This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. All right, we have a call on a water leak from an ac. Of course, the day we come out is the day it's raining, but that's not the the call the call came in before it was raining. Today is the first day.

Obviously you can see these units are in really bad shape. Need some love, but the biggest complaint is from the kitchen ac kitchen ac is not working. They're saying that it's overflowing downstairs. Let's have a look and see you can see that there's water in here and i don't see it in the ac or in the drain though, but we'll have to go through this guy and see why there's water in the unit um, i'm sure it's just gon Na be plugged up drains and stuff we'll have to go through it all and check it out we're going to go ahead and check every ac, because i believe they said it was leaking in the server line too.

You guys might recognize this done lots of work here. This is one where they had a refrigerant leak in the evaporator, and i turned over. The compressor poured the oil out and actually dropped the compressor. That was a pain in the butt but uh yeah we're gon na go through these guys.

Uh check out the drains check out the operation check the belts we'll go ahead and check the belts on the exhaust fans too, make sure everything's working properly all right. This is kind of a frustrating one, but this happens in the restaurants. We get here. There's two managers here: none of them were here when the water leaking was happening um, they think they know where it's from.

They think it was coming from a ceiling tile, but then the work order said it was coming from the ac vents. Now i will say that every ac vent in the kitchen has condensation dripping from it all right, so that could mean that um, you know. There's uh the the cans for the vents aren't insulated. It could mean a bunch of things, but, first and foremost before we go crazy with that we have to make sure their building is working properly.

Okay, before we start addressing humidity issues and stuff. So all the exhaust fans, the belts - need to be tight. All the makeup air units, the filters and belts - need to be cleaned and tightened. The acs the units need to be working so we're going to start by cleaning everything we're going to go through all the exhaust fans and tighten up the belts because they're too loose we're going to get the building back into proper operation and then we'll start addressing The condensation issues coming from the vents, uh we're looking at every ac and we don't see plugged up drains so we'll have to see all right.

I tightened up all the belts on the exhaust fans. They're all good. This exhaust fan had a broken belt. That's a restroom, so we'll take care of that.

I just wanted you to see how bad these coils are they're pretty plugged up now. This is not going to cause condensation on the vents, but in order for these units to be uh working properly, and in order for me to diagnose this, i need these units in proper operation. So that's why we're going to clean everything and get it tip top and then go from there. These makeup air units are completely plugged they're, not allowing any air through these filters and that's going to mess up their air balance.

It's going to make the building extremely negative, which would pull outside air in through the doors when people open them we're by the coast. So it's really humid you pull in outside air, it's rushing into the kitchen and the the supply grates are going to condensate. Now, that's not the only reason why, but it's going to raise the humidity level in the building significantly by having the air balance that bad, so we're going to clean these again. This is why we got to start from scratch and look at everything.

Don't just start attacking the acs, so i'm troubleshooting the unit just checking the pressures and everything and in order to check the pressures limit, has some linux has some target pressures here and uh. But typically, you want to close the outside air damper when you're troubleshooting via the pressures. Okay, because the outside air is going to throw you off. We use minimum outside air, usually to balance the building out or to feel fresh air requirements.

But it's going to throw the pressure readings off, so you typically want to close it. I noticed something earlier that when i turned off the unit, i didn't hear the actuator closing, so i came over here real quick to disconnect it and you can hear it but nothing's happening the gears are jacked up or something, and it's not shutting the outside air Damper so that can add to humidity problems too, we'll investigate that a little bit further here in a minute, but for now we're gon na leave, it disconnected and then uh. Now we're getting an alarm that because i disconnected the thing: it's not getting feedback anymore, but now we can kind of analyze the pressures all right, i'm not in love with this, but i'm also intrigued my return. Air temperature is 69 degrees right now.

Why are we still calling for two stages unless there's a problem with the zone sensor and or well yeah? The zone sensor just has to be in a bad place or maybe they're not using a zone sensor. If we go over here, my approach, temperature is not too bad. Um sub coin's a little bit low super heats up kind of okay. I mean we're right, okay, but also, i would say, because we have low uh return air temperature.

