacturers.

So if you can't find them at your local supply house definitely check out truetechtools.com. They have all the refrigeration technologies, products and uh. You know you can get a cool discount using my offer code, big picture. One word: uh you'll get an eight percent discount on checkout um and uh yeah, that's a great way too so um.

If a package unit does not have a liquid line service port, how do you get sub cooling, mr green? You have to make some guesstimations there based off of the different type of equipment, so i typically know that on carrier package units that have fixed orifice metering devices, you're typically going to have about a 30 degree, 35 degrees. Sometimes, pressure drop from discharge to liquid line pressure, so you can kind of do the math there linux package units uh, you know. Typically, if i see about 16 degrees sub cooling on a linux package unit using discharge pressure, it's usually on point once you get onto the liquid line port, so you know you just got to kind of do some guesstimations, obviously weigh in the charge is the best Way, you know and then take your vitals if you're ever going to be working on a unit that doesn't have a liquid line service port and you have the refrigerant out at a liquid line service port it'll help you, you know in charging it but best way To charge a package unit is to weigh the refrigerant charge, in the only reason why i'm checking coin is, if i'm coming through on a pm or a customer's complaining, and i'm just going to check the vitals without recovering the charge. I'll look at the sub coin and see how the system's operating um.

Let me see uh, let's see what we got going on in here: um worst ice machine, you hate, scotsman, terribly harvest cycles and evap calls. You know it's not so much that i hate scotsman or isomatic or manitowoc or hoshizaki or whatever. What i find is that i'm very comfortable with manitowoc hoshizaki ice machines. I used to be really comfortable with the fallout countertops because i used to do a lot of work, but i don't work on a lot of fullets anymore right and i recently worked on a fault and i was lost.

I was like what the heck. What's going on, it's really, i think, about what you're comfortable with if you're comfortable working on hoshizaki you're going to tend to call those your favorite, then, if you get thrown in isomatic you're like wait a minute, how does this work you kind of scratch in your Head so i think it's more or less just about what you're comfortable working on. So when i cut when you know, because i'll get emails from like homeowners, sometimes what kind of air conditioner should i buy or and i'll get an email from a restaurant owner? What ice machine should i buy, and i would always tell them, it really depends on who you're gon na have service your equipment and how comfortable they are working on that piece of equipment. So i always tell people you need a contractor that you trust you know and what are they comfortable working on? Because that's what you really want to buy! You don't want to buy an ice machine that nobody in your area knows how to work on, because you're going to have a heck of a time when it breaks down getting someone to properly service it all right.

So um i had a video uh. I already covered that one, i'm just crossing up my list of things that i've already talked about, so i had a video a while back. It was a walk-in freezer condenser and it was one of these. I don't know if you guys remember it.

I was way out in the desert and i went out there and it had a bad evaporator fan motor and then i ended up having to have another technician. Bring me the evaporator fan motor and while i was waiting for that, i started checking other things and i found a bad contactor, a defrost clock and then uh. I think we even changed a condenser fan motor. We cleaned the condenser and then in the end we found out that the head pressure control valve wasn't working right, so anyways the person the viewer said.

You know in a comment that you know uh. I threw way too many parts at that before i knew what was wrong with it: okay, so um first off. I want people to understand when i post things or when i react to someone right recently. I pinned someone's comment because it was an ignorant comment.

I'm not taking offense, i don't get my feelings hurt. Typically from a comment i usually like. If i pin a comment, it's because i want other people to see how ignorant this person is right, um. So in this particular thing, this guy said he thought i threw too many and i don't think he was being rude.

I just you know and i'm not taking offense to it. So i don't want people to think that i'm i'm getting affected by these comments. I'm not, i usually like to try to educate people as much as possible, so in that particular video. Yes, it was a one thing leads to another, but you have to understand the circumstances of which i was in, and you have to understand that the particular customer that i was working for needed that equipment fixed it needed to be operating.

Okay, bottom line, no matter what was wrong with it. I had to fix it that night, even if i had to change a compressor, it was going to be fixed that night when it comes to walk-in, freezers and walk-in coolers, we have to get it running. It needs to operate. You've got thirty thousand dollars worth of food in there.

A five thousand dollar repair, six thousand dollar repair. Fifteen thousand dollar repair is nothing in comparison to losing all their food. Okay, so bottom line, i have to triage the equipment. I have to get it running as best as possible and then i may make a recommendation in that situation.

