Hey thanks for watching this is another session from the second annual hvacr symposium bert, and i did a presentation on ductless or mini split cleaning, best practices, maintenance, best practices. You can find all this information from speedclean.com and just look for their ductless or mini split cleaning, guide or maintenance guide. I actually helped to write that for them and all the information or most of it from this presentation is contained there, but i hope you enjoy. This is burt, and i talking about ductless cleaning, best practices all right.

So this presentation that we're going to give is really designed to be significantly longer than what we're actually going to spend on it. But i wanted to definitely have a demonstration element to it, because that comes up a lot actually wanting to see what we do when we clean ductless systems. The first thing that i want to get out of the way right away is that the stuff that we show you is the stuff that we do, because we get a lot of people who don't believe that and who will you know dispute that it can be Done or that it can be done in a timely fashion, these are best practices. That means that if you're doing this regularly yeah there, we go if you're doing this regularly.

This is the the best way to do it. Are there cases where you're not going to go through and do all of these steps? Sure i'm not an advocate that you need to take a brand new unit, that's six months old and do all the same stuff. You're gon na do with an older and dirtier unit. I think one of the biggest things that we make a mistake on is that we take technicians and we tell them - you always have to do it this way, and then they get disenfranchised with what they're being told, because the reality in the field is, is that It's not always necessary, so it takes a discerning technician.

You're, never going to replace a discerning technician with the process, but we are talking about a process here, so you got to give yourself a decent amount of time. What would you say to to do a really good ductless single head maintenance? What would you say, the right amount of time would be if i'm using the bib kit and cleaning this whole thing out, i'm probably doing an hour hour and a half yeah, and that's that includes even pulling the blower wheel if necessary, which a lot of folks Talk about how you can do it without you know, you use this kit without pulling the blower wheel, and that makes sense in some cases, but in some cases pulling the blower wheel is just a good practice on most systems, most ductless high wall systems. If you get good with it, you can get that blower wheel out in probably 10 minutes. You know something like that.

It's usually usually not worse than that, and so it depends a lot on your market. People who are in dry air markets we'll talk about how it's unnecessary. It never happens because that's because they don't get the growth on the blower wheel, that we get in a you know: climate zone, one like we're at here or any sort of humid climate in our market. Blower wheels on these things get really dirty and it has something to do with the electrostatic charge.

I think of the of the blower wheel, because it's not made of metal, and so it doesn't discharge and it just kind of statically attracts the stuff it clings to it, and also the cups on the blower wheel are really thin. So you got to get those cleaned so anyway, we'll go into the specifics. Now i want to introduce everybody to bert, bert, testerman, otherwise known as yeah. He wants it.

He wants a round of applause. Yeah um jesse has done a lot of the actually a lot of the content in this uh presentation, which is also a guide from speedclean. A lot of that was done by him. A lot of the photos in there are of him he's done a lot of ductless cleaning.

A lot of our technicians have because we work in a market called the villages which is the largest retirement community in the u.s, and we install a ton of these. In that market, and so these are the products and the procedures that we use to do this again, having you know just to cover that you don't have to always do it the same way every time some people are going to have a little different twist on It but what we're showing you is going to be the best practices, so, let's jump into it and again, like i said some of these slides, i'm going to go through really quickly, just for the sake of time, if you don't know what ductless is you know, I don't know what to say, but because you know it's been around for a while now, but one thing to discern is when i'm talking about different designs, a cassette system is a system that recesses into the ceiling they're becoming more and more popular high wall is One of these guys right here this is one of our installs in the villages and floor. Inductive designs are also becoming more popular, so your strategy of how you clean them is going to vary significantly, depending on which one you're working on and when you're talking to a technician, especially if you're in leadership of an organization and you're talking about processes, you have To discern between these, because they're not going to be the same at all and how this process is done all right, so configurations again a lot of different configurations, this would be what we would call a multi, a multi-head or a multi-zone unit. These are becoming increasingly popular, especially in markets where you know, especially in markets where maybe it's not primarily a cooling market where humidity, isn't a big concern or where you have historic homes, so places um.

You know like the northeast are very popular, they're, very popular out. West, there is a whole bevy of concerns with this, though, which is why maintenance is so critical, because this is a really important thing. If you're ever involved in the design side, this may be great to install. It may be very efficient but think about having to clean all of these heads because they have to be cleaned.

It doesn't matter what market you're in the process may be different depending on what market you're in. But these things have to be cleaned and if you're sitting this thing over top of a location that you're not going to want to get up there with water and cleaner, then you're going to set yourself up for a lot of pain and suffering. And we see this a lot so from a design standpoint, that's always really important to consider all right. A lot of key advantages, two ductless, one of the biggest being that you don't have to have as much labor and installation you don't have to have as much materials and installation because you don't have a ductless system.

