Foreign, i like puppies, 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 what is up hello, my viewers, i know - that's probably getting old. I always do that, but i like dr zarkov doctors, i miss the guy right.

I don't know about you guys, but i used to watch that guy all the time he was so corny and so cheesy, but i liked his videos. He was a cool dude. I think he was like an hvac instructor or something like that, and then he just made videos at home. I don't, but i think he had a business too.

I don't know we should have doc. It's sad because i think a lot of those people would not come on the overtime show, but on the overtime show we have the perfect platform to interview these people. Maybe i should start doing that on my channel. Maybe i should start interviewing people.

Maybe they wouldn't be as intimidated because, like the overtime show it's fun and - and you know the people who know what it is, if you guys don't already know, hvac overtime, the youtube channel myself and my friends, we do a live stream on friday evenings, but anyways It can be a bit raunchy at times it can be a bit educational, just a little bit, not much just a tiny bit educational, but it's more or less just for guys. You know just like sitting at the bar talking about whatever, so it's just cool but yeah. We should have someone like dr zarcloff on it'd be kind of fun to like interview a bunch of youtubers speaking of youtubers. You know i don't get involved in a lot of drama and stuff like that, but there's a particular youtuber he's one of the biggest ones and he had posted something on on social media or something like that yesterday and i politely chimed in and was like: hey Bro you're a little bit incorrect and then i i said you know i wasn't being rude at all.

I was like here's, some information, that's a little more factual and i could tell that. I hurt his feelings because he came back with like a. He was lashing out at me, comments saying, like i think, you've been in the walk-in freezer too long. You don't know what you're talking about and then um.

I posted some more information and like a picture and more factual information, and then he just blocked me and deleted me. So i can't see his stuff anymore and what like i'm, not a person that goes out and attacks. People like it's just kind of funny, but i'm not even gon na mention him, because i don't need to give him any more attention than than he needs. But yeah he's a bit silly so but yeah i'd like to have more youtubers and stuff and and talk to him and get to know people, so is that a toupee? No, this is my real hair.

Most people don't know that i actually have hair on my head. That is my real hair here. I'll make it easier for those that that don't you know i could. I could put the hat on.

You know there we go whoa. Oh it's my secret identity. You know um, but now for real all right. So let's see what else we got going on in here, i'm looking at the chat right now, hello to everybody, it's cool to see all you guys.

I know i've missed a few i'll talk about that here. In a second um reading, through here uh, let's see do i watch the mikey pipes channel. I've watched his videos once or twice um honestly, i really don't watch very much youtube content. Uh it's hard enough, and so let's get into this, someone had asked in the chat.

How do i balance work and home life? Well, let me one up that question: how do i balance work and home life and then also start a social media business that has to do with work that takes up all my home time, so i can focus on my social media business at the same time, How do i do that? I don't okay, the only advice i can give to everybody is find a spouse that appreciates everything and tolerates your madness. Okay, because that's the only way that i get through all this - is that my wife jill tolerates my madness, because i'm a whack, i'm nut, i'm a nutcase, i'm super hyper focused and yeah. I don't know why she puts up with me. Thank goodness she does.

If you guys don't already, you should follow my wife on social media. It's at hvac, our wife on instagram. I think she has something on facebook, but i don't think she posts very much on facebook, but she definitely posts on instagram and she just kind of posts. So if your spouses want to follow she just kind of gives ideas into how we live, the hvac, our life and it's just a way to communicate and stuff, so we're probably going to take it further someday.

But you know all right: let's see what else we got going on in here um. So how do i yeah? I just just i don't know how we'd balance it. It's it's chaos, okay, and that's also part of the reason why i haven't had live streams for like three or four live streams is because i've realized that i need to prioritize some things and my sanity is most important above all, and i'm uh, i'm sure, there's Some kind of a weird diagnosis there as far as all the craziness goes, but like i'm, a very hyper focused person and if i miss or potentially i'm going to miss a live stream. I lose my mind like i start stressing out, and i start just going crazy and i know people out there will email me and say: don't take it so seriously.

I'm trying, but i have issues and it's really hard for me to let go of things like. I just tend to focus way crazy on them, so um i've been trying to get better at that, and i've been trying to relax a little bit more and not be so stressed out. If i have to miss a live stream um you know it just is what it is, and i need to focus on my business too, my hvac business, because that we're struggling in different ways too, because obviously we're short, staffed and all that stuff. So it's kind of chaos right now, so it's just life and you know we all have issues.

I doubt that any of my problems are any more severe than anybody else's uh in perspective. You know it all whatever, but so hello to everybody. If you're new here welcome to the live stream, this is the hvacr videos live stream, uh, i'm a bit crazy. My name is chris um welcome to the chaos okay.

So, let's see what else we got in here, uh commercial kitchen, chronicles, that's, mr pat finley pat - is working on what he is. He has launched a new podcast he's social media stuff, he's gon na focus on uh, the kitchen, hot side, equipment, some refrigeration side, and then also, i saw his post that he wants to kind of showcase other trades and kind of um. You know bring more light to the blue collar lifestyle when it comes to all the different trades. So you definitely want to check out commercial kitchen, chronicles, pat's, a cool dude i've communicated with him a bunch on social media um.

