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 evening. How are you guys doing tonight? Hopefully you guys are doing well, i'm doing pretty good over here. Work is starting to pick up a little bit.

It's i wouldn't say that we're slammed or anything like that, but uh we're heading in the right direction. Uh our restaurants here in southern california, just got the green light to open up indoor dining to about 25 capacity and or i think it's and or 100 people, or something like that max or whatever. So it's certainly not um back to normal, but i don't know if we'll ever be back to normal. I think there's going to be a new normal, that's going to come from all this craziness, so we will see.

But you know, work has been picking up more and more. I think i've got you know in the last week, or so i've got two or three no cooling calls in the dining room, which is like the first. No cooling calls i've gotten in over a year. Almost so it's getting better and better every single day, hello to everybody, that's in the chat.

How are y'all doing, hopefully, you guys are doing well um. I kind of wanted to start off this stream this week and uh talk a little bit about business ownership and um, covering something that i kind of wanted to talk about. I guess i kind of really said nothing there in a long sentence, kind of went through the whole dictionary and really said nothing but anyways. That's a whole nother conversation.

So when it comes to business ownership, you know there's that point of which you start out. As a one-man shop, you build your way up. You, you build the relationships with your customers and then you got to make that step to hiring employees and, along with hiring employees. Your business is inevitably going to change.

Okay, i mean, of course everybody thinks that they want to maintain the business and keep doing it the same way. Even i struggle all the time to try to keep running this business as if i was the only service technician, and i mean there comes a point in time when you're gon na have to realize that you're not gon na be able to run it. The exact same way um, and while you you you know in my case, while i have really good employees, it's just not going to be the same they're, never going to have that line of communication that line of concern in the line of um. You know the amount of that they worry about the customers and things like that, like nobody's ever gon na.

Have that heart. I call it the owner's mindset, kind of a thing um. So with that being said, comes you know you having to do certain things within your business or at least the way that i run my business. You know we have to do certain things uh and where i'm going with.

This is like, for instance, because this is a hot topic. Quite often on my channel and my comments. Um, you know, criticisms and different things like that is you know, i stress all the time like hey. I want to try to use oem parts as much as possible and or you know i might be working in a video uh working on a package unit, and i say you know what that's not the right.

Condenser fan motor in that package unit and while people in the chat or in the comments might say well, what's wrong with the motor that was in there well, i won't ever change a part that doesn't need to be changed first off, but i'm always looking for An excuse to make something oem again: okay, to get it back to manufacturer spec within reason, and i attribute that to having employees and what i mean by that is the easier it is for employees to repair things. The less callbacks i'm potentially going to get. If i can take um, you know some guesswork and or uh some tinkering or you know having to make things work out of the picture and make it as cookie cutter as possible. I find that it's easiest when the employees go to diagnose something.

Is it a bad fan? Motor yes, go, get the oem motor, then i don't have to worry about them tying the capacitor in the wrong place, or you know you kind of get where i'm going with that and unfortunately it's that thing. You know, because i can remember uh, you know working on reaching coolers for many years. I can remember you know going to the supply house and just getting an off-the-shelf temperature controller and making it work having to fine-tune it. Uh a3261 was a ronco air sensing temperature controller that i could think of you know, and it would replace a lot of aftermark or a lot of oem controls.

But you know putting that in the hands of employees. A business owner is going to run into a problem. What happens if the you know the sensing bulbs too, close to the evaporative coil? What happens if you know um, he sets it just a hair too cold. You know all these different factors come into play and then it potentially leads to callbacks, and you know mistakes of which, of course, the employee.

You know you want them to go back and learn from their mistakes and grow from it. But you know it's that fine line of having to uh keep the customer happy, and so i find myself leaning more towards oem parts and putting it back together the way that it is not - and i always say i say this phrase - often you know i'm not Trying to reinvent the wheel, you know, certainly i could make equipment operate a lot better in certain situations, but you know it came from the factory in a certain way and on a very rare occasion i might deviate from a you know, an oem setup or something Like that, but you know i try to keep things as easy as possible because it makes it that much easier when i send someone else to work on that equipment. Does that kind of make sense to you guys, um? I try to keep it that way, so that way, it's easier for my guys to go out there that way, they don't have the potential of accidentally making mistake or missing something obvious and it leading to a bigger problem, for instance, and there's nothing wrong with this. But it's just you know people having to think outside the box, and sometimes they may not have the experience uh, that you know i may have or something when it comes to a specific restaurant that i've worked at for 15 years.

You know i'm so familiar with it that when this problem happens, i know what it is. You know you send someone else in there and they may not know because they didn't experience it like. I have in the past, you know, so if i can make things as cookie cutter as possible, i find my life is a lot easier. So again i get that question quite often from people.

You know why am i always pushing to go oem? Why am i always you know, trying to to make things back to factory? You know, because i'm trying to make it as easy as possible to troubleshoot um, so that way it isn't difficult for the next guy. You know so hopefully that makes sense. I was just thinking about that before the uh before the show started. So let me see, what's going on in the chat right now and see what we have here.