Even if you use what we you know, what we call a ducted mini, split, mini, split and ductless are kind of used interchangeably. Sometimes i find myself saying abducted ductless, which of course makes no sense whatsoever, but even when you have those types of systems generally, they have really short duct systems. So you're able to put the unit in a location that you wouldn't have been able to traditionally put an air handler and those would be what we would call pancake units or or low units whatever you want to call them compact units, so you can fit them. Maybe above a ceiling, space run a shorter duct.

A lot of them are what we call low static systems. So if you ever are installing a ducted mini split pay attention to the specifications, because a lot of them are designed for very, very low static pressure. So the duct systems have to be designed for very low back pressure and a lot of the failures that we see associated with those units are people putting them in and just running ductwork to them like you normally would and that's a that's, a serious issue. If you want to know how to size, duct work for them, we've got other presentations from from edge on a walk, especially that's going to talk about that.

There's they're lighter they're, easier to install generally, you can install a head in a condenser with a single person. They even make you know, tools that allow you to pull it away from the wall and work on it and there's different strategies you can use, but generally it reduces labor in that way and then also the inverter driven technology does help in terms of efficiency. So the numbers from the factory, often look really good caveat, is, is that sometimes as installed, they don't perform the way that the numbers look on paper depending on the market you're in and the way that you install them so so designing them properly, sizing them properly. All that is just as important, and i would say, almost more important in some cases with ductless than it is with ducted the days of when i first started installing these things, where i'd be like hey, you know, put a 24 000 btu unit in a little Sunroom because hey they turn down to this really low capacity, we've learned that that was a huge mistake and there's a lot of impacts to that, and i'm not going to go into all the reasons that is right now, but it's especially in humidity-rich environments like we Have here high moisture content environments, it causes a lot of suffering you're.

Just standing there shouldn't you be doing something like any. That's better yeah. I don't like people being higher than me. It's just it's a it's an ego.

It's an ego problem here, hey who's! This ugly guy in the picture look at there huh all right. No, no, no, don't clap for him anymore. If he asks for it, he really likes attention. I don't just him not me uh, so all of them require servicing.

All of them require cleaning a mistake that we can make when we see systems like the speed clean system that we're going to show you or the coil jet is that people will get the idea that, like oh, this is easy. It's a lot easier and, even more importantly, it's much better in terms of preventing damage. So that's the main reason that you use it and you have to know how to use it and really anyone who's going to clean ductless systems regularly needs to have a way to make sure you're going to prevent damage, because these things are mounted on people's finished Walls, so you have to know how to do it, but it's not easy, it's something that requires practice and it requires preparation and it requires a measure of disassembly now, depending on you know the strategy you're going to use. It may be just as simple as flipping up the front cover and pulling the filters out, like you did with this one, and in this case he actually took the door off too, which is super easy to do and worth doing because then you can take it Outside and clean it, i still would prefer anything, that's easy to pull off.

Take it outside clean it just get it out of there right. So you don't have to worry about it. That's not hard. What gets difficult is you've got an evaporator coil you've got a blower wheel in there that aren't necessarily as easy to clean and require some some discipline and some forethought all right.

Some reasons why maintenance is critical on ductless systems. All right, smaller coils mean that when you have soil that bridges, those smaller coils, when you have something that's getting on it, whether it's you know fungus or cottonwood, regardless of what it is, it can impact the operation more quickly and those of you who have seen Issues with ductless systems, where the blower wheels get gunked up on them. They go from working to not working like that. Like one day, it's cooling, okay and the next day.

It's not doing anything like it's moving nowhere, so that has to do with the size of the blower wheels it has to do with the design of the blower wheels. The evaporator coils are smaller. The condenser coils are smaller, which means that if you don't have a really clear strategy for maintaining ductless, if you're installing ductless, then you're going to get into trouble, meaning you're going to have unhappy customers. So you want to have a really clear strategy.

They also have very little filtration a lot of them and again i i you know, i i talk to these companies. They're, not you know, they're good companies, but they put in these little extra filters. These little goofy things that go in addition. That stuff doesn't do anything.

These things are terrible at air filtration. Let's just be honest, i don't care about the electrostatic cling charge that they put on the filters and all that that does not. That is not significant air filtration unless you're putting a nice big media filter on your on your high wall unit and i'm not sure how you're doing that you're building a really weird metal fitting off the front. Maybe unless you're doing that, you're not filtering the air.

Very well so that means that that stuff's going to get stuck on the evaporator coil and in the blower wheel, if you, if it ain't, broke, don't fix, it becomes. If you don't maintain it, it won't work with ductless and again. I understand that, if you're out west, if you come from utah, it's not going to be nearly as bad, which is why you see vrf and vrv, really popular in arid climates, where the drains backing up isn't as big of a deal and the maintenance isn't. As big of a deal in markets that you have high moisture content, stuff grows more with high moisture content.

