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 yo. What is up everybody? So my new little buddy here, my little guy, we're gon na be chilling in my office. Well, he doesn't want to do anything but cause chaos right now, but this is my little guy luke.

We just actually just picked him up today, he's only eight weeks old little guy he's a uh silver lab for all the people that are gon na freak out, but uh yeah cool little dude right here. So all right, let's get him out of here, because he's gon na cause chaos and uh. Hopefully you guys are all doing well. Today, um hold on just a sec he's going crazier yeah, my wife, my wife just came in to get the dog right now and she says it's like those uh those videos.

You remember seeing the zoom videos where, like the the person's doing a newscast or something from their home and then like the little kid comes in on the all this different stuff, yeah, that's pretty funny, but uh yeah. It's it's a trip. It's like having a little baby again like every two seconds. I'm sure we're not gon na sleep very well tonight and all that good stuff.

But the family's gon na be super stoked about it. So yeah get out of here. That's right! So yeah! Hopefully, you guys are doing well um, i'm doing pretty good over here. Had a nice weekend had like a um.

My daughter was sick. Over the weekend i mean it's all good she's, fine. It was just a cold but um. It was kind of a bummer because it was her birthday but uh, it's funny how things work out.

So we had to change plans and but it all ended up working out. We ended up painting her bedroom for her, which she was super stoked about and just had a nice family relaxing weekend. So it's really cool yeah, it's just nice and the weather's kind of a trip out here in southern california. Today, it's like cloudy and it's about to rain, um yeah, it's weird, weird how this stuff's happening.

I mean not weird, i mean it's fall, that's what happens but just rain in california. We haven't gotten it officially yet, but it looks like it's going to rain. So it's definitely a trip but uh yeah. So as usual guys, i've got a bunch of stuff.

I want to cover on my little list of things to talk about, and i definitely want to get to the chat too. So if, if you guys have questions and things that you want me to cover topics, you want me to cover, do me a favor and hit caps lock and put them in the chat that helps me to try to see them a little bit better. Keep reposting them until i answer them and or myself or one of the moderators tells you to stop posting them. If i miss your question, feel free to send me an email to hvacr videos, gmail.com and i'll, try to get back to you there too, a lot of the times when you guys send me emails and comments on my videos.

If i see something, that's that's live stream worthy, then i'll cover it on the live stream. So most of the things actually all of the things on my list right here are questions or emails or comments that people left and i just usually shoot that person in an email or a link. Saying: hey, i'm going to cover your question on the live stream and then we'll go at it. You know try to cover it.

So um jjmn asks if i would recommend the field piece, sc 680 meter and yes, i would recommend it now. I personally don't use the sc680 because it's a little bit too big. For me, i use the sc 480. Okay.

The sc sc480 is a clamp meter with phase rotation. It does all the electrical stuff that you needed to do. Capacitance all that um, it uh checks. Uh, the frequency it does all that, but it doesn't, it doesn't have a swivel head and it does not have a dual temperature input on the display.

That's all um! So if you need the dual temperature, you need the swivel head. Then yeah. You want to go for the sc680, it's a great meter, it's just a little too big for my taste. The 480 is perfect for me and it handles everything i need it to handle.

Now. Let me be fair. I get a lot of people all the time you know in the comments or in the chat or whatever that say, get rid of the field piece trash and go to fluke. Hey field piece works just fine for me, but also i have flukes, and i have different meters that i use for different things.

Okay, for what i do the field piece, sc 480 is perfect. It does everything i needed to do it's perfectly accurate for what i need um and it's great. If i was doing like super scientific stuff, then i'd probably go a step above fluke. If i needed to you know, i mean it really depends on what you're going to be working on and for most of hvac the field piece products.

For me. They work great okay, but to each their own they're, not necessarily everybody's cup of tea, and there's nothing wrong with that. Okay with that being said, i do have a point on here that i wanted to talk about. Let me find where it is, so i can mark it off and um i'm looking i'm looking, i'm looking, i'm looking, i'm looking.

Okay, there we go so um. Someone had asked me uh, you know about tools in general and i kind of wanted to talk about that uh, so we'll segue into that with this topic. So when it comes to the tools that we as technicians carry in our trucks and use every single day, it's going to change from person to person, and you know what each individual likes my my apprentice that works with me. He carries a uei meter and he loves it.

Okay, i personally don't care for it, but there's nothing wrong with it. It works. It works fine. So that's why you see a uei meter pop up in my videos.

Occasionally, usually my apprentice is doing some checking and i'm filming him with it. Okay, but um. You know it's really about what you're comfortable with. I know.

There's people that swear by the uei meters. I know there's people that hate them and the same thing goes for field piece and the same thing goes for fluke, so it's really about what works best for you. Okay, now, when it comes to new guys in the trade um, i see people. You know the questions come through all the time.

You know what tools should i buy, they're eager they get out of trade school and they want to just load up their van with all the tools in the world, and i encourage technicians that are first starting out fresh to chill out with buying tools. Until they talk to the people that are hiring them, okay, now um, you know, reach out to the local companies in your area find out what the standard is in that area. In my area for light commercial, refrigeration and air conditioning like i do most of the service companies provide the tools. Okay, so, for instance, i make my technicians bring their tool bag with just hand, tools in it um and a cordless drill and a set of gauges.

