This is so weird because none of this equipment is running and it's four on the clock or four o'clock in the afternoon on a wednesday, the mall's closed, obviously because of the virus, but it's nuts, it's very eerily quiet up here to give some context to this. This video is actually archived and i pulled it out. This was shot back in march of 2020, so this was right at the beginning of the lockdowns. Hence why i just showed that clip from the shopping mall being completely shut down, which was very eerie.

I still remember the sound like i i could imagine um. Well, no, it's not quite the same, but i've heard supermarket rat guys talk about walking into a motor room or an equipment room. That's completely silent, which is a scary sound. This one is just air conditioning equipment, but it's still a trip to walk up onto a big shopping.

Mall, that's normally slammed you know i'm busy and hear nothing but the freeway traffic. That's you know, quarter mile away, it's kind of a trip so um. If you guys haven't already i'd, encourage you guys to go check out my website, hvacr videos.com uh, we have merchandise available, it's a great way to help support the channel. We have hats beanies.

I know as we're coming into the fall right now. We got these beanies right here. We have cuffed and non-cuffed. It's just a great way to help support the channel and you get a little bit of a something in return.

You know shirt hat beanie sweatshirt, whatever you may be, let's go ahead and get on with the video. This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition all right. Today's call is in the middle of that crazy virus that we got going on and it's a restaurant obviously they're not even barely serving any food, and they called me and said: evaporative fan motors were not working and they told me we need you here. 9-1-1 um see all that stuff over there.

They said we need you here 9-1-1 and then we asked them. Did you make sure the switches were turned on and they said yeah and then they called us back and they tried to cancel the call and uh. I started questioning them. They said that they turned the switch a couple times and then the fans started running and they chipped away a bunch of ice and they got it to work.

But i talked him into letting me come out just because i didn't want this to turn out into a middle of the night service. Call it's a in the middle of the day. It's like wednesday, so you can clearly see that they've got ice on top of all their boxes. I don't know where that came from, but you can also clearly see that we've got ice, build up on the ceiling on the thermostat.

I mean the line set. There's ice everywhere. What i did was, i ran up on the roof. Real quick and i threw the unit into a defrost got it defrosting.

I'm gon na check that all the heaters are working, it's not frozen up per se. I mean it's just a little frosty. Nothing bad, but i'm gon na go through it all and just test the heaters. So i've got it in defrost, i'm going to check to make sure all the heaters are drawing current um and then we're going to evaluate why this ice is all over the walls.

I have a feeling door is not shedding or something they've also got this thing packed to the gills with food. The temperature inside this freezer right now is about 15 degrees. Positive 15 degrees should be probably about negative 10 because they store ice cream in here. So it definitely doesn't look like it sized up that bad, but i'll pull.

This fan guard off, there's a giant chunk of ice back in there. So that's probably what was going on. Let's uh, we got two heaters in here, one down in the drain pan and then one going into the middle of the coil so we'll test the upper one first drawn 2.98 amps and we'll test the lower one. It's in the drain, pan drawn 3.3 amps.

So the heaters are working, we're good there. You can see this big old chunk of ice. We're gon na have to remove that so i'll get this pulled open and we'll get a look in there. This right here using your senses and paying attention that is all lint: it's not wet.

It's not oil. It's lint on a walk-in freezer on the other side of that door is a walk-in cooler. This means that they're leaving the door open. Also, if we go over here down in this drain, pan is full of lint too, and that's the side closest to the door.

They are leaving doors open for sure and yeah we've got big old chunks of ice, that's huge! So get it all cleared out. All right, so these are some dead giveaways here, there's frost all around the door frame. Look it in here there's ice around the door frame. This gasket is mangled.

If you look on top of the boxes, look it they're covered in frost. The ceiling is covered in frost the exterior of the boxes that goes right next to the door. I can hear that this door is actually not shut. I can feel warm air coming right in through the door, so see the door, isn't shutting all the way and uh there's just ice everywhere, these big old chunkers.

So this is clearly a door issue. Let's watch that door shut and look at like see how it's rubbing on the hinge. That's not that's messing with it too. The shelf someone moved something, but this door clearly isn't shut all the way and it's actually bouncing open because of the bad gasket see how it pops open.

They probably need to practice, locking the door. I don't even know if the door lock works, nope doesn't even work, but yeah they got to get that door fixed. So i'm just going to be back here next week for the same stupid call. This is so weird because none of this equipment is running and it's four on the clock or four o'clock in the afternoon on a wednesday, the mall's closed, obviously because of the virus, but it's nuts, it's very eerily quiet up here, all right.

