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 yo. What is up my friends? It has been what seems like a lifetime. I think it's been about three weeks of pure chaos.

For me, time has been flying by, i feel like i went to sleep and memorial day, and here we are now like it. Just is just jamming right now we're super busy. I'm thankful for that. I'm very thankful for that.

But as usual, things are chaotic, we're crazy we're trying to catch up with all the craziness going on and we're just taking it one day at a time, um started with memorial day weekend. I had taken some time off my wife and i went away for the weekend super chill relaxing with the family and then, after that, just the chaos picked up started getting busy and you know just hasn't stopped. Basically, today i was very surprised. I skated out of work kind of early had my apprentice riding with me.

I told him we're going to get off early today and uh. You know we scooted out of work and i'm just avoiding the phones, avoiding my emails. Luckily, nothing's come in yet so let's see how this goes so obviously i can't cover every single video, but i'm going to just kind of cover the highlights of the last few videos. I got a list of things.

I want to talk about um, but let's start this off right: okay, guys! My name is chris: i'm an hvacr service technician here in southern california, okay, i started making these videos for my employees and that led to me making them public and then this whole thing happened. I never planned on this. Turning into what it has turned into. I never planned on the amount of attention all this stuff.

Okay, i'm still, i probably don't treat the videos, the live streams or anything, the way that most people think i should treat them. My family comes first, work comes second, the live streams and the videos are just something that happens. You know when i can okay um, i i realize the reach of the videos i realize you know. I guess i'm technically that term influencer or whatever you want to call it it's kind of weird um.

I don't see myself as anything special, i'm just a nervous. Another service technician um, but you know it is what it is. It's a very humbling experience. Thank you to everybody out there that has been supporting me guys, there's so many different methods to support me.

The easiest way is what you guys are doing right now, watching the live streams, interacting leaving comments, um watching the videos from start to finish, leaving a comment interacting giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down. That is the easiest way to support the channel. Now, there's a couple other ways: um such as uh robert m uh, a cree, i believe, is how he pronounced. His name became a channel member on youtube.

Okay, just a few minutes ago, just popped up on my screen, that's kind of like patreon. It's a way to support the channel on a monthly level. You can also do support the channel via patreon paypal. You can go to my website.

Hvacres.Com we've got merchandise, available, hats, shirts, beanies, all that good stuff, there's all different ways. But again, the easiest way is just simply watch the videos, guys, okay, but i have to thank all of you that have supported the channel through this time. Thank you. So very much you guys are amazing for those that are in the chat right now.

It looks like we have 148 people in there right now. Do me a favor and smash the like button or the thumbs down. I could care less. Just any kind of interaction help youtube to see that you're actually interacting with the content.

I'm told that that helps with the whatever algorithm. I don't know you know, i'm not a genius at any of this, i'm just a dude that works on air conditioners, okay and does a mediocre job at that. I happened to film it and i happened to share my mistakes with you guys. Okay, now, when it comes to this channel, i kind of want to cover this real quick.

I treat this channel the way that i want to treat it all right. I appreciate feedback. I appreciate comments. I appreciate criticism, i'm cool with it all, but one thing i want to make absolutely clear is this: is my channel and i will do as i please with my channel.

Okay, i will take feedback into consideration, but when i see negative feedback which negative feedback is fine, but when i see negative feedback like your videos suck with music, that just makes me want to put more music in them. Okay, because i'm fueled by that um and i'm not saying i'm going to put music in every single video, i will, i won't it just kind of depends on how i feel these videos are an expression of how i feel when i make them. Okay and if i'm in a good mood - and i throw some music in there, so be it - maybe i don't have time you know um and i realize there's far more positive people out there than there is negative people and i'm not letting it get me down Or anything like that, i've made it perfectly clear inside the comments. You know.

Look, you have your opinions, but i'm gon na keep doing me. I'm gon na keep doing me and i'm gon na do the videos that i want to do them. You know i have a few uh partners that i work with uh spoiling refrigeration technologies, occasionally field peas and they're great partners, because they appreciate what i'm doing and they let me do what i want to do. Okay, they just want to be part of this project, and you know when it when it does come time to working with partners and sponsors and different things like that.

That's what i'm looking for! I'm not looking for anybody to tell me what i'm going to do, because it's just not going to happen. I don't do good when people try to tell me how to do things. You know just doesn't work that way so anyway, so be it rant over. So i see a lot of people in the chat right now, if you guys have questions or things that you want me to answer, please put them in caps lock and i will try to get to them.

Okay, i'd really appreciate it. Um, i don't get to every single question: it's just there's too much stuff going on in these. So if i miss your question, feel free to send me an email to hvacr hvacrvideos gmail.com, i will try to get back with you, okay. Clearly, the last three weeks.

I have an inbox, that's insane and i'm just not going to be able to get to everything. I might you know make my way through some of it over the next few weeks, but it's just going to take a long time. So if you sent me a question that i didn't answer feel free to send it again: okay, there's just so much stuff going on and i'm just trying to stay alive all right. So let me see what we got going on in here: um, i'm not seeing anything too crazy, okay, cool cool um! I appreciate you know, there's a lot of people that watch my videos that don't do air conditioning and refrigeration and that's fine business owners.