That's what my technicians are responsible for bringing you know they they provide their meter and all that stuff and then i give them or provide. You know equip their van with torches vacuum pumps, recovery machines, leak, detectors, you know, you name it. If we need it and it's a big ticket item, then the company is going gon na provide that okay uh in my area. Now you know that may change from area to area so be careful coming out of trade school blowing your wad on a bunch of tools, because you may find out that you don't even need them um, most of the time when people first come to work with Me i'll look at their tool bag because they'll usually come with a tool, bag and i'll tell them.

Okay, you're gon na trust me get rid of all this stuff. You know, like only have these specific items in there when it comes to tool bags uh, you know the the least amount of weight in your tool bag, the better okay, because it seems like. Oh it's not that heavy. You know i'm a man i can carry this, but over time that really starts to wear down on your back your shoulders and all that stuff, and you can get hurt you know, so you got to be careful about uh, about overloading your tool bags and putting In things that you absolutely don't need i mean if you look at your tool bag, you should use almost every item in your tool bag every one to two days and if you're, not in my opinion, you probably need to take it out of the bag and Put it in your van and just use that as a go-to item, when you need it, you know you go to the van and get it and bring it out, try to reduce the weight, even if, like, for instance, i've been rolling with the the veto.

Roller tech pack, it's the backpack that has wheels on it. I've been using that now for a couple months and it's a great bag, and since it has wheels, you know i don't really have to carry it, except for when i go on the roof and when you go to pick that thing up, it's heavy. You know. So you got to be careful about that kind of stuff, and you know you don't want to hurt yourself.

I you know. Last year i hurt my neck and uh. I had to downsize my tool bags and go to almost nothing so um. You know just just keep that in mind: be careful about tools now tools.

You know for me, they're a very important item and i love buying tools. Okay, so i tend to have some fancy stuff. You don't necessarily need all the the crazy latest sophisticated top of the line gadgets. Sometimes you know you can make do with a set of compound gauges and different things.

It just depends on what you're working on okay. I firmly believe that service techs should understand how compound gauges work. I used to say that they should work start on their compound gauges and move to digital, but i got to be honest, the digitals they give you so much information that you know i. I will coach my technicians with the digitals and and teach them from the beginning how to use them because um you know they will do so much more than a compound manifold gauge set.

Will okay, but it's still good to understand scott. Thank you. So very much for that. Uh super chat, but he said how long does it take to get the prize from those friday guys? Um, that's a good question.

Scott is is uh. If someone i'm assuming you're talking about on the overtime show, i'm assuming someone didn't send out your prize. That's a really good question. I don't know um.

I would send an email to hvac overtime. Gmail.Com, you can see see me in it. Hvacr videos, gmail.com and i'll light a fire under someone's butt. I don't know if someone forgot to send you something or what but um, let's see what else uh all right.

I'm gon na look at the chat here. Let me actually mark that one off my list of things to talk about there, we go boom and uh looking through the chat to see what i'm missing in here, um and okay cool uh thoughts on the new a2l, slightly flammable refrigerants. The epa is mandating. Okay, so let's get this straight kyle, it's not necessarily that the epa is mandating that you have to use a2l refrigerants.

It's that a2l, the the epa is coming in and saying your refrigerants have to meet certain global warming potential and or um they have to be. You know they have to meet certain standards. So therefore the a2l's are the best thing. That's available right now, so um, it's not necessarily that they're mandating a2l's.

It's just that they're saying your refrigerants have to you know, do this and do that, and so the a2ls at this point in time are the only thing that meet that criteria um, so keep that in mind, a2l refrigerants are mildly, flammable, refrigerants, such as like r32 And then there's a couple other ones: a lot of them have r32 in them um. You know you're going to start seeing it on mini split installations and stuff like that, and it's just something. We have to be a little bit more cautious about. Okay, it's still a refrigerant.

You still follow the common refrigeration practices, except for you want to make sure that if you're, using a recovery machine or a vacuum pump that they are a2l approved machines, that they're meant to be working with a2l refrigerants now with a2l refrigerants uh brian orr. Actually, just did a video and podcast on this recently with uh jason obscu from esko and they kind of talked about this, but with the a2ls you have to understand, they're, mildly flammable and they can combust under the right circumstances. But i mean it's pretty extreme. What would have to happen for an a2l refrigerant to catch on fire? Okay, now, when you're dealing with hydrocarbon refrigerants, those are highly flammable refrigerants, pure butane, pure propane, okay, that's r600 and r290, but even with those okay, i mean you really have to try hard in normal operation to get them to ignite.

Okay, it's really about following the basic refrigeration practices and what's interesting, is that when it came to these hydrocarbon refrigerants r290, especially because that's what i work with all the time when i started looking into them - and i realized that we were gon na - have to work With them it's like, hey, um, uh, you know sorry. I got distracted by the chat here, real quick, but anyways um, with the a2ls or with the the hydrocarbons. You know it's really the the the best practices. The things you have to do to work with them are the basic fundamentals that we were taught purge: the system with nitrogen, before brazing cut out as many components as possible.