Here's my condensing unit! What i did was i let it does the defrost heaters just melt, all the frost, because it really wasn't that much and but i had put it into a long defrost when i got here too, the time was, let's just say it was correct on the clock. It was an hour off, but we just had time change so um. It was an hour slow, basically, and we were supposed to spring forward. So when i got here it was 4 p.m and it said 3 p.m, so anyways.

But what i did was i put the clock into an hour, long defrost, all right and i started a stopwatch on my phone. What that did was that allowed me to go downstairs test the defrost heaters and then because i started the stopwatch it allowed me to test the defrost termination switch on here. It's the one that goes to the x terminal down at the end, so the defrost clock didn't go through the full hour, long defrost it stopped at 33 minutes. So that means the defrost termination is working correctly too um.

My sight, glass, i'll put you guys in here. I don't know if it's gon na be noisy, it's been running for about six minutes sight. Glass cleared up, so that's good. I will go ahead and put my uh field piece probes on there just to make sure everything looks good, but i have a feeling everything's going to be fine.

One suggestion i'm going to make to the customers there's a lot of bad insulation all the way down here and then also going all the way down to the box inside the box. So i doubt they're going gon na do anything right now because we're on a limited spin budget, basically because of the virus, everybody's being afraid and careful. So they just want. You know, get it up and running kind of stuff.

But of course, big picture. We'll look at everything and let them know, but i'm gon na, go and put my probes on there and watch this thing run for a little bit and watch it come down and temp all right, i'm not doing a full analysis or anything. I've just got my pressure probes on there, and something i want to show is that this is the perfect example to point out. My dislike for fan.

Cycling controls, so this one uses a fan cycle control as a pressure or as a means of maintaining head pressure. Inevitably, to maintain the correct pressure, differential or pressure drop across the expansion job you've got to have a certain pressure drop for it to work correctly. That's the whole point of it. Okay! Now i know that there's more uh, you know newer valves can handle um.

You know lower liquid pressure and that kind of stuff, but in general that's the whole point of head pressure control. But what i want to point out here is that, when we're running the fan cycle control, it's set to cut out at 200 cut in at about 250.. What i start to notice is that the system gets very violent in that eventually, the sight glass will clear when the fan cycle control has shut off the condenser fan motor like it has okay, but once you turn the system on it takes a few minutes for The sight glass to clear up it actually takes a little while for the cycles to clear up. So let's give it a second and then all of a sudden.

The side glass will start flashing and the reason why i always say i don't care for fan cycle controls because they're very violent on the system, especially when you have a single condenser fan motor like we do in this situation. I much prefer a head pressure control valve for low ambient control. Basically, so a headmaster head pressure, control valve that floods, the condenser and when it's not flooding the condenser, it backs the extra refrigerant up in the receiver. There we go now as i let it run longer and longer with the condenser fan motor or the fan cycle, control bypass, that sight glass will clear up because i've been watching it, but it's just the on off on off that just is very violent.

Inside the system, as far as the refrigerant flow goes, but obviously it's trying to maintain a set head pressure to make it work more efficiently. Essentially - and it's pretty much clear it's just about to clear up, but this whole process of bypassing it then taking it out. Then turning it on then watching it go violent, then watching it go clear, has taken about four minutes and it's just gon na consistently do that over and over and over again - and you know essentially like it's still kind of going back and forth and we'll watch It but i'm telling you it clears up after you let it run for a bit the system's, still kind of under somewhat of a heavy load too. Right now, i wouldn't say heavy load, it's about 15 degrees in the box and we're looking for negative tent.

But i'm just not a fan of the fan cycle controls, they will work and i mean it's fine, but it's just one of those things. I'd rather have a head pressure control valve for sure all right box is at five degrees and let's see what the set point is negative 12., that's probably because it's uh off a little bit and they got to get this ice out of here too. This ice is not good, but yeah we're looking good everything's cool, it's coming down and temping here. My thermometer is calibrated three degrees and there says six degrees, so that's pretty close, so yeah we're good to go.

We're gon na tell him to keep an eye on it. Everything else seems fine at the moment, all right um. So again, this is one of those when the customer calls me and then they try to cancel the call. I always get nervous because this was you know, middle of the day and man i don't want to have to go out late in the evening.