I actually got to meet in person. This last year, uh or a couple months ago, so um, let's see what are the main things to be concerned about when installing a walk-in cooler. Well, let's jump right into this, because i definitely have that as the first thing that i want to talk on my uh topics right here: okay, so, first and foremost walking coolers in general, okay, um, walking cooler is the most important thing. The absolute most important thing is properly sizing your equipment for the infiltrating heat load of the box.

You're gon na be cooling, okay, properly sizing your equipment is going to affect the entire operation of everything. Okay, it's going to affect the indoor humidity inside the box. It's going to affect short cycling, it's going to affect compressor life uh product life right because you want to maintain product temperatures, whether it be a refrigerator or a freezer. Who knows you want to maintain that temperature? And in the past we used to oversize equipment? It wasn't right, but we were able to get away from it or get away with it.

Okay, but that doesn't happen these days. There's a lot of issues going on. There's a lot of regulations. We don't need to say whether we like the regulations or not but they're here, okay, we can whine and complain about all of them, but the simple fact is is that we either learn to live with the regulations and work with them and benefit from them and Profit off of them, or we just complain about them and then end up out of business okay.

So we have a lot of new regulations that are attacking the walking cooler and walk in freezer sizing, especially of the smaller walk-in coolers 3000 square feet or less there's new department of energy regulations that are making manufacturers follow certain energy guidelines. They have to meet certain criteria with that being said, oversizing your equipment isn't really going to work anymore. Okay, because you're not going to meet that, but then on top of that, if you're over sizing your equipment even more so nowadays, you're going to run into uh operational problems. Okay, because if you have a massively oversized compressor - and it's just gon na start to a domino effect - that's gon na affect the entire operation of the system.

So the number one thing about walking, coolers and walk-in freezers is make sure it's sized right. Okay, as a service technician, this is going to be hard, but this is how i've learned to approach this. When i go into a walk-in cooler, walk-in freezer call, i will analyze it i'll, look at it i'll be like this is brand new equipment and then i'll go and ask the customer hey. Have you been having this problem since this equipment was installed? Well yeah? Actually we have boom.

The first thing that i'm gon na do is: do a vitals just walk around look at the equipment, then i'm gon na do a load calculation on the software there's several different manufacturers out there. That will allow you to do load calculations on your phone. Um heatcraft has one you can download the hub from heatcraft. I believe you can do the full load calculation on your phone.

He craft rpprpd.com. I believe um uh, but do a load calculation find out if the equipment is oversized or undersized. That's where you're gon na start okay and then from there you're gon na move forward. Now you find out it's oversized, okay, so then we got to start thinking about the repercussions.

Now what can happen if your evaporator uh is sized for the box, but your condensing unit is massively oversized. That is dramatically going to affect your evaporator td, your evaporator td. In the light commercial refrigeration side, let's define evaporator td, we talk about the suction saturation temperature, but even that i'm going to give you a caveat. Okay, single component refrigerants we're going to look at the suction saturation temperature compared to the actual box temperature, and that is going to be how you're going to calculate your evaporator td.

So it's a comparison to the temperature inside the the box and the suction saturation temperature of the refrigerant. But remember i said single component refrigerant. You start adding in blended refrigerants, especially the newer refrigerants that have a really high glide and you actually don't just use the suction saturation temperature. You want to look at the midpoint temperature of the glide okay, so a lot of these new refrigerants.

The way that they're able to make them is by mixing together a bunch of different refrigerants and they have a high glide and that glide will affect your evaporator td if you don't know how to measure it properly. So if you're, looking at the dew point on your set, your uh, your pressure temperature chart, which is normally how we would calculate superheat, which still is. But if you look at your dew point, that may not necessarily be your actual evaporator temperature. If you have a high glide refrigerant, so you need to look at the midpoint of that glide to calculate your evaporator td, and then that will help you okay.

So now i had a question on here about evaporator tds and how it's affected by glide um. I want to explain something too: okay, on my side, the light commercial side. We don't have capacity control, we don't have variable, speed, compressors, okay, we don't uh uh split, or what do you want to call it? We don't have multiple condensers, so we can shut down. One condenser: we don't have multi, you know so with that being said, we typically design for the hottest ambient okay.

Now i live in southern california out in the desert. Okay uh. Some of the areas that i work in can be 115 to 110 or 120 degrees. In the summer, and so we have to design our equipment for that high heat load right of the summer, but the problem is, if you have a single capacity compressor, meaning it's not variable.

Okay, that compressor is now probably going to double in size when it cools off and we go to our 50 degree. Winters you're still going to have that that two horsepower compressor in the summer is now going to turn into maybe a three horsepower compressor. Okay and it's going to be pumping it's a little hard away, but it doesn't have the outdoor heat load right, and so your liquid saturation temperature is going to be a lot lower and that's definitely adversely going to affect your evaporator td. So it's so important to understand that, because, as service technicians i go out in the middle of the winter on a single component, uh comp or a single compressor system, and i'm like looking at my gauges going.

