So so, ah, it's time to chill out and get ready for a mediocre q, a live stream if you're old enough grab yourself your favorite adult beverage and if you're not stick with apple juice, put your feet up and relax. If you have any questions feel free to ask them in the chat and now, let's queue up the intro music, so yo how you guys doing this evening. I hope you guys are doing well. We've got a whole bunch of uh talk in the chat right now.

Everybody's talking about the old radio stations in southern california, um, if you guys, aren't watching the chat, there's like a whole nother thing going on in this live stream. Sometimes the chat will go off in a completely different direction than what i'm even talking about. So i encourage you guys, if you're watching on a tv or something like that, just pull it up on your phone too, and you can actually see the chat. Sometimes people have cool funny conversations going on in there.

It's a great way to ask questions. If you guys don't already know, you know, i'm totally willing to answer questions on these live streams. So if you guys do have questions, please feel free to put them in the chat put them in caps. Lock, it'll help me to see them.

If i don't see your questions, you can keep reposting them. If i don't see those you can send me an email to hvucrvideos gmail.com most of the topics and things that i talk about on this show other than the questions that i get in live chat are literally. I got home at like three o'clock. 3.

30. I sat down at my computer for about an hour and a half just going through youtube comments and emails and facebook comments and different things, and i consolidate um things that will be good topics for the live stream. So my my you know show topics and everything are just based off of the questions that people give me. So if you guys have them, feel free to throw them in there.

Okay, um, let's see uh, nothing crazy, too crazy, going on in the chat right now. Just lots of cool radio station talks someone's asking about luke already luke's my little uh labrador retriever that uh we have uh. Let's see he was born on august 1st, so i don't know how old that makes him, but he's like. I don't know too many weeks to count anymore at what point do we stop referring to weeks and months and start calling years? I guess i guess he's not a year old, so duh, that's kind of a stupid question, but so um it was a monday.

For me just a normal day, nothing too crazy and then right at the end of my day, one of my guys, his van broke down the guy. That was with me on a job, so it's like man so had to call a tow truck. I'm hoping it's something easy. It could always end up being a big big deal, but we have the chevy express vans.

We've had pretty good luck with those things, but luckily i think he noticed it right. Quick. All of a sudden, he had no oil pressure whatsoever. Um and uh on the positive side, there's no hole in the side of the engine block and it still has oil in it.

So i'm hoping it's a sensor or something like that, because he turned off the van turned it back on all of a sudden. He had pegged oil pressure all the way as high as it would go. So i'm hoping it's a sensor problem we're gon na find out, but it was an ordeal having to find a tow truck and orchestrate all that still make it back in time. Luckily, i was able to arrange for one of my other technicians to pick him up at the dealership, so i didn't have to go.

Do it. This is the fun thing about being. A business owner is having to deal with vehicle breakdowns and everything um on the plus side. I guess there's another plus side too.

I have an extra van sitting in the shop because um we had an opportunity to buy a van a couple months back and we went ahead and picked up another one just because of all the shortages and everything we didn't necessarily need it. But we knew we were going to eventually need one, so we picked it up when we could um and it's funny too, because i've just been so busy and haven't been able to prioritize switching over the vans, because that new van that i have has been sitting At the shop for a few months, it's mine - it's just covered in dust, be honest with you might even have a bad battery. Just i mean dead battery just from sitting there so long, but i need to change over into it, and my changeover process is very lengthy because i severely customize the insides of the vans and re-do the shelves and do everything the way that i like it. So it takes me a good three four days of solid working in that van to get it operational where i need it, and i just haven't had the time to do that.

So it's just one of those things that happens. You know takes a little while so yeah, i'm hoping it's just a sensor or something simple like you said the sensor screen or something you know that would be nice. That would be very, very nice. Let's just see, though, you know hopefully because, like i said, there's no holes in the block as of yet so it didn't throw a rod or anything so um.

Let me see what we got going on in the chat, see what i'm missing yeah. Exactly that's! Why uh? It sounds like a sensor and and like my technician, you know it didn't sound funny. It wasn't running funny, but i was like you know what we're not even going to chance it. It's worth the 300 to get it towed.

You know and have it dropped off just for them to tell me he could have driven it. That's fine, you know like i'd rather just tow it just to be safe. So that's what we did. We had it towed over there, so um yeah, changing vans is a process hello to everybody, eddie how you doing bud um all right, so um, all right, i'm gon na get on with my list of things to talk about so recently.

This last week i was able to meet a few of you guys at the ihaky trade show, i'm sure one or two of you is in the chat right now, but it was really cool. Um we had a local, it's just a local show that they do. Every single year, ihacky's just a local trade organization that we have and they put on a big trade, show every year uh it's been going on for quite a few years. I think i've gone for at least the last 10., but it's in pasadena, california and uh.

It was really nice. I was able to meet up with a lot of people that i haven't seen in a while one of my good friends, uh scott who comes in here every once in a while, his name's hvac rookie. He was able to come down and see me and we hung out had some lunch and it was just nice to get to meet a lot of people and and uh. You know, take some pictures.