I made a recommendation to change the equipment. Now the customer hasn't changed it yet, but i'm sure they will eventually, okay, so um but yeah. I don't get offended by the comments, but sometimes if they're ignorant or they're dumb comments, i will pin them or make an example out of them so that you know they can realize they were incorrect. You know in this particular situation this guy.

That said, he thought i threw too many parts. He wasn't wrong. I mean from an outsider, looking in without uh, you know context yeah. It looked like.

I threw a lot of parts at that and i will agree. That was one that i rather wish. I wouldn't have done all that to, but in hindsight there's not much you can do you know i mean i was there to fix it. I couldn't proceed any further with checking the refrigeration system.

When i had an evaporator fan motor. That was bad. I couldn't diagnose anything until i got that fan motor in there and i didn't have it with me and i was an hour and a half from civilization. So i was better off cleaning that equipment and doing what i could.

While i was waiting for someone else to bring me apart so again understand, there's always a reason why people are doing things and you know yeah, i put it on youtube and yeah, i'm opening myself up for criticism and i'm okay with criticism. I really am, but there's always reasons as to why and maybe i'm not being vocal as to all the reasons as to why i did certain things so um you have to regularly clean ice machines or you will have problems guaranteed, and that is an absolute 100 Percent statement, ice machines need to be serviced, at least at least on a quarterly level. If you're not servicing your ice machine, at least on a quarterly level, you are going to have issues now. Will it work yes, but the scale build up will eventually become to the point that you can't clean it off anymore and then you're going to have to resort to scraping things and scrubbing things.

And if you actually read the installation instructions from any ice machine manufacturer out there, they tell you not to use anything abrasive when you're cleaning their ice machines, you can use a nylon brush. That is it. They don't want you using scotch brite. They don't want you using metal, scrapers or anything like that and, if you're having to use metal scrapers.

That typically means that the customer has gone so long without a preventative maintenance that there's not much you can do. But when you do use a metal, scraper or abrasive pads, now i'll still use scotch brite pads just mild right, but if you're using scrapers, you're, actually making very very fine microscopic grooves in the metal that bacteria can grow in. That makes it almost impossible to properly clean. So that's why they don't want you to use scrapers brush.

You know like wire, brushes or anything like that, but if the customers aren't maintaining their equipment, what are you supposed to do? You know in walking coolers and freezers? What i prefer copper condensation lines or pvc copper gabriel. I prefer not to use pvc on anything in a restaurant because it will get broken. If it can it will. I can understand in a case store, you know, a gas station convenience store using pvc because you know what the the gas station owner isn't in and out of that box 500 times a day, but in a restaurant they are literally it's absolutely a certainty that, if A restaurant has a walk-in cooler.

I don't care what you think. They're gon na use it as a reach and cooler they're gon na be in and out of it all day, long they're gon na be pushing pans in places they shouldn't. You know so copper drain lines is my preferred method of condensation drain lines for air conditioners and refrigerators, copper lines, uh. The reason why i don't like pvc, they get broken ice machines for pvc drains pvc drains for ice machines, uh the customers break them, underneath the bin with squeegees, and for those of you that have done this.

You tell me how easy it is to cut a piece of pvc drain line off and put a new tee on underneath a hoshizaki bin. That's only six inches from the ground and it's four feet deep. It's a nightmare. It's an ugly nightmare.

It looks like crap when you get that that 90 put back on there, because the customer broke it off with a squeegee okay, so i prefer not to use pvc whenever possible um, it's just not a fan of it. Let me see what i got going on on my phone right now: uh, oh good, gosh man, all right um. Have i ever used a steamer like a vx5000 to clean an ice machine. No sean i've never used a steamer.

I've heard people telling me about them. I haven't had an opportunity to use one um, i'd, probably like to get my hands on one one day, but i don't know it just hasn't been a priority for me. So let's see what else we got going on in here. Okay, how do i cut? This? Is a question i get so much guys? How do my customers react to me filming on their sites? Good question? Okay, first and foremost, i'm very discreet about filming on my customers locations.

Okay, i do have approval from my restaurants to film, but it's not approval from everybody in the restaurant. If that makes sense. Okay, you have to understand something i want to protect my customers as much as possible. So i have verbal approvals, but there's never ever going to be anything in writing that says i can film, because that's just a liability for restaurants, um but another thing to understand too.