Why is my suction temperature, so solar suction pressure, so low right, my saturation temperature's so low, and it's like well, you know start thinking about it. Well, this compressor is now massively oversized. It doesn't have a heat load to overcome because it's only 50 degrees outside and that's adversely going to affect your evaporator td okay. So it's really important to understand that i'm going to look at the chat and see what we got going on in here.

I know i'm probably going off on a tangent, so um uh have, i ever checked out century refrigeration equipment no, never heard of it. But uh do i watch mikey pipes and i already talked about that one um, so, okay cool, i'm not seeing anything that i'm missing as of yet so when it comes to our evaporator td uh. Let me preface this with saying two um. I was actually just talking with brett wetzel from advanced refrigeration podcast about this too.

I plan on doing a more in-depth video because oftentimes when people ask me questions, you know when i'm working - and i don't know if it's the same i'd like to know in the chat, if, if it's the same for you guys too, but um uh, really quick. Uh matio, i don't know, if that's how you pronounce your name, do i think r448a will ever be replaced with something new yeah r448a is already on the chopping block. Dude. Every refrigerant that you are using today is already on the chopping block.

They're already have a date for when it's not going to be used anymore, so don't get used to any refrigerants. Okay, just because they're all being phased out right and if the hippies have their way, we're not going to use propane we're not going to use water. We're not going to cool anything okay, because it's just going to be a problem so um now i lost my train of thought there. Let me see uh chris is looking a bit like sean penn.

You know you're, not the first person. That's told me that in my life, that's kind of funny um all right, so i lost my train of thought. I know i was talking about evaporator td, oh so yeah. I plan - and i know this isn't my normal style, but i'm gon na start working on some things from the back behind the scenes and i'm gon na start contacting some manufacturers and we are going to try to make a change with the manufacturers.

Okay and the point that i'm trying to make is, is i've done a bunch of research and i can go to all these different refrigeration manufacturers, whether they manufacture components, equipment, refrigerants and if you ask them a single question about midpoint temperatures or when and when or When to use those each one of them will come up with a different answer, so we cannot get a concise answer from everybody. We're going to work on that. That's one thing that i have the ability and a lot of the other influencers. I don't care for that word, but it is what it is right, a lot of the other influencers and or educators on the the youtube area.

We have the ability to contact these manufacturers and and help to create some change and voice concerns that you guys have uh to them. So i'm gon na do that. I'm gon na take it upon myself to contact them. We're gon na try to come up with a a video that explains um all of this really in depth.

That's not too boring right and that's something that i've had a talk with manufacturers before too, because i'll have a manufacturer and they're like hey. Let's do a video, let's make this and i'm like guys. You got ta dumb it down right, because i don't like hearing all these big words that i have to like read four times to understand what they mean and different things like that, i'm just a knuckle! Busting mechanic and i like things to to make sense, i like to dumb things down because often times it takes a while for me. I have to learn it at like when i say dumb it down.

I have to slow it down and break it down and learn it slowly and then i can get to the big words and the big definitions and then i can understand it, but i have to start with the dumb down version and work my way up. So i'm going to try to do that and try to make an effort to make a video about the entire load calculation process when and where to use the midpoint temperature of a glide when and where to look at evaporator td and how it affects things. So we're going to do that and we're going to talk about it more in depth, so uh will speed again thanks for becoming a supporter and being a supporter for so long, but i really appreciate it. Man, that's really awesome, um, all right, let's see uh, let's see brett says: let's have a cage match between the refrigerant manufacturer, the engineers of the equipment and the customer and see uh what they all think about.

Td and superheat. That's a good good idea! Brett. We should do it all right, uh uh, oh, so, let's go ahead and do this too um a couple things i want to talk about, so i did make stickers they're not available. Yet they've been kind of been popping them in little different pictures and stuff.

They will be available soon. I've got a bunch of them um honestly, i am just so overwhelmed with life right now and work, and this that i'm trying to prioritize things and stickers are on the back burner. Uh merch is on the back burner. If i'm out of stock i'm out of stock until i have time to sit down and order, it, i'm never planned on doing merch and and merchandise.

For those that i triggered by saying, merch you'd believe how many emails i get, because i called it merch in a video. Oh, my gosh people start losing their minds, call it merchandise. It's like shut up: okay, um, but merchandise, merch stickers, hats, beanies, sweaters! Those are like i never planned on doing any of that stuff. Honestly, the first time someone asked me, i was like that's weird.

I don't want to do that. You know it's just not my thing now. I did inevitably - and i appreciate all the support that all of you give, and it actually gives my wife something to do, because that's not not that she doesn't have a million things already to do it. That was a bad way of me to say that i need to be a better husband right, but um.

No, she handles all the merchandise, packaging and shipping and all that stuff. So you can keep her busy if you guys place orders so um, but uh wanted to again i'm losing my train of thought like crazy right now. Why am i losing my train of thought? My brain is just like doo doo right now, um. So i'm sure i'll remember what i wanted to talk about too so uh.