Homeowners, restaurant owners, just people that you know just the algorithm sent on this video. I watch random stuff. One of my favorite things to watch right now is uh um, brent, underwood's, channel ghost town living dudes, exploring a ghost town and building up a ghost town like i love watching that um matt's off-road recovery, he's in utah and i think he's in hurricane utah or Something like that and he just goes out and pulls people out - it's like it's so easy to watch other stuff, sometimes because you don't have to think you know. So i appreciate anybody.

That's watching my videos and they get some sort of an entertainment out of them. Okay, obviously my videos are made for my own service technicians, but i realize that there's other people that enjoy them, and i realize that there's some service technicians that get benefit from my videos because they learn a tip or a trick or different things like that. I firmly believe in sharing knowledge. Okay, there was an interesting there's, still a discussion going on in one of these facebook groups about someone being perturbed because of people sharing their information and their knowledge on youtube, and this particular person.

You may have seen this this message board chat, that's going on this particular person. The gist of it is is that he paid a lot of money for his education and he feels like youtubers or people putting their hvac technicians putting their content. He wasn't just targeting me, but he's just saying: people in general should not be putting their content on youtube for free because he feels like he paid for his education, so everybody else should have to pay for theirs too. While i hear his argument and while i still firmly do believe in a formal education of some sort - trade school apprenticeship, you know something like that.

I believe that i should share the little bit of knowledge that i have with everybody. Okay, i don't like my my personal opinion again, if you think otherwise, that's fine, but my personal opinion is i don't like coveting information. Okay, i believe we should share the information. I am not afraid of being replaced.

I am not afraid of my job going away. Okay, uh there's plenty of room for several. You know for hvac technicians, all across the country in the world, um, our jobs are in demand and they're in need. Okay, um we're not gon na be replaced right.

There's you know it's not gon na happen, so i'm gon na keep standing on top of the pedestal that i've been given and share the little bit of knowledge that i have um and you know for people that don't agree with that, then so be it. It is what it is we can co-exist. You can believe your way i'll believe my way and i'm gon na keep doing my thing and you keep doing your thing. You know it is what it is, but i do believe in sharing knowledge.

Okay, um. You know and uh you know, of course i don't i'm not upset, because people get paid or anything like that. It is what it is. I make money off these videos.

I'm not gon na lie okay, um, but i do believe in sharing my knowledge - and this is a great resource because technically you guys don't have to pay me for this knowledge right, because youtube's kind of helping me out a little bit and of course i don't Get paid whatever we're not even going to go into that, but i mean it is what it is, i'm going to continue to share the little bit of knowledge that i have okay. So let me see um, i'm not missing anything. You see a lot of gouging going on with r22. What's my opinion of the masses? Okay, so that's actually on my list of things to talk about, so i'm going to cross that one off and we're going to talk about the refrigerant pricing right now.

Okay, so um, i believe firmly. Yes, that r22 prices are going up and i do believe it to be price. Gouging. Okay, there is r22 sitting in recyclers warehouses, okay, so let's, let's make it clear right now: uh r22 refrigerant is illegal to import into the united states and it is illegal to manufacture new refrigerant in the united states, okay, plain and simple.

So what that means is, we are cool and we're okay to continue using r22, but it either has to be leftover, supplies right and or recycled refrigerant. When we recover our 22 out of an air conditioner, we take it to a supply house. They send it to a recycler, they clean it. Then they repackage it and resell it.

Okay, that is perfectly legal. The prices of r22 have shot up, and almost all other refrigerants have shot up through the roof. 410A is like tripled. R22 is insane what it did.

It's nuts right now, um now i believe you know supply and demand kind of stuff, i'm not mad, because the prices i mean it's kind of frustrating. You know, but i mean granted. We have been given a lot of time for the phase out. We've been warned for a long time that r22 is going away, but i'm gon na stand on my pedestal and i'm gon na gripe a little bit.

Okay, i have a customer that uh we just sent out a quote today: okay um, we have a carrier package unit. I did not make a video on it, but i have a carrier package unit that has a completely plugged up fixed orifice metering device. Okay, it is the uh liquid header going into the evaporator coil. It's a five ton unit um.

It is going to cost, let's just say, to replace that evaporator because it comes with a liquid header on there um it's going to be a ridiculous amount of money. Okay, i want to say the cost to replace the evaporator with labor refrigerant, and everything like that, i want to say, is like 4 500 or something like that. It's it's maybe even more than that, but it's really high. I can't remember the exact thing right to replace the air.

Conditioner is going to cost three times that much because of all the crap. We have to go through to get that air conditioner replaced so everybody's, like hey, why don't you just replace the unit when i repair things? It's because the costs are insane and what the local cities and the code inspectors and all these people want from us. You know to replace these units is just not worth it for the customer now in other places. Besides california, maybe it's cheaper different things like that, but here in california it is stupid, expensive to replace an air conditioner on a commercial building because of what the city makes you want to go through.