Now, when it comes to the hydrocarbons and the a2l's, you know what they want to do. Is you know, especially with the hydrocarbons they want to have spark-free condenser fan motors they're, going to try to do everything they can to eliminate a potential ignition point? Okay, so um, you know they're not going to typically use wire nuts anymore they're, going to use waygo connectors different things like that. There's pluses and minuses to all the different stuff, but really when you read the installation, instructions for a hydrocarbon system and the basics that you're supposed to follow, it's the stuff that we should have been following from the beginning, with a few other added things, have a Fire extinguisher handy be in a well ventilated area when it comes to hydrocarbon, refrigerants right, that's uh, the isobutane and r290, which is unodorized propane those ones you can legally now keep. Let me preface this understand.

This is just what the hydrocarbon ones you can legally vent. Those into the atmosphere, you do not recover the hydrocarbon refrigerants now you're still going to recover the a2l refrigerants because they still are, you know not allowed to be vented into the atmosphere. So with that being said, you need to make sure you have an a2l certified recovery, machine and vacuum pump. Okay, so um, but it's not nothing too crazy.

I mean i wouldn't be worried about it and for those of you that say well, i just refuse to work on it, because i do see that i see people out there saying i don't want to work on any of these well you're going to need to Go ahead and hand in your tool bag because a2ls and hydrocarbons at this point in time, at least for the next five to ten years, are the future. Okay, until they, the hippies, have more regulations that make us get rid of the a2ls and the hydrocarbons and don't get me wrong that will come in two okay. There will come a point when you can't use hydrocarbon, because they'll figure out a reason. Why that's bad and they'll figure out a reason why the a2l's are bad too, but with that being said, we're refrigeration technicians, our job is to evolve with the industry.

When things change, we change. We up our education, we learn new stuff and we're the technicians that are going to fix things. So the cool thing, knowing that, eventually the a2ls are going to go away and eventually the hydrocarbons are going to go away. Guess what there's going to be something new that we're going to have to be here to learn and it's gon na make us even more valuable okay, so keep that in mind change is inevitable.

There's nothing we can do about it, i'm just as stubborn as the next guy. I don't like change, but it is what it is okay. So with that being said, if you do air conditioning and refrigeration, if you don't already do this, you really need to start focusing on saturation temperatures. All right pay attention to the saturation temperatures because, with every different flavor of refrigerant, the pressure temperature relationship is going to change.

So if you're, one of those guys which i have been for the longest time or used to be for the longest time that focused on strictly r22 strictly 134a and strictly 404a for the longest time, that's all i worked with. I knew exactly what the pressure should be for this for that for this, but when you transition into these new refrigerants you're going to realize that there's so many refrigerants in our trucks, now you're going to be straining your brain trying to remember all the different pressures That they run so, if you just focus on the temperatures - and you know that you know the typical air conditioner is going to run anywhere from you know - at the lowest and a 38 degree, evaporator coil, all the way up to a 55 degree, evaporator coil for Air conditioning, depending on what you're working on and you know and uh, you know evaporator temperatures on refrigeration and freezers and different things like that. Then you're gon na be much better off because uh, i don't think much better off as a word, but you're gon na be doing a lot better than the next guy. When you start understanding the pressure temperature relationship and start focusing on saturation temperatures versus just the pressures, okay, so i'll get off my soap box on that one um.

Definitely lots of cool stuff going on in the chat and thanks everybody for being in here. I really appreciate everybody's support. You guys are awesome and i know i keep changing things with the videos and stuff but um. Thank you for being so patient with all that stuff my mind as you can tell i kind of go all over the place up and down changing my mind on a daily basis.

I want to do this. I want to do that. I'm a little bit crazy in the head, so that's just kind of how it is um. My good buddy ty, branaman um just released a video and it was a pretty, i would say: edgy video.

Okay ties an educator: if you guys don't already subscribe to his youtube channel. You definitely want to do it and in fact, i'm going to pull up his channel right now and throw a link in the chat. So, hang on tai ty bran, i'm in um and uh here's his channel right now do me a favor and uh. If you haven't already go over and subscribe to ty's channel and tell him, i sent you over he's a really cool dude and i i had the honor of meeting him at the kalos training event or the hvacr school training event two years ago.

But i i've always appreciated ty's enthusiasm and efforts that he puts into educating people so tai had a pretty controversial, edgy kind of a video about for-profit private trade schools. Now it's not all of them and he did a good job of outlining the way that some of these schools are structured and some of how some of them work. Okay - and it's pretty interesting. So if you guys haven't already go, look at his recent video, it's about trade schools and give his channel a subscription and check it out.

I have been preaching for the longest time about trade schools right whether it be for-profit or non-profit. So you have community college trade schools, and then you have for-profit private schools. Both of them can be good. Both of them can be bad.