Um, let's see, yeah, i'm not seeing anything in here. Yet: okay, um hello to everybody! That's in here really appreciate you guys all making it in here um have. I ever used the pro press tool. Uh.

No, i've never used a pro press, but i don't know if you know that propress is actually a brand name. I happen to have the the the zoom lock max press fittings from spoilin, and that is similar to the pro press, but it actually has a refrigeration specific fitting. I have a video on that. If you just type zoom, lock max in the youtube search bar zoom, lock max you'll, come up with my video, it's a walking cooler retrofit with zoom lock.

Max, i think, is what the video was titled or something like that. So what parts would i not replace with oem? Well, you know there's certain instances that i might be working on something. For instance, i can think of it right now. I'm working on a manitowoc ice machine uh, it's a quiet, cube machine and the fan cycle switches fail all the time on those machines.

So when it is out of warranty, when it's no longer under manufacturer's warranty, then i will go in with an aftermarket fan. Cycling control and put it in there and then they'll never have a problem. Well, the odds are the you know likely not going to have any more problems with that fan cycle switch. So it's things like that where you know.

I know that. There's a flaw in the way that it was designed - and i might fix that, but i try to stay as oem as possible to make it easier for the tech after me to troubleshoot and you know not have to run into so many issues. So um angel is asking me if i do work on any ems systems, not really uh. I've done you know very little work on ems systems.

So all right, let me see what else we got going on in here. Um, let's see uh andy is saying he gets my oem philosophy, but is there not some value in getting the customer running in one trip uh at what expense, though, is the thing like i try to keep as many oem parts? Okay, so i don't necessarily go working for new customers every day, most of the customers that i work for. I've worked for for a very long time and or maybe not that location, but i service their equipment and the majority of the time have the same equipment at their restaurants. So if i'm working on dell field refrigerators, for instance, we stock a lot of dell field refrigerator parts in our trucks, i have some chirac parts on my trucks, so i have a lot of the most common parts and or supply houses are readily available.

But on a regular, it is normal for me to go ahead and tell the customer. We need to wait for parts and order them, and my customers know that that's just what it's going to take. In fact, i have customers that demand that i use only oem parts and they actually demand who i ordered them from to make sure that they're factory oem authorized parts or whatever. So you know most of my customers, i understand like hey, i got a walk-in freezer.

That's down, you know, that's critical. It needs to be running asap. So, of course, i'm not going to try to find some silly part. If i can make something else, work i'll do it, but i try as much as possible, especially when it comes to like reaching coolers and things and, for instance, i'll give you the example we're talking about oem parts, everybody that's just coming in right now.

So, for example, uh you know delfield refrigerator uh on the older style. They had a constant cut in um temperature controller that had a coil sensing bulb that was shoved in the evaporator coil. You could replace that with an aftermarket temperature controller sure, but the constant cut in coil sensing temperature controller has defrost built into it. So if you put an air sensing, for instance, a ronco a what did i say earlier a3261 - i think, is the old number that i remember right and that was an air sensing temperature controller.

I could put that in that coil, but then it's not going to have self defrosting built in so potentially we might come back a couple weeks later, because we have a frozen up coil, because when we change that constant cut in temperature controller, we took the defrost. The built-in defrost out, because it was mounted in the evaporative coil and i don't know if you guys understand the whole concept of a constant cut in or a coil sensing temperature controller. The sensing bulb is shoved in the evaporator coil and it's set up that it. Never turns back on a constant cut-in means that it always turns back on at the same temperature.

So, no matter how much you turn the dial, it's always going to come back up to about 39 degrees, 40 degrees, and so it's self defrosting in itself. Right because if, if you know you crank the dial down and it brings the box, you know the the the temperature at which the temperature controller shuts off or stops the refrigeration. You know may come down to like 26 degrees. But it's not going to turn back on until the air inside the box gets up to 39 degrees, no matter how much you move the dial on it! So something like that, not understanding what that oem control does taking it out of the picture putting in an air sensing control sure it might maintain temperature.

But it's no longer going to have that built-in defrost of the constant cut in control where it always turns back on at 39. Therefore, you're going to run into more freeze-up issues. I had a. I have some videos out there that i show working on like true coolers, true stand-up, coolers and people would shove in like a a pen temperature controller in there of which would work.

But you would have to install a separate defrost clock too to make sure that you get defrost in the system. Okay, so that's what i'm talking about like! I try to stay oem as much as possible, but within reason i mean if it's something that the customer absolutely needs, i'm gon na tell them like hey. We need to order the factory parts, but i can get it going, but we have to come back out and put these parts in if they don't want me to order the factory oem parts, i'm going to document everything and they're going to sign their life away. That way, they're not calling me when it freezes up and bitching at me or something like that.