Shake people's hands. Have some good conversations had some really good conversations? Actually, at the trade show with a lot of different people, so that was really neat um. It's kind of unfortunate, because the trade show itself has just been getting smaller and smaller. So it's definitely was slim pickings on the booths and different things that they had there.

But there was a few good ones. You know. Um was able to uh. True tech tools was there, so i was able to meet bill spone one of the owners of truetech tools, so that was really cool and then obviously the field piece booth and the spoiling booth, and so it was really neat but yeah.

If you guys ever see me out in the wild um, you know, stop me say: what's up i've had people stop me when i'm out with my family, i don't mind it. You know i mean i'll, tell you hey, i'm super busy or something i can't talk. I mean i would always say that, but yeah there's no harm in trying so hit me up. If you guys ever see me out there stop me, i'm totally down with it so um uh.

Let's see that was cool. That was, i took a day off to do that show so that was really neat um and uh. I did want to kind of go off on a little soapbox here. You know i uh, as usual, always like to do this in the videos um uh yeah.

If you guys do have questions type them in caps that way, we can see them, okay, so um. I want to talk about equipment design right now, okay, so i kind of i did a video this week on a very poorly designed piece of equipment and it's unfortunate. It does happen uh, you know. Even some of the best manufacturers have got equipment out there.

That's got a poor design and uh. Sometimes that can be a struggle when it comes to troubleshooting things, because when we're troubleshooting things nowadays, you know we're having to not only try to find manufacturing defects, but we're also trying to figure out if the problem we're experiencing is because of a manufacturer's defect right. So that can be a troubleshooting issue, because it's really easy to go in there and say well. I can clearly see this wasn't designed good and there's a flaw here, but we need to make sure we're still doing our due diligence and looking into the issues now.

While that is a problem, does it necessarily mean it's part of the problem you're here for today you want to be very careful about just assuming, because there's a flaw or there's an installation error that that you know that is the problem, because if that company was To call someone else out to give a second opinion they may come in and say you know what yeah. This is a problem, but that's not your problem at hand today you know and they may be able to get it operational and make you look silly. So you always want to do your due diligence. Look into things.

Diagnose, i'm a i'm, a question person, i'm you know just like my buddy bill, i'm a very curious person when it comes to talking to people. So i love talking to technical support. You know, of course, i have all my ducks in a row before i call technical support, but when i do, i have a whole list of things and it's like hey. This is what i'm experiencing.

These are the problems and then the way they say you know it's this or it's that i usually counter their points. You know like okay, if it's that, then, why is this happening, or why is this happening? You know um and uh. I like to do that because i like to get to the root of things now in this situation. With that recent video, the video was titled uh.

What was it titled um uh? They thought they would get air through all that, but um in that one. When i called technical support, i was like okay, so first, let me let me give some context to that video. So originally they had equipment installed before cove it happened. Okay, they had brand new equipment installed, but then the restaurants were, you know, shut down for a good period of time.

Then they were very slow for a good period of time. They weren't spending money. They were afraid to make any kind of service calls. So it has now been almost two years all right uh.

Then they called me and said: hey this box hasn't been working since installation, but it had been sitting in the restaurant for over a year. You know and it was running, but it just they didn't. Have people in the building so they didn't even know there was an issue because they weren't serving draft beer for the longest times, because that's a beer keg, cooler. Okay, so i ordered the parts back in june or may of this year.

I was able to go out order, the parts that i needed, but it was funny, though, and it took forever to get them, but it was funny because when i called the manufacturer - and i kind of talked about this a little bit in the video when i Called the manufacturer and said: hey, i'm having a 10 degree temperature discrepancy from one side of the box to the other. They were like really is there things blocking the airflow and it's like well yeah, it's a keg cooler. I mean there's always going to be stuff blocking the airflow. You know, but i could clearly see that the customer themselves had their beverage installation company come in, that installed all the keg equipment and the regulators and the water or the airlines and everything they took it upon themselves to take down a a chase on the top Of the box that allows airflow to make it across right, but we clearly see that on the box they didn't take the chase down that we were still having the issue on that one too.

So i'm not gon na. Let the manufacturer blame that um, but it was just funny after all, this conversation and again there's a way to go about this. Okay and i'm gon na explain that in a minute. But after all this conversation, the manufacturer, the representative on the phone just said, yeah we've never heard of a problem before you know and it's like well, i need something like do.

You guys have booster fans. Do you have anything that would boost the air for this box? Oh yeah, we have a kit that does that and it and it's funny, because that kit is got a 12 volt motor and it plugs right into their existing 12 volt lighting circuit. You just take the molex connector out you plug one in it's got a jumper like it just fit in flawlessly, but it's like so then. Why didn't you guys ship that with the unit, you know what i'm saying like it's just kind of silly but hey? I didn't install the box and i didn't sell the box, you know so i'm not going to go to bat too hard for the customer.