Okay, it's our job and or your job as future technicians or technicians that are trying to better yourself to know when a school is leading you down the wrong direction. Okay, be very cautious about schools and ty kind of breaks it down in his videos. So trust me go, watch it but be very cautious about um. You know schools that will not give you refunds, schools that will not give you options to back out of the program and different things like that, the cool thing and again i'm for any education, because any education, in my opinion, is better than no education.

So whatever you got to do to get that education good for you, if your best bet is to go to a for-profit trade school and pay the you know 15 to 25, 30, 000, whatever it costs, i don't know it's different from area to area, then so Be it okay, just be careful about some of these schools and make sure it's something that you can either back out of and or something that you're really going to like, because once you pay that money, you need to make sure. If you decide you don't want to do it anymore, that you can get it back or what what what your options are. So just be cautious about that kind of stuff. Okay, now me personally, i went to mount san antonio community college in walnut california.

At the time, i still think they have one of the best hvacr training programs in southern california. There's a couple different ones: san bernardino valley college, mount san antonio community college and cypress community college, in my opinion, and from what i've heard from other people all have great refrigeration and air conditioning programs. Okay, now the cool thing about the community college classes is oftentimes. They offer night school and you don't have to make a commitment to the whole program all at once for the most part for myself i was working in the trade already and i went to night school after work.

So i would go two days a week, usually like monday wednesday and then a class, maybe on thursday, or something like that, and i would go from like six to ten at night and it was really beneficial for me because i was able to work during the Day and learn and then go to school and then learn too and it was. It was convenient for me to be able to take what i needed and then come summertime. I would take the summer off and then start taking the classes again in the fall. That's what worked for me now again, i'm not saying that for-profit trade schools are all bad they're, not there's.

I know people that swear by some of them. There's local ones to me that people love okay. So whatever floats your boat and whatever works for you good on you just do your due diligence. Do your research ask people, you know tai made some great points.

He said when you're walking up to one of these schools before you enroll see the students that are are leaving classes after the day or whatever go talk to them, talk to the people getting in their cars and ask them hey. What do you think of the program? What do you think what's the hands-on lab work, do they have a lot of lab work? Do you guys do a lot of book work? Do you watch a lot of videos? Do they just make you guys watch videos all day guys you would be surprised, not gon na name any schools, but i get emails from people and it's it's flattering, but at the same time it's disturbing because i get emails from students saying hey man, my teacher's Been playing your videos every single day in class, we watch three of them a day. You know all this stuff and it's like and then i'll get into conversations with some of the people, and it's like do you guys do anything other than watching my videos? Oh well, sometimes we just watch your videos and that's it and it's like wow. You know i mean i appreciate that people are watching my videos, but i don't know if that's quite what trade school is supposed to be for.

You need to get your hands on things. You need to learn the fundamentals, because i'm not teaching necessarily the nitty-gritty and the fundamentals in my videos, i'm showing service work. You know a practical service worker that okay so understand that there's uh the textbook way to do things and there's sometimes practical ways of doing things right, because we can't always follow every single textbook thing when we're out in the field. Sometimes things just don't work that way, but i think it's so important that people understand the book side of it.

They understand the right way to do it so that way, if they do take shortcuts and they have to skip steps, they know the repercussions of it. So just keep that in mind and do your due diligence and research and if you guys haven't already go check out ty's channel, it's a great channel. Okay, let me get to the chat and see what i'm missing in here. We got a lot of a lot of action going on and it's hard for me to pay attention to everything and keep up with it.

So, let's see if my computer will catch up with things right now, um it is dragon butt right now. For some reason, loading certain things, uh we'll keep going with this um. What i recommend i saw a question, would i recommend job link system or analog gauges with separate sophisticated temperature sensors? I have may already gotten into it. When i read this um, i i'm probably gon na go towards the job link system.

Okay now understand something i want everybody to understand the fundamentals, and you need to understand how a compound manifold gauge works and, to be honest with you, everybody should have a compound gauge set in their trucks. Okay, there's certain things that compound gauges are still good for, especially when you're field adjusting pressure switches, while the system is still operating. A compound manifold gauge set is so much more accurate than using a digital gauge set because they have like sampling rates and and uh rates that wish it takes measurements on the digital ones. And it's not quite as fast as the instant reaction that you see on a compound manifold set.

So, whenever i'm using or if i'm going to do pressure setting or intricate adjustments on pressure controls, then i'll go get a compound gauge from my van i i actually to be fair. I don't carry an entire manifold anymore. I just have stubby gauges, high and low side and i'll, throw them on there and adjust the pressure controls accordingly. Okay, but i'm probably going to push people more towards the digital sets uh because of the uh, the things that you can do with them, but something to be very, i think it's so important that we understand this.

If you're going to use digital gauges, you have to know what you're doing digital gauges using measure quick or the field piece job link app all those things they're great and it's cool what you can put them on the system. You know, but i'm afraid that there's too many companies out there that think, especially with the the the job issue right now with technician shortage and all that stuff, we can't just throw a guy that doesn't know what he's doing into a van hand him a digital Gauge set, and and and try to walk him through it over the phone, we're gon na run into problems with that. Okay, because, as a technician, we have to know how to interpolate the data that comes out of our digital job link, set or digital gauges or testosterone, whatever we're using what happens if we accidentally install the liquid line temperature clamp on the discharge line, because we don't Know the difference, and then our super heat is out. I mean our sub cooling is out of the charts right that can lead us down a rabbit hole of removing refrigerant, doing this doing that when oh, the technician just made a mistake and he put it on the wrong line.