I am a little bit messed up in the head. Okay and when i troubleshoot things i talk to myself, i talk out loud. That's how my troubleshooting process is. So what you hear me doing in my videos is literally how i troubleshoot, when i don't have a video being on ask any of my employees.

They'll tell you, i talk to myself all day long people constantly saying what, from across the room, i'm not talking to you what i'm not talking to you like. I talk to myself out loud and i answer questions and that's how i work my way through troubleshooting. So what i'm doing on my videos is no different than my normal troubleshooting process. So yes, my customers do know.

The easy answer is yes. They do know that i'm filming, but it's just one of those things. You know you just still got to be careful. I don't ever show my customers locations.

I do my best now. I know some of you know the places that i work at because you might work in the same locations, but we always try to protect my customers. I'm going to tell all of you guys this too, if any of you post anything on social media. Any of that stuff.

Don't ever include restaurant names, grocery store names, business names, i don't even care if you're working at that job site, if you're walking through you can be in trouble for talking about a grocery store, because you see something funky and you name the grocery store. Just in a simple social media, post, okay, they will get lawyers involved and they will get that taken down and your channel will get in trouble. So you always want to be careful, always protect your customers, protect restaurant names, customers different things so that way, um you know it doesn't put you in a position where you're going to get in trouble, basically, okay, so um on an r290 freezer a while back. I had a dell field r290 freezer and the customer said that during the day it wouldn't work right and when i went out there it was down to temperature.

When i got there - and i was like huh, you know, and i made a video showing me go through the process now. One of the things that i did in the video is an r290 freezer is. I walked up and i said you know it's working right now. I took all the food out of it moved it in the back of the kitchen and i went through the operations just kind of checking everything it did not have pressure ports.

So i just took some temperature checks, and i said i think it's working okay, but i did a leak search on the system. Why would i waste time doing a leak search if it was temping? Okay and the reason? Why was because there was an intermittent issue when i was there, the customer said it wasn't working during the day, but it was working right now. So my first instinct, because there was no pressure, ports was hey. It'll.

Take me two seconds to shut the unit off and do a quick leak search to see if there was a potential leak. I'm saving myself time when i had the unit off, because i was trying to troubleshoot an intermittent issue and i didn't have service ports now. Yes, i could have added service ports, but i didn't want to necessarily have to do that if there was nothing wrong now that video was from a couple months ago - and i have yet to get another service call in that freezer, what actually ended up being the Problem because i didn't find any leaks and it came down to temperature really fast was it came down to how the customer was storing product? They were storing tons and tons of bags of, i believe french fries on the top shelf and their complaint was the bottom. Wasn't working well, they were blocking off the airflow to the bottom of the freezer.

Okay, but again it was my troubleshooting process same thing: if i'm working on a reach and cooler walking cool or anything like that, if i have an opportunity and i'm opening up the evaporator to do something, if i see anything that looks like it might be, a Leak, i'm going to bust out my leak detector and give it a shot real, quick, okay, because i'm trying to save myself time in the long run all right. Let's see what else um i'm reading through the chat. What do i think about topping off an r290 system? I will not top off r290 systems uh. First up, there's a couple reasons: number one: you got some liability issues.

Okay, r290 is a flammable refrigerant. You don't want it. You know leaking out and running. At the same time now, if it's just leaking out in the kitchen, it's not going to be the end of the world.

It's in such a small concentration in a huge kitchen, full of oxygen, carbon dioxide. It's going to get diluted in the air, so i'm not worried about the refrigerant per se, but the reason why i don't leave it running when it has a leak is because if you have refrigeration, compressors and fan motors and relays and different things, you have more Of a potential for an issue inside that reaching cooler, okay, the next thing most of the time - r290 coolers - do not have pressure control. So if the system has a leak - and you top it off, there's the potential that it can run out of gas and then run with no pressure controls to protect the compressor, so i'm also protecting the compressor. So if i come across an r290 system that is leaking, i will typically disable the system lock it out.

Take the cord off, put it away, put the panels back on the box. So that way, the customer can't even attempt to plug it in if you ever are working in a restaurant. If it can happen, it will happen. So if you simply just unplug something and wrap electrical tape around the cord, the kooks will unwrap the electrical tape and plug it back into the wall, so make the cord disappear.