You know, because i'm not going to deal with warranty drama and all that stuff. This is just uh. This is how we're going to fix it problem solved: okay, oftentimes, these customers, and while i want to help the customers out as much as possible, you know we have a relationship right. We call that you know the customers say that we have a relationship and while we do, you know it's more or less mutual respect than a relationship because and it's more one-sided mutual respect right and it's not really mutual.

It's more respect from my side to their side. Don't get me wrong. These customers are good customers, but the bottom line is they want to spend the least amount of money as possible and uh and and there's nothing wrong with that, because they're in business right i'm in business to make the most amount of money as possible. So you know we each have to kind of play and dance around here and be courteous to a to one another.

And while they are courteous to me, it's just kind of funny, because sometimes i can bring up like design issues and then they'll tell me: yeah go ahead and repair it. You know i've had this happen with certain customers before, where hey there's a major flaw in the design of this box. Would you like me, when i install these new parts to to correct that flaw? Yeah yeah, please do it, you know and then, when i hand on the bill, they say: okay, no problem sounds great and then i don't get paid and then i don't get paid and then i don't get paid and then come to find out well what they Did was they turned in that bill to the manufacturer because of the things that i told them, they assumed that the manufacturer should have covered it under warranty, and while i agree with that right, the manufacturer should the problem is, is that the manufacturer doesn't want to Pay my going rates, and so it's just a roller coaster of stuff, so whenever possible, i just stay out of that drama. If it's under warranty and it's blatant, then i'm going to take care of it under warranty.

But if it's installation stuff, if it's you know a manufacturer's defect, i might mention it a little bit, but i'm going to kind of keep it to a minimum, because i just want to get the job done and move on to the next one. You know call me bad business for that or whatever it's just that game you have to play because there's too much of the well, this should be under warranty. So then we're not going to pay it. And then nobody pays me and then it's just a a game.

You know it's just silly, so it's just one of those things we have to deal with and i try to stay out of as much of that stuff as possible. So um quentin had asked a question and i talked about it um on here too, and at quentin. I actually have it in my my questions to talk about so quentin had asked me a question about how long is too long to leave a door propped open when it comes to, let's just say, a walk-in cooler? Okay, so let's put it this way in a perfect world that door never gets opened on that walking cooler that refrigeration system operates flawlessly from that point, that's in a perfect world, okay, but we all know that that doesn't happen in restaurants. Okay, so when you open a walk-in door, you need to go in and the door needs to be shut behind you.

You need to do your business, you need to exit the walk-in and shut the door immediately. That is the best way to treat a walk-in cooler. Walk-In freezer or even reaching cooler, reach and freezer okay, bad practices are opening the door right, leaving the equipment running, pulling the air curtains, the strip curtains out of the way and going in and out of the box for three hours, while you're doing a box inventory Or while food's being loaded into the box in a perfect world, we have shutdown sequence right. We have a breaker that you turn off.

We have a pump down, switch that you turn. We have a twist timer on the wall, something that shuts the equipment down anytime. That door is opened that equipment should be shut down if it's open for longer than a minute. Okay, uh really should now is.

Is it necessarily going to break down if the door is left open for 20 minutes? No, not necessarily, but it's just gon na add unneeded heat into the box that the evaporator then has to absorb and reject out of the box. Okay, the purpose of the evaporator coil is to move heat from inside the box outside of the box. That's all it's there to do so. It moves that heat via the refrigerant up to the condenser unit.

Then it discharges it out of the condenser okay. So the longer you have, the doors open downstairs, the more the equipment has to work and, at some point, there's going to be a system. Failure from leaving that door open at some point, you're going to allow too much heat into that box for a certain period of time, and it's going to cause a freeze up where the evaporator actually frosts up, turns into a giant block of ice. And then you know basically ends in a service call someone having to come out and take care of that ice.

The other thing that happens when you prop doors open is contaminants from outside dirt. Grease grime gets stuck to the evaporative coil and that can cause downtime later so. How long is too long on a walk-in cooler, walk-in freezer, a minute? Okay, anything more than a minute. They need to have some kind of procedure to shut the equipment down.

Turn off a breaker do something so that way you can do the in and outs in and outs, but realistically in shut the door behind you out open the door shut it right away. I can't tell you how many times i see people and i'm going to say that it tends to have well, i'm not even going to say that. But i see people that walk into the walk-in freezer and i can clearly tell that they are afraid that they're going to get stuck in there because they prop the door open and the entire time they're. Looking in the box, looking they're looking back at the door to make sure it's it's, it's still open.

You know it's like. No, that's not how that works. Okay, we have emergency releases. We have all that stuff.

You know we're not gon na jump in there. Just chill out shut the door behind you, okay, um, all right. Let me go ahead and go through the chat, see what i'm missing in here, real quick. What is the different refrigerant hose ends? Because if you hooked up a recovery machine, you don't want it to trap the refrigerant before the recovery machine or something sorry, okay, no, it's all good um! So, first off i i'm assuming i'm just going to kind of go with your question here with what i think you're asking me.