I imagine saying supply air probe line of sight. Sensible capacity is below 90. That totally makes sense. System may be undercharged with refrigerant i'd, be a little hesitant to put refrigerant in it um with such a low load on this system right now.

So i'm not too scared by that, but we definitely want to look into the damper and we definitely want to look into the thermostat issue too um, but yeah. This unit seems like it's running a little longer than it should so we're gon na go investigate that thermostat right now, so our thermostat is set for 61 degrees. So that's not good. So what i found here is is that these were not set to the schedule mode.

This one right here set to cool only and it's 61 degrees. So it's never shutting off. It has to be in the schedule mode schedule. So now it turns on and off automatically and the oh yeah, the time's all jacked up this whole thing's a mess.

So now we're we're set up it was they all. I also found that it was set to turn off at 11 45 a.m. This thing is just a giant disaster, so i'm just reprogramming everything going through setting the times and everything you can see the condensation, but there's a couple things going on and i'll explain it here. They also have plugged up hood filters, so the the hoods aren't pulling up the air properly.

So the heat's kind of rolling out of the hood - and you know rising up and hitting that and that's got 55 degree air blowing out of it, which is not helping with the condensation and their return. Air grill is also plugged up. It's going to be hard to see because of the lighting, but that's not helping because we're not getting proper air flow through the unit, so they're going to have to clean that too this guy the damper shut. So it can't move the air across it.

So you get all this condensation too, like the little bit of air. That's coming across is super cold. It's a mess here. I just opened it all the way, there's no reason for that damper to be shut.

So we open that we'll put these back on and then finish troubleshooting also, their dishwasher is missing. Curtains, so you're supposed to have two sets of curtains here, one on the inside one on the outside and the outside curtains are missing so once this opens up the humidity and steam can roll out so that extra set of curtains does have to be there. Let's see yep same thing here too. In fact, this side is missing the curtain right here, all the way so humidity the exhaust fan is working but it'll roll out man.

This place is a mess, but it really makes you realize that you can't just come to the air conditioner and assume you're going to solve your problem. Yes, they're complaining about condensation dripping from the vents, but it's not just as simple as you know, x, like they've got so many things going on now. Every one of those vents in the kitchen are uninsulated on the top too, so that adds to it. The hood filters being plugged up that adds to it the dishwasher, not trapping the steam and pulling it out the exhaust fan that at so it's everything you know this damper being open.

You know it's all this stuff, so you can't just look at the first issue and assume or you can't just come out and say the drain's clear. I don't know i mean you've got to look at the big picture, big picture diagnosis and the second stage is pretty much doing the same thing as the first stage running about the same pressures. I'm not going to adjust it for that. This unit itself is doing everything it can um yeah it's a 92 000 btu we're getting that.

This thing is doing everything it can so we're going to look into this damper now and figure out. What's up with that hold the actuator loose and the linkage completely broke off. Look in there you can see the rest of it so yeah. The whole linkage assembly is completely busted.

Um, that's a mess! Basically, i think a new economizer assembly really because that piece in there should be a it, should connect to this and it shouldn't be coming out, or this no yeah, i don't know but anyways yeah - that linkage is busted, so that sucks i got in there and Yeah, as best as i can tell that piece i believe, is all one solid piece: there's a screw in there, but yeah that's a mess all right! Well, i'm just gon na shove. This crap back in here and put this panel on we'll have to look into that. I think they're gon na have to replace the whole economizer, but i'll pull up some parts breakdown sheets for this unit and see if that is a replaceable part or not all right. I just got a call on this kitchen ac, not working again.

Well. The last call was water dripping this time they say it's not working at all. So i'm like what is going on here. Did the economizer come open? Did we leave the unit off so i go to the thermostat and of course they had the thermostats all messed up again so and what's frustrating is the thermostats were set for heat and cool mode? They were taken out of the schedule mode and um they're password protected.

So it's a manager for sure, because the manager is the only person that would know the password. It's not employees or cooks and they're all in the office, but they're all put in heat and cool mode, which means they're never going to shut off they're running 24, 7.. Okay, that doesn't have to do with my problem today, but it frustrates me because it means they're playing with the thermostats when they shouldn't they're in schedule mode. They should never touch them.