I recently heard a story from a friend of mine who does air conditioning refrigeration in a separate company in my local area, and he called me because he was changing a walk-in cooler, replacing the entire thing, the box, the coils, the line set and everything, and he Wanted my opinion on it and he was just asking me about permitting and all these different things and i just said: well technically, you have to permit a walk-in cooler replacement, there's a lot of stuff that goes into it, fire sprinklers electrical code, all kinds of different Things - and i said when the city gets involved, it's gon na be a disaster okay, so he proceeded with the quote. He got it approved. He replaced the walking cooler pulled a permit, but when it comes to the city signing off on the permit and being done with the job that poor restaurant has to go, spend fifteen thousand dollars in in repairs on other things that have nothing to do with the Walking cooler because they want the building brought up to code and, interestingly enough, it's the health department, that's getting involved in this stuff. The health department came in and basically ripped the restaurant, a new one saying you need to replace the floors.

You need to fix this. You need to clean these walls. You need to do all this different stuff, mind you nowhere near and has absolutely nothing to do with the walk-in cooler replacement. Okay, so here's my question that i asked my buddy.

I said how long's that restaurant been open. He said like 30 years and i go how many times a year. Does the health department come into that restaurant and inspect that restaurant and he said, like oh crazy, like once a month all this and i said exactly and all these things that they're making this restaurant do to bring the building up to code so that way they Can sign off on the walk-in cooler that my friend installed perfectly by the way is ridiculous and that poor restaurant is hurting because they wanted to do the right thing and upgrade their equipment. Now i don't want to get political or any of that stuff on here, but i'm just saying the hoops that we have to jump through here in southern california is insane right and in my opinion again i'm going out on a limb here and probably going in Territory, i shouldn't be, but it's money grabbing.

It is money grabbing by the cities, because the cities are also hurting and everything, and it's kind of sad that us contractors that want to do things the right way that want to pull permits that want to be a hundred percent legit doing our job right is. It's impossible for us to do everything right. We have to do so much and we basically we're up against. You know a wall and don't have any other place to go.

You know it's so frustrating, so it is what it is, but it's just kind of a bummer, the craziness that happens. Okay, all right um. Let me see what else we got going on in here. Huh, let's see um, why do carriers pistons, keep plugging up? Okay, chad, i'm assuming uh you're, talking about well, first off, let's what causes a piston, a metering device or any kind of a restriction um.

You know plugging up dryers and different things like that. It's contaminants, okay, contaminants in the system, if technicians are not doing their due diligence and not following proper refrigeration practices, not pulling proper evacuations, not brazen with nitrogen. Again, i'm going to say this right now: i'm not a perfect technician and i do not always braise with nitrogen. Sometimes i do take shortcuts okay.

So i'm going to be perfectly clear. I am not the perfect technician. Okay, but when you don't raise with nitrogen, when you don't pull a proper evacuation right, when you purge a system, just let the r22 push the air out right, it doesn't really, but i mean when you purge a system, there's gon na be repercussions. Okay, when you mix refrigerants there's repercussions so on my systems.

Why do these carrier package units always have plugged up fixed orifice metering devices, the multi-orifice headers? Okay? Why is because of contamination um? The customer is not maintaining the equipment enough, not cleaning the equipment enough. Not doing proper preventative maintenance, the technicians not doing the maintenances correctly right, not splitting the condensers and cleaning them on the inside, and i'm going to preface that with saying in my recent video, i had a plugged up condenser that looked perfectly clean, but i split the Condenser - and there was years of dirt inside of there all right now, i'm going to tell you something that is one of my restaurants and that particular customer. They do not pay us to split the condensers. We only split the condensers when we work on the unit and have a problem with it.

We have not worked on that unit in years, other than doing routine preventative maintenance where we go and rinse off the outside condenser change the belt that kind of stuff there has been no major repairs on that system. So therefore we haven't had a justifiable reason to say: hey: we need to pull this condenser apart, pull the top off and split it and clean it mind you too splitting a condenser is really a job for two people. You know one person can do it. I've done it, i've shown it in videos, but it's a struggle right, there's a lot of stuff that goes on, especially when the units are really high.

So if you don't maintain the equipment, if you run a dirty condenser all the time over time, the system's head pressure, the condensing temp, is so high that the discharge temperature in the compressor gets high. The super heat runs high. It starts cooking the oil once the oil gets damaged, that oil uh kind of, like think about bacon, grease, okay, think about when you, when you clean out a pan, there's all leftover black crap uh. When you get all the the grease out of the pan.

That is happening inside the oil and that's what's contaminating these fixed orifice metering devices, and it's simply because there's not enough preventative maintenance done to this equipment. Now. Is that? Because we have extremely cheap customers? Is that? Because these customers don't want to maintain their equipment? And they just want to make money and be rich and not fix anything. No, not my customers, okay um.

Yes, they they are in business to make money. These are big corporations that have shareholders and all that stuff, of course, they're in business to make money. But my customers, they do understand the need for preventative maintenance. Unfortunately, when you have a budget they have to give and take right.

They have so much money and they have some capital expenses that come up and on you know unplanned for expenses, and they have to spend the money, but then they have to take it from somewhere else, and preventative maintenance is typically the area that they pull from To come up with other money, at least in the restaurants, that i work in okay, so they found creative ways where they cut down their preventative maintenance um. You know, instead of doing it every month they go to every three months or they hire. I have one a few different restaurants that use a national filter cleaning company they'll come in and they'll clean the units clean, the units change, the filters change the belts i mean. Unfortunately, i don't want to blame everything on these.