I wanted to make an effort to, and i need to get better at doing a lot of this stuff, but i've been getting a lot of packages from people and i'm gon na make a better effort of showcasing the stuff that people send me um. It's very very awesome, i'm very humbled that people want to send me old tools and different things like that, and i'm very honored to be able to do that. Okay, so thank you very much for those that have already, or you know, various little things that people have sent me. It's amazing and awesome okay, so i know i don't acknowledge you guys enough, but thank you and i know i don't acknowledge my supporters enough, but thank you very much, i'm just trying my best to like keep my head above water from drowning over here, because i'm Just going crazy, but anyways um, i got some new cool tools that i kind of wanted to talk about really quick um.

Now i've talked about this one before okay. This is a refrigerant leak detector from robin air uh. This was actually given to me and all these tools were actually given to me by the same person, so i'm gon na hook him up with a shout out and give him a plug because he does have a product that he wants me to talk about. So um, i have nothing to do with this guy.

The gentleman that sent this to me is chris eads. Now he gave me this at the hvac, our school training symposium. This is probably one of my favorite tools that i've ever seen in my life, this robin air leak detector. Now this is from the 70s, i believe from my research, but he also sent me some other old-school leak detectors which i did think were really cool.

This is one of them right here. It's just kind of funny to see these things. You know how old school the technology was, and then also he sent me this one right here, um, interestingly enough, this has the same tip as that little one. That looks like a ray gun too this one's made by thermal engineering, so this one's pretty cool.

So thank you, chris um and i will talk about chris's product now. It has nothing really to do with me, so i can't really showcase his product on my channel because i have no way to showcase it. I make service videos, but chris made something called the acezt, so it's um, acezt.com and uh. What he did was he made.

These are three quarter inch. Plumbing tees they're for residential is really the application you can use them for and they have a cap on them and when you pull the cap off you're like what the heck does it have a cap for? Well, it's actually a pretty smart design. What he came up with is these little tools right here right now. This one has a hole on the side.

Okay, so if you think about it, if you want to blow this t out, but you don't want to have to plug this side, you take this right here and you put it in there and now it just blows out the side and it doesn't blow out The bottom pretty cool little idea right and then he also came out with one that you can screw a nitrogen adapter into right here right and you could blow it out with air if you wanted to so i thought that was pretty cool um, but it's acezt.com Check him out give him some support. Tell him i sent you over there. I got no affiliation he's not paying me or anything like that. He just sent me a package of these and i kind of feel bad because i can't use them.

I don't do residential i'll, keep them and i'll find a way to use them at some point or i'll, give them to a friend or something like that, but pretty cool but um yeah. I do want to say thank you to chris eads. That was really cool of you bud: okay, um uh. Oh that's what i was gon na say earlier before i lost my train of thought so um for those that have been emailing me uh to try to help support the channel.

Obviously i work with truetechtools.com uh and i have an offer code set up within big picture. One word: you get you an eight percent discount and i get a small commission when you use the code, okay, um. So in the past i would do affiliate links with them and then i would also do offer codes. There's no need for the affiliate links.

So if you guys are emailing me asking me for affiliate links anymore, don't worry about it. Just use my offer code we're good to go okay, because the affiliate links were taking me way too much time to generate and because i had to make a different link for every tool, and it was just too time consuming. So i eliminated those and we're just going with the offer code now. So if you want to purchase any tools - and you want to help to support my channel check out truetechtools.com if you like what they have, if you like, their pricing, use my offer code big picture, one word: uh you'll get an eight percent discount.

I get a commission we're good to go. Okay, all right, let's see what else we got going on in this chat right now, i'm just going up here. Can you use a three-quarter horsepower condensing unit for three quarter? Ton: regions corey? It really depends on the temperature of the regions and the capacity of the condensing unit what ambient is going to be in because if you have a three quarter, horsepower condensing unit and 120 degrees. The delivered btus out of that condensing unit are going to be significantly lower.

If that condensing unit three quarter horsepower was installed in a 50 degree. Ambient the btu output of that condensed unit would be through the roof okay, so it really depends on the load of your space that you're trying to cool so where the evaporators are um so and and quarter ton doesn't mean a whole lot. It we rate in btus, okay, so just because it has a quarter. Ton txv doesn't mean that it's gon na be a quarter ton system, so keep that in mind um, but it really depends on the load.

So can you i don't know you need to do the math okay, but what i will tell you oftentimes people forget, especially in the light commercial side, is um line set length. Okay line set length makes a huge difference when it comes to refrigeration equipment. First off, if your line sets way too long, you could have pressure drop issues which could lead to oil return issues and capacity. Issues of your equipment, compressor cooling, could go in the gutter.

Most of our equipment is cooled by suction gas coming to the compressor, so that suction gas has to come back at a certain velocity and a certain temperature to properly cool off the wine needs of that compressor. And if it doesn't do that, you can run into overheat situations and have issues right. Okay, so could you use a three-quarter horsepower it's hard to say bud. You need to do the load calculation on the equipment.

I highly encourage every one of you to start learning. How to do load calculations because, just like we are short, staffed supply houses are short staff too trusting supply houses to do a load calculation, for you is a gamble. You might have an amazing supply house that does a great job, but then you also might have a supply house that just trained a technician or trained a counter guy to do a load calculation and he doesn't input the numbers right and that could drastically affect your Equipment, okay, that could lead to oversizing or undersizing i'll. Give you a perfect example.