So how do i cope with superseded parts that does require modification? Well, of course, i mean you're going to run into some of those situations, but um most of the superseded parts that i run into don't require much modification i mean unless it comes from the factory like a true refrigerator. If you try to order for some styles, the old school mechanical temperature controller they're, going to send you a retrofit kit that comes with a digital temperature controller and all the components to make it work. Well, that's easy because it comes with instructions and you just follow those to a t and it works perfect, but i mean occasionally you do run into things. So again, i just try as much as possible to go oem because i'm trying to make it easier for my service technicians and trying to limit the callbacks and that kind of stuff.

Okay, because those callbacks drive me through the roof, they're, nothing but a headache. And you know, i don't know if people realize how bad a callback is in the customer's eyes, at least the customers that i deal with here. Here's a scenario that we run into and this this is something that i hate. Okay.

In the beginning, this was a feeling when i wasn't you know before i was an owner right. This was a great feeling to be the service tech that a customer wanted to work on something right, so you go out there you communicate with the customer. You fix the equipment, you shake their hand, you know they appreciate you, you, you talk for a few minutes after you leave and then you go on your way right and then you send another service technician out there and you know maybe he's not as confident on That particular piece of equipment, but he gets it fixed. You know he may have to call someone, but then you go back another time and the customer said man.

You know i really wish you could be my only person that services, my restaurant, because you seem to make me feel more confident that kind of stuff right. So now that i'm an owner, i actually hate that i used to love it. When a customer would tell me like, i really appreciate you just to give me like a good feeling to know that they wanted me to be the service tech to come out and work on their equipment. But now i've got employees and i can't be the person that goes out to work on that equipment anymore.

So i recently just had a conversation with a manager recently, where my guys didn't do anything wrong, but again kind of like i started out. They don't have that communication that i have, because i have the heart in it and the passion in it and you know so when a customer says man. I really only want you working on this. From now on, i have to say look.

I have three other employees. I can't be the only person to work on this. You need to be okay with those guys coming out too, and i have to try to reassure my customers. Look.

I understand they may not be as comfortable working on it, but trust me i'm on the other end of the phone with that employee. You know walking them through it telling them what they need to do. So i'm confident they're going to fix it right, but getting the customer to believe that is the struggle. Okay and i've had customers that have have told me.

They don't want service to certain service techs at their business anymore, simply because the service tech didn't seem very confident, but he got it done and i only build them accordingly. But the customer wants the whole package. They want the cheapest possible the fastest possible and they want you to. You know they want to feel super comfortable about the person coming out there.

They want the most knowledgeable person at the restaurant. Unfortunately, that's not practical, so again going back to the whole being an owner. These are things that we have to work through all the time. You know that that phone call from a customer saying, hey, you know, uh.

I really appreciate what bob you know did, but man, i just don't think i want him in my restaurant anymore, because when you come in here, i feel much more comfortable. That is a gut-wrenching feeling to a business owner because they have lost confidence in that technician, and you know we recently just had a talk about this at the shop like and again, nobody did anything wrong, but i'm just telling them like hey we're coming out of A crazy time right now, these restaurants budgets are super tight. They don't have money to spend and they're going to expect the world for nothing. So we have to wow them.

You know coming into these restaurants. We have to make them feel comfortable. You know um and you know you're never going to win 100, but these are just some of the struggles we go through on a daily, so uh all right. Let's see what else we got in here: um uh, eric um.

Let's see it says you love watching the vids, they are very educational. You, your parents also like to watch them while you're watching all right. I really appreciate it, but thank you uh. What would i do if the equipment i'm working on is obsolete and cannot get parts for uh? You know i'll do whatever i have to do in that situation.

We might have to make something aftermarket work, but i'm gon na try my hardest to go oem whenever possible. First, so uh have. I ever worked on industrial refrigeration. No, i have not um.

Let me see what else all right. So, let's go and get to my list of things to talk about um everybody! That's in here! Do me a favor. If you guys have questions, please put it in caps, lock i'll try to get to them. Okay! If i don't answer your question, just keep repeating it and tell myself, or one of the moderators tells you to stop okay um.

Do me a favor guys smash the like button and encourage everybody new that comes in to smash the like button as they come in. I'd really really appreciate it. Okay, we've got 249 people watching right now and 104 likes. So please get that number up uh, please.

The algorithm all right um as an employee, okay - and this is something that i mentioned in one of my videos. How do you know when to stop looking and or when to stop cleaning when to stop repairing, and how do you know when you know you're spending too much time on a call or not enough time on a call, and this kind of came from something that I mentioned in my video. This was a question that someone asked me: you know that is a struggle and again i'm a business owner. So i know how much time i can spend on my calls.

I can regularly tell you that i encourage my employees to take uh put more time on the call, meaning that i need you to pay more attention. Look around be thorough, that kind of stuff okay. So i'm constantly encouraging my guys to look bigger kind of okay, with the customer's permission, of course, all right, um again, even in the customer's eyes, at least the customers that i deal with. We go out there to work on a walk-in, for we go out there to do a preventative maintenance.

Okay, we're just servicing the equipment. Changing filters, checking things out a couple weeks later something breaks. I kid you not the service. Call that i'm going to get.

