Foreign, 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, hey everybody. Hopefully you guys are doing well today we're alive over. Here i am doing better.

Every day i was sick for, like uh, i don't know it took me 15 days to test negative after all the drama of all that stuff. So it's been about a week now that i've been good and it's funny because i still haven't gotten my smell back um and my taste is not a hundred percent like it. It didn't go away completely, but it just kinda is lingering and weird, but i just had my dog in here a few minutes ago and then like out of the blue, all of a sudden, i'm like what is that smell, i haven't been able to smell anything For so long, all of a sudden it just like clicked so i got something back today, but um hello, uh, welcome to the hvacr videos live stream right um. I do this every once in a while.

I kind of introduce these because we have a lot of new viewers coming in, so my name is chris and i'm an hvacr service technician here in southern california um. I make these videos just to kind of share the little bit of knowledge that i have with everybody um it never anticipated it. Turning into what it's turned into, it's become a giant thing um, i it's kind of a roller coaster. For me, i go through highs and lows: i've got all kinds of mental issues and bipolar, crap and stuff like that, so i kind of go through like ups and downs where i'm like hyper focused and then i get burnt out and get you know just whatever.

In my blah zone - and i feel like i'm kind of coming out of one of those and i've been kind of a little bit more excited about doing stuff and making videos and different things - maybe it's just the new year and everything, but as usual, i do. These live streams to kind of answer. The questions consolidate the questions kind of keep me sane, because if i try to keep up with the comments and everything it just it just consumes me so usually what i do is come on once a week like we are right now for the people that are New and uh just kind of consolidate some of the more common questions answer them in a live format. That way, i'm not typing out the answers to the same question 27 times over and over and over again so um got a nice little list of questions in front of me.

Also, if you guys have questions in the chat, do me a favor put them in all caps, lock, all capital letters. It helps me to see them understand something too um. The chat is just scrolling by right and when i'm talking, i typically focus on the camera and the chat just moves on by so it's hard for me to always see what's going on. If i miss your comment or your question feel free to post it again.

Okay, until myself, or one of the moderators tells you to stop, if i don't get to your question, feel free to send me an email to hvacr videos, gmail.com and uh yeah, we'll kind of get on with this thing, so hello to everybody um, i see a Lot of cool people in here right now. It's really neat because you know we have a pretty cool community of people that are pretty regular to the show. So it's kind of nice to see people we all get to kind of talk and catch up on the week and stuff. So it's it's a really.

I really love doing this so um. Let me see what we got going on in here: all right, cool um. Well, i appreciate that zachary um, okay, so uh last week was just a normal week for me here as we're coming towards um. Let's see i'm off this friday, so uh, i'm going out to las vegas um for the ahr trade show, which is coming up monday.

Tuesday, wednesday of next week so uh i'm actually going to be taking my wife out with me to vegas we're going to get two days of relax, maybe two and a half days um my ahr festivities. Officially start like sunday midday. I have things going on my wife's actually going to fly home on monday, we're going to drive up together and she's just going to fly home and then she's going to do the wife mom thing, while i'm in vegas for the hr trade show. So if any of you guys are going to the hr trade show feel free to find me message me on social media, follow my social media, because i will be announcing where i'm going to be at so i am obligated at two different booths: the sporland booth And the refrigeration technologies booth so i'll be splitting some time i'll be spending a lot of time.

Monday, most of the morning at the sporland booth, then mid afternoon i go to the refrigeration technologies booth for a little while, then i'm going to walk the show for a little while and then i come back and do my monday night live stream from 5 to 6 p.m: pacific time at the sporland booth too, and then i'll be there tuesday for some of the day and then i'm sure i'll be bouncing around from here and there. So if you guys are going feel free to reach out to me, stop me say: what's up also, if you guys don't even know what the hr trade show is. Okay, the ahr trade show actually started as a show for um manufacturers to show their products that they can produce and the types of things they can do to um. You know other manufacturers right and it's kind of evolved into a much bigger thing.

They've consolidated a bunch of different groups, and it became a show that they're still manufacturers showing all the cool stuff they can do so you'll literally be walking around and you'll see a giant machine manufacturer that makes the assembly line machines that put together expansion valves, like You know and they're trying to sell that machine to manufacturers, and then you have manufacturers like heatcrafter spoilin, refrigeration technologies that are showing what they can do now. It's kind of uh adopting and evolving into almost a uh, a contractor type show also so they're bringing in contractors and um they're. Bringing in you know, tool manufacturers and it's just a cool hangout place right and then, on top of that they have educational sessions going on um brian orr is going to be there and he's going to be doing a couple. Different educational sessions - there's a bunch of other, really cool people.

I know jason obscu is going to be doing one on a2l refrigerants. That seems to be his thing. That he's really been preaching a lot lately um several different uh industry. People are gon na, be there doing all kinds of educational stuff.

Honestly, there's not enough time to see everything right and even though i'm gon na be obligated at booths and different things for a majority of the time. But i'll probably have one solid day of being able to walk the entire show, and it won't even be enough time to see everything because there's so much so they change the location of the ahr trade show. I believe they go. Atlanta, georgia, orlando florida, las vegas nevada and i think, there's one more where's, the other one, i'm forgetting where it is.