So there's several different types of hoses and ends on your hoses that you can use uh. Your best bet, honestly, if you're dealing with refrigeration and air conditioning is to use ball valves on your hoses. Okay, low loss fittings are problematic. They can be restrictions they're, just kind of i really don't like low loss at all.

Okay use a ball valve, so i buy um hoses. I prefer the yellow jacket hoses, but those are getting hard to come by. So i get the jb hoses at my local supply house and i buy the six inch ends for my hoses, so i buy like 48 inch hoses. I don't like big long ones, so i buy 48 or 36 inch hoses and then i buy a six inch ball valve end for it that has schrader depressors on it, but a ball valve.

Okay, i like those versus low loss fittings because low loss fittings again. They just become a restriction, it's just a nightmare worst case scenario: you have to evacuate a system through your hoses if you have low loss fittings on the end of your hoses, that is a major problem. When you're trying to do an evacuation, it's going to slow. You down tremendously, so i prefer to use ball valve hoses, especially if i'm going to have to evacuate through my gauges, which isn't perfect, but sometimes you have to do.

I prefer to have ball valves on my hoses, so i encourage everybody out there to use ball valves. That would be my best recommendation for anybody. Let's see um wendell parham says turn the manufacturers into the law. If you know it's supposed to be paid under warranty, that would get me and because i do earn it would have no choice.

But to say wait, wait wait! So that would i'm i'm trying to read your question here. Real quick um because you do have no choice but to say you stole something: oh yeah, so i i don't understand the second part of your question. Maybe i just didn't understand the way it was phrased, but wendell um. As far as turning manufacturers in like yeah, the manufacturer should be doing something right.

But the bottom line is, is that i need to get paid and i need to get paid within 30 days and when you start the process of turning it into manufacturers. And i maybe have understood your question or your comment that you made too, but this is a good thing to talk about anyways. If i turn things into manufacturers and that kind of stuff it just adds issues: okay and when you're doing warranty, service work for manufacturers. Oftentimes they don't pay your going rates right.

Whatever my rates are oftentimes they'll pay. You know a considerable amount less than that and it's just kind of like either take it or don't you know. So it's one of those things. Whenever you accept warranty work or you choose to do warranty work for your customer oftentimes, you have to agree to the manufacturer's discounted rates and it's a pain in the butt.

So i will do that for my customers i'll do their warranty work as a courtesy, but i also get their normal service work, but when it comes to things that are out of warranty, i make sure that you know i get paid on it accordingly. It's just one of those things and you just got to kind of deal with it and some contractors choose not to do warranty work. Some do okay, it's just a necessary evil for the customers that i'm dealing with these days. Um.

Let me see what else we got going on in here: um yeah, if you guys haven't already, please smash the thumbs up button on the stream. We've got 161 people currently watching and we have 63 thumbs up interactions on the video. So please smash that. Get that count up.

It really does help out the stream. Okay, youtube is still just dragging butt recommending this channel this month. That's just the straight through the ground, but it's all good um. Let me see what else we got going on in here.

Remember if you guys have questions you need to put them in capsule, because i'm scrolling right through here so um so uh, how i don't know how to pronounce your name. But someone asked how we're dealing with the pandemic, where we're at right now: okay, so um, it's it's doing. Okay, the numbers are pretty low right now, um, you know we don't need to get political or anything like that. It's just you know.

We have to deal with this stuff, so restaurant industries still kind of slow they're having a hard time getting employees and bouncing back there's a lot of political reasons for that. But again, we're not going to address that right now, so restaurants are struggling, uh they're alive, but they're struggling um. Some of them might not make it through this because of how hard they're struggling some of them will it's just kind of a gamble you know and as a contractor, i have to be careful too, because it's like i have to pay attention to the business side Of things and see are people getting behind, and then i read financials about the restaurants that i service i'm reading the news and stuff because you want to get ahead of things before they go south right and a lot of the times when restaurants are doing bad. You can see it in their earnings and different things like that, so i have to pay attention to that stuff.

So that way i don't get in head over heels and then have a customer file bankruptcy. I mean or something like that. So it's something we always have to pay attention to to make sure that you know these guys are doing okay, but they're doing all right. We're we're gon na make it through this, but um things are starting to get kind of hectic as far as mandates and different things like that and um again, not taking a political stance on anything.

But what i'm saying is: these are all things as a contractor that we have to be concerned about um. You know yeah. I may agree or disagree with certain things, but my business still has to operate, so my business has to operate in a way that majority of my customers, if not all of my customers, are going to want. You know you got to get where i'm going with that without me really getting too crazy, i mean you got to do what you got to do to stay in business.

So it's just definitely an interesting time, and every week brings a new challenge for sure. So um, let's see what else we got going on in here all right. What kind of watch do i use every day lucas? I am currently wearing my watch right now. It is a galaxy watch three.

So it's the new samsung galaxy watch, but it has a really nice protective case on it made by sup case. So that's what i wear every single day. Honestly, i don't use anything. That's in the watch.

I don't even know how to use it. It actually has cell phone service, i haven't even turned it on. I use the notifications and i use the time and the stopwatch. That is all i use in this watch, but i really do appreciate it cannotify me when i get emails and i can look down instead of having to pull the phone out of my pocket.