I got called out to a cake shop right where they made wedding, cakes and i was a second opinion because they had a general contractor come in and he wanted or he had uh a load calculation done because that particular general contractor. He was not a refrigeration guy, but he had an ac guy. Okay, he told me i got an ac guy and i have an account at the supply house, so he called the supply house. The the general contractor said this is the box that he wanted to refrigerate and they did a load calculation, but he didn't tell him what they were keeping in the box and he didn't tell him what kind of humidity levels he wanted to be maintained in that Box and so because the equipment wasn't sized right, it was cooling, just fine, but the humidity control was problematic.

It was way too humid in that box, and it was affecting the way that the cakes were cooling after they iced them, and it was just causing a catastrophe, and so they called me as a second opinion and i'm like yeah. You guys got some serious problems here, let's start over and the general contractor's like. No, no, no, my ac guy says he can fix it. I'm like well, then, why am i here, my ac guy says: it'll be fine where's, your ac guy at oh he's on vacation yeah, exactly okay, the equipment wasn't sized right because they called the supply house.

They didn't ask the right questions at the supply house. There was a loss of communication somewhere and the equipment was incorrectly sized and that led to all of their cakes being ruined in a consistent basis, and that was just pissing off the the business owner and it was just an issue. So you have to do. Load calculations: we as technicians need to learn how to do those load calculations ourself, so that we can verify when information is incorrect.

Just like i say - and i said recently on a video digital tools, i love digital tools. I love using apps that consolidate all my measurements onto one screen, so i can stare at it and say boom boom boom. This is what's wrong. Okay, it's amazing.

Digital tools are amazing. We can take field piece, job link, clamps uh. We can take a field piece. S-Man manifold, like i have down there and we can clamp them on systems.

We could take uh this one right here. This is the jl3 lc. This is the large pipe clamp. This thing goes up to four and an eighth of an inch on pipe.

So if you work in industrial, heavier industrial supermarket stuff, these things are badass and they're wireless. All that stuff right. But if this is put on the wrong pipe or the wrong area of the pipe - and we have a novice technician that doesn't know how to differentiate between where it's supposed to go and he's gives it gives him an incorrect measurement. That's just off by a few degrees, but then in the grand scheme of everything it messes up everything.

So if we as technicians, don't know how to interpret the data from our digital tools and our apps and all that different stuff, and we don't know how to know how to say hey, this isn't right right. This doesn't seem right because we can't just blindly trust an app, because an app tells us to do something: that's not how this stuff works, because sensors are wrong. Transducers are wrong. All kinds of stuff: okay, uh we're working on a heat craft, intelligence system or a heat craft, um qrc system, or a beacon system right and uh.

You know the the board says the super heat's perfect. Well, guess what? Maybe? Someone was working on the system and they over pressurized it like i did and they're an idiot like i was and they ruined a pressure transducer, and so then it's reading 35 psi off. Just like i did in one of my videos. It was pretty funny um.

You know that can lead to a headache, but the board says that the superheat's fine, no, we need to verify because what happens if there was an idiot there before you in my situation, what happens if i was the idiot right and i messed up a pressure? Transducer and made it read 35 psi off because i over pressurized it okay. So we have to know how to interpret data and know when it's right or wrong: okay, so the apps all that they do and the digital tools. They consolidate information for us and they put it on one screen and they make it a little bit easier because we now can get on the fly super heat measurements did. You know see when i was coming up in the trade.

I learned how to measure superheat with an analog gauge set looking at a pressure temperature chart. Actually i never looked at the analog gauge set. I had my little pocket tecumseh pressure temperature chart. Those were my favorite ones too, by the way that folded like on five places or whatever those were awesome, but um i used to take a pressure temperature chart.

I used to tape a thermal couple. Actually, not even i started with a analog thermometer right and you taped the analog thermometer to the suction line, you'd insulate it and take a measurement you'd be like oh, my superheat's, 15 degrees and then guess what i would do. I would uh take the superheat. While i was charging that air conditioner, maybe three more times in the next two hours, while i was charging it right - well, guess what superheat is a fluid number.

It doesn't just sit there at 15 degrees and stay there. Okay, it changes every second digital tools. Give us the ability to measure that and see that in real time, so digital tools are the future they're not going to replace us they're, not dumbing down the industry. Those people out there that say digital tools are dumbing down the industry dude.

You need to take a step back and look because they're helping us they're, giving us the ability to see more real-time information, um someone - and this is what i'm kind of going towards another path. But this is leading me to this. Someone in the chat asked me if i do a triple evacuation: okay and and again, i'm going to the i'm not even going to say that, but no, i do not do triple evacuations, because i have read a lot of information that have basically disproved the need For a triple evacuation, i'm not going to say that it doesn't do anything. Okay, the idea of a triple evacuation um! Nowadays, you you start to pull a vacuum.

You introduce nitrogen! You pull vacuum a little bit. Further! You introduce nitrogen! You pull a vacuum a little bit further. You know, and it's you do that three times: okay, um in the past, we actually were told to use r22 refrigerant right because r22 had a great ability to absorb moisture. This is pre epa protocols and all that different stuff, a lot of times.