I thought there was a fourth one but anyways they rotate between those places. So last year they had to skip it, oh chicago they do chicago and illinois too so last year they skipped the chicago show because of all the craziness um. So this will be the first one since the orlando show. So i was at the orlando show in 2020 and it's a really really cool thing, so anyways uh they have stuff for all different types of people and it's just a cool place to see all the new up and coming things to reach out and talk to Manufacturers, they have refrigeration stuff, they have probably i'd, say 80 to 85 percent is refrigeration.

I mean as air conditioning controls and that kind of stuff, and then you know a little bit of refrigeration and stuff like that. So it's a really really cool show and it's a lot of fun, so um all right, so hello to everybody! That's in here kyle right on man, thanks for hanging in or coming into the show. That's really cool um yeah, the family's doing good over here yeah. That was pretty funny.

If you guys don't already know, i do another live show with my buddies on friday evenings on the hvac overtime, youtube channel, it's with my buddy joe from up in canada, hvacr north um, adam uh, who used to be a team adam. I don't know if he still is: he has a youtube channel, a curious hvac guy bill. We all do a show friday evenings on the overtime channel, so uh jason johnson and that show is very much different than this set up here. Okay, it's not really a question and answer thing: we do every once in a while cover something educational but majority of the time.

It's a bunch of bs and guys talking crazy and silly stories and stuff like that. It's just kind of a big hangout festival, so bill on the overtime show last week just out of nowhere. He brought up the fact that when he was younger, he put a cat in a microwave one time and it just it. We we all lost our minds.

Like it was when he was a young kid and he realized it was dumb, but it was just hilarious because it came out of nowhere. Jason johnson just brought that up so very, very funny, so um. Let me see what makes a condenser fan motor spin backwards. What would be a fix pub chat? Well, it really depends there's a lot of different things.

Is it truly spinning backwards? Okay, the reason why i bring that up is sometimes um. The if you have two condenser fan motors like on a package unit and one of the motors, is bad. The other motor will draw the fan motor backwards and it'll. Look like it's running when in actuality.

It's not okay other times. Sometimes, if a capacitor fails on a psc condenser fan motor on occasion, it can run backwards, and that is a confusing thing for some people, but on occasion it can happen. So that's something that can happen uh, but it's hard to say. I mean you really have to be on site, it's not just something that i can say boom.

This is your problem. I mean it could be a couple different things. So um. Let me get to my list of things to talk about, so i wanted to kind of uh start off the stream kind of talking about electronics um.

This trade has a whole new, like era of stuff, coming into it right. We have more technology coming into our trade now, and it's actually coming in so fast we're not even able to keep up with our education to be properly educated, to work on this new equipment that has all this crazy new technology in the next five to ten Years i pretty much mark my words. Everything is going to be ran by some sort of a speed control system. Uh vfd variable frequency drive you're, going to see compressors more motors vfds are probably going to going to become more efficient as they can reduce the size of capacitors and make them smaller and smaller our home consumer appliances.

Your refrigerator, if you have a newer refrigerator anything made by samsung or any of the newer top-end brands majority of the time it's going to have some sort of inverter technology in that refrigerator, home air conditioners, have inverter technology built into them. It's all. Coming now, one of the problems that i see is because i came from old school. I was trained old school and i've learned the new school ways right, but i still have that stubborn aspect of man.

I appreciated things when they were simple and mechanical and they were easy to fix, okay, um and and that's kind of a stubborn mindset right because in reality our trade is always evolving and we need to embrace the change. But it is true that we, you know, we don't like change, you know and we like the way things are going. We become complacent and it's super easy just to ride in cruise control and just go out and change fan motors because ah fan motor failed boom. Put in a new one, oh fan motor filled put in a new one.

You know i mean majority of my job is de-icing things. I'm going out defrosting evaporative coils, because they're frozen up majority of the time, because the customers leave the doors open or defrost clocks fail. I mean that's just boom, just de-icing things and you know we need to embrace change. We need to embrace the new technology coming in, but it is also fair to say - and this is my opinion - that a lot of the new technology is being thrown into this equipment when our infrastructure isn't quite there, we need more electrical protection.

There goes the coke nose right now see someone said it. I saw that jesus. I saw you say that in the beginning, and now my nose is starting to itch now that i grew my mustache back it's starting to itch um, so uh. We need to embrace that change because it's here right any of the guys that work on vrf stuff any of the guys that work.

I know, jason johnson, you work on some of the bigger heavier stuff. You know that is all technology right. We have um. You know circuit boards and inverters and all kinds of things controlling our equipment and it's it's coming into the light commercial side and it's definitely getting into the residential side.

And if we don't accept the new stuff coming in we're gon na be pushed out the door, because it is what it is: okay, um but like i was mentioning, i feel like a lot of us. You know we don't have the infrastructure, and so we see a lot of power problems, at least where i'm at we see vfds have a high failure rate. We see that um, you know, electronics have a high failure rate on the flip side, sometimes they're, just cruddy electronics, really jesus. You really set me off now.