Is you guys were just here doing the maintenance, and now my refrigerator is not working? The maintenance was just cleaning like the odds of us, ruining something on a maintenance are very slim: okay, yeah, there's the occasional leaving it off or something like that. But this is the kind of stuff that we get on a regular. You know so. Customers think that you're there doing a preventative maintenance.

You know, maybe not even touching that particular piece of equipment depending on who said what you were going to do on that maintenance, but the customer doesn't see it that way. The customer sees it as you were just here, and now this is not working. I literally just had a phone call or a conversation with one of my customers, there's a new manager and she's like how come every time you guys come here, something else breaks and it's like. No nothing else broke.

You know we're doing the maintenance, we're doing our job, we're making a list or how come you come out and do the maintenance and you always have a list of broken things that we didn't even know were broken. It's like because that's my job, you know so again: i'm not trying to be rude or hostile, but i'm trying to educate the customer and trying to provide them with a value you know and sometimes on a management level. They don't understand that when, in fact, i'm working for the corporate office and the corporate office is totally fine with everything because they see restaurants every single day and they know what kind of repairs happen. But a a on-site manager doesn't necessarily understand that.

You know repairs are normal, especially in high volume stores. You know this particular manager that i was just talking with. We just had this discussion because she's like look, she goes, you guys are constantly coming out here and i go we'll define constantly. She goes in the last six months.

You guys have been here, you know four times and i go okay, but on different equipment yeah. But it's still the same like that's what she sees. But then i asked her something i said: look you guys. Are the busiest store in this particular company right and she goes yes and i said okay, i said when things were super busy before you know everything went to hell with the virus and all that crap.

I said we were getting i'd, say six to eight service calls a month at this restaurant, okay and she goes okay and i go now we're getting. You know six to eight service calls in a couple months: okay, i go so where's the variable there and she goes. I don't understand and i said think about it. I said you guys are dead, slow right now, you're, not abusing your equipment, the cooks aren't breaking it.

Therefore, the service calls aren't there. I said when things pick up pick back up and the restaurant gets busy again. The service calls are going to go through the roof, so i said again: where is that variable? The variable is your cooks. I said i understand that you see me and you think i'm breaking it, but i said how come i haven't been here over the last couple months.

If it was me doing this, you know you think that the service calls would be just as much, but i said the variable is, as you guys slow down and you don't have a normal kitchen staff and you're not slammed and you're, not busy. The service calls go down, therefore. The variable is the kitchen staff, the kitchen staff is abusing the equipment, so sometimes you got to babysit these guys and grab them by the hand and explain things to them and then sometimes you're never going to win. You know sometimes they're never going to understand that um.

What is my post? What is my customer on cus? What is my policy on customers calling tech for service if they get their numbers uh? Well, first off! That's not acceptable. I've had that happen, and i tell my service technicians do not give out your phone number only give out my phone number. You know my phone number is the only one i want the customers calling me if they're calling to try to. Sometimes they want to have someone troubleshoot something like hey.

Can you can you tell me things to check before you come out? I want them to call me so if they're calling my service text, then you know usually my service tech tells me, and i tell them you need to stop accepting those calls and you need to have them call me so yeah. I don't want my employees because what happens if one of my employees tells the customer something incorrect and then the customer said. Well, he told me to do it. You know no i'd rather that be deflected on me and let me be the person to try to walk the customer through those things so um, let's see what else we got.

What's my experience or opinion with r12 to r417c conversions, i don't know that i've done r12 to r417c, but i mean any refrigerant conversions. First off what i'm going to do is i'm going to plug my buddy ralph. Okay, my buddy ralph is always willing to talk to you guys about refrigerant related questions, so i'm going to give you his information right now. Ralph works for honeywell refrigerants.

So i'm going to give you my spiel on retrofit refrigerants and alternative refrigerants stuff like that. First and foremost, you never mix refrigerants. I don't care what the supply house counter guy told you. I don't care what the other service tech told you.

There is not a single refrigerant out there that you are supposed to put or mix with another refrigerant. Okay, if someone told you that they're lying and they're incorrect, okay, every refrigerant is a specific chemical or specific chemical mixture, and it's meant to be used on its own in a properly dehydrated environment, meaning that you need to evacuate the system down to 500, if not Lower microns make sure there's no air, no leaks. No anything, then you put the new refrigerant in, but before you make any conversions, whether it be r12 to 417c or whatever you're going to use, you always want to follow the installation instructions from the manufacturer. I encourage you to go to the manufacturer's website.

Read up on that particular refrigerant. Is there an oil change that happens? Is there a better oil that you need to use with whatever refrigerant you're going to use, and this goes for any flavors of refrigerant? If we're using an r22 alternative and r12 alternative any of those, you always want to follow the installation instructions when it comes to r12 replacement refrigerants. Okay back in the day 409a was my replacement refrigerant for r12, okay, uh 408. A was my replacement refrigerant for r502.