I hate these ones when they're, like my walking freezer, started working and it's like well, how warm did it get? You know that stuff makes me panic, because and and that same effect like customers call me and they say: hey. Is there anything i can troubleshoot man for me. Maybe i'm a a cynic or whatever but um it always seems like. If i help them to troubleshoot it they're like okay, let me give it some time after they flip the breaker or whatever, and then they end up calling me back a couple hours later, which i'm just prolonging the inevitable.

Essentially right. So there's only a few things. I'm going to walk the customer through and i try to get them to. Let me come out because i just don't want to have to sit there going.

Okay, i know i'm gon na get called back. I know i'm gon na get called back and then three hours later in the middle of dinner or something they're like oh yeah, we need you now you know and it's like, so i try not to help them troubleshoot too much. I mean there's a few things. I'll, just you know quickly say: did you check the breakers yeah they're, all on okay cool? That's it.

You know or yeah one of them's tripped. Okay, i'm not going to tell them to reset it, i'm just going to say: okay, yeah, i'm on my way. You know so in this situation they tried to cancel and i was like guys. I really really think you should have me come out, there's definitely something going on and then they did uh.

You know and i was able to go through it. Luckily, you know the system wasn't completely down. My thought was, maybe because they were complaining about the fans not working, maybe that chunk of ice had fallen in front of the fan, blade or something and stopped one of the fan motors. It's hard to say, because i wasn't there, but we clearly found that there was ice buildup.

It wasn't keeping the box up and temp too much, but it was definitely keeping the door open and you can tell by the signs that i saw the lint and different things inside there that this had been happening for a while and it was caused by the Door being left open now, let me clarify something if there is lint and grease buildup in the walk-in freezer. In this situation, you had to walk through the walk-in cooler to the walk-in freezer. That means that they're leaving the walking cooler door open and the walk-in freezer door that amount of lint doesn't build up just from the opening and closing every once in a while. That means that someone has blatantly left the door open for a long period of time.

Multiple times for all that stuff to come through and make its way into the walk-in freezer, so there's definitely issues going on here. Okay, we have since corrected the door and the gasket closing and all that stuff, because again this was over a year ago. You know so everything has been good. In fact, i think they actually had a compressor failure that i did not change.

One of my other techs went out there because that walk-in freezer because it's been a year and a half we're in what august of 2021. So it's been a year and some change. I actually had a tech go out maybe six months ago, or something because that compressor failed on that thing on a weekend and you had to change the compressor, but i wasn't there. So i didn't get any video footage of it, but yeah this has since been repaired.

Everything is good, but it's just you know, stepping back and looking at everything as you're defrosting it, even though this wasn't wasn't that bad stepping back and looking at that lint. That's a dead giveaway of them, leaving a door open, so we can coach. We can talk to the customer, hey look! This is what's happening, it's costing you this much money. You know i can call higher-ups in the corporate chain and say: look.

We've got obvious signs that the doors are being left open. They need some coaching. They need some work now. It's interesting because this you know in hindsight this was all the way back in march of 2020, now we're looking at august of 2021 right.

We have seen the repercussions of this intensify even more because you have employees that just don't care about going to work. They blatantly don't give a crap because they know you know they're not going to get fired because the restaurants don't have enough employees. So this kind of stuff is happening more and more. You know this again was just the start of it: customers cutting down on preventative maintenance and stuff like that um it's definitely been a trip.

You know and uh we're really cleaning up the messes. Now that everything's open back up um, but it is what it is right hey. I really really appreciate you guys making it to the end. As usual, you guys are amazing.

It's so humbling to see all the support from you guys if you haven't already like. I said in the beginning of the video please consider checking out my website hvacrvideos.com um, a great way to support the channel hats, beanies, shirts, hooded sweatshirts, as we're coming into the fall. The hoodies and the beanies are great um. These hats are even great too.

I love these hats. These are our number one seller uh, because they're, you know super comfortable, they're, a flex, fit style, hat, there's other ways you guys can support the channel too. The easiest way to support the channel is simply just watch the videos from beginning to end without skipping through anything. That's the simplest way right, but then there is the website hvacrvideos.com, you can support me via patreon uh.

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That is it remember that i try to go, live on youtube monday, evenings 5 p.m, pacific uh, obviously work permitting. This last year has been interesting. I've missed more live streams ever in the last i'd, say eight six to eight months because we just got so slammed this last summer. Um.

I also go live on the hvac overtime youtube channel, with my buddies on friday evenings about 605 pm pacific there's a link in the show notes of this video for the overtime channel and for everything else and again, you guys are amazing. Leave me some feedback down in the comments. Let me know what you think. I really really appreciate you uh be kind to one another and we will catch you on the next one.

Okay.