My nose is itching like crazy um, so you know we we do have inferior equipment. You know bad components and stuff um in a recent video that i did this last week, i was working on a walk-in freezer. It had a failed two-speed fan, motor okay and that failed two-speed fan motor is they have a super high failure rate. I have to change them all the time so in that video i took it upon myself to go ahead and take out the two speed option: just eliminate it and wire it on high speed, i'm not a fan of changing things.

I like to keep it the way the manufacturer wanted it to be, but when i keep having to do these and it's costing the customer money, it's starting to look bad on me, even though i didn't even sell them the equipment they bought it and it has It in there now to be fair too, to give the manufacturers some room here, they're not really into this whole two-speed motored. All this fancy stuff too they're being told by you, know whatever insert name of government organization. You know uh, i don't know department of transportation department of energy. Who knows you know they're all you know making them um make their equipment more efficient too.

But the question is: is more efficient cost effective right? It costs the customer more money. They have to have these fancy things two speed motors on package units, two speed motors on you know evaporators for walking, coolers and freezers, uh economizers on air conditioners and all this stuff, and while all this stuff is great and the whole concept of energy savings, in My opinion is great. The question is: is it cost effective to repair this stuff when it breaks and the failure rate on a lot of this stuff is really high, so i'm reluctant to sell a lot of equipment that has circuit boards and all kinds of fancy stuff in it? Unless the customer is willing to put in some sort of power protection, and even that, doesn't guarantee that the equipment's going to last when these customers aren't doing proper preventative maintenances to maintain their equipment, they have high failure rates too. So it's an interesting dilemma.

We're running into you know, it really depends on how much money the customer wants to spend, but some of this stuff we just it - is what it is and we have to fix it. I mean it's a money maker, you know, you know the failure rate on some of this stuff is pretty high, changing sensors all the time. You know because sensors fail on these different uh regions or whatever, and i mean they have water intrusion and different stuff, and you know i mean that's. I just go around changing sensors a lot.

I mean it's interesting. So all right, let's see what we got going on the chat, uh see three phase: compressors can run backwards for a short period of time before the oil or the overload trips. Okay, i'm assuming you're answering someone's question um jason johnson says he has an extremely high percentage of customers who have maintenance performed. You know in the restaurants, it's a little bit different.

I mean i have some customers that do a decent job. I have one customer that does monthly maintenances. I give them i'm blown away every time they send a whole package of maintenances they're, just like boom monthly maintenances, and they do a good job they're one of my best customers actually um. Let me see what else we got going on in here: um, i'm looking to see if i missed anything uh all right, not really missing anything.

What's the the fail rate of the compressor in a linux ac unit, uh joe burke, the i would not say that a linux ac unit has a high failure rate on compressors. Compressors are typically murdered, something caused them to go bad so to blame it on linux. That's that's not a fair thing to do to blame it on any manufacturer. It really depends on how well the equipment is maintained and what kind of protection devices now that is something that the manufacturers do.

Control is the protection devices that they put into their equipment to make sure that bad things don't happen, but it's not necessarily the compressor. That's bad, you know, so every manufacturer does dirt certain things and really the the the price point of the manufacturer's equipment is really determined by the customer. The customer demands cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. The manufacturer can make it, but something's got to give they can't give stuff away.

You know they have to take certain components out. So when everybody's demanding cheaper, cheaper, cheaper you kind of get what you pay for so um. Let me get to my list of things to talk about sorry. I have a whole list in front of me as usual.

I already talked about these two things. I mark them off that way. I know i do have a question for you guys, the viewers that are watching right now, whether in the live chat, send me an email, hvacr videos, gmail.com or leave a comment on the video. After it posts do you guys have any sort of power monitors that you guys suggest the only ones that my supply houses locally carry is like the icm style, the phase monitors which are decent um, but i'm just kind of curious.

If you guys have any other cool stuff, i like three-phase monitoring, that's that's a big plus because i'm working on a lot of three-phase equipment, but i i would like to start talking my customers into more power monitoring that has uh control abilities to shot equipment down. So i'd be curious to know if any of you guys in the chat and or have any suggestions, feel free to. Let me know um, let me cross that one. I did have that on my list of questions.

I'm gon na go through the chat right now. Um you can blame lg for their compressors, that's funny, um! Let me see what else we got going on in here. All right, um, hello to everybody. That's in here, thanks for coming in this, is really cool.

It's very humbling that so many of you guys are in here just listening to me: ramble um! I am uh drinking a lacroix today, because i'm trying to cut off the beer, my belly's getting bigger and bigger, and it's not big - it's just i'm self-conscious about it. So i got ta. Stop i've been drinking way too much um. Let me see the room can answer as well.

There you go, icm is the standard, the one that monitors front and back and voltage yeah dave k. Okay, yeah um. Have i ever done a repair of a mini split? Yes, i have done mini split repairs, not my favorite thing to do, but i have done some work. Um zachary reid is saying his understanding is that switching any two phase lines on a three-phase system will result in a three in a phase reversal.