Those were the most common ones and there was a lot of miscommunication. Okay, there was not good education coming from the supply house is who we were looking at for education, because they were the ones selling us this refrigerant. Oh yeah, this works perfect. Just do this.

Just do that: well, we weren't being given all the proper information, so you need to go to the manufacturer's websites and read up on what needs to be done, understanding something if you're going from r12 to a 400 series refrigerant, there might be some pressure differences there. Okay, so understand that with 409a from r12, we would have uh refrigerant issues: okay, because the the receivers weren't big enough to store the full charge and we ran into issues um. You know commonly. We thought that when you were, for instance, using 409a that you you know, there's a misconception that on a refrigeration system, you would only put in 80 of the original charge.

Well, that's not necessarily true, because on a refrigeration system that has an expansion valve, you need a clear sight, glass bottom line for that roof expansion valve to work correctly, but the design of the system was not correct. So we would have to leave the sight glass flashing for it to even half-ass work, okay and for the compressor to not go off on overload. It wasn't that there was a problem with the refrigerant. It's that we weren't looking past what the supply house counter guys told us and we weren't verifying that the components in the system were big enough.

You know the liquid lines were big enough and that kind of stuff to make sure that we could store the entire charge in the system, so on 409a systems. You know on some of them. If we would just go in there and take the r12 out change. The dryer and put 409a in there you know and clear the sight glass our compressors would go off on thermal overload.

They would, you know, get too hot and we'd have issues, especially when they were trying to pump down, and it was just a problem, but it was a system design issue. Again we had it in our heads that oh, this is a simple change. I'll just take one refrigerant out put the other one in and call it a date, but that wasn't the truth, because there wasn't a lot of good educational materials out there. So you got ta lean on the manufacturers and read their installation.

Instructions do not trust what a counter guy at a supply house says. Okay, i've gotten bit way too many times by that. I'm not saying that counter guys! Supply houses - don't know what they're talking about, but you need to do the research yourself and do your due diligence to make sure because guess what, if the supply house counter guy sells you the wrong compressor and you install it whose fault? Is it it's yours? Because you installed it, if the supply house tell counter guy, tells you to mix the refrigerants and something happens. It's your fault, not his okay.

So you got to do your due diligence and look into it um. What is 410a used in air conditioning systems? Uh puffle up against you're, saying your issue is to clear the sight glass. You was running right up against your high side limit and again because there was a design problem in the system. Okay, if you were dealing with a refrigeration system with a receiver and a cyclist, there was likely a design problem in the system, and you needed to correct that.

It's not just a simple drop one gas in, for you know, call it a day so um our refrigerants, such as r12 and r22, also banned in my country no r12 and r22 are not banned in my country. You cannot manufacture those refrigerants anymore. We can't make r12, but we can still use r12. We still have surplus r12.

You can't make r22 and or import new r22 into the united states, but you're still allowed to use it you're not going to get in trouble. I know other countries have bans and different things like that, but it's not the case here. So, what's the rule for sizing line sets for walk-in equipment, how do you calculate the btu rating steve? Okay? This is kind of a loaded question steve and i'm actually working on a video series doing just this explaining how to size line sizes we're going to go. You know quickly into it, but in a nutshell, what you're going to do is you're going to find out the total capacity of your system.

Okay, the easiest way to do this. Let's just assume we have one evaporator and one condensed muted on the walk-in. Okay got a condensing unit on the roof. You've got a single connection line size from the condensing unit to the evaporator plain and simple uh.

The condenser unit has a 7 8 3 8 line set on the outlet of the evap of the condenser, and the evaporator has a half inch 3 8 line set on the evap on the outlet of the evaporator. What's the line size that we're supposed to use, do we use the 7 8 or the half inch or the 5 8, or whatever it doesn't? Okay, the the line sizes on the evaporator and the condenser do not dictate what size lines you're supposed to use on. The system, what you need to do is calculate the equivalent length of the line set. The equivalent length is the actual measured length of the line set with added calculations for the fitting loss.

Okay. So if you have a 90 degree elbow on a 7 8 inch 90 that might equal 3 4 feet of pipe okay because of the friction loss across it, so that adds to our total equivalent length. So it's not unheard of to have a line set that measures 70 feet in actual measured length, but the total equivalent length might be 125 feet because it has a crap ton of fittings and 90s and elbows and t's and different things like that. Okay, so once we've calculated the total equivalent length, then we're going to find out the capacity of the equipment that we're using okay, because that refrigerant line needs to be able to carry the refrigerant at the proper velocity and maintain the pressure drop across that line set.

We don't want it to create a pressure drop too big, so we don't want there to be. You know high pressure at one end and low pressure at the condensing unit, because that's going to lead to improper oil return and stuff like that. So once we calculate the capacity of the system, then we're going to take that total, equivalent length and uh it's kind of like in residential duct. What i'm going to do is actually open up a program that makes it super easy, but you can get out the old copla manuals and you can do friction, loss calculations and you can calculate what size lines you need uh.

The easiest way guys is go to sporland's website and input the information. Once you input the information go to their um uh. What do they call it? A virtual engineer, sporland.com there'll, be a virtual engineer. Tab go to virtual engineer.