These big giant filter changing companies. They basically hire people at minimum wage to come in and do a task of a technician. So you can't expect perfection coming out of those. So it's kind of frustrating.

You know because the customer thinks that they're getting and the customer knows the customer knows, because the price difference between the national filter, changing company and me to do the exact same job is significant okay, so they have to do what they have to do and they Have to cut corners where they have to, and then you had this entire chaos that happened last year. Nobody can plan for that and these restaurants are trying to recover from that. And here comes all the craziness. You know um all right.

So, let's see what i got going on in here, what does the black flag mean in measure quick, the black flag means there's something major going on within that system. Compressor damage is imminent: okay, typically you'll get a black flag when you have extremely high suction temperature. Extremely high discharge temperature - that's been my experience, but i am not an expert with measure quick. If you do have questions about measure quick, i encourage you to follow them on social media reach out to them and they'll answer more of your questions.

But yeah. The black flag typically means there's imminent damage happening within that system, almost basically shut it off and figure. Something out is kind of what it means um. So, let's see um.

What am i missing? Why is it so important to flow nitrogen when brazing kevin asks? Okay, because um, what bra? Okay? I'm i'm not a super genius with this, but when you, when you uh purge the system with nitrogen, you, you put a very, very small flow of nitrogen through the system, while you're brazing, you have to have an exit point. Okay, you put it in from one side and you have an exit point at the other side. What it's going to do is it's not going to allow that carbon crap to build up if you've ever braised, on a copper line, and you just heat it up from the outside and over time as it's getting hotter and hotter when it gets cherry red you'll Start to notice that there's like these carbon flakes that build up on the outside of the line, and you can like wipe them off that exact same thing is happening inside the refrigeration lines too, and that black carbon crap, depending on how big of a system it Is and how many braze joints you're making is gon na eventually start to accumulate somewhere? Okay um! If you have a filter dryer after that brazing, then maybe the filter dryer will catch it. Maybe it'll plug up the filter.

Dryer! Maybe it'll get caught in the txv who knows okay, but by purging with nitrogen there's, a very small amount of nitrogen. It's like rated an scfm. I think, or something like that. It's very, very small flow.

It's not even a pressure. It's not like five psi. You just it's barely anything just flowing through there all it does. I believe it keeps the oxygen from doing something in the system, so it's just sweeping the system to make sure and then there's that steady flow it doesn't affect your brace joint.

If done correctly. Okay, be very cautious, though i will say in personal experience, trying to purge with nitrogen on a capillary tube system. I'm not a fan of that, and i haven't had very good luck with that in my head. I don't know if this is accurate, but in my head i see pressure drop problems, okay, because that that little bit of nitrogen has got to make it through the capillary tube, and if you have too much flowing through there, i would imagine that it's going to Create a pressure drop which is just going to create back pressure and just all kinds of issues, so be very careful about per or brazing with nitrogen, on capillary tube systems.

Okay, all right, let's see what else we got going on in the chat right now. Um, let me see uh yeah black flag equals you done, goofed, okay, what's the best way to clear a blocked, capillary tube quinn, dahi dani danihi. I i'm sorry if i butchered your name but okay. A plugged up capillary tube is a very difficult thing to clear.

Now they do make tools like capillary tube tools that like push crap through the cap, tube and stuff - i don't i don't buy any of that stuff. Okay, if you have a plugged up capillary tube. Your best bet is to replace the capillary tube. If you're trying to clear a restricted, capillary tube, it really depends.

Is it just a restriction at the beginning if you're noticing a restriction at the end, it's probably too late and you're going to have a really hard time clearing it now, something to think about too uh r134a and polyester oil uh in the mid 90s became very Popular as the medium temperature refrigerant in almost every reaching cooler, okay, we started to notice plugged up capillary tubes with the r134a and the polyester oil right. We typically notice it on systems that aren't maintained properly. The oil inside the compressor starts to get dirty. It starts to overheat and you start to get build up in the system and then it'll coat the inside of the capillary tubes.

If you don't believe me, when you cut out a capillary tube, that's plugged up just look in it and you will see a coating of crap in a circle all around that capillary tube. It's just like wax buildup. Who knows what it is. It's just some sort of a contaminant, so if you have a capillary tube system that is plugging up and it's really bad, especially if you have to change the cap tube more than once, because it keeps plugging up it's time to change the compressor, or at least The compressor oil, but usually it's easier to change the compressor.

So, to be frank, if you're working on a true refrigerator, for instance, and it's under warranty and you have a plugged up capillary tube, they will send you out a new compressor and or condensing unit under warranty, because they know that that compressor oil is the cause Of the capillary tube plugging up all right, so if it is under warranty, even if the compressor's still pumping you call true - and you say i have a very bad plot restriction on my capillary tube, i would like to change the compressor they will send out a Compressor, okay, because they know that's going to cause the problem. So if you have multiple plugged up capillary tubes, where it's happened more than once it's time to look into that compressor oil and that source of contamination, your best bet is to change the condensing unit, because there could be oil stored in that condenser too. Okay and then talk to your customer about maintaining that equipment, better keeping the condenser clean, not being in a high ambient kitchen. You got to think if, if you have a condenser, let's just say on the roof, a walk-in cooler where i'm at okay, if you have a condenser, that's out in 115 degree heat right.

