This video is brought to you by spore'ln quality, integrity and tradition. Today we have a call on a bar air-conditioner: that's not working properly just walked up onto the roof. The energy management company called the restaurant and said the unit wasn't working. So that's all we know.

Go ahead and jump into the electrical section and see what we see so the camera is not going to pick it up, but because of the scrolling marquee. But what it's saying is it says: alarms 13, 15 and 1:30 and then there's an arrow pointing to the right. When I push the arrow pointing to the right, it says: alarm: 15 strike 3 on compressor to high pressure or temp s 7. So then, when I hit down and go to the next alarm number 1:30, it says VFD bypass, engaged and then alarm 13 is strike 3 on compressor, 1 high-pressure.

So it looks like we got a high-pressure situation. So let's go ahead and clear out the codes and then we'll reset it and then start the unit back up. This unit also has a bad VFD drive, which I actually already have on order. The unit has an automatic bypass if the VFD drive doesn't turn the blower motor on it, bypasses it via a contactor inside the unit.

So you can see that this drive is kind of blown apart. It's failed and if you look down here, it's actually disconnected so if we go up into here and you look in here - it's not labeled, but one of these contactors is the indoor blow motive bypass contactor. It's very important that you never push in contactors on these units that have VFD drives without knowing what those contactors do, because if that VFD drive is sending power to the blower motor and then you push in the bypass contactor, you could have a big issue and What can happen is, is you can send power to the wrong side of that VFD drive and no joke? It will explode. So you got to be very, very cautious about that.

Normally, on these units it looks like someone's already torn it off, but on the contactor. That's the bypass contactor, they put a piece of cardboard so that way, you know not to push it in the reason why I say this is because I had someone that did that one time and it didn't end well, nobody got hurt, but it was a very Dangerous situation because the drive blew up right next to him and shot parts out across the roof, so got to be very, very careful about that. So what I'm doing is I'm waiting for this unit to reset again, I hate how you can't see this on the camera, but there's actually a display on there. It's something about the shutter speed or something like that with the camera.

So the other thing is: if I cover this up, you can see that we have a call for G y1, y2 and an occupied signal. So here, in a minute, this unit should turn on so the unit reset, and I was thinking - maybe we would have a bad condenser fan motor, but they both started up. So what we need to do is amp them out to see if either of them is over amping, potentially because this condenser is clean, I can see through it. I mean there's a little bit of lint on there, but I don't think enough.

It has been rather hot where we're at, but I wouldn't expect it to trip a high pressure control, so I'm going to monitor the unit I'll have to go, get some service gauges to and put them on here and checked everything out so on these units. If you look at the schematic, it'll be a legend right here. Okay and it'll tell your! I don't know if it's called a legend, but it tells you what each item is and usually you come down here and look all the way down here, and this is the control area, and this is kind of a schematic, and these relays right here are going To be various items, outdoor fan exhaust fans different stuff. So if we look right here, we just go down the line and find them so k.

65. If we go up to k 65 k 65 is outdoor our exhaust fan. If you look at k, 10, that's outdoor fan 1 and if you look at k68, that's outdoor fan too. So then, if we come on back down here, kay 10 and k68 are the second and third relays right back behind this panel.

Here's our relays, so the second and third are my condenser fan motor relays, so we can get on there and amp the motors to see what they're happy now on one of the motors I'm running 0.95, 0.96 and on the other one. I'm running point nine. One point: nine two: so now we just need to dig in there and figure out what we're allowed to run according to the rating plate. My outdoor fan is allowed to run 1.3, so we're well under amps on both condenser fan motors.

So our profile we have it set up for it's a 10 ton unit, 13 to 16 seer TXV for 4 or 14. A it's currently about 87 88 degrees outside I've already set that target. There's a couple things going on here: sub-point seems a little high, but that kind of happens on these units because it depends on where you have your your liquid line. Temp, but also these units tend to run a little bit higher on the sub cooling.

I'm more comfortable with like 18 to 20, this one's a tad bit high, so we're gon na watch it right now, approach temperature seems really off right now. I don't think we should be in the negative I'll look into that. It might be just a placement of my liquid line. Maybe I need to sand it better or something.

This is just the first stage, so airflow something's up with that, I got ta check that out because it's getting a false reading for the airflow. That's not quite right. Sometimes you got to check your numbers. You can't just trust these things when you see weird numbers that usually means something Funky's going on there yeah there's something funky going on hey.

I need to check my profile and make sure that it's actually profiled correctly, so we'll go back to my profile system info. There we go, it somehow got changed to a 310. It needs to be a 10 time check. Let's double check that everything else is correct.

10, 10. 13 TXV yeah. That's correct packaging. It alright! So now we should get, but, but still that's not gon na fix my liquid line temp, sometimes a little funky than that.