You have to put in your email address and then on the virtual engineer: it'll actually have line sizing calculations and you just input a few of the numbers. Again, i'm going to be showing a video on this very soon where i'm showing this. But you input your your btus, you input your total equivalent length, um the refrigerant type, and then it's going to come up with a calculation as to what size lines you need now to go even further with that, you might have to change your line sizes depending On, if you have really high risers okay, let's say it's going up six stories. Okay, that's not unheard of! You might need to reduce the line size to increase the velocity.

You know there's different things you're going to have to do. Okay, you add in multiple coils, then that's going to change a few things too. Okay, so someone had actually just asked me because they had some incorrect information and there's nothing wrong with this. Okay, we all learn all the time.

Even i am learning every single day. So if i say something that doesn't make sense to you or makes you think that you've been doing it wrong for a long time, just do some research and it doesn't mean you're a bad person. Okay, so someone had asked me um where's, this question that i had here. Let me find it um and it goes with line sizing right now.

Uh where's my question: there we go uh, oh, i don't have the name, but he was asking about a common suction line and he's saying hey. I had two evaporator coils on my video, where i did a new line set just this last video right and he said hey. I was always told because he said that the lengths were different on my line, so one evaporator was longer one evaporator was smaller. I think it was confused on his question because he was asking me saying that he thought both evaporator lines need to be the exact same length.

I think he was referring to the line size, but that's incorrect in both okay, so um. It depends on the capacity of the evaporator if you have a 14 000 btu evaporator and a 9000 btu evaporator they're gon na have different line sizes more than likely. Okay, because the refrigerant lines are, are sized to carry the refrigerant through it at the proper velocity to maintain the proper um suction gas return to the compressor that kind of stuff okay. So it's not unheard of to have different line sizes going to different evaporators because of different capacities, or something like that.

Okay, so hopefully i didn't butcher that and that kind of answers this question um. Let me see what else we got in the chat right now: uh yeah virtual engineers, where you're gon na go and sportline's virtual engineers there's another great thing about virtual engineer. Um is that you can also it'll help you to size, expansion valves, liquid line dryers um. It does all that stuff for you, okay, and it really takes the thought process out of it.

You just got to plug in a few numbers and call it a day. Um and again, i am working on a video series, guys there's no big rush on this. One because i'm just taking my time, you know working out the kinks and stuff, but what i'm gon na be doing is a walking cooler equipment replacement from the load calculation, where we're showing the equipment we're doing the load calculation, we're determining what size evaporators we need. What size condensing unit we need we're determining the expansion valves, the liquid line, solenoid valves, we're determining the line sizes and we're going to put the entire system together, and i'm going to take you guys through it step by step on the video trying not to bore The heck out of you guys, but trying to dumb down the process because there's a lot of engineers speak and technical terms that even sometimes, when i look at some of these things, i'm like what the heck does that mean like i don't know what that is.

You know i just want to make it simple, so i'm trying to dumb down the process. So that way, it's easy for me to understand, and you know i have resources available to me like, for instance, my buddy ralph dallas fan in here. You know he's gon na i'm gon na be picking his brain about a few questions, because we're going to be using our 448a refrigerant right. So i'm going to pick his brain a little bit so because i have access to ralph and while you guys do too, but i mean you know some people just don't know the contacts that i can just reach out to i'm reaching out to sporland to wrestle.

You know and we're getting on conference calls with engineers and all this stuff and i'm trying to really make it simple so soon, okay, i'd say next couple weeks or so this video series should be coming out so um all right, let's get through the rest of This so um had two videos this last week: uh they lost power in the middle of the repair and the thermostat is missing, and it's cold. Okay, the two questions on both of those videos that the most common question uh, the first one: they lost power in the middle of the repair. How come i didn't use the navac battery operated vacuum pump? I have it okay, but i had no power. I had to charge the system too, so that's why i got the generator i had to evacuate the system and then i had to charge the system with the with the recovery machine.

I had to push the gas back into the system uh. You know, because i wanted to walk away and not have to come back um now at the end of the call you guys saw that the power turned back on but uh. I have the navac battery operated two cfm vacuum pump, but it's not going to pull down a walk-in cooler with one battery you're going to need multiple batteries and i'm still using the big hoses. But to get it down to the proper evacuation.

You got to have multiple batteries and i would rather use a bigger pump in that situation. Okay and then on the one that the thermostat is missing. Did i ever put the thermostat back? Okay? First off it wasn't a thermostat. It was literally a tablet mounted on the wall that had a custom program in it that just showed their their interface, basically for the internet, thermostats and no, i did not put the tablet back on the wall.