People would do a tripoli vac and they would use r22 refrigerant, and actually that would do something because the r22 would absorb the moisture. But when we're using nitrogen nitrogen doesn't absorb very much moisture, but what it can do is nitrogen can actually introduce warmer temperatures, which could help refrigerant and non-condensed walled refrigerant, essentially to boil out of the oil majority of the time when we're pulling an evacuation and we're Really really struggling, it's oftentimes oil that has refrigerant trapped in it and that that refrigerant is slowly off gassing from the oil, but it's taking forever. So i personally don't do triple evacuations. In my opinion, the best thing you can do is heat up the system.

Okay, if you have a large compressor and uh you heat up, the oil turn the crankcase heater on okay uh. Let the crankcase heater get that compressor, nice and hot. Do whatever you have to do to warm the system up any places where there could be oil. Warm it up so that way you can try to help raise the pressure of that refrigerant, that's trapped in the system and help to move the molecules.

So that way it can be evacuated and you can get the vacuum in the system down. Okay, if you want to learn more about evacuations, there's an actual, really interesting book, it's called the review of vacuum for service engineers. Now this book was written a long time ago, but it was actually just revised by brian orr, from hvac school and jim bergman from measure quick. They revised it together, um you can get this book from truetechtools.

I believe they're the exclusive distributor of this because i believe anyways but yeah truetechtools.com and again you can use my offer code, big picture. This will give you a really good understanding of an evacuation and what a tripoli vac truly does i'm not saying it doesn't. Do anything, but i think it's more of a um people, don't realize it what it's doing, because a lot of people seem to think that um uh, when you introduce nitrogen, that the nitrogen is going to absorb the moisture? And then it's going to help to move it out of the system and i don't think, that's quite accurate. I think what the nitrogen is doing is coming in at a higher temperature and it's just kind of helping to move the molecules of refrigerant around warm them up.

So that way they can be pulled out a little bit better, so um really tripoli vac. In my opinion is not really necessary if you have proper core removal tools, a good size vacuum pump and, most importantly, before vacuum, pump and well vacuum before the vacuum pump. Size is the hose size at which you're using to evacuate the system. I use the true blue hoses, but there's other large diameter hoses too.

That's really where you're going to get all your uh. Your efficiency is from your hoses. Okay, my entire career i've had a six cfm vacuum pump, but i only had true blue hoses for the last five years. Okay, maybe something like that and then before that i had the large diameter appion hoses.

Okay, before the appian hoses, my evacuations were all being pulled through a manifold gauge set okay using my quarter inch process hose my charging hose. Did you know like if you open this up, i want to say a quarter. Inch charging hose only allows less than like one cfm of uh. Let me see if it says it right here: it's like less than one cfm of flow through it, so it doesn't matter how big your pump is.

You can have a 10 cfm pump. You can have a 20 cfm pump, but you've got it's. It's like trying to suck a golf ball through a garden hose okay, it's just not going to happen right because the hose is too small. So you know no, i don't do a triple evacuation.

Hopefully that answers your question. Um. Can we talk about the sweet, sweet heat craft sponsorship? I swear. Half the comments, people i people lost their minds because i started that video out with this video is brought to you by heatcraft.

Yes, um heatcraft is a new sponsor. No spoiling is not gone. Spoiling is still my title sponsor to this channel. Um occasionally you'll see someone else pop up on the video, because i'm doing a marketing thing with heatcraft right now, so they did a series of videos we're going to be releasing them throughout the year on different topics and on those videos.

It will say this. Video is brought to you by heatcraft, okay, so, yes, i am working with heatcraft now um they're cool, it's been great so far, so let's see where it goes again. One of the cool things about working with these manufacturers like spoiling and heatcraft and fieldpiece, and all these different ones is it gives me the ability to give them feedback. Okay, i just had a really good conversation with field piece and and gave them some frustrations that i have.

I didn't expect them to answer all my frustrations, but i was told that every single thing that i complained about is being changed. So whoa my mind was blown. I thought i was just sending him an email, saying, hey this kind of frustrates me and they were like. Oh, we appreciate the feedback, and so i encourage everybody out there.

If you have frustrations, if you have ideas reach out to these manufacturers, now don't be a jerk about it, but reach out to them and say hey, you know what this doesn't make sense and it might work better. Now. Also understand that you know manufacturers aren't going to listen to everything. You say because there's a lot more than just the the functuality that you want it to work as right, because just because in my head i do this every day and i work on ice machines and i need you know a manifold that has three probes on It you know when i'm doing evacuations, because i need to do a three-point recovery when i'm or when i'm recovering right um.

But not everybody works on that kind of equipment right. So it doesn't always make sense for these manufacturers to listen to every single complaint and or idea that they have but reach out to him. Okay and it's cool, it's cool being able to have that kind of influence for sure um yeah. Exactly mike b, mike b says he got that eddie murphy reference golf ball through a garden hose um.