Put it in the reach and cooler do what you have to do to make sure that nobody can plug that thing in um. Let's see uh! Oh, that's, that's something i wanted to cover. So i did have a somewhat rude comment from someone telling me uh. It was like a snarky comment.

Talking about ooh, an hvac guy is gon na give family time talk or something like that, because i posted about on social media about spending time with my family. Okay, first and foremost, i have never followed any sort of a correct path with my youtube channel. I am me, and i will continue to be me and i will do me right or do my thing - i'm not going to do myself. That'd be kind of weird kind of cool too, but anyways that's another thing um, but uh i'm going to always do my kind of thing right and if i'm going to be going out, i'm going to be sharing little facts that i think are important to share.

On my channel, so yes, i do hvac content, but, yes, i posted a picture of my kids shopping. You know with my wife joking around, like i like to show people that i'm a real human right, because we're all the same and we all need to be spending time with our family. I have my wife on the live stream or on videos, sometimes talking about how we deal with things. This is how i run my channel.

If you don't like it move on to another channel, i could care less okay, because i do have people that value this content and i'm going to keep making the content. The way that i want to make it. It is what it is so you're free to move on to wherever else you want to go all right. Have you ever recovered gas from an rtu carrier, found it to be low on gas leak, searched and pressure tested and didn't find the leak, and i see a bunch of people down below screaming where the leak's at steven? Yes, i have done that.

Okay number one! It could be that someone let refrigerant out of the unit. It could be that someone didn't charge it right. There's always that weird instance a lot of the times on carrier package units. If it does have a refrigerant leak, it will be at the coremax fittings.

A coremax is a high flow schrader type fitting, but unlike a standard schrader that you can remove with a vacuum core removal tool um, you can't remove the the coremax fittings without a special tool. Uh it's made by jb industries. It's, i don't know the part number, but you can get at the supply house, it's like three or four hundred bucks, but you can't remove it to evacuate a system like a vacuum, coil removal tool or anything like that. Okay, so um key point: if i suspect an air conditioner has a refrigerant leak, i typically will leak check the schrader ports before i put my gauges on it, okay, again trying to think ahead because it is possible.

Now i i don't like it when people call me when my techs call me and say yeah, i couldn't find a leak, it must be at the schrader port, and i don't like that because i want people to prove that it's at the schrader port right. So if i'm walking up to an air conditioner - and i can see signs of oil around the schrader fittings, i'm going to grab my leak detector, i'm going to take the cap off and i'm going to leak check the schrader before i put my gauges on it Because oftentimes, you can put your gauges on it and it's going to solve the leak and then you're not going to be able to find anything and then you're going to be in that instance. So always look if you're working on a carrier unit always look at the high flow schraders. Those are very common to leak.

If you're just topping off the charge, you can put a swivel tee on one of them. If you have the fancy tool like i do, you can remove the core put a new one in while it still has refrigerant in it. You just can't do an evacuation on it um. So anytime.

I open up a system on something that has high flow schraders. If i have to change a dryer, if i have to change a compressor, i it's one of those things. I just change the high flow schraders you can, you don't need the tool to change them. If you don't have refrigerant in the system, you just two crescent wrenches pop it off and unscrews, and you put a new one on um.

So i do that preventatively if i'm ever working on them, because the leak rate on those high flow schraders is intense. It's through the roof, so all right, let's see what else we got going on in here. Um anyone make a diy cormax remover would love that yeah. It's not really going to happen, but you're not going to find something.

That's that's refrigerant leak proof that you're going to have to remove a schrader on it's just not going to happen. It's called your tubing cutters. There you go jason johnson um. I have taken uh, cormac's, tees out and sweat them and put in uh a brass access.

Fitting in in place of them, yes, i've done that several times so um, let's see what else uh, yes, cormax huseman says: cormax often gets pushed to one side and leak and that's very common um. What can happen? There's actually a tool out. There called a high flow schrader core depressor. Okay, you can buy it from accutools, yellow jacket, i think makes it and what it is.

No, it's actually just from accu tools. I think they had it. Custom made it's not from yellow jacket, but all it is is a little fitting that depresses the schrader to make sure it gets pushed all the way down. So you can pull a better vacuum now on those.