The temperature inside that system is a lot higher than 115 degrees. Okay, maybe 20 degrees higher, maybe more right, and that oil in that compressor is getting pretty darn hot, okay and bad things start to happen when you have really hot oil, especially when you have other contaminants in the system. Moisture and different things like that, okay, polyester oil, is also a very good uh. What do they call it? A solvent right as it goes through the system.

It actually clears the crap off the walls of the copper lines and cleans it, but that crap that it clears off has to accumulate somewhere ends up in the crankcase of the compressor ends up plugging up the txv. All kinds of problems like that. I saw a super chat. Come through rethink hvac buy a pineapple on hvac over time.

Thank you very much for that super chat, but i really really appreciate it. Okay um so i want to. I did have a question too. I want to get to the chat.

Some more but i did have a question about expansion valves, so nathan had emailed me - and he said i'm paraphrasing this question - that at his company they've been changing a lot of expansion valves and his boss, who does not work in the field anymore, but used to Work in the field said that when he was in the field, he might have changed. You know 20, something expansion, valves that were actually bad and his boss is basically saying that he feels like the company is changing way too many expansion valves, maybe they're misdiagnosing things. So nathan kind of wanted. My opinion about this and nathan was also curious about the uh rust inhibitor debacle that happened with copeland compressors years ago.

Okay, so he was curious if that has something to do with it right. First and foremost, i am going to say this right now that i have very rarely seen bad expansion valves on my side too. Okay, now i'm going to say that carefully. I typically deal with spoiling expansion valves.

Okay, you will have failed power heads on expansion valves because the capillary tube typically rubs out for the most part expansion valves really don't have a lot of components inside of them to fail. If installed and maintained properly. Okay, you really shouldn't have to adjust on expansion. Valves very much other than the original installation.

You really shouldn't be wrenching on expansion valves, okay, there's really not a lot to fail, but that the key is if it's installed correctly. Okay, now i said that i change a lot of power heads on spoiling expansion valves. Yes, because typically the power head sensing bulb will tend to rub out in a bad place or on the top, as they get really old. They'll start to rust out too okay and then they'll uh generate refrigerant leaks.

Now sometimes it will be easier to change the entire expansion valve than to just change the power head. So you will see me changing expansion valves, okay, it's a good practice. If i'm changing an evaporative coil and i've got an expansion valve, that's two inches away from the coil, i'm not going to unsweat the expansion valve and put it on new evaporative coil, i'm going to change the whole valve okay. So i do change.

Expansion drops but majority of the time, they're really not bad. They tend to have plugged up strainers. If they have them, they sometimes will have removable strainers and those strainers can get plugged up. It's really easy to change them or clean them.

So i have a cutaway of a spoiling expansion valve right here that i cut with my band saw, and you really see, there's not a whole lot going on with this valve. Okay, um, there's a spring: there's a seat! There's a an orifice there's, a needle point where it allows the refrigerant to go through you've got a power head. I mean there's not a whole lot going on now on. Some of these valves too there'll be a strainer right, because this is a flare valve.

There'll. Be a strainer built into it or you have dropping stuff a removable strainer right here. This happens to be a dirty strainer from uh, an sbq body. Actually, so these things fail.

I keep these strainers on my truck in bulk because sometimes it's easier to take an old, strainer out and just put a new clean one in instead of trying to clean an old strainer. So i agree with your boss in the sense that expansion valves typically don't fail. Okay, there something usually happens within them. They could get plugged up that kind of stuff.

I'm kind of curious nathan too, if you guys bring any of these expansion valves back to the shop and auto see them, okay, cut them open. It's super easy. If you guys are changing a bunch of them, bring back expansion valves and start cutting them open see what caused them to not work right. Are they full of gunk? What kind of gunk is it? Is it because people are not pulling a vacuum? Are not purging with nitrogen that kind of stuff, okay, um, but i mean you know valves, do fail right it just most of the time, the valves they pretty much handle it correctly if they're installed properly and maintained properly.

Okay. Now, as far as the debacle with the rust inhibitor, so my understanding with all that crap compressor copeland compressor, what happened was someone one of their their off. You know one of the other people that builds their compressors for them or something like that added. They changed a chemical that they add to the compressor, to prevent rust again, i'm paraphrasing some of this stuff and i may not be 100 accurate, but i was told that oftentimes these compressors will be shipped without oil and different things like that.

So they'll add a rust inhibitor to them to prevent any rust from building up inside of there and supposedly. What i heard is that someone changed that rust inhibitor without all the proper testing and approvals and that led to a contamination issue that started gumming up expansion valves whatever that chemical was reacted with the oil or something like that and it started gumming up the systems For the most part, that should be worked out of our systems, because that was quite a few years ago, and i would imagine that most of that stuff has been replaced worked out of the system. So i don't think you're going to be seeing a lot of the rust inhibitor problems that we had um with the copeland compressors, but that would have had to have had a copeland compressor in it too, not a lg or any of these other brands. It would have had to have been a copeland scroll compressor that they added that rust inhibitor to, but again those just here say the stuff that i've heard.