So we have to know how to interpolate the data and say this isn't right: okay, it's really important that we understand that um. So, let's look at the chat and see what i'm i'm seeing inside here right now um. How often do i service restroom exhaust fans? Uh, i don't know, but it really depends on how often they come in. I mean that's a hard one once a year twice a year, maybe you know it's hard when i recover r22, do i have to send it to be scrubbed? Or can you reuse it jj? If i remember correct, no, you can you can only reuse it on the same piece of equipment at the same customers, location.

If i remember the epa laws correctly, i don't even think you're allowed to use it on the same site on different equipment. I think you're supposed to recover the gas either send it off to be recycled and or to be disposed of and or you can put it back into the same piece of equipment. But it's been a long time since i took my epa test, so i'm sure someone will correct me in the chat uh, let's see what else we got going on in here, um all right, i'm gon na go ahead and get to my list of things to Talk about so brandon before the stream had sent me an email and he was asking about a multi-stage carrier package unit and he sent me a model number and he says it has a jade controller. The unit has two compressors and a vfd, and his question is: what speed should the blower be running at with one compressor on low or high uh? He says that he mostly works on residential and he's not uh best with commercial equipment and he's noticing that when uh, the way it's set up right now is that when one compressor is running, it runs on low speed and then, when the second compressor comes on It runs on high speed, but then his pressures change in the system and he was curious how that works.

So, let's, let's explain this all right. For years we have had multi-stage package units, they have multiple compressors in there. Thank you, scott uh scott said to smash the like button, and i really appreciate that. Okay um, so the jade controller is just an economizer controller.

It's a super simple economizer controller. I'm going to tell you if you do install a jade controller. Your eyes are going to be open to how easy it is to operate, be prepared to go through outdoor air sensors like they're, nothing, okay, majority of the time, depending on where you live. If you live in a very moist environment, where you have a lot of humidity and stuff you're, probably going to go through outdoor air sensors once to twice a season - okay, it's just the name of the game with it.

Now, when it comes to the air speed on our package units all right, let's step back to the uh, the infancy of our trade. We started making package units and we put multiple compressors in it and or we put a single compressor with unloaders, which essentially is a way to shut off half the compressor. That's the easiest way to explain it. If you have unloaders okay, the idea of multi-stage equipment is, is that you conserve energy? When you have a demand and high building temperatures, you might turn on one compressor and then after so much time, there's typically an algorithm whether it be in the package unit or in the ac after so much time.

If the temperature's not met, then it's going to turn on the second compressor or it's going to turn the compressor on full blast. Basically, okay. Now we do that to save energy and to maintain building comfort easier. If you have a package unit that both compressors come on right when it turns on you're gon na see a high peak on the energy usage, and you can run into comfort, cooling problems where you over cool the building, really quick and it short cycles back and Forth, okay, so we do multi-stage equipment to reduce that.

So that way we can use the algorithm like, i said whether it be in the thermostat or in the package unit. With that being said, for the longest time we had evaporator fan motors that ran at one speed, the entire time. Okay, we we're dealing with multi-speed evaporator families now and in fact it's an energy code in california, but on the single speed, evaporative fan motors, you have to understand that on average, okay, it can change from region, but let's just make it easy. You want to move about 400 cfms of air through the evaporator coil right for every one ton of refrigeration.

Okay. So if you have a five ton unit, you typically want to see 2 000 cfms of air moving through that evaporative coil. Now with that being said, what happens if we have multi-stage equipment, so we have two 5-ton compressors and it's now a 10-ton system. Well, 2000.

Cfms of air is not necessarily going to be enough air for that system, depending on how it's designed. So we have to speed it up and we might have to do 4, 000, cfm's now, but here's the problem when we're running on just one compressor. We were running on 4 000 cfms of air on a 10-ton unit, and that could be a problem all right. That's going to affect the efficiency of the unit and how it cools the building it may not.

Dehumidify correctly, it may not operate correctly. Okay, so we started putting in two speed. Evaporator fan motors, and the theory is - is that if only one compressor is running, we're not gon na waste, all that energy running that evaporator fan motor at high speed anymore, we're gon na slow it down to low speed. So to answer your question on a two-speed system, it's going to run on low speed when one compressor is running.

It's going to run on high speed when both compressors are running. Okay, that's on a two-stage system and it may change a little bit. There's typically in his system has a vfd. It's a carrier package unit.

So it's it's factory program typically, and you can adjust it just be careful. It's a pain in the butt to adjust the carrier ones with the vfds. You got to get a special adapter for the abb drive to be able to plug it in there because they don't come with them and uh big, pawn, cable guy. Thank you.

So very much for that super chat and thanks again man. He said to smash the like button. So please guys do so so um. We we do the two speed evaporator fan motors to save energy and to make the equipment more efficient and operate better.