That is correct. I'm assuming you're answering someone's question three-phase motors right. A compressor is a motor three-phase motors. Um can be reversed.

Okay, but just because they can be reversed doesn't mean that you should reverse them. Okay, because on a compressor like a scroll, compressor um, if the motor runs backwards, then the scroll plates are gon na run backwards and you're gon na run into issues that eventually either the compressor is gon na turn off on overload and or you're going to kill The compressor okay, so you don't ever want to run a scroll compressor backwards for any extended periods of time. Sometimes you have to bump them to kind of check to see if the rotation is correct. You can hear it when you once you hear a scroll compressor running in the right direction and then you reverse it.

It's like oh yeah. I know there's a problem there. Okay, now on sometimes just standard three-phase motors, depending on the type of process they're being used for sometimes they may have a reverse circuit built in where they reverse. Maybe it's some sort of a manufacturing plant and it's a conveyor belt and they got to go backwards and forwards or something they have the ability to easily reverse the rotation of that motor using a vfd.

You know with a switch or you can. You know rewire, it run it backwards, there's different things, but you have to understand the process that that motor is being used for and make sure that it's supposed to run backwards. If you're using an exhaust fan, that's extracting grease and smoke out of a building. If you run it backwards, it'll still pull smoke, but it won't pull enough.

That's a very important point to make just because you feel air blowing out of the top of the exhaust fan does not mean that fan is running in the right direction. Okay, i have literally been on service calls where people have done startups and they're like yeah. I could feel air it's going in the right direction, but it's just smoky in the building and then i go and i look at it. It's like no.

It's going in the wrong direction now, sometimes you can pull the lids off and there's a directional arrow, but majority of the time you just got to learn to be able to look at the wheel and know um. You know if it's a backward inclined wheel or whatever how it's supposed to rotate uh. So you you can reverse three-phase equipment, but just understand there might be repercussions to doing that. Um, let's see what else we got going on in here, um, you guys are funny.

Am i a fan of crank case heat exchangers, pros and cons, crank case heat exchangers, i'm assuming you're talking about a crank case heater, not a heat exchanger um crankcase heaters yeah. They need to be on any particular compressor. They should be on residential, compressors and or refrigeration. Compressors crankcase heaters are there to protect.

The compressor from fr from flooded starts, essentially: okay, um and uh. The the refrigerant migration you know is gon na is gon na go to the coldest place, and sometimes that can be the outside compressor during the heating season. So then you go to start it up and boom. You could have a flooded start where you wash all the oil out of the compressor.

You can damage the compressor. Crankcase heaters are one step to help prevent flooded, starts um and uh migration of the refrigerant. Let's see what else we got going on in the chat? Um um the bypass contact ooh, i'm gon na tell you guys a story. Okay, i've told this many times before i had some technicians up on a rooftop.

They were walking up to a linux package unit and it had a vfd for the indoor blower motor variable frequency drive. Okay, and what happened was they on the display? I i know this because i've pieced this together together. They never admitted this to me holy, but just from listening to their story and how they told me the process they went through. I was able to piece together what happened so they walked up to a linux package unit.

They were doing a preventative maintenance. I had two guys there had a lead technician and an apprentice basically and the lead technician walked up to the package unit and it said bypass, engaged or something like that. There's an error message on the older prodigy, the white ones and it said like bypass engaged or something like that, and my technician was curious because the uh, i don't think the indoor blower motor, was running or i don't know what he did. But it was basically, they have a bypass contactor, so the vfd was running and they also have a bypass contactor and he walked up and he pushed the bypass contactor in while the vfd was running and when he did that what it actually did was give a Power source to the other side of the vfd and the vfd blew up and shot the capacitors out of the vfd between the two technicians, they're lucky they weren't standing in front of it because it was like a shotgun blast.

It would have hit him the stomach and that probably wouldn't have been good, but it shot the capacitors out of the vfd and the whole front of the vfd. The plastics and everything i don't know six seven feet across the roof, scared the crap out of them, and it was all because they were in there just pushing and pulling without knowing what they were doing. Don't ever send voltage to the wrong side of a vfd. Now it has a bypass contactor and what that does is and there's a contactor for the vfd too, and the vfd contactor will disengage and then the bypass contactor will engage and it completely bypasses the vfd and runs the system without the vfd.

In the picture, it was a safety that they had built into those units and it was because the technicians didn't understand what was going on. Don't ever push in contactors. If you don't know how that system works, because you can cause some serious damage and they were lucky, nobody got hurt when they did that um yeah one two, three, please don't blow up exactly. That was not a good thing.

Do multi-stage units just push more refrigerant through the same lines or evaporator delmar? Well, it really depends. There's a difference between multi-stage and multi-circuit, okay and oftentimes. We get them confused technically the proper term for what most of the equipment we work in would be multi-circuit, but regardless there's two different types. You have a parallel type system that has multiple compressors piped together and it's one set of refrigerant lines and each compressor will come on dependent on the load.