There's no reason to touch them. You know they can still adjust the temperatures, even when they're locked, like whatever so i put them back into schedule mode come up to the unit to see. What's going on and this first off, i checked the disconnect switch. Did we leave it off? No, i know we didn't but still checking it.

You know come over here and nothing's running and it says smoke alarm. So we have a tripped, duct detector and the last time i was here. I told him you guys. Exhaust fans aren't working right because your hood filters are completely plugged up hood filters still haven't been changed and or cleaned, and now we have a smoke alarm trip.

So i guess here's your sign kind of a thing so we're going to reset this guy and see you know, make sure everything else works right. All right. You guys see that um, when you're looking at this stuff, when you're going on these service, calls it's not always as simple as you're gon na fix it in one visit, it's not always simple. As just blowing out a drain, you have to look at the big picture now in this situation.

The problem is not completely solved. Okay, because i went to the customer - and i said: look you need to do these things right. You need to change the hood filters. You need to clean the return air grill um.

Now i don't mind cleaning a return: air grill. I don't change hood filters and the reason why i don't do that is because ordering them can be a nightmare and uh it's time consuming all right if uh as a business owner. If i start going down the path of ordering things you know like hood filters, the problem is, if i do it myself, you know i'm pretty confident, there's not going to be any mistakes, because i'm going to measure 50 times, i'm going to verify everything. Do the math do all this hard work to make sure that i come up with the right stuff now, when you have employees - and you start delegating things to your employees, you have more of a potential for errors to be made because oftentimes and it's not anything Against an employee they're, not an owner, they don't have the owner's mindset.

So if i start pushing ordering hood filters on my own employees, then there's more of a potential for there to be a problem and then it reflects badly on me. So i try to stay in my lane and you know just just fix and repair things and i'd rather not get into the hood filter business you know of ordering those. Then i've done it before and that's the reason why i say this because it just ends up biting you in the butt. In the end, it becomes a pain in you know whatever, but so we don't deal with that, but i can clean the return air grill, but the customer wanted to do it themselves, but obviously they're not doing it.

Okay, because you know they're not keeping up on their normal stuff, so i give them a list of things. Look we need this stuff fixed. I need to change. You need to change the hood filters um and then we're gon na start addressing issues, but you have to walk into this with the big picture.

Mindset again, you can't just you know one track it and go to the ac and say the drain's plugged up now when i first opened up this ac, there was condensation in the bottom, but there was no condensation in the drain pan and what was actually happening Was the seal around the door was not working properly? It was not tight, the door wasn't closed all the way and because it had rain that day that water was getting sucked in because of the building's negative air pressure into the rtu unit. That is very common. So you need to make sure those door seals are correct, so, but the the leak that they were complaining about was the condensation on the vents, even though that was kind of frustrating too, because the managers had no idea. Communication is the biggest thing with these restaurants.

They have so many new staff members that they're not a strong team yet, okay, obviously all the restaurants are hurting for staff. The you know the the craziness of the last couple years with the pandemic, and everything is just wreaking havoc on these restaurants and they have new managers that don't have a lot of experience that don't know how to communicate properly. They don't have a single manager taking charge of the entire building. It's just a crazy mess right now, and it's going to take some time for these restaurants to work and build their team structure back up in the past.

They had an amazing team structure. Now, it's very very you know just shaky and not the greatest thing in the world, so it is frustrating on my part because i get called out there for a water leak and you're like okay where's the water leak coming from. I don't know you figured out. It's like: where do i even start? You know um so that i i finally got to the bottom of it and found out that they were complaining about the condensation leaking from the supply, diffusers or vents.

Okay and again, i'm in southern california. We don't know you know we don't work in a lot of humidity very much, so this isn't a very common problem now this particular restaurant is unique in that it's about a mile away from the ocean. It's right on the coast, so they do have high humidity. At this building - and so you have to think about humidity, which is a new thing for us - i know you midwest people and you know people from florida and stuff.

You guys know what humidity is here in california. In my area i mean on average, where i live in the inland empire. 20 humidity. Relative humidity is about normal okay.

So you know when you get to these places that have 60 70 humidity. It's like wait, wait. You got to rethink and start it tackling problems differently. So when i go into these buildings, it's a big picture mindset before i can start diagnosing.