So it is normal for it to slow down to low speed, whatever the factory predetermined and or you changed it to okay, um in as far as his question said how many cfms of air should it be moving? Well, it really depends on your particular situation and how your building was balanced. Did balance technicians change everything was it correct? Did engineers spec what the airflow should be worst case scenarios stick with what the factory has it programmed for, so i hope i answered your question. Bud feel free to send me another email, hvacr videos at gmail.com. If i didn't answer it completely: okay, um, let's cross that one off here, all right.

Let's see what else we got going in the chat. What am i missing? Um all right, i'm not missing anything as of yet uh any advice for vrf systems, uh, honestly, i've, besides working on mini splits, i've never worked on a vrf system, so i don't work on any of the big stuff. So i'm not going to be the technician to give advice on that one. What i would suggest you do, uh there's a not a new guy he's actually been making videos for a little while now um, and he has a lot of great commercial videos and uh.

He does commercial industrial stuff and the channel name is hvac time. Uh cool dude. His name is slipping my mind at the moment, but i do know it because him and i have exchanged emails together but go check out his channel. I post the link in the chat right now.

It's a great channel. He does vrf stuff, he does chiller work stuff like that, so check it out. He's got some great information and he might be able to help you a little bit more with some of your questions. Okay, um, i'm just reading through my phone right now: okay, cool, nothing, important um, something to keep in mind.

The video that i released yesterday was old footage all the way back from july. I had someone emailing me hey. Why am i using footage from july when it's october? Well, i had a super busy summer and i shot a lot of videos over the summer time. That's something that i will often do and i'll just catalog the videos and if i have a slow month or a slow day, i'll try to start using up some of those videos.

So i usually try to let you guys know ahead of time. In the beginning of the video, or something like that by telling you what time it was what the date was. That's why you see me looking at my watch a lot lately telling people what the dates are, because i want people to understand: hey because sometimes i'll release a video like when it's really slow in january or february and it'll be from the summer and people are Like what it's a hundred degrees - no not at that time, so it just happens that way: um vw, cyphon! Thank you. So very much for that super chat.

Man uh. Let's see he's asking any ideas on how to make an ac run more efficient. It's a fairly new unit, two to three olds mid price when installed a very good compressor that did oh, very good company that did the installation uh. The best advice i can give you on making sure that your equipment operates properly is to have preventative maintenance done on a regular basis once to twice a year.

Have them come out clean the equipment? That's a minimum once to twice a year. Okay, depending on your area, maybe the condenser gets really dirty. The company will recommend more what you need, but at a minimum once to twice a year, you want someone to come out service. The equipment clean, the condensers, clean, the evaporators check the performance of the equipment.

That's the best thing you can do to get it to operate as efficient as possible, maintain the filters change them on a regular basis. Typically, you want to change your filters at least every 30 or every 90 days at a minimum. Sometimes you have to do it more depending on the restaurant or the building or whatever so change your filters regularly just maintain the equipment, and if it was installed correctly, it should have a long long life so um. Lately, i've been working on a lot of the heat craft, refrigeration equipment.

First off. Let me say something here, because i think that there's some misinformation out there larkin heat craft bone, they're, all the same company, okay, they're, all companies that they've bought up and merged and different things at different points in time. There's a couple other ones chandler and a couple other names they're all owned by heatcraft. Now it's typically the same stuff.

Okay, so i've been working on a lot of the older qrc systems that is heatcraft's, quick response controller, that one is a dumbed down beacon system and uh. I had some questions about if i've been running into a lot of problems with those systems, and let me explain that he craft actually got rid of the qrc system and they made the new system which is intelligent. Okay, so qrc is no longer sold to my understanding and now it's the intelligence system, but with the qrc. Am i having a lot of problems? No, not necessarily um.

I have at least 30 qr, no, maybe not 30.. Well, yeah, i would say, that's safe to say, 30 evaporators out there with the qrc system on it and uh, whether it be walk-in, freezers or coolers, and the majority of the time. The failures that i have seen are: sensors, okay, sensors or frozen up or different things like that, and it usually has to do with customers leaving doors open and different stuff. I've had two expansion valve issues crossed my fingers.

I've had no circuit board issues. The the expansion valve issues were both failed, coils or stators for the eevs and one of them. One of my issues that i had on a qrc system was self-inflicted because i didn't follow the installation instructions correctly and i over pressurized the system with nitrogen and i ruined a um uh. What do you want? I'm i'm in a brain fart right now: uh transducer the pressure transducer i ruined one, so i had to change that, but that was my own fault, so i really don't have a lot of problems with the qrc systems.

Now let me the moment the first qrc system that i installed was the first system with an eev, an electronic expansion valve and from that point forward i realized and and made sure that whenever we're doing these installs, we purge and braze with nitrogen every single time. Okay, to try to eliminate anything from getting into the eevs to plug up the screens and different things like that. So i'm always trying to follow proper practices when i'm working with the eev systems to even more so than a normal system, because i want to make sure that nothing's messing up those valves, okay and then just follow the installation instructions. You know proper piping, p-traps and all that stuff, but for the most part, i've been extremely lucky with them and have not had very many issues at all.