That's like nobody! Ain't gon na fall for no banana. In my tailpipe right um, i'm stuck with a bunch of movie, puns uh and that's just a horrible thing. Someone had asked me recently how and actually that's in here uh. How is it that i can remember random equipment info and service history from years ago? I'll just ramble off in a video and say boom.

You know all this different stuff, um. The only reason i can remember all that weird crap is because my brain prioritizes work over everything else. It just does i again, i'm sure, there's some sort of a you know: clive clive put a little easter egg, big clive from big clive.com, um or big clive live uh. Um anyways clive had said something one time that he he's like.

He said something about. Technically minded people, may you know he feels like a lot of technically minded. People may be on the spectrum of being slightly autistic, and i i'm very interested in that, because i tend to notice that a lot of my friends that are technically minded and stuff - i'm not saying everybody's autistic, but i'm saying that everybody has unique quarks about them. Right - and so you know we have like, i may be, focusing on work and like hyper focused on everything, and i tend to forget about other things now.

Is that right? No, no! It's not, but that's just how my brain works. So that is how i can ramp remember, random crap and that in movies, for some reason i always remember movie, references or movie quotes, like those things are always there. Um yeah, that's a whole whole argument with my wife about that. One right there all right.

Let's see what else we got in here, uh yeah, if you have yeah, please i need to breathe for a second uh. Do me a favor and smash the thumbs up button guys it really helps out the stream. I'd really appreciate it. Have i ever changed the oil then re realize the compressor is bad.

I don't know if i've ever changed the oil and then realized it's bad. No, but i've done major repairs on equipment and then you go to start it up and it's like. Oh crap, the compressor's bad, you know, so that's why i try to make it a point to, even if a system is completely flat and refrigerant, just go bump the compressor, real, quick to make sure it's not shaking all over the roof, especially like i'm about to Go and repair an air conditioner that had a crack discharge line on it and it's a scroll compressor anytime. You have a cracked discharge line.

You need to find what caused it to crack. Okay, it's not very often that a discharge line is just going to snap or crack by itself there's some kind of vibration in the unit. It could even be a harmonic thing from a weird frequency of a fan motor running or something weird right, but it's usually something like that. So i'm actually gon na go fix something and when we walked up to a unit, my apprentice was out there.

He diagnosed it as being out of refrigerant. He found a crack in the discharge line and i said, find the vibration when he said that go find the vibration in the unit. So then we proceeded and i bought in. I was there and we proceeded with walking around the unit and we uh the system was flat, but we went ahead and pushed in the contactor and just bumped.

The compressor for like two seconds made sure it wasn't shaking. No, it sounded fine and it works, and then we found the indoor blower assembly was out of balance and there was actually a crack below the indoor blower assembly on the the metal that it mounted on too. So we found our vibration more than likely. We found the cause of the crack discharge line, so you always got to dig into that kind of stuff and don't just assume.

The first thing you find is the problem. We were just having a discussion about that with my apprentice where we went out and we found all kinds of problems with the system and it started with something simple. I think it was an ice machine and that the touch pad wasn't working right and yeah. It was actually today the touchpad wasn't working okay.

Well, we couldn't really do anything until we got the touch pad to work because we couldn't turn it on. Well, we pushed the power button enough times that it finally turned on okay. So then we got to go through the system and we noticed the compressor wasn't running so then we went on the roof and we found it had a bad low voltage transformer, but we didn't just stop there. We started looking and i looked at the evaporators.

The nickel plating was coming off. Okay, so i added that to my list. I noticed that the uh ice probe the the thickness probe, the frequencies weren't right, and it was just really it looked really bad. So again we don't just stop at the first thing right.

We do everything in our power within reason to investigate that system. So you have a bad compressor and actually heard brian orr say this on a podcast recently and while this may be frustrating for some residential guys, i thought it was very interesting. Okay, so brian gave a scenario, and this is on the hvac school podcast. I don't remember what podcast it was, but he gave a scenario of a technician walking up to a grounded compressor on a residential air conditioner.

It's grounded compressor. Okay, okay, can't really do anything, because we don't know what caused that compressor to go bad now. We know something caused it to go bad right because compressors rarely ever go bad by themselves, but we don't know what caused it. Okay, but the thing is it it.

It still had refrigerant in it. Okay, so he encourages when you have a grounded compressor or a bad compressor, and the system has refrigerant to go ahead and recover that refrigerant and then calculate by. Looking at the line set link now mind you. This is a residential split system right calculate how much refrigerant that system actually needs.

So then you know: hey. This system was low on refrigerant. So that way you don't come in say i need to quote a compressor. You quote a compressor, the customer approves it.

Then you go to repair the compressor and you know you pull a vacuum. The system won't pull a vacuum. You find out, it has an evaporative coil leak, so now they need to spend another four thousand dollars right. So you do your best within reason to diagnose the entire system.

You walk up on a system that has a grounded compressor. Does it have refrigerant in it? Okay, is it a system that you can verify that you know by a data plate that it takes this much refrigerant? So in that case, go ahead and recover the charge and find out right then, and there you can leave the tank on the roof for the person who's going to repair it or whatever. But you know that it has the right amount of refrigerant okay. So now you know it more than likely doesn't have a refrigerant leak, so you can safely quote just the compressor.