Okay and then you have a system that has multiple circuits right, different compressors, different sections of the evaporator different sections of the condenser, even though they might be one big evaporator, but they're not connected the piping whatsoever. Besides, sharing the same mass for the condenser or the evaporator okay, so it really depends on what you're working on and what type of system it is um. Let's see what else uh. What's my favorite window ac unit, i couldn't even begin to tell you.

It's been many years since i've even touched a window ac unit. Let's see what else we got going on here, then throw unloading valves in the equation yep and you get really confused ever call back to the walk-in freezer with the oil logged coil um, no customer. That thing is still running, compressor's still running 502 system. I think it actually has 404 in it.

It's still running. They have not had me, go back out there, uh ike, thanks for being a member, as usual man, you're awesome, dude uh. That's really really awesome. Thanks for all the support from everybody um.

Let me see uh philip, oh, my goodness phillip. Thank you so very much for that super chat, wow bud. That is amazing. The support that you guys give me honestly is just so humbling.

You know the easiest. I i'm just blown away. Thank you. So very much.

Phillip, that is amazing man, have i ever thought about a different bag other than the veto pub chat, uh yeah i've tried out a million different bags. Long before i was doing youtube. I used to buy all the home depot bags and the lowe's bags and everything, but once you go to a veto bag you just the only reason why i change vetos. I typically don't even wear them out.

I just change them because they come out with a new one and i want the new bag, but you can get five to six years if you take care of them out of the veto bags. The biggest issue with the veto bags is the zippers, and i'm going to be honest. Most of us are the reason why the zippers fail is because we overload the bags and we don't take care of the bags. You don't oil, the zippers, i mean i don't oil, my zippers either, but i mean if they break it's kind of on me.

So, let's see, let's see, i love my veto bags uh. What's my favorite, what to work on micah uh, throw it in there. I don't know what you mean what to work on um, so i would like to know too in the chat um i'm looking in the chat uh in a recent video. I had to add oil to a compressor that was operating, so it was a hermetically sealed compressor.

There was no oil sight glass, it had a refrigerant leak and there was oil all over the place. So my question to you guys in the chat i would like to know or in the comments: how is it that you go about determining the oil that has been lost like? How do you guys do it? For me? There's really no good way to check the oil. It's not practical to pull the compressor out. I mean the only way to do it right would be completely pull the compressor out.

Pour the oil out measure it and then put in the the factory charge back into the compressor, but that's not very practical when you have a system that needs to be operational. So in my situation i just took a ballpark guess: looked at the amount of oil on the ground and figured you know what one pump, so i just drew one pump in through my oil pump and added it into the system so um. But i'd like to know in the chat, how would you guys have done that differently? Do you guys have a better way to add oil to a system? Um all right put some dialogue on the zippers. Oh man, if i put nylon on the zippers boy, i mean i understand the lubrication, but man they would get dirty.

Oh right on man, that's really cool jason johnson, so jason johnson said from the christmas giveaway. You know it's very very funny, and it just goes to show you you know. I do these videos right. I did one this year where i did an end of the year giveaway and i gave away a bunch of cool stuff gift cards and stuff, but it's so funny because those videos get the least amount of views.

That's like one of my least viewed videos ever and the same thing for the video last year. It was like one of my least viewed videos, it's just kind of funny, but that's not the reason why i did it anyways. I did it to give back, so it is what it is. Um all right, uh, listen to the sound that the compressor is trying to tell you that it needs oil yeah.

I guess i can hear that on a scroll with no sight glass. It's an educated guess: um yeah, that's so that's what brett's saying you would have to remove the compressor purge. All the oil that's out in the system then recharge the compressor with the proper amount from the manufacturer yep, and you know i mean that's the only way to do it right, but you know i mean it, you know. Sometimes you can't.

You know you got an oil mess on the ground and you just got to do what you got to do. You know um, of course i know you know. The right way is to pull the whole compressor out and get the oil out, but in that situation there's just no way to practically do it in a feasible amount of time and even pouring oil out of compressors i've done it. I've shown it in videos.

It's a pain in the butt; actually, i did in one of them because i was flipping over a scroll compressor and i dropped it on its head when i was trying to pour the oil out of it because that's a pain in the butt man, those things I mean they're heavy to be lifting with one person you know trying to do what you got to do, but yeah all right, um, so uh. One of my viewers was asking me if there would actually that's why. I asked that question. What are your guys's thoughts on it? One of my viewers was asking if you could use a thermal imaging camera to view the oil level in a compressor and no that's not very practical i'd.

Imagine maybe, if you had like a super super expensive one, maybe it would be able to differentiate, but that oil is really really hot in that compressor. It's not like checking refrigerant um per se. The inside of that compressor is so hot that if you look at a compressor with a thermal imaging camera, you're, just gon na see a giant mass you'll see cold going to the crank case and then you're, just gon na see a massive heat coming from the Discharge area of the compressor - so i i mean you'd - have to have a very, very sensitive thermal camera. Then maybe you can see an oil level, but the next question is: if you are trying to use a thermal camera, to look at a compressor to check the oil level.