I do want to cover something that i get quite often in my youtube chat people addressing the way that i defrost evaporator coils um. I you get hit and miss on both sides. Again, whatever floats your boat, whatever makes it work for you guys, okay. For me, when i'm defrosting evaporative coils, i use a water hose with hot water.

Typically, okay, sometimes they don't have hot water and i have to use cold water. I personally find that a heat gun is a waste of my time when i'm defrosting evaporators. In my opinion, okay and heat guns can be uh horrible on the electrical components in the system oftentimes with a heat gun. What you'll see if you ever find a video of someone using a heat gun? Typically, what they do is they take that heat gun and they find a way to prop it up, just pointing at the coil, and they go do something else.

Okay, i too have been guilty of doing that now. I don't use a heat gun unless i absolutely have to, but every time that i've tried to prop a heat gun up there, it's either fallen, or it's just downright melted, something in the system. I do keep a heat gun in my truck when i used to do a lot of hospital work, i would have to use heat guns because we were on patient floors and you know we just couldn't bring in hoses to wash things down, but whenever possible i Try to use a water hose, i personally, i find it to be much more efficient, it's faster and it gets the job done right now. I had a comment recently from someone saying they hate using water hoses because it makes the biggest mess in the walk-in.

Well, i don't make messes the only time it makes. A mess is usually by choice. Right and you know you can do things to reduce the amount of mess that you make. First off, you take water and you spray it down, and you look at the drain.

Pan, when the drain pan gets about full, you stop and you let the drain pan drain out. Okay, i don't just keep spraying and letting the drain overflow. I take all the motors out. I disassemble them set them on the side, so i can go to town.

Typically, when i'm defrosting an evaporator coil, i'm only defrosting it from the front side. I typically don't get to the back side unless we got a dirty coil so i'll. Take that hot water and spray it in from the front and it actually steams off the ice on the back and it'll, usually fall off as a big chunk. So i'm not getting back there spray in the back too.

I highly doubt that, with the heat gun, unless you're going to take hours and hours that you can actually defrost an evaporator from the front okay, now you can occasionally make a mess on a reverse, airflow coil or the the slimline ceiling mounted airflow or air evaporative. Coils, those ones can be kind of a pain because, especially when you're cleaning them too, because the airflow is typically reversed on those. So it sucks in through the fan motors and blows out the side of the coils okay, it has a reverse airflow and with that being said, the inside of the coil is usually what gets dirty. So most people will walk up and look at the evaporative coil say it's clean, no, because the air goes through the inside first, so it looks like a giant filter on the inside.

Now, when you're cleaning those you got to take out the evaporator fan motors and cleaned from the inside out a lot of times if you try to clean from the outside in it'll spray water ever everywhere, unless you have the right wand. Now, in my video i use that uh that orbit wand from lowe's no affiliate with that. I just use it and i show it in my videos all the time. That thing is great, because you have a missed feature.

You have a shower feature for different things. You can do different settings and you can reduce the amount of mess that you create. Now, if i go to a walk-in cooler and it's a tile floor and the customer doesn't mind, i might just make a mess if they're, okay with it. Okay, because that's the fastest way is just go to town and spray it.

But if i'm working on walk-in freezers, you typically don't want to get any water on the floor, especially if they have a raised floor. Sometimes the walk-in freezers have a metal floor. It's about six inches above the concrete. You do not want to get any water on that floor because eventually it'll make its way under the floor, and then it re-freezes and lifts the floor up and that can be a ridiculously expensive repair that the customer has to do, because you defrosted the coil and You got water all over the floor, so keep that in mind when you're working on walk-in freezers.

Okay, let me see what i got going on in the chat. Why are the flu vents never covered on package units? Uh? That's a good question a lot of times. The flu vents um they'll offer they'll have like a bird screen on them, so birds can't fly in there, but that doesn't stop insects from flying in there. You can still get bees and wasps depending on the manufacturers.

Sometimes they have a chimney kit for the package units. Actually, most manufacturers do have a chimney kit. If you need it that will typically extend the flue piping higher. That will be very beneficial if you have like a parapet wall or a make up air unit nearby or outside air dampers nearby, because you don't want the flue gases making it into the conditioned space, so you can put chimney kits on them and a lot of Times the chimney kits will have covers and different things like that, but it's definitely something that we can add in the field.

You just got to be careful if you're going to add an aftermarket anything to the venting for the combustion compartment of a package unit. You want to make sure that you're not going to reduce or restrict the the the speed of the combustible gases coming out of that vent, because that's going to make the system not work correctly. So, let's get into the the seasonal topic of the year. You know i talk about these all the time, but we're coming into that season and we really really need to start thinking about head pressure, control valves, guys, head pressure, control valves.

I know there's a lot of people that don't like these, but bottom line. They're out there and we have to maintain them head pressure control valve. This is the easiest one. This is an lac valve and i do have the coke nose going on today.