I don't know what all is true on that all right um. Let me see what else we got in the chat going on. That's a txv condemned the wrong thing: okay, um! Let me see you want one of those expansion valves cross, sectionals yeah, so does adam adam's, been from the hvac overtime show, if you guys don't know my buddies and i do a show on friday evenings called the hvac overtime or on the hvac overtime youtube channel. There's a link in the show notes of this video uh, joe uh, any any of the moderators that are in here.

I don't know who all's in here right now: justin anybody can post a link to the overtime channel. If you could please, but um adam's been asking me for for these cutaways, he was asking me if i would make him a cutaway so to make this cutaway it's it's, you can do it, but getting the cut right is correct or is difficult, so it actually Took three of these valves, i went through two cuts until i figured out exactly where i wanted to cut it, and i took the valve apart before i cut it. So i pulled the guts out and then just cut the body. The flare valves are actually the easiest ones to cut because you've got this solid brass right here.

If you try to take the sweat in valves with the copper coated, you know brass connections or whatever, and you start to cut those it just bends them and deforms. The metal, so the flare valves are the easiest ones to cut open for the cross sectional, to be able to open them up and i've done it with a bunch of different stuff. I've got some more stuff behind me. I enjoy cutting stuff up.

So i have a dryer that was actually given to me by spoiling, but i've done these myself too, where you just cut them open, pull the insides out. I've got a liquid, lined solenoid valve that i cut open this one right here. So you can see. This is a simple e3 valve super easy.

Actually, this is a e6 valve, but yeah super easy to cut away. My favorite cutaway was the head pressure control valve the lac valve that one just shows the simplicity of this and guess what guys i have a repair. I'm working on a video, this one won't come out because this is actually going to be a sponsored video, but i'm working on a repair where i replaced one of these and it was really cool. When i cut it open - and i got to see why the head pressure control valve failed, spoiler alert head pressure, control valves typically don't fail on their own.

Okay, there's not a whole lot in this valve. That will go bad right. So it's usually some sort of contamination and i had that exact thing happen, so stay tuned that'll be out in the next month or so and then uh. This um is a stepper valve uh that i cut open to and i have sportline's little tool.

So you can actually see the actuation happen. This is very similar to how an electronic expansion valve would work. This is not an electronic expansion valve. This is an sds valve, but it's just a cool representation.

It's bigger makes you understand how an electronic expansion valve would work, and i have sporeland's sma 12 that basically actuates the eev, and you can use this on multiple different things, so it's pretty cool little tool. Let me put this stuff back and we'll continue talking. I just get curious and love cutting things open, so you know those valves are fun to do and it just really helps you like. I show my technicians i like making trainer boards.

I've got smoke detector trainer boards that i've done. So it's a lot of fun. You know it it's a good way to learn things for yourself. You know when it comes to smoke detectors i struggled with those for years and even when i would ask the alarm technicians that i thought knew everything they were doing.

They would struggle with them. Until i really just made a trainer board and started testing and figuring everything out and realized that, like oh, these are pretty cool. You know it's pretty neat to work on the smoke detectors things. So can i talk about discharge pressure and sub cooling mike johnson? Okay? So um i've been talking about this a lot in my videos.

What i find out in the field is that sometimes, when you go to get onto an air conditioning system - and you want to check sub cooling, you only have a discharge pressure port or sometimes you have a liquid line service port. And you don't have a discharge pressure port at all: okay, like a residential air conditioning system for the most part, that is a liquid line service port coming off of the residential air conditioner and most of the time you don't see a discharge port, that's accessible inside The system - okay - you don't necessarily need discharge as much, especially when you're checking sub coin, but with that being said, sometimes i will work on a package unit. Carrier freelance, for instance, does not have a liquid line service port and they have a discharge line service port. So oftentimes on air conditioning systems, you can see a rather large pressure difference between the discharge pressure, port coming off the compressor discharge line and the liquid line pressure court coming out of the condenser.

Sometimes you can see up to 35 psi drop across that quite a bit of a pressure drop right so, depending on the type of equipment you're working on refrigeration, you typically don't see much of a pressure drop, but on air conditioning i tend to see more of A pressure drop but what's interesting is it depends per manufacturer. From my experience and i'm talking on properly operating systems, you can see a pretty big pressure drop so with that being said, if you are checking pressures and you're using the discharge pressure port right and you try to get sub cooling, your sub coin number is going To be skewed a little bit, maybe not a lot, i mean if you wanted to know, let's just say: uh r22, i'm looking at a pressure temperature chart right now, let's just say: r22 the saturation temperature at 296 psi. The saturation temperature of r22 is 54 degrees. Okay, so let's go 296 minus 35 psi, so that would be 261 psi right.

So let me find 261 psi uh. The saturation temperature would be about 48 degrees. Okay, so there's a temperature difference right there of 54 minus 48 there's a six degree temperature difference now, while that's not going to be a huge difference when it comes to sub cooling measurement, that is going to make a difference. So it's something that you want to be aware about.