How do you even know where the oil is supposed to be right because there's no grad gradient showing you where the oil level is supposed to be so without uh? You know a baseline of knowing where the oil and that's that's using the thought that a thermal imaging camera would do it. I don't my thermal imaging camera. I just use the flear one pro. It would not detect the oil level in a compressor you're, just gon na see a giant tin.

Can that's really hot? That's all you're gon na see. So why do i add oil while wait, wait, wait. I saw a comment here and i think it was. Why do i add oil? What is this? Why do i add oil while it was running well in my particular situation? That's the easiest way is just to slowly.

Add it while it's running, certainly the best way is to pump the oil into directly into the crankcase. Using an oil fill port on some compressors, they actually have it on this hermetically sealed compressor. There was no way to do it. So if i didn't have the compressor running and i tried to pump the oil in then when you started it up, you're going to get off whoosh just right into the crankcase and you could potentially you know it's caused some damage or something i mean.

I guess there's there's accumulators built into those things and stuff, but still no, i choose to add it while it's running and slowly pump it in because as it's coming out and going through the quarter inch inlet, it's actually spraying into the air and vaporizing and running Into the compressor so you're just going to add it slowly, but the perfect way is to take the compressor out, pour it out, pour the oil back in, but that is a just completely disaster to do that. So someone had asked me a question in one of my videos. I don't know if you're a refrigeration person - and it is totally okay to send me questions and comment on my videos if you have nothing to do with the industry. I have no problems answering this.

This is a questionable one. Someone asked me: why do i have a trap in the refrigeration line set, and the reason why we have traps in the line set is purely to make sure that we have the proper oil returned to the compressor. A refrigeration trap adds a little bit of velocity uh kind of spins the refrigerant grabs the oil and helps to move it back up to a system or back up to a compressor in a certain situation. There's different types of methods that you can do with traps.

You can do uh certain risers, depending on the amount of lift you need from where the evaporator's at to where the condensing unit or the compressor is at there's different limitations. You need to, depending on certain heights and different things, you need to do different stuff to try to make sure that you have proper oil return, understanding that in a refrigeration system, oil is moving through that entire system. Even if you have oil separators there's going to be a little bit of vaporized oil moving around through the system, it helps to lubricate certain components and stuff. So with that being said, if there's oil moving through a system that has poor refrigerant velocity, that oil potentially can get trapped and logged in an evaporator in a line somewhere, so we want to do everything we can following proper piping practices to make sure that we Get any oil back to the system now in the systems that i deal with the smaller stuff brett from the advanced refrigeration podcast was in here a few minutes ago.

He works on the bigger stuff, so his systems are probably going to have reservoirs and separators and all kinds of different stuff, but most of the stuff that i'm working on we're not going to have separators. It's very rare that i see oil separators on what i'm working on and an oil separator simply grabs the oil as it's leaving the discharge line and stores it into a tank essentially right and then somehow gets it back into the crankcase, whether it be through solenoid Valves through there's a couple different methods that they can push the oil back in. But if you guys want to know more about oil, separators and stuff check out the advanced refrigeration podcast on youtube, you can find them all the different podcast apps. They actually have a really really good episode on oil separators.

I believe it was one with westermeyer industries that uh, brett and kevin did great great. They go way into the advanced refrigeration stuff. Hence the name advanced refrigeration, podcast right brett and i are actually going to be at the ahr trade show next week, together at the sporland booth hanging out, um he's going to be on the potentially be on the live stream next week. If he'll have me um next week, next monday he'll be on the stream with me and you guys can, you know, feel free to send the questions.

So, let's see what else we got going on in here um? How do you add oil to k-type copeland compressors? Well, that's easy: the most k-type copeland compressors that i've ever seen actually have an oil port on them and they have an oil sight glass. So uh you can actually stick an oil pump right on there and it's even easy to remove the oil from the k-type compressors too, because you can get special fittings that have little polyvinyl hoses. That can go into there and still be sealed and you can draw the oil out of the compressor too. So hermetic i mean uh k-type um semi-hermetic compressors are super easy to change the oil on uh, the bigger they get.

They'll have fancy oil pumps and different things on them, but they typically have a port that you can add it and on most larger refrigeration, scroll compressors. They also have an oil fill port and an oil sight glass. Honestly, i really think that every compressor manufacturer out there should have a sight glass. So that way we can monitor the oil in the compressors and know when there's a problem, but they don't so what's the worst thing, that's ever happened during my hvacr career.

Pat, that's a hard question to answer off the top of my head. Um yeah i'll have to think about that one. If i don't remember to answer that, one send me an email, pat and i'll, try to answer it on the next live stream. Hvacr videos - gmail.com! That's one that takes a little thinking.

That would actually be a good question for brett and i to answer next week together, so feel free to send me an email pat to help me. Remember that one okay, let's see i'm going through here, how many cylinders in a walk-in cooler, reciprocating compressor joe burke, i mean typically the reciprocating compressors that i've ever seen have two cylinders in them um. But i i'm not going to say that there isn't a reciprocating compressor like a giant one that has more than two cylinders. So, but typically, i see two cylinders.