So but i am a dumb dumb when it comes to using this thing, i'm getting really irritated because i'll be driving down the road and it keeps telling me to get up and take a walk and i'm like what do you want me to do stupid watch? I'm driving you know come on. I got to figure out how to turn that off um all right. So i'm going to go to some of my topics to talk about real, quick and then we're gon na get to some more questions in the chat. Okay, uh.

I get this question quite often, and i wanted to address this after my last um uh video that i did uh what was it last week or something like that? Why do i not use piercing valves on repairs, okay, and that is a good question, so when i'm doing repairs, i push the wrong button there. So let's do that and let's change that to that there we go. So why do i not use piercing valves when i'm doing uh sealed system repairs um? Okay, so it goes like this. A piercing valve is a mechanical valve that goes over a piece of copper.

It actually saddles the copper. It has a piece of rubber, a literally a flat piece of rubber in it, and what it does is it has a little needle, a little hypodermic needle that comes down and pierces the copper, and when that needle pierces, the copper and you back it out, you Now have pressure at a quarter inch pressure port, it's meant to be um permanent, but it is not. Okay, every piercing valve that i have personally ever used ends up leaking at least the mechanical ones. Okay, the brazon ones are a little bit better um.

So with that being said, when we're working on sealed systems, my personal preference is that i always braze on service fittings and i rarely rarely ever use piercing valves because piercing valves are a leak point and oftentimes. When we're doing sealed system works work, we will occasionally tap into the system to find out that we actually didn't need to tap into the system. So let's say that we think something might be low on charge, but we don't know for sure because it doesn't have service ports. So if we tap into the system using a uh, what do you i'm sorry? I had a brain fart right now.

A piercing valve you want to use a temporary piercing valve. My fear is, is what happens if i don't end up having to do any repairs on the system? What happens if i thought it had a leak, but it didn't have a leak, but i now put temporary piercing valves on there. I have to pull those off and braise on service fittings, okay guaranteed. If you leave a piercing valve on a system out there, it will leak eventually, okay, those things are not meant for permanent use.

I don't care what the manufacturer says: okay, because you talked to the manufacturer of almost all the piercing valves out there they're a huge conglomerate that things are great they're manuf to be permanent. Well, that's some bs and i'm gon na be honest with you. That's one of the reasons why i don't work with some of these manufacturers because they peddle a lot of bs and i don't like it: okay, so um, but no those piercing valves, they're junk um. My opinion.

Okay, that's my opinion. I shouldn't say they're junk. I don't care for them. Okay, i have to be careful because i realize that, even though i hate the term, i am technically an influencer and i don't want to you know negatively influence people as much as possible, but i do want to try to give truth.

So it's just like a fine line. I don't want to turn into one of these news agencies right now that spews a lot of craziness, so all right, um, so yeah, i just don't care for using piercing valves. So, let's see what we got inside here, anybody else have any comments on that. What are your guys's thoughts, um yeah, so anthony marino says because piercing valves suck and leak? That is exactly it um, that's i i just they.

I can't stand them so um. Let's see uh, that's an interesting name. What kind of things does your company do when fixing refrigerators and air conditioners um? Well, i mean it's. It's pretty much spelled out in my videos.

We just try to do our job properly, we're there to make sure that that equipment is working properly, so to make sure that it's working and operating properly means that it needs to be cleaned. Sanitized lubed up belts need to be tightened whatever, but it all depends on what the customer wants to spend money on. So, let's see what else do i ever see people skipping steps doing preventative maintenance? Well, yes, i do and something i want to point out. I am you know my a lot.

I work for national chains, a lot of big national chains right, um and oftentimes. They will have uh a third-party cleaning services come in right because they basically pay minimum wage, whatever that is um to technicians and they come in here and they'll clean the equipment and move on. I shouldn't even call them technicians because they're just there to clean they're, not service technicians, okay, they don't really know how to fix anything. So excuse me yawning that's what happens when i drink chamomile tea.

It makes me sleepy so when they hire these cleaning companies in there oftentimes, they don't know what they're doing and so we'll come in behind them and we'll be like these guys didn't do anything. They didn't even clean it right, blah blah blah blah blah right. Something to understand is that before we start bashing other companies before i go in there, and i say this company is the worst company out there. You know before i say that to the customer.

What i like to do is i like to when the customer complains about them. First off. I don't like complaining about anybody, but what i typically will do is i'll. Let the customer talk to me man.

I can't handle that company every time they come. It breaks down and i'll be okay right on you know, but then i'll just start asking them questions politely. So what is it exactly that you don't like about the company, then they'll just kind of start saying - and these are things to help me grow too, because it helps me to know what i don't want to do at my company right and then what i'll do Is i'll say what was your agreement with? That company see that's the key oftentimes in these big national chains? The corporate offices will have agreements with these companies that these use service companies cleaning companies whatever it may be right. The management on site doesn't know about these agreements and doesn't know what the company's being paid for okay.