Uh condensation problems. You you fix the envelope okay as best as possible. So you you, you fix the exhaust fans, you make sure the building is operating 100 as best as possible, and then you can start backing into where this problem might be. So in my situation, i found everything every ac.

We went through every ac that day and we cleaned all the condensers. We blew out all the drains. We tightened up all the belts we went to all the exhaust fans. We tightened up all the belts, the makeup air units, one of them wasn't working uh.

That's a whole nother thing: we got to fix one of them or both of them. The filters were completely plugged, so the filters were actually so damaged that we couldn't clean them. So we pulled out all the filters we're going to be replacing them all. We've got a quote in the process to replace that broken economizer.

For that kitchen ac, i'm still trying to figure out what to do about the thermostats, because i've been out there multiple times now and they keep playing with them. So i'm almost contemplating well! No, i don't even know what to say, because if i put lock boxes on the thermostats, then management is still going to need the key. You know it's just a mess. It's just training the new managers to stop playing with the thermostats a lot of the times when people play with thermostats - and you see this where they're constantly set it's because they don't understand, so they need to be educated.

You don't need to be a punk about it. Just you need to get the management team as a whole together and explain. Okay, if this green light is on this, air conditioner is doing everything it can. You know like if the thermostat light says cool on there's.

Nothing else you can do if it's not cooling down the area then call me and we'll address it, but stop playing with the temperature stop taking the unit out of schedule mode. I told them multiple times when you take that thermostat out of schedule mode, that thermostat now never turns off. So when you set it for 65 degrees or 61 degrees, whatever it was set at. It runs at 61 degrees, 24, 7, because it wasn't in the schedule mode if they put it into the schedule mode.

Then my schedule times, you know: uh 7 am until 12 p.m or 12 a.m is, you know, it'll run and then, after that it turns off and goes into unoccupied mode. So it's all about coaching management and explaining things we as technicians, business owners, whatever we can get frustrated with these guys. I you guys watch my videos. Religiously you've, probably seen a trend of emergency service calls because condensers are dirty.

Belts are broken, you know, and it's all stuff that could have been prevented with proper building maintenance right, paying us to come in and clean their equipment, maintain it coach their teams and build them back up. You know all that stuff would help, but again the last couple years everything's been put on hold and they're slowly starting to get these restaurants back into shape. So it's going to take time for them to build it up and we have to have patience even though it's frustrating we have to bite our tongue because me as a business owner right. I want to continue to work for this customer for the next 20 years.

So you know if i vent my frustrations, uh sometimes justified. You know and piss off the customer. Then i'm not. They may not use me anymore right.

So it's a matter of having that owner's mindset. That's another thing: it's kind of tricky to get employees to think that way, and you know you obviously want to work with them. You want to coach them and explain to them and help them to try to understand, and it's still frustrating and it's okay for us to be frustrated. Okay, but anyways, i'm going off on a tangent on that one.

As far as this call goes, we're still waiting for the customer to prove the economizer quote. Actually, it's not even a matter of the customer approving the economizer quote, it's a matter of getting linux. To give me the proper part number, so i can quote it. We have called them multiple times and each time the first time they sent me part numbers for a blower motor and i'm like how does a blower motor match up to an economizer? Then they sent me economizer actuator motors, and i said i need the entire economizer complete.

You know and it's going back and forth so dealing with that um and we're still trying to get the restaurant to replace the hood filters. So uh you know once they get those hood filters replaced once we get the economizer replaced, then i told them. I can further troubleshoot okay. Now i i kind of have a feeling that we're gon na have to go in and insulate those supply, air cans on those registers or diffusers, but we're going to address that as the time comes.

Okay, so the whole big picture - diagnosis thing: it is real guys in when we go into these problems. You got ta take out that you know single track. You got ta start looking at the big picture and address these problems in a whole and understand and make sure you communicate that to your service manager, your dispatching team, whatever it may be, that this is not completed. This is a big issue and you you can't.

I understand that you know i get other service technicians that will reach out to me and be you know, question like how long how many service calls do you get done a day? You know it's not about how many service calls i get done a day. Okay, i'm out there to fix a problem as long as you have communication with the customer with your management team. With all that, you know with your business, you you explain and you get them on board with. This is a big problem and we have to address it in steps.