With a caveat that says, you know once we replace the compressor, we have to further diagnose to find out why it went bad, but at least you've done your due diligence. Okay, so be a thorough tech. Someone um someone asked me where's the comment at um. It was a gentleman named frank and he am paraphrasing his criticism.

Okay and again guys. I appreciate criticism if you have criticism that helps me to grow. Okay, just don't be a jerk about it, but if you have something, if you have um, if i said something incorrect correct me, politely come to me and say: hey, you know what dude that's a little incorrect and give me some documentation that i can read. So i can better myself but anyways frank had given me some criticism that i was working on a walk-in, freezer and uh.

It was iced up and he said you know you didn't need to do everything that you did. You could have just de-iced it and moved on because again, when i first walked up to the walk-in freezer, i noticed that there was a bungee cord on the door. Those are a dead giveaway because they bungee the doors open and then they forget and then the coil ice is up. Okay, so i saw bungie.

I addressed it in the video i said huh, i wonder, and then it was iced up. We de-iced it. We couldn't find anything else wrong, but i tested the defrost heaters. I turned them all on and did a current test on every heater i tested the defrost clock made sure it held time.

I came back another day check the defrost clock. Again. I checked the refrigerant charge too, because i had marked the liquid level when i installed the system. Okay, so he was mentioning.

I didn't need to go through all the steps i could have just de-iced it and moved on. Yes, i could have, but what happens if that bungee wasn't the cause? What happens if they weren't using that to hold the door open and there was a bad defrost clock or a bad heater guess what you can have four heaters in a coil and only one of them go bad. It's happened, it's a pain in the butt, but it happens okay, so we have to do our best, even though this job may seem easy, even though it seems i just got a de-icer coil. I do this all the time right because you're a professional coil de-icer like i am, we still go through our due diligence.

We still go through our checklist and we still make sure everything's working properly. Okay, that's what separates us from all the other crap. Okay, you want to be a better tech, be more thorough and efficient; okay, just because you're thorough doesn't mean and you're the best technician, but you take forever well, there's a fine balance there. Okay, because you still have to be profitable for your company it you have to think like that.

Okay, you can't spend seven days at a job to install a door gasket. That's not gon na be profitable whatsoever. Okay, yeah, you may have done the best job ever, but it doesn't make sense. So you have to find that fine balance, but you need to be thorough.

Don't make mistakes don't cut corners unless you can handle the repercussions of potential corner cutting? Okay, all right. So now that i've answered a million questions and i haven't been marking them off - i need to cross them off. So i know it's already answered that one um, let me see i'm going through here. I already answered that one i'll look at the chat here in just a second um, not that one uh brooke had asked me a question about manitowoc ice machines and he was he.

He listed off a whole bunch of problems that he was having in his machines. But the first thing that he told me was these machines are filthy and then he started listing this and that and this and that i'm going to tell you right now, brooke, if you have a dirty ice machine, you can't properly diagnose it until it's clean customers Need to have that equipment cleaned properly, okay, manitowoc, hoshizaki scotsman, i'm calling them all out, isomatic full it vote. Okay, those are all the ice machines that i work on. Okay or have worked on every one of those manufacturers has a cleaning guide in their service manual and that cleaning guide says that you can clean their ice machines in 20 minutes 30 minutes 15 minutes 12 minutes whatever.

Okay, that is not the truth. These every one of the ice machine manufacturers - that's not an ice machine book, but every one of the ice machine manufacturers. I make it a point that if i and i'm going to challenge every one of you guys too, if you ever go to an ice machine service class, this is something kind of fun. You don't need to be a jerk about it, but start asking questions, start raising your hands and saying hey.

You know um. How long should it take for an ice machine cleaning and then, when they give you that blanket answer of oh yeah, our machine can be cleaned in 15. Minutes say: is that a full teardown is that getting rid of all the calcium on the evaporator? Is that pulling the hoses out and running nylon brushes in the hoses to get the the slime build up? That nothing else is going to take off. Is that pulling the water valves apart and cleaning the calcium on the water inlet valve and the dump valve? Okay? No, it's not every manufacturer out.

There has published data that says their ice machine cleanings only take this much time if you're working on a hoshizaki ice machine, the ones that i work on are the big machines so anywhere from thirteen hundred pounds and up okay, a thirteen hundred pound hoshizaki ice machine For a full teardown is going to take minimum four hours minimum, sometimes longer, maybe even six hours. Okay, 1400, pound manitowoc quiet, cube machines, two of them sitting next to each other, pretty much assume you're going to be there for seven hours, cleaning those machines properly. I'm not talking pouring cleaner in there. I'm talking pouring cleaner, breaking up all the lime.

Disassembling, the entire machine scrubbing down the entire machine with a damp towel and ice machine. Cleaner, hosing everything out with the hot water hose brushing all the tubes descaling. The machine then doing the whole entire process again by pouring sanitizer in there running sanitizer through the machine, then starting the machine up then watching the machine make two to three cycles after you clean it. That's the key to cleaning every ice machine out.

There is watch multiple cycles after you clean it to make sure nothing. Funky is going on okay and take the time and do it right.