So it's really easy for me to walk behind one of these cleaning companies and say they didn't even clean the acs. It looks silly up there. Well, their contract may not dictate that they spend time cleaning the acs and the reason why i know this stuff is because whenever i do contract negotiations for customers i'll say you want a preventative maintenance. How far do you want to go? Because i can be at your site for a week doing pm work on all your equipment.

It's really about how deep you want me to go. Then they'll often give you a budget, and then you say yeah. I can't do a whole lot for in that budget. Do we have more room to push it up and they'll say no, and then you say okay: this is what we got to do: we're going to cut things out of this pm, so they may only be being paid to come out and change ac filters right, But we as assume because they're there to do a pm pm doesn't mean they're going to service the whole building.

It means that they're going to do preventative maintenance on whatever the customer wants them to do. Maybe that preventative maintenance is literally just changing filters. You know we don't know what these other companies what kind of agreements they have. It makes us look worse as technicians and business owners if we go in and start talking, crap on people, okay, so i try to keep that to a minimum.

Of course, i have some managers that i am friendly with, so we can share a personal conversation or i may have a phone call with a facilities, person or a corporate person and say hey, i'm seeing some issues here, but i'm usually going to let it happen. A lot so i can give a lot of examples: i'm not going to be in there just throwing people under the bus, that's just bad business in general, so um all right. Let me see what else we got going on in here are merv 13 filters worth buying? Do they plug up quicker than merv 10 or merv 8, leading to more callbacks kevin corona merv filters will plug up a lot faster than merv 8 merv. 10..

That's an absolute guarantee, okay, but you need to think about what the filters are doing. Okay, first off your duct system for your air conditioner, your furnace, whatever it is, is designed for a certain pressure drop across the duct system from the return to the supply side. It cannot handle too much resistance as it's trying to move the air through that duct system. Okay and every single turn.

Every single elbow, every single damper, every single return or register that that air has to go through to get to the area. It's trying to condition, creates friction and or a pressure drop. Okay, so um are merv 13 filters worth buying. Yes, the highest merv rating that you can safely put in your system with it operating properly, while still maintaining comfort levels in your building, the better okay.

There was a lot of caveats in that statement that i just made, because it's really easy for someone to think that they can just run to home depot and buy the heaviest hypoallergenic pollen, blah blah blah blah blah, filter, okay and then the filter plugs up and The homeowner says: that's the worst filter ever it caused my unit to freeze up or their contractor, comes in and says: don't ever buy this filter. Okay, what the contractor or the homeowner isn't sometimes understanding is that filter is a good filter in the right circumstances. Okay, unfortunately, a lot of these big box stores, don't do a good job of educating this consumer when they're selling on these parts or these things and the consumer tends to blame the product. Okay, so there's nothing wrong with a one inch: hypoallergenic filter, blah blah blah blah blah if it's in the right, duct system that is designed for that filter.

Okay in our world we're trying to reduce the amount of resistance in our system, so the wider, the filter, the better okay, you can go with a four inch filter, that's better than a two inch filter, that's better than a one inch filter right. So but it's all about designing our system so that way air can move through it properly at the right friction rates without a big pressure drop. So that way it can do what it's there to do, which is exchange or condition the air okay. So it's not necessarily worse to get a bigger filter, but if you have an older system um, i can guarantee you buying a merv 13 filter.

You're gon na run into some problems. If the ductwork's not sized correctly. Okay and the same thing goes for a new system too: let's see what i'm missing in the chat man. I really wish there was a better way to consolidate these questions, but um pop-up bomb reading through here, seeing what i'm missing.

Okay, um, okay, cool. I am going to oh uh zach, says four port or three port manifold. Well, here's the deal! Zach um! I carry a four port manifold in my van. I don't use my manifold for evacuations very often, but sometimes i do, and it is very convenient to have a 3 8 port on that manifold.

I'm going to tell you this right now using a manifold, a compound manifold or a digital manifold, for your evacuation is not best practice, but sometimes you have to do it and if you are going to do it, you need to understand the repercussions of doing so. Okay, vacuum gauge placement different things like that more leak points. Those are some negative sides to using a manifold for your evacuations, but if you're going to have to do it because sometimes you got to do what you got to do right if you're going to have to do it, speeding up that evacuation is the best thing You can do in order to speed up an evacuation. You don't necessarily need to put a bigger pump because, if you're, if you're evacuating through quarter inch, hoses you're now restricting yourself to like one cfm or less cfm of flow right, so putting a 10 cfm pump on there isn't going to do anything else.

Because it's being restricted at the point at which it's you know, uh the the entry in the system right so at your your vacuum, i mean at your uh your schraders or different things like that. There's going to be a big restriction. Okay, so i prefer to carry a four port manifold for those instances, because you now consolidate those two quarter inch hoses into one 3 8 port, and then you have a 3 8 hose going to your vacuum pump. So it's still going to be a massive restriction and a lot of potential leak points using your manifold, but you can speed it up by using a 4-port manifold and having a 3 8 hose on your manifold to the the machine.