So what i tend to notice is, if you know you have um an air conditioner that only has a discharge line. Pressure port you'll tend to see your sub cooling numbers run a little bit higher than what you would think like 10 degrees, or something like that right. So just keep that in mind. Keep that in mind is that you tend to run.

You know one to two degrees higher ish on sub coin, but it really depends on the manufacturer. Okay, so just keep that in mind um, you know you there's not a whole lot. You can do about it unless, like i worked on a system recently and i added a liquid line service port, so you can actually get true sub cooling. A lot of these manufacturers actually compensate for that by giving you their charging methods and their charging methods might be different.

For instance, linux. They typically don't tell you to charge by sub cooling. They tell you to charge by approach temperature approach. Temperature is kind of like ass backwards, sub cooling approach.

Temperature is the difference between the entering medium, the outdoor air, on an air conditioner and the liquid line surface temperature. Okay. So the difference between the entering outdoor air and the liquid line surface temperature would be your approach temperature. So you can see how kind of that is an ass backwards, subcooling, because sub cooling is liquid saturation temperature right and liquid line surface temperature.

The difference between the two so uh liquid saturation temperature is directly affected by the outdoor ambient. So that's why it's kind of an ass backwards way of soap, cooling, so anyways. Hopefully that answers your question a little bit on that one uh, let's see what else we got going on in here um. How often do i find honeywell thermostats that won't respond to touch um when they get older? That's something that happens quite often, i've shown it in my videos, a bunch uh xdx valve.

I said sds valve um and uh. It's it's a refrigeration valve they'll use it for discharge, um, it's more of a supermarket thing, so i'm not gon na go into that, because i don't have a lot of knowledge with that valve. Okay, um uh. Let's see! When do we get to go, live out in the field with me again, steven going live in the field has been really difficult.

There's a lot of variables about going live. I have to do a really good job of protecting my customers. Locations uh when you go live it gets really difficult to do that unless i'm just changing a compressor like i have done in the past and we're literally just talking in front of the compressor, that's an easy one. I haven't had the opportunity to do anything like that.

I'm also working with an apprentice right now and he's doing really well by the way, but getting um. You know having to teach him and it's making it easier to do the videos, but it's just you know doing a live service call is rather difficult that an internet service sucks everywhere you go even with 5g, it sucks so um. Let's see what else we got going on in here, what am i missing? This ding youtube thing is screwing up there we go um. Let's see the new apprentice.

Dave is doing great. What are some of the pr? What are some best practices with economizers frank, great question, and i'm actually want to talk about that anyways. So let me turn my air conditioner down, because my office is starting to get hot right now um. I need a thermometer in here to tell me how hot, but it feels like it's 80 degrees in here right now, so i'm going to turn my air conditioner down to 70.

um all right. So when it comes to economizers, okay number one. I get a lot of questions all the time of people asking me: why are economizers always bypassed and or why do i always bypass them? Okay, because all right, i'm going to give you a perfect example of this. For the most part, my customers, my customers, maybe other ones, do but my customers do not see the return on investment in an economizer.

Okay, the failure points on the economizers that i experience are sensors, actuators and control modules. Okay, because, in my opinion, they're not installed in good locations, oftentimes um in my recent video that i just did the control the honeywell jade controller is located in the return. Airstream, okay and the outdoor air sensor is located in the outdoor air. The mixed air temperature sensor is located in the mixed air temperature section right: those sensors on that system - that i changed where i had an air conditioner, not working, and it was the two sensors that failed.

Those sensors get changed three to four times a year. Okay, because they go bad because the outdoor ambient contaminates them, the sensor connections, start corroding. And if you think about, let's just say those sensors alone, i don't even know for sure how much those sensors cost. But if i had to guess off the top of my head, probably about 40 50 bucks, a sensor, okay, would be my guess and if you're changing those three to four times a year, plus adding a couple hours of labor travel time that kind of stuff.

What are you looking at four or five hundred bucks? You know something like that uh per time and what's the cost of an uh, an economizer assembly for that ac. If i had to guess, i don't know two grand you know something like that: three grand something like that to install an economizer assembly with labor. Again, i'm just pulling these numbers out of my head, so the the return on investment is. It goes away really quick when you have the sensors failed that much right consistently and are they really saving that much in energy versus the amount of money they're spending, so my customers for the most part they typically don't want to fix these now, the ones that I did fix on that system.

I keep trying to baby those along because i don't like bypassing stuff. I don't like bypassing economizers i'd love to fix everything i can so i'm going to continue to try to fix them and keep them operational, because i like an economizer, the concept of it is great. It's just the repair on them tends to be a lot and the customers typically don't want to spend that money. Now it is an energy code in california.

If you install a new air, conditioner 2000 cfm are bigger, you have to have an economizer and all that stuff right, but majority of the time the customers will install them to follow proper codes and to pass permit inspections, but then, when they fail, they don't want To fix them, okay, because they just spend too much money on them and that's just their their belief on it, so we don't fix economizers. So what are things to look for with economizers? If, given the perfect scenario that a customer lets me maintain them is we're? Probably going to clean the electrical connections on them, maybe as long as it's not causing any communication issues, put some dielectric grease to keep moisture from building up on the the terminals to corrode them really big. When you're cleaning an air conditioner when you're hosing it down, do not hose the outside air filters with the filter in place. Okay, that is something that i've seen many times in the past, where a technician will come in and he's just hosing down the condenser and i'll take the hose over and rinse off the outside air filter with it still in the outside air hood.