Because, technically it's seen my liquid line temp is below my ambient temp, which isn't correct, but this also is a microchannel condenser. So they do do some funky things, but I'm gon na look into that and make sure that I have a good nice clean surface. If we go to my capacity in my CFM should be better now still yeah, it's a little bit on the low side, but it's not bad temp splits still about right capacities, much better, still, not perfect, but okay. So it's showing that we're a little bit high on our head pressure, so something I was concerned about is because this units on an energy management system that they might satisfy at the thermostat, so I throw some jumpers on there so that way it won't turn off.

So I cleaned up the liquid line a little bit better and tried to get a better placement on it. It improved a little bit but still running a little bit high on the head pressure, so we're gon na watch it for a minute and then we'll switch over to the second stage. Sometimes, on these micro channel condensers they can look clean, but the slightest bit of lint can throw them off. So you got to be careful about that.

So you know it looks clean, but there's a possibility that it's not so, but I'm gon na check the second stage too and see how the pressures and, if they're running a little bit high on the second stage, then we'll give this guy a cleaning and see If that makes an improvement, we're on the second stage now and kind of looking the same slightly high on the head pressure, not bad. Just slightly the it's Monday - and I called the EMS company, the energy management company - and they said that this high-pressure tripped on Friday afternoon, so we're gon na go ahead and give that condenser a rinse just to make sure it's not dirty and then see what the Pressures look like after we do that this goes to show you that, just because it looks clean doesn't mean it's clean. Look at all that dirt! All that dirts coming out of this thing right now, it's not horrible, but micro channels can get dirt caught in the fine little spots and creates a problem. So, as the water is blowing through, it's it's coming out dirty on the other side, just washing that dirt off.

I want to make sure you rinse away all the dirt, as I always say, don't got ta clean the whole roof just clean off the dirt. You know good six foot, four foot perimeter around the unit that way doesn't get stuck back up on to the condenser trying to prevent this from happening again, also to look at where I'm washing it, you don't want to wash it in front of that condenser. So we'll make sure I rinse it all down all right. It's looking pretty good, I'm gon na give it another quick rinse and then we'll fire it up.

One thing I want to show you too, is: when you wash a microchannel condenser, you need to give it a pat touch down on the bottom list. If you can see this, can all the water that's coming off? The water gets stuck in there and it'll actually cause the unit to go off on high head pressure on a startup. If it's too saturated seeing it happen where you turn it on and then all of a sudden, you know, go off on high head pressure and it's because it's so saturated the microchannel tends to hold the water. So let it kind of drip dry and give it a couple paths with flat with your hand and try to knock some of that water out all right.

Even after cleaning it. My head pressures still kind of high, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to recover some gas from this unit and see what that does for us. Both stages are doing the same thing where it's acting like it's a little high on head pressure and then also I'll show you guys the Lenox charging chart. It's also indicating that we're overcharged we've got a charging chart right here and it's 95 degrees outside I've got about a hundred and ten degrees suction pressure.

It says that my liquid temperature should be about a hundred and four degrees and that's surface temperature, and it also says up here if measured liquid temperature is higher than the target remover for her add refrigerant. If measure temperature is lower than the target recover some refrigerant and we are lower because my liquid line temperature is 91 when it's same, we should have about 104, so we're going to try recovering some charge and see what that does for us. So this is about as good as I can get it. I went ahead and recovered the charge according to the unit nameplate, I'm running spot on, like 389, 115 116 suction, pretty close on measure quick, like I said, I usually notice on these linux units that we run in like the 18 issue, ange on the sub cooling, Liquid lines still a little bit cool, but I can't really explain that right now, but I'm gon na call this good we're not running high head pressure anymore.

I did recover a little bit of charge out of both stages, I'll go ahead and swap over. This is my first stage I'll swap over to my second stage and show the pressures on that one too. Here's my second stage again running pretty close to what the factory pressure should say a little off on measure quick. We are under a load load because I've got that building down to 68 degrees in the bar right now, it's gon na be why we're running probably a little low on the super heat but yeah.

I'm gon na call this a quits. Everything else seems to be good. Oh the last thing I'm going to check real quick is I'm gon na test the run capacitors for each condenser fan motor? I was thinking about that. So we'll do that real, quick and then after that, we're going to call this done.

So this says for 50 Hertz 15 micro farad run cap and for 60 Hertz, a 10 micro farad run cap, so we're gon na test our motor. Now so, let's see what we got here: 7.45 on one of them 6.79 on another one, so these capacitors are plus or minus 5 % so we're under on our capacitance for each motor. So we're going to go ahead and change both of those capacitors shopping malls. Can sure be fun, sometimes lots of ladders and stairs to climb over to get you know to where you need to go.

You want to make sure that you know, depending on your climates, you want to stay on these mats if it's cold and it gets icy because even on the mats, they can get icy and you could slip. But if you step on that, PTO roof you'll fall on your ass. I get questions as to why I carry this veto backpack and I find it very convenient because it probably holds I'd, say at least 95 96 percent of the tools that I use regularly. You know there's a few things that I don't carry in here that you know I have like, for instance, my my I connect.