Okay, so the bigger the hoses. The better the flow so um, let's see what else we got going on in here, uh hello to everybody. If people are just coming in here and you don't know the the the procedure the routine, i continue to do. These live streams typically monday evenings 5 p.m.

Pacific on youtube work permitting as long as i can get off working time. Okay, if you guys have questions that you want me to cover, feel free to put them in the chat. If you guys are watching on a tv, i encourage you to pull the chat up on your phone while watching on the tv, because you'll see that there's a cool conversations going on in the chat lots of questions being answered. But if you guys do have questions put them in caps lock that helps me so all capital letters, because that helps me to see them, because i got a big old list of questions right here and you know it's hard for me to see them all.

Okay and if i miss your question, feel free to send me up an email, hvacr videos at gmail.com um, let's see what's the gas ballast for in a vacuum. So if you go to any vacuum pump, manufacturer they'll explain the gas ballasts in super science terms: okay, but i'm going to do dumb down logic on this one. The gas ballast is there for your initial pull down. So when you first turn on the vacuum pump, you want to open your gas ballast.

It's going to initially pull down on the system without contaminating the vacuum pump oil as much okay, but there's a much more technical term and i'm sure someone else can explain it better than i. So i encourage you to reach out to all the different vacuum pump. Manufacturers or whichever one you use and ask them to explain the gas ballast, but the easiest way is: is this for the initial pull down, typically i'll close my gas ballast. When i get to 1500 ish microns, then i'll close it down and let it start pulling 100 through the vacuum pump: oil, okay, um, so that one's that let's go down here, have i ever shown up to a restaurant that doesn't have fresh air or an economizer You're in georgia - and you know all the states are different, but should all restaurants have fresh air kyle carmen 100? All restaurants should have fresh air.

If you do not have fresh air going into a building, you can have sick building syndrome where people start to basically run out of oxygen in the building right, the more people that are in there, the more carbon dioxide they're breathing out. And yes, while you do have an exhaust system, it can be a problem if it's not being exhausted in the right way. Okay, sometimes the kitchen exhaust system might be completely separate from the rest of the building. Okay and if it's completely separate from the rest of the building, you may not get the air relief that the kitchen has right.

You might not get air exchanges, so we actually have a lot of codes. Mechanical codes - and i know a lot of these - actually go across the united states, but california, of course, is the number one code maker right. So we have all kinds of codes that explicitly make sure that when buildings are built and when buildings are commissioned, that they're bringing fresh air into the building and that fresh air technically is supposed to change per occupant right. So the more people you have in the building, the more fresh air you need to bring into the building.

So it's very important and that's going to go into air balance. Air balance is the topic we talk about. Occasionally, i'm not certified in air balancing. I have just a basic understanding of how it works, but, yes to answer your question.

Every air conditioner out there should have some sort of fresh air intake, but but but but very important caveat. Bringing in fresh air into a building can be a problem because that air is not necessarily conditioned, even if you dump it into the return air side. It's going to potentially negatively or positively affect the building, comfort right and the building air conditioning. So if it's really really humid outside and you're dumping, a bunch of outside air into your package unit, you're going to add some humidity to the building that can negatively affect things.

Okay, same thing on the flip side, not having enough humidity in the building different things. Like that, so yes, you need fresh air for every single unit, but you need to make sure you're handling that fresh air properly. You can't just dump air into the building. Okay, but you theoretically, should have a little bit of mixed air on every unit, even on residential every residential unit out there needs to have fresh air, and that's that's a really important thing.

They don't, but it is very important. Let me see what i'm missing in here: does the sight glass being clear without bubbles work the same for a car ac system? No, i don't think so, and car ac systems, typically i've, never seen one with a sight glass. I'm not going to say they don't have them, because i don't work on car air conditioning systems, but no that's not necessarily true. I'm not going to answer that one and say yes or no for a car, so jason johnson says the gas ballast gets rid of moisture and not put it in your oil.

That's yep! That's that's! Right! All right! So uh do my national service providers ever try to replenish parts instead of paying me for mine, denir christie, no okay, and that is now i as a business owner. I have the ability to do what i want to do. Okay, i can stay profitable. If i do everything well, no that i'm gon na go there, my i can choose to do whatever i want to do.

Okay, but sometimes customers, especially the bigger they. Are they like to demand things? Okay, like, for instance, i've had customers before big giant customers that i don't do work for anymore, but i've had really big ones where they say hey. You do a lot of our service work, yeah yeah! Well, since you do a lot of our service work, we need you to do us a favor and we need you to go ahead and take this extra location. That's about 70 miles out of your service area, okay and uh.

You can't charge us anything else. You need to just charge us our normal rates for that customer. You know so as a business owner. While i wanted to tell that customer to go pound sand, you got ta, look at the big picture, and sometimes you know you look at it and you say: okay.

This makes this makes sense as a business move to absorb this one customer for the grand picture right. The big picture - yeah we might be losing here, but you know what we're gaining more trust, we're gaining more whatever. So we've done that we've taken on locations outside of our normal service area, sometimes being able to charge extra, sometimes not um, but you know: we've we've had to do that. Okay, so sometimes customers do try to dictate things, but i do not use customers parts.