Um this valve right here is meant to maintain a pressure differential across our expansion valve simplest way to explain it. Okay with that valve in the system right this thing, when the pressure in the system gets below the bypass pressure. Now this is an ice machine one. So the bypass pressure is 240 psi.

So whenever the the head pressure of the system, the high side pressure gets below 240 psi. The bulb right here pushes down on the spring, which is on, has a seat on top of it and allows refrigerant to bypass, and it takes vapor refrigerant from the compressor and dumps it into the receiver. It does that to maintain the head pressure and or pressure differential across the metering device, the expansion valve or the eev, so that way it can operate properly. You have other methods of controlling the head pressure fan.

Cycling fan, speed, controls, different things like that. You can definitely go that route, but with head pressure, control valves, a lot of people, don't understand how they work and or how to properly diagnose them. One of the most important issues that you need to understand with head pressure control valves is that they require extra refrigerant in the system. I have a very small receiver right here.

Okay on this very small receiver, we have the inlet pipe coming in and we have the outlet pipe going up the top and there notice that there's a dip tube going all the way down to the bottom of the receiver for the outlet pipe. What that dip tube does is that ensures that it pulls the liquid from the bottom of the receiver, because there will be vapor in the top of this receiver. Okay, there's going to be a vapor liquid mixture, so it makes sure that when the receiver lets the gas flow out of it, it pulls liquid from the bottom of the receiver. With that being said, when we have a head pressure control valve on the system - okay, this again, this is the lac valve.

You have oroa valves, and then you also have the individual, holdback valves and different things for the higher um, like parallel style systems, supermarket systems, but any one of them they're going to require extra refrigerant being the system, because when this valve bypasses it's going to dump Vapor again vapor refrigerant into the receiver, when it dumps vapor refrigerant in the receiver. That can be bad, because expansion valves, whether it be an eev or a txv thermostatically, controlled expansion valve, have to have liquid refrigerant going to them, pure liquid, refrigerant, no vapor. So if we're dumping vapor refrigerant into that receiver, that can be a problem for the expansion valve. So therefore, we have what we call the flooded charge always sitting in that receiver all year long, and i want to clarify this.

If the system is properly designed and properly set up, you do not add refrigerant in the winter and remove it in the summer. You put that refrigerant in the system. When you start it up and you you don't have to add any more refrigerant unless it leaks out for some reason: okay, so once you've calculated the proper flooded charge, you shouldn't have to add any more refrigerant to the system. But it's important that you understand how to properly calculate that flooded charge the best way to understand how to calculate that flooded.

Charge. Sporlin has a tech bulletin 90-30-1. This is only for tube and fin condensers. This is not for micro, channel condensers, so tube and fin condensers.

You calculate the internal volume of the condenser. You find out how much you want to flood it. It explains everything in that chart 90-30-1. Just google it it's super easy.

Okay. So once you calculate the flooded charge, you add that to the system and that refrigerant there's going to be more refrigerant than that system needs typically in the summertime. It's going to have extra refrigerant, always sitting in that receiver. Just waiting, okay, this receiver, when it's designed properly, is meant to be a storage vessel.

There's always going to be extra refrigerant sitting in this receiver, that's typically not being used. Okay, it's just sitting there because most of the time it's not going to require all the refrigerant, so it just sits in this receiver just waiting for it to be used. Okay, so the receiver allows some refrigerant to go through, but there's going to be extra refrigerant, because this is just a storage vessel. This is for when the expansion valve opens and closes.

Sometimes it requires extra refrigerant. Sometimes it doesn't so when it doesn't need all the refrigerant. It just sits in the receiver waiting for the expansion valve to say, hey, i need more, and then it gives it more okay, because it's always available in here same thing goes for this head pressure. Control valve when the head pressure control valves when the outdoor conditions get low enough and the head pressure drops this guy bypasses it dumps vapor refrigerant into that receiver.

And if we didn't have an extra liquid holding charge in there, we would feed vapor to the expansion valve, and that would be a problem. So we always have the flooded charge sitting in that receiver and or winter charge sitting in the receiver waiting to be used. Okay, so once you calculate it, you throw it in there. You should never have to add any more or take it out now.

Sometimes people design systems incorrectly receivers aren't big enough. It's converted from another gas there's different things that happen, but in a properly designed system you don't take refrigerant out in the summer, put it back in in the winter. You just leave it in there all year, long, okay! Now, how do we diagnose a head pressure? Control valve okay, it's actually really easy to diagnose. This is the easiest one.

This is an lac valve. Okay, so on the valve itself, they'll typically be lettering. This one. Actually, the the lettering has been cut off, but you're going to have one line coming from the receiver you're going to have one line coming from the the condenser and you're going to have one line coming from the compressor.

Okay, so normal operation on this guy is that the refrigerant does the normal flow. It goes through the condenser out of the condenser into the receiver down to the expansion valve, but when this guy bypasses what it'll actually do is shut off the flow coming out of the condenser, the condenser acts as a storage device, because extra liquid refrigerant will back Up into the condenser, which will simulate a blocked off condenser and drive the head pressure up and then when it restricts the flow coming out of the condenser all of a sudden, it will take discharge gas directly from the compressor and dump it into the receiver.