So here's the first step we clean the equipment, we did this. The next step is replace. You know the parts that are bad, then we'll have another step of address the root cause. Okay, but we need to get these other things fixed before we can thoroughly diagnose this system all right.

It's so important to understand that now you guys also saw at the end that, like a week or two later, i got another service call and i was kind of like oh man. What else is going on? You know, and i go out there and the smoke detector was tripped. Well, here's your sign guys what happens when the hood filters are plugged up and not pulling up the smoke from the kitchen. The smoke rolls out of the hood goes into the return air grill, which is right next to the hoods and trips the smoke detector for the kitchen ac.

Okay, so you guys see this if we would have gone in there and just said: oh as a trip smoke, detector, no big deal right, it probably would have happened again and while it probably would have been our fault, it still wouldn't have solved issues right. So we're looking at big picture. So even if i came out for just that smoke detector and i reset it - we go down and we look. Why would a smoke detector trip? Oh, the hood filters are plugged.

Let's get that fixed before we go any further and my my diagnosis, my my write-ups on my invoices never say this is your problem. They always say they're very broad. Like look, i came out for this and here's what i found. We need to take care of these issues first before we can further diagnose.

Okay, you always cover your butt, because you don't want to go in there and say: oh yeah, the smoke detector was tripped, you know um and uh. I clean the sampling tubes and it's fixed. It won't happen again. Well that could be part of the problem, but maybe not you know so you're broad about that came in here found a smoke.

Detector tripped found a couple things that could have been causing this problem, but you guys need to change your hood filters too. I reset the smoke detector it's operating properly at this time, but it's possible. It could happen again and you know you need to get those hood filters before we can. You know further diagnose, so it's always about being broad and being thorough in your descriptions and your diagnoses.

So that way the customer feels confident and also it whenev whenever possible. You grab the customer by the hand and you walk them with you and you say: here's what i'm finding you see these hood filters. Those are plugged all those aren't too bad. We clean those every night.

No, you don't. You know, politely, there's no way! These are cleaned every night. Those hood filters have grease around the outside frame. They haven't been taken out in months.

You know oh well, maybe my staff isn't doing what they? Oh, maybe they're, not you know so grabbing the manager and having discussions, not arguments, but discussions with them helps to educate them and better them, so they can communicate to their staff and start coaching their staff on how to properly clean those hood filters. Now, in a perfect world, these restaurants pull these hood filters out two to three times a week out of their hoods and soak them overnight in a degreaser, and they have to soak them in a in a manner that the hood filter is facing up and down. So that way the grease can fall off the filter. Then they rinse them.

Then they wash them. I've gone through this process with the customer on educating them and then all of a sudden you get them on a routine of cleaning the filters. And then you start getting service calls on the dishwasher. You know dishwasher exhaust not working, and you find out the dishwasher exhaust is filled up with grease.

Well, dishwasher exhaust isn't made to have grease in it. Then you find out, oh well, we started washing the hood filters in the dishwasher. You can't do that guys. You got to wash them somewhere else, because that grease gets sucked up in the dishwasher.

So it's all about coaching, the management and explaining why you know dishwasher exhausts aren't meant to have grease in them. They're, not cleanable. You know the ductwork and stuff, so you can't wash the hood filters in the dish machine you know and it's bringing that stuff up. Okay, so coaching these restaurants trying to be thorough.

Okay - and i know i run my business different than other people, but i'm not concerned with how many calls a day, i'm getting done. I'm there focusing on one call one call at a time and working my way through it. Now, of course, there's times i get slammed and you know we got ta, put fires out and come back and finish up a call, but for the most part i focus one call at a time. Okay, i don't have a quota.

None of my employees have a quota. They might only get one call a day. They might even have even get one call done, they might get started on a call and have to go back and finish it. Okay, because it's one call at a time thorough problem solved, callbacks are horrible, eliminate callbacks focus pay attention.

You know this is how i run my business, not saying it's how you have to run yours or your company needs to run it this way. It's just how we go one call at a time: okay, so i've babbled long enough. I really appreciate you guys making it to the end of this video keep in mind. I uh go live on youtube monday.

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