Well, the the outdoor air sensor, whether it be enthalpy sensor or dry, bulb sensor for the economizer, is right behind that filter and it typically gets wet and that's one thing that can cause them to short out moisture in the air and different things like that is Another another thing that we can do on economizers to maintain them is, if you pull the whole hood assembly off and get the actuator out, is clean. The gears clean um, the the actuator connections and then lube them up, but the problem with using a lube on them is that oftentimes like a dielectric, grease or something it will uh attract dirt and then it'll get gummed up even more. So it's really just about cleaning and maintaining them is my opinion um, and i have said this before. Let me find the book.

I've shown this a million times. I found this to be amazing. Okay, this is the technical reference manual from honeywell design and application guide for honeywell economizer controls. Now you can download this just google, this manual technical reference manual, honeywell economizers, and it breaks down every style of economizer that i've ever run across the old school to the new school, and it explains how they work, how to diagnose them.

This is a great manual. It even goes to the new jade controllers, explains programming and everything. So if you want to learn more about economizers, i run into a lot of honeywell products. Get this manual just download it off the internet.

I don't. I had supply houses order these, but getting manuals. Like this is really difficult anymore, i don't even mind paying for them i'll, go to the supply house and say i want five of these and whatever it costs, just get them to me. You know, but this is a great manual to have all right.

A lot of places are not installing makeup air units, anymore yeah - that is a really big thing. A lot of restaurants are oversizing their air conditioning equipment and accounting or they're, using the air conditioning equipment to bring in fresh air into the building. Okay - and that can be a very problematic thing - and i'm going to give you the perfect example - the perfect storm. I have a restaurant that about 15 years ago.

They built several restaurants across the country. This is a big chain and they were sold on this really cool new exhaust system. It's a really cool smart system. It's a it's! A super smart exhaust system made by a company called maylink, really cool.

What it does is. It has infrared beams that go across the hoods and it has temperature sensors and it's about energy savings. Okay and whenever it would get really smoky in the kitchen. That smoke would interrupt the little infrared beam going across there, and that would tell the exhaust system hey.

There's a lot of smoke in here. You need to speed up okay, so are you getting me with this? So they would run that system the exhaust system at low speed majority of the time to save energy, so that way, they're not wasting energy. Okay. They also had temperature sensors so that way, if the temperature in the hood got really high, it would turn the exhaust fans on to full speed.

It also had safeties built into it that if someone ever turned on the cooking appliances without turning on the exhaust fans, the temperature sensors would automatically turn on the exhaust fans - okay, uh, the 98 deville. Thank you so very much for that super chat. Man. That's awesome! Please hit the thumbs up, guys, okay, so that mailing system was really cool, but what my customers started to notice because they have really and i'm not blaming the mailing system.

I think it was great, but we don't have very good power here in southern california and we have poor energy grid. We have brown outs different things like that, and we didn't have proper power conditioning on these buildings. They should have had safety devices rethink again. Thank you so much for that super chat or hit the thumbs down.

That's right, thumbs up or thumbs down, it's an interaction, so it's all the same um, but we would lose uh vfds quite often because that's how they sped up and slowed down these exhaust fans. These exhaust fans were direct drive fans, they didn't have belts. So not only was the customer saving money on electricity, because the exhaust fans were running at slow speed, majority of the time and only speeding up when it got smoke in the kitchen which was really cool. Then they didn't have belts on their exhaust fans, so there was no belts to change.

It was a direct drive motor. The maintenance was dramatically reduced right. So this seems like a win-win, but here comes the problem. After about six to seven years of run time, we really started to lose these vfds, especially after a power outage.

We would tend to notice that we would have a power outage and then boom we'd have one two we'd slowly lose all five vfds for the exhaust fans. Then we'd have to go in with a new vfd. These vfds were by the time they were installed. They were 1500 to 2 grand each with labor and everything right and you have that times five and then the customer finally got sick of it and they said you know what we don't want, this smart hood system anymore.

We want you to bypass it right, but then that presented a problem because remember i told you guys that these exhaust fans that were running in this building were direct drive. There's no belts, there's no pulleys! You can no longer speed up or slow down those exhaust fans if you bypass the vfds. If you bypass the vfds you're going to feed 60 hertz to that motor, it's going to run at full speed all the time and it will still run. But that becomes a problem, so the customer wanted me to go in and bypass all the vfds and i said: well, we have to put in conventional motor controls because we have to protect the motors, the three-phase motors, so we rely.

We re-wired the entire exhaust hood. I've done this like six seven times now, so it's it's pretty fun to do, but you go in and you rewire the entire exhaust system you put in normal switches, you put in normal motor starters. You wire it into the ansel system into the smoke alarms into the fire system, but here's the kicker when they installed those super high efficient mailing systems. They would do an air balance on the building and they would air balance it at low speed because it ran at low speed for majority of the time.