The thing that was missing that the customer thought was their thermostat because they have an audio video company that comes out and they have a custom like the whole custom mount for that thing they had it like framed out with chair rail, like a picture frame. Kind of a thing and uh i'm not getting involved in that kind of crap, so the whole tablet fell off the wall. I just told the customer to get the audio video company back out, they'll install it they'll program it and set it all up. That's not my thing so um, what's my biggest pet peeve on walking equipment, my biggest pet peeve, that's a hard one bud i mean i can't handle when people leave crap on the roof, their trash and stuff like that um you know and then service technicians, not Being thorough when they're defrosting walking cooler equipment take out the fan motors take out the fan, blades be thorough, defrost, the entire thing that would be a pet peeve of mine.

I guess um chris norris. Thank you so very much for that super chat man. That is amazing. I really do appreciate it um you guys that do that, it's awesome, you know i don't.

I don't need the super chats, but it is super generous when you guys choose to do them. So thank you so very much. Okay um. While we're talking about that, if you guys do want to support the the videos you know, the easiest thing is just watch the videos on youtube.

That's the easiest way to support it. Watch the videos. If you want to go further um, you can support. You know support via super chats or you can go to my website hvacrvideos.com.

I got merch available by the way the large hats on the website are out of stock, but i've already gotten that process rolling. So i'd say in the next week or two i'm hoping or three weeks at the most, i would say we're going to have a whole new stock of hats. I just ordered another 100 so they'll be coming in, but we still got plenty of sweatshirts hoodies, um, sweatshirts and hoodies are the same thing but they're zip up hoodies. We got plenty of those shirts hats beanies, all that stuff.

Okay, you can also support via patreon youtube channel membership um all that good stuff. Okay, let me see what else we got in here. Um. Have i ever seen residential ac compressors used on walking coolers kevin yeah yeah.

I have yeah um, not so much anymore. These days, but i have, in the past i've seen residential five-ton air conditioning systems just on the roof, running walk-in equipment and stuff, like that people added receivers and time clocks and all that fancy stuff pressure, controls yup seen it many times all right um. When is the review coming for the milwaukee heated jacket? I don't know you know that might be one of the other guys. I bet you adam or joe might even have that milwaukee heated jacket here in california.

I don't think i really have the need for the heated jacket i might buy the heated vest because they actually have just a vest that you can buy. That might be better because i wear long sleeve, shirts, anyways um. Let me see what else we got in here: okay, so i'm gon na get back to my list. Um danny was asking me about my my oxygen or oxy acetylene torch setup and he was asking which package to buy as far as an oxy acetylene setup, and he was questioning whether or not i used flame arresters on my oxy acetylene setup, okay.

Yes, i do use flame arresters um. I do not have one specific oxy acetylene setup that i tell everybody to buy or anything like that, because i'm not satisfied with any of them out there. Okay, that's one thing: i've always been bugged about is every manufacturer. Has an oxy acetylene, whether you go with insert name a brand here, victor, whatever uniweld, all these different brands.

I've never been totally satisfied with the caddy, the cage, the the components um they just they. I don't know just doesn't seem very. They don't seem to have the technician in mind when they design these things um. So i don't really have one that i specifically use, but yes, i do use flame arresters, they usually come on the kits already.

You just put them in the hose line and you know they work just fine, so um okay. So i answered that question. So someone had asked me about outside air dampers when it comes to rtu units and building balance, and he was kind of asking me you know how do i determine how much to open the outdoor air dampers and then he was also asking me he's working on A linux package unit and he was having a hard time disabling the free cooling, meaning that if he would open up the outside air dampers, then when it would get cool outside, he noticed that they would open more. So when it comes to the linux package units it's going to be in the unit settings itself, if you have a new prodigy unit, you're going to need to get into the unit id configuration, i'm not going to instruct people how to do that.

You got to read the manual because you can set them up for manual outside air dampers. You can do that kind of stuff. You can set them up to turn off free cooling if you're, using on the old uh energence units that had like the m18 or previous circuit boards or m19 boards. You know it was just a dip switch setting that you could change to turn off free cooling but um as far as how to set the outside air dampers and how to know it.

You're gon na need to do a building air balance. When you do a building air balance, you're gon na you know you - should it's very rare that you actually come up on these plans, but in an air balance, they're gon na determine usually it's determined on a set of engineered plans. You know you need the damper set to this position, that exhaust fan is moving this much air and an air balance. Tech should be able to come in and just look at those plans and then adjust everything accordingly and then measure and verify now as a field technician, i'm not going to have those plans.

So there's some rules of thumb that i'm going to use being very cautious. Not to mess up any engineered systems, you know worst case scenario. I can't get my hands on plans. The building's out of whack, you make sure everything's operating everything's, clean outdoor air dampers, are clean, functioning and then we're going to set the exhaust fans and then balance the building out by feeling the airflow.

You can use manometers. But it's it's a tricky thing. Doing air balances again, i'm not a certified air balance person. Okay, i just know how to kind of wing it but you're going to pay attention to the positive negative air pressure in the building and try to in my area, typically try to get as close as possible to a slightly positive building.

That's how we typically run our restaurants here, it's ever so slightly positive, but i mean it's not really something. I can completely walk you through over here. It's it can be tricky and i would encourage people not to mess with air balance, because you can really screw some building issues up so be very cautious about starting tweaking on things um a veto, oxy acetylene torch bag. That's an interesting one! Yeah, i've always been an oxy acetylene person.