Lots of chillers, especially centrifugal, have an oil pump and and pump it into the compressor. Okay right on jason, johnson um, let's see all right, um cool, all right, i'm gon na go to my list of things um. So i answered the question about the oil traps: um mahji! I i'm sorry if i butchered your name maji or maggie. I think it was maji though um, let's see, uh asks if i've ever thought about using electronic time.

Clocks, that's actually a question. I get all the time. Okay, i get so many questions. Whenever someone sees me use a grassland time, clock don't ever use those their junk use.

The paragons whenever i use a paragon someone says, don't ever use those those are junk, use the grasslands. Then, when i use um a grassland one time, someone will say no don't use those those are junk, use the digital, paragon or use the digital grassland or use a ke2 or use a you know, insert name of whatever. Okay, here's the deal. If a manufacturer sent a particular type of clock in the system for the most part, i usually put back in what was already in the system.

There are certain times that i'll change over to something different like if i'm in a sandy area - and i don't have a lot of freeze up problems - i might go to a old electromechanical - paragon like an 81 45 20 because they do what i need to do. But if i have restaurant customers that need more defrost, because they're constantly leaving the doors open - and i need a more aggressive, defrost strategy - then i'll go to a grassland style where i can put in multiple defrosts, okay, ke2 temp, plus defrost controllers, they're great. They have built-in defrost, but one of the flaws about them is you can't really get in there and do custom defrost right? So if you want to do a 10-minute defrost during the day, but then a 30-45 minute two-hour defrost in the middle of the night, you can't really do that with the ke2 therm temp, plus defrost controllers, at least not that i've been able to figure out. Okay, same thing goes for a lot of the controllers, like the um.

What do you want to call them? The dixon controllers, whatever the defrost duration, is that you put in there is the same defrost duration throughout the defrost strategy. Okay, so every single situation calls for something different, there's times that i put in ke2's, there's times that i've put in dxel controllers grassland, i mean it really depends. I have not used the paragon digital very much. I have run into it a few times in the field honestly without reading the instructions, it's kind of confusing for me to kind of set it up, but i realize all i got to do is open up the instructions.

It's just not something i've jumped on the bandwagon for yet um, so you know each each situation determines you know it just depends on what's there and what the ambient conditions are, and things like that. So let me go through the chat, see what i'm missing in here. Um laska says he uses receptacle timers from walmart for defrost. We used to see those a lot in the beginning of my career.

Those things were everywhere. Um, let's see. Oh, i see this question so uh jason johnson, saying his appian core removal tool. Do the same thing barely grab the schraders anymore.

You know, honestly, i i don't skimp on my tools. I have a lot of appion core removal tools. I have a lot of the the true blue, yellow jacket, core removal tools by the way, the ones that come with the true blue kit are different than the off-the-shelf yellow jacket ones: okay, but the fancy ones with the true blue accu tools, kit, i have those They all fail all the time all right, the appians, i will say, have a harder time grabbing. The schraders - and i realize appion - has a million videos out there saying that you can pinch the little thing on the end of the schrader thing, but even still they don't grab the schraders as much but the um, the true blue ones.

They leak all the time. So i mean it's just a gamble. The appian ones are rebuildable but they're a pain in the butt to rebuild so just uh. One of those things we have to learn to deal with are kind of a pain in the butt.

Um grant asked me if i ever call the manufacturers and tell them about the defects that i find, for instance, in the video where the liquid line dryer liquid line cracked, because it wasn't properly supported. Did i tell the manufacturer? Well, let's give some honesty and be fair. Okay, first off that particular colpack rdi unit came with a different type of dryer. It was, i believe, a dan fast dryer, so it was a much smaller dryer.

It was not as heavy okay, but after we've done field repairs. We've added 16 cubic inch dryers on there, okay, because we need to be able to clean up the system. Their placement of the dryers is kind of what led to that liquid line cracking. That is a high failure rate on those units, but you know, theoretically, the first time we changed the dryer.

We could have re-piped the system and maybe laid the dryer on the ground. But sometimes you don't have time to reinvent the wheel when you're just trying to get equipment up and running you'll just throw something in there in this situation, when i went in it's like okay, this clearly happened because there's too much weight on that dryer. Now it's a bad design, the placement from the manufacturer, because when we went in with an aftermarket dryer that was much heavier, it put unnecessary weight and there is an argument to be made that maybe even with the dan foss dryer the much smaller one. That much lighter one.

It eventually would have done the same thing: okay, um, so you know do i get the manufacturers involved sometimes sometimes i'm just not even gon na fight. Now i will tell you right now that i can actually tell you that the service department from colpac and rdi actually watches my videos. So i don't really need to tell them anything because i'm not going to say who. But i know someone from colpac rdi and i will communicate with him regularly and you know they already watched them, so they see them.

A lot of manufacturers do um it's kind of funny like i'll get emails from people hey. Would you like to talk about this situation? You know i've made videos where i i vent frustrations and different things, and the manufacturers like reach out to me right away some of them. I still talk to even videos that i've like negative videos they reach out and they're, like thanks for the feedback, we're gon na fix this. You know so it's kind of funny kind of humbling to know that the manufacturers actually watch my videos, that's kind of cool um.