I mean my um, my Peele piece, JobLink probes with my tablet. I keep it in a separate veto back over there, but this one I mean it carries my little Milwaukee drill, my wire strippers Crescent wrenches. I mean this is the stuff that I need to do most of my work up here in the front. I keep gloves and that's where I keep those gloves.

You know I keep a headlight right here. You know eighth inch drill bit some chucks different things. You know this is all the stuff fuse polar on the side. My service wrench electrical tape.

You know my universal. Whatever malko six-inch, whatever you want to call that 5/16 quarter-inch on the backside, it carries my knee pads. They fold right up in here my electrically insulated screwdrivers, my meter Demolition screwdrivers, and then I have a little wrench back down here with some open end wrenches. You know this thing carries majority of it.

Usually I don't think I have any right now, but usually I keep some s J cord in this pouch back here and then right up here in the front. I keep you know wire nuts and whatnot in here and then down in here. I've got jumpers so that way I can jump stuff out. You know I really like this veto backpack and I usually have a tape measure sitting right here too, but um yeah.

It's a little bit on the heavy side, but it saves me trips, you know, and I try to keep the minimum, and this is. This is what I use. I'm gon na be honest with you. I probably don't need to have this crescent wrench and I've been thinking about taking it out, because I don't use this small one very much and I haven't been doing a lot of PM's.

So I might take these scissors out because those are for cutting filter media's. But I mean for the most part, I keep everything in there. I've got a couple tubing cutters down here. Some zip ties, it's a really nice backpack.

So our original service call was that we had a bar AC that wasn't working properly and when I got there, I found the high-pressure safety limit on the compressor 1 and compressor 2. Unfortunately, on those Lennox units, for whatever reason, when you have the prodigy board, especially the white one, when it has that scrolling display or whatever it just does not come up on camera, so I apologize, but it is what it is right so found high pressure for Both compressors was tripped reset it and it was running, but I noticed that, as the unit ran longer and longer the head pressure just kept building and kept building, went ahead and tried to clean. The condenser really didn't make much of a difference. Even though a lot of dirt did come out, take notice of that tip that I showed about patting those condensers off, because that is a very common thing on the micro channels.

Even if it's a v-shaped condenser, and you would think that the water would fall out. It doesn't it just sits there and sits in the condenser, so also want to be careful when you're, using micro, channel safe cleaners a lot of times when you go to rinse everything off the residue will still be in there and no joke. You'll have a bubble party on the roof, because when the condenser fan motors turn on it'll start sucking all the moisture out and it'll just make bubbles and it'll be blown bubbles everywhere. It's kind of funny the first time, but then it gets kind of scary.

When you see that the bubbles just keep coming and the condenser fan motor gets saturated in bubbles, it's like a mess so just be cautious when you're using the micro channel, safe cleaners anyways. I digress on that. One went ahead and decided that the unit was probably overcharged. It's kind of strange that both stages were overcharged.

Being that I'm the person that usually works on those units - I don't know anyways. Nonetheless, I let out a little bit of refrigerant. It really didn't take much. I just took a vacuum: cylinder ID actually didn't even have to take out my recovery machine.

I just had a cylinder pulled into a vacuum, and just I ended up having to use two cylinders, though, which was kind of a bummer, because, with the 410 a the pressures are so high, so anyways I took the cylinder just shot the refrigerant in there. A little bit at a time saw the system stabilized out. It wasn't perfect, but it looked much better and then did the same thing with the second cylinder for the second stage shot a little bit into there, and you know it made a difference. The unit was working fine, but out of curiosity, I just went ahead and tested the run caps for each condenser fan motor and found that the run caps were bad.

So it's a very good possibility that it could have been a couple things. Those condenser fan motors could have been starting to you, know overheat or something and go off on overload, possibly it's hard to say because it was working. When I was there. All that we saw was that we had a high-pressure situation, so we went through and we checked everything I found that the charge was slightly overcharged and then also found that both of the run caps were going bad.

So you know it could have been either. One of those two things I probably leaned a little bit more towards the run caps because, like I said, I've been the only person to work on that unit. So you know but anyways. It is what it is.

I'm gon na have some links down in the bottom of the video, for you guys, ok with the different tools and stuff that I mentioned cuz. I know every time I post these videos. If I don't mention or don't post tool links, then I get emails and comments like crazy, so they'll be links in the show notes of the video for all the different tools that I've referenced and other than that guys. That's gon na be it.

I will see you guys on the next one hey. I just want to say thank you guys so very much for taking the time to watch this and watch all my videos. The comments that you guys leave you guys leave are awesome. I appreciate the criticism.

I appreciate the nice comments. I appreciate it all: okay, so emails whatever you want to send me. If you have any questions, my email is HVAC our videos at gmail.com and other than that. I will see you guys on the next one: okay,.