Just don't do it? Okay, that's not my choice. Now, other businesses have a great business model and it works for them and they do okay, but i don't use customers parts now. I will with some of my really really big chains. If you want to do their work, they provide their own equipment, so if they have a walk-in needs, a new condenser and evaporator they'll provide it.

Okay. So that's something i have to deal with, but i always get to sell them parts: okay, but on the flip side, um their own air conditioners. Those are the other things. They provide ice machines that kind of stuff but and i'll install them for them and charge them.

You know my my rates and stuff, but um things are changing too, so you know we have to evaluate everything and make decisions on what's going to work for us. Let's see what i'm missing in here right now, um all right. I answered that one we're good okay, economizers are treated like a redheaded stepchild with a club foot and an extra eye that is right. Jason johnson majority of my customers out there when the economizer actuators fail, they say yeah, no just go ahead and bypass that and we don't even want to fix it.

Okay, they should be working and i try. I try every time hey. Let me get this thing going. Let me check it change it over to a jade system.

You know we can get you operational and all this stuff, but i can't lie to them and say it's not going to create more issues. Okay, because i'm sorry guys, maybe it's just the equipment that i work on, but every economizer that i work on out - there loses sensors outdoor air sensors like crazy. Okay, they are a failure point even on the jade systems. I go through outdoor air systems two times a year because of the outside air conditions that are running across those sensors.

They just corrode them like crazy. They go bad, so you know that's like all together, maybe 150 200 job by the time you sell your labor on each one and all that you know what i'm saying so that can be an expense that the customers just look at and they say yeah. You know what we don't want to fix this. You know um.

Let me see there was one more uh kevin corona my thoughts on reem and rude's new furnaces. I don't really know much about their new furnaces uh. So i i can't really comment um. I have worked on some rude equipment.

Um i've installed one of their package units before and i've worked on a couple of their um package units too, and i mean it's it's decent equipment. You know every every manufacturer out there is trying to compete with the next one. So every time someone lowers their quality, all the other ones are trying to compete with it too. So it's just kind of a vicious circle of um.

You know quality and issues, so they all have problems every manufacturer out there and it really comes down to the installation and service of it. So um see what i missed there uh see him, i'm oh shoot see. This is what happens and i skipped through a lot of questions too, when i'm reading um reading through here, okay, what mini split air conditioner, do i recommend uh mica honestly, i don't install very many mini splits and i may be completely naive in the matter, but Personally, right now, if you ask me today which mini split, i would install in my house, judging by just the information that i have, and i may be completely wrong, it would probably be a mitsubishi. Mini split system is what i would install in my house, but you know that's just i may be ignorant on that.

That's just what i've always heard has been one of the better brands they're expensive, i'm sure, but i don't work on them very often so um. Let's see what else uh that one's good, i answered that one um, let's see mitsubishi hands down is what jason johnson says too so yeah! That's what i would do in my house, so um, seeing what i'm missing in here. I'm not missing anything. Yet so! Uh dave had asked me a question about the refrigerants dave said: he's a retired, hvacr service technician.

He doesn't really work in the industry anymore, but he's really curious about all the different refrigerants that i work on these days. Okay, so dave was asking me how many different refrigerants do i use okay on my truck right now. I carry 404a 134a, 410a, r22, r290 and r448a. Those are the refrigerants that i'm carrying at the moment.

I don't even know how many that was six five seven, something like that: um there's a lot more there's, there's a new flavor of refrigerant every single day. I'm pretty sure that i'm gon na have to add 407c to my arsenal here, really quick, because we have some really big jobs coming up and i don't think the customers are going to want to use r22. So that's going to add all kinds of complications and before we know it, they're going to be phasing out r410a because that one's on the chopping block very soon also so we have replacements for that and they basically have replacements for every 400 series. Refrigerant.

That's replacing r22 and 410 at the moment right now too, because basically, all the four series refrigerants are out the door so soon, it'll just be r290 co2 and water, and even water they're cutting down on. So let's see what else r718717, which ones are water, 717 or 718, but then ammonia is in there too. So i don't know whatever um, let's see have i seen a walk-in fans not turning on when the fan delay closes um yeah that that would just be a fan delay, that's bad! We've. I've definitely seen it before uh.

Have i tried 427? Yes, i have jay collins, i've had good and very very, very bad experience, but it wasn't 427 za's problem. It was my problem because i didn't do research and i blindly trusted the supply house. That told me 427a would work perfect on my train. 3D scroll compressor.

10 ton by the way, and no it does not work perfect on a train 3d scroll compressor without an oil change. So don't listen to the supply houses when they tell you that always do your own research don't do what i did don't be like chris. Do your research, okay, so yeah! I had two compressor failures because i was using 427a, but again it wasn't the refrigerants problem because had i read the installation instructions and not listened to what the supply house said, i would have known that 427a does not work very well with polyester oil and in.