So in a recent video a couple weeks back, i had a drum of refrigerant that the threads were jacked up on and i went to go screw my gauge hoses on there and it just didn't work, and then it was ironic because um a gentleman. What is his name um? I'm trying to think of what his name is: uh brett dude. Thanks for that super chat. Man.

969. I appreciate that bud. You didn't need to do that. You're, the man um, but anyways.

I'm forgive me because i don't remember your name right now, but a gentleman reached out and had sent me a thread fixer. It's called the falcon thread fixer and he sent me that tool and then i had some messed up threads. So i gave him a shout out and used it in the video leslie leslie orm is his name. I believe he had sent me that tool.

So someone said: why would i try to fix the threads on that and why not just return that cylinder back to the manufacturer and tell them that it was jacked up? Well, we're contractors and we're out in the field and if i can make it work, i'm gon na make it work for me to stop and go return that cylinder in the middle of a repair is just not practical. So i needed that cylinder. I don't carry multiples of different cylinder, i mean of the same type of refrigerant. In my van i only have so much space in my van so having a tool like the falcon thread.

Fixer is a cool little thing because you can actually used it today too. On another set of threads, it's funny you know for that and um, so it it's not always practical to just say: hey, i'm going to stop in the middle of this repair and go get it. You have to understand i'm working on a piece of equipment that has 40 000 worth of food in it. You know, and - and it's at 50 degrees right now.

I need it running asap, so we got to do what we got to do. Sometimes we even have to like, when that happens, we even have to fix systems that have refrigerant leaks in them like we have to get them back in operation. It's it's normal. When you have equipment that has down that's down, you got to do what you have to do to get it fixed, and then we can go back in later and make permanent repairs.

Sometimes we just got to band-aid it triage it and get it running so see what else we got going on in here. Um, that's funny! Uh! Let's see mag bearing compressors for everyone. Yeah i've never seen magnetic bearing compressors i've. I've i mean i've seen them on.

You know videos and pictures and different things like that: the turbo cores and but i've never like seen them in person they're very interesting and very intrigued to see them. So, let's see what else happy panda. Thank you so very much for that super chat man. You guys are amazing with all this support.

It is very, very awesome. Thank you, um do i prefer heated diode or infrared leak detectors well, currently, right now i use an infrared leak detector i have for a while. I use the fieldpiece dr 82, and before that i use the detex select. I also carry the inficon stratus, which is the the newer fancy version of the detect select.

It's got a ppm readout different, sensors and stuff. Both of those are infrared leak detectors. That's what i use they've worked great for me. I have had heated diode in the past, but i just use the infrared infrared ones now so um.

Let me make sure i'm not mixing that up. Dr 82 infrared. I want to make sure that is an infrared leak. Detector yeah.

It is infrared, that's what i thought so um. Let's see, how do i feel about the pro press, machine, locking, refrigerant fittings pub chat so um? I have uh here: uh use the zoom lock max tool from sportlin uh. I have a fitting right here. This is a cutaway of a zoom, lock max tool or a zoomlock max fitting.

This is a press style fitting that has o-rings inside uses a mechanical press. So there's a time and place for these, i have used them on two different jobs, but it's not something that i can use with what i do every single day. I work on a lot of small stuff that has tight little spaces and we don't have a lot of room for mechanical press style fittings, but i'm not knocking the fittings. Okay.

They clearly have a good track record if they are installed properly. One of the biggest failure points on these fittings is people not properly prepping the pipe okay in refrigeration. We are taught to debur the pipe on the inside when you're braising a fitting you're, not too concerned with the outside other than it being clean right. So you can slide it in heat it up and have the solder flow into the joint and properly bond to it.

But when you're dealing with press style fittings, you have to understand something that there is an o-ring inside there and when you slide the pipe into it. If the pipe is not deburred on the outside, because there can be a burr on the outside, it will rip the o-ring and you potentially have a leak point. So the prep that goes into these is pretty big, so um. What do i feel about the press? Fittings there's a time and place for them.

I don't get to use them a lot in what i do. I've had occasional uses with them. I have not had any problems with them, but i put a lot of effort into prepping the pipe. So i have two systems out there, one of them that has been running for over two years, a walk-in cooler system.

Both of them are videos on my channel. I believe they both mentioned zoom, lock max in the video title or something but um. I've had good luck with them now they also have the push to fit connections. I personally have not used those i've heard of people having good success with those, but then i've also heard of people having bad success with the push to connect fittings.

The argument i'm going to make again with the same thing, with the push to connect fitting you need to properly prep the pipe clean it sand. It make sure there's not any imperfections in the place where the pipe's going to go over because, unlike a braze joint, a brace joint's just going to fill any imperfections on a press cut fitting or a push fitting. If you have cuts or big scrapes or scratches. In the copper, that's a potential leak spot, so you got to properly prep the pipe and it's all into the prep, that's going to matter with the press style or the push style, fittings um but uh.

If uh, if you're going to do it for plumbing.