So am i gon na review the milwaukee crimping tool, if you guys have things that you want us to review if you're curious about you know the tools channel first off, if you guys don't already know, we have a new tools, channel called hvacr tools myself and The overtime guys are running this channel together. I'm posting a link right now in the the show or in the chat you guys. Please subscribe to that channel. Give us some watch time on there help the channel to grow.

If you guys have suggestions or things you want us to cover on that, i have an email address and the email address is tools at hvacr videos tools at hvhdrvideos.com - all you need to do is send an email to tools.hvacrvideos.com and give us your suggestions of things. You think we should cover or talk about and we'll go over it and see what we can do so tristan had asked me about trade school. He wants to get certified in hvac, but he wants to know if he necessarily has to go to trade school tristan. It really depends on the location you're in here in california.

We have no licensing requirements to be a service technician other than getting your federally mandated epa. Section 608 certification. That says, you know how to handle refrigerants and when you're supposed to recover the refrigerants and all that stuff, okay, so in california other than that, that's the only thing you need to be an hvac service technician. You do not need state mandated licenses or anything like that now, if you want to open a business.

Yes, you have to have so many years in the trade and pass a state contractor's license, but other states have more stringent requirements where you have to have or other countries, canada and different things like that. You have to have certain certifications. Okay, so it really depends on where you're at so in california. You could certainly find a company, that's willing to train you, and you would never have to set a day in school if they require that right, they can teach you everything, they want to teach you and you can continue to work for the rest of your life.

In california, okay, but in your location, tristan, i don't know where you're at it really depends on the the place you're in. So what i would suggest is is, if you're interested in getting into the trade call a local refrigeration and air conditioning company and just pick their brain say: hey i'm interested. What would i have to do? What are your requirements? What are the legal requirements and they would probably fill you in i'm sure so um. Let me get to the list of things here: uh yeah, all right, um bulimo makes a universal kit, or at least they used to send it whatever zeroed it in your float.

Okay, i'm having another conversation, have you seen a rooftop package unit that uses a combustion chamber for the furnace uh andrew? Are you talking about a train package unit that has a combustion chamber uh? That's what it sounds like to me. I don't know if, if that's what you mean but trane package units, they use a giant combustion chamber as their heat exchanger. If that i don't know what you mean by that, but do they make single-phase walk-in cooler equipment? Yes, they do. Am i still set on dewalt tools, or am i starting to like milwaukee um? I have a mixed bag of dewalt and milwaukee stuff.

I think i've been actually using more milwaukee stuff lately than dewalt so, but i'm not gon na get rid of my dewalt stuff. I'm gon na use it until it breaks um, but i'm not set on one brand, but i do like the idea of just having one set of batteries in the truck so um. What is mo 99 used for mo 99 is an r22 retrofit refrigerant. How often do you go through old, honeywell thermostats? I don't get very old ones anymore.

I have the newer ones right now we're on a phase changing out the vision pro thermostats right now. Uh is the the series that they're getting rid of at the moment. Um. Let me see what else everyone please yeah, please guys smash the like button.

We got 314 people in here 176 likes. Please get that number up. It would really help me out. I really appreciate it.

Okay, um. Let me see what else troy had mentioned, that he thought there was uh, oh okay, so in one of my videos, troy was watching and he was saying actually my recent video. He was saying that uh you know. I mentioned that the the belt was worn kind of funny and the pulley was bad because i stuck my finger in the pulley and i could feel the the the wall of the pulley or sheave and he was saying there's nothing wrong with the pulley he's saying.

Just change the belt and adjust the pulley accordingly, so the belt sits in the pulley correctly and that's incorrect. Okay. So, first and foremost, let's talk about this, so uh pulley sheave. I don't know what you call them.

I call it an adjustable motor pulley, okay and then i call it a drive pulley. Some people call the the the motor pulley achieve some people. You know, i don't know it semantics guys. Okay, so the motor pulley in my case is typically adjustable.

I get it. People tell me all the time in the chat i should put in fixed groove pulleys that are not adjustable. Yes, that sounds great, but that's just not what happens out in the the real world, okay in the real world in restaurants and most like commercial, refrigeration and air conditioning equipment. If it has an adjustable pulley on it, we leave the adjustable pulley on.

I i don't think i've ever seen, someone go put fixed pulleys on stuff, okay, it sounds great, but it doesn't happen very often. Okay, second thing: if the customer doesn't do routine preventative maintenance in my opinion and they run loose belts on their equipment, all the time. You're going to have a lot of failed adjustable motor pulleys. In my opinion, in my experience and just my observation, loose belts ruin pulleys, okay.

I don't have any scientific evidence to prove that it's just from experience. I noticed that if we have loose belts, all the time we're gon na have bad pulleys. Okay, what i have right here is a pulley gauge tool. This is from browning, i think, there's probably a link in the show notes of this video.