What you will find is, if you depress those schrader core depressors, the high flow ones, all the way down, you'll actually damage the core max fitting they're not meant to really be pushed all the way down, so be very cautious about that. That's what, in my experience, would i find the damage to them a lot um, so we can't no, we didn't cover this yet so i had someone ask me - and i mentioned it in a recent video sub cooling when you're working on a package unit that we Kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but i want to address it a little bit more so when you're working on a package unit and you need to get sub cooling. But you only have a discharge port when you're working on air conditioning. You need to understand that there is going to be a pressure drop across the condenser.

Now you're, typically not going to see much of a pressure drop across older tube and fin refrigeration condensers. But you will start to see pressure drops across some of the new awef style condensers, because they're doing some weird stuff with sizing and pressure drops, but just be understanding that sometimes you will see a pressure drop okay, especially on air conditioning equipment, and that pressure drop Means that there's going to be a change so, for instance, i mentioned earlier that on linux package units. Typically, if the system's charged right, i will typically see about 16 degrees, sub cooling across or you know, using the discharge port. But if you put your pressure probe on the liquid line, port it'll be about 10 degrees, subcoin, okay.

So it's really about understanding what each manufacturer is doing. There's no rule of thumb. That's going to go across the board. You can't just assume that it's going to be a 30 to 30 psi pressure drop across every air conditioning condenser, because each manufacturer beats to the tune of their own drum and there is no set standard for air conditioning or refrigeration.

Everybody kind of just does their own thing, so you need to be familiar with the equipment you're working on in a recent video, i was working on an air conditioner. I think it was sunday's, video and uh. I said that the discharge temperature was kind of high and it was 175 degrees. Now i had a valid question: why, in the heck did i think 175 degrees was high for a discharge temperature right, because copeland recommends that your discharge temperature be below 225 degrees, 225 degrees about eight to ten inches away from the actual discharge of the compressor? Now something to understand is the actual internal temperature, in that compressor and down in the oil sump is much higher or actually up in the head of the compressor is much higher than 225 degrees, but the best that copeland has been able to to estimate is that, If you have 225 or lower, the internal of the compressor will be okay for the most part.

Okay, but if it's over 225, then what you can do is you could be overheating. The internals of that compressor and you're gon na have oil breakdown. So with that being said, why did i say 175 degrees was high? Well, i said that because the condenser fan motors were not running and i knew that that was abnormal once i got the condenser fan motors running on that unit, the head, the the discharge line - temperature dropped like 20 degrees, okay, so it was more or less me Saying there was no outdoor load. I didn't think that we should have 175 degree discharge temp on that particular one, but i do not have a set standard or a correlation that i know in the top of my head of outdoor air temperature versus discharge temperature surface temperature.

I don't have that number. I just was kind of using my experience, saying i think that's kind of high again understand something when i'm making my videos, i'm not necessarily talking to you, i'm talking to myself and i'm just videotaping my thought process so there's times that, yes, i do make a Point to say something: so that way, you guys will understand it, but there's often times too that you're literally just hearing my rationalization in my own words of how i'm getting through this service call because again, like i said earlier when i'm making my videos, i'm literally Talking to myself, just like i would be, if i wasn't making a video, that's, i know i'm insane. I know i've got mental problems, but that's how i troubleshoot okay um is interesting and i do kind of agree with this uh my buddy clive mitchell, big clive um. You know he'll come on the overtime, show and stuff like that, and he made a comment.

A long time ago, and it kind of rings true to me, he said something along the lines of he would argue that majority of technically minded people are somewhat autistic, maybe just slightly on the spectrum, and i would kind of agree that a lot of technically minded People right have some sort of a what nor you know. Other people would call a abnormal uh pattern in their head. Whether you call that autism adhd, who knows right, i mean, but if you think about it most technically minded people like think about elon musk right. He, i believe, he's autistic right.

Isn't he yeah? I think he is and he's one of the smartest people that there is right. So you know sometimes we have a hard time. I you know with with with certain social interactions. We may sacrifice certain things, for you know, um, being more technically minded or something so i'm not trying to say i'm special or anything like that.

I'm just saying that you know. I know that there's something there and i kind of agree with what clive had said that you know a lot of technically minded people might be slightly on the spectrum and there's nothing wrong with that right. I think one of the things that we've learned over the years - you know when we were younger when i was younger. There was a word right and yeah.

It's kind of become more of a slang word than anything, but i mean that was basically a blanket statement for anybody. That was not what society called normal right. It was some sort of retardation or whatever right, and you know it's not.