So that's something you have to. You have to definitely consider your market before you start to select which equipment you're going to use. The rfvrv is an excellent technology, it's it works great, but it has to be designed for and maintenance has to be planned for. Another thing i didn't mention yet in terms of cleaning is pumps and pans also have to be cleaned and cleaned regularly.

You will get lots of problems with condensate if you've ever seen the ductless system, that's sitting up on the high wall and the the the drip that's been coming down the wall. I know because i had one in my master bedroom that i failed to clean the drain line in time. You know that sort of thing. So it's it's not it's! It's! Okay in your own house, where you can accept it, because it was your own failing when it's your customer's house and it's dripped on their computer or their ming vase collection that gets expensive.

Pretty quick burt agrees: yeah yeah! If you have anything that you want to, you want to add in you know you just you could just snatch it right away from me. You know just yank that away. You know like that. You're, a strong young pup, clean and well maintained systems.

It's more than just does it work? Does it cool it's about? Is it energy efficient and isn't going to last for a long time? Is it going to last for the long run, um btu performance is a really good way to assess that, though, and we're going to talk about that as we get towards the end. Is it producing the btus that it's designed to produce at the wattage that it's designed to produce it at that's the end of the day question that we want to answer with every piece of equipment, but with ductless that's actually, almost the only way to assess their Performance so you're going to want to know how to do that and then obviously, if you keep them clean, they're not going to break down as much, which is also a good thing. Also, if you keep them clean, it's less likely that a junior technician is going to go. There find out that it's not working, and rather than figuring out that it's because of cleaning put a bunch of refrigerant in it and then mess the charge all up, which also happens a lot with ductless systems.

Ty's ty's nodding his head back there because he knows he teaches this. You go to a ductless system, that's got a dirty blower wheel, dirty evaporative, coil whatever, and they show up and this thing's not working right, and they just start, of course, adding refrigerant, because freon is the answer to everything or the txv. Luckily, these don't have a txv, so they would then replace the eev with a txv or a piston, all right so key things. We need to do on a maintenance.

We need to pre-inspect first, if you're, showing up and you're immediately starting your cleaning, stop doing that. You want to make sure that you pre-inspect first go ahead. You said yeah yeah yeah. This is important because if anything is not working on the equipment, it's your fault because you started cleaning and of course it was working before you showed up so yeah check everything else out.

You get a scope of what you're about to do, but also you confirm. Is there actually a problem? Because you know what it's like when you get the call? Oh, i just need a maintenance done. All i need is a maintenance. There's no problems and you show up and nothing's working.

How long have you been waiting for this maintenance yeah? That happens. I like how you did like three different voices. There. You were like the customer and then you were yourself.

That was good, so the pre-inspection is huge, but then, after the pre-inspection communicating any prior issues and communicate all prior issues, if there's the screw covers, are missing, communicate that before they were missing after you touched it. If there's issues with the filters, if they're torn or damaged mention it first and those are the sorts of things you want to assess is anything noisy, is anything broken and is the thing working? That's what i would start with you hear anything weird, you see anything broke or missing and is the thing working and if any of those are aren't working then address it with the customer. Now, how do you pre-assess? I don't i don't want you spending a lot of time on this pre-assessment, i'm literally going to go to beer, can cold, walk outside check. Condenser discharge grab that suction line, just like we've, always been taught.

If it's running, that's, that's i'm not going to go through and do a whole assessment, especially since i haven't cleaned it yet right, and so of course it's not going to perform like it should. Until it's been cleaned, then clean then confirm its operation, non-invasively, which we're going to talk about and then communicate what you did i'm going to rush through these steps, they're pretty obvious um. You can check the discharge air, that's probably a better way than beer can cold. Um you know, i just said that so and then i forgot what slide i had in here.

I would probably just do beer can cold honestly, but anyway, so you can check your discharge. Air temperature, one nice thing with ductless systems is the discharge. Air temperature stays pretty consistent regardless when it's working and it's at high. So that's first thing you got to do: put it in cool mode, drive the temperature way down.

So it goes to full capacity you're going to get pretty consistently the same discharge, air temperature and, generally speaking, you know - 45 50 degrees in that range. So, even when it's warmer than that, you get higher delta t's on ductless and people will say what should my delta t be well on ductless, it's not even stable. It's more. Your discharge, air temperature is, is fairly stable.

What do you think joey? Do you disagree with that? Okay, wrestle: okay, tickle fight! I know i know well see the thing with joe is, and this is true of a lot of people who are sitting here in person watching this is that i know they're actually smarter than me and when, as soon as i see a facial expression, i'm like Did i say something wrong: yeah, okay! Good! Do you know why that is it's because that's how it kind of dictates it's really trying to hit a target, coil temperature, and so it ramps the compressor based on that, and so it's not completely fixed. There is some variance, but when you go to high speed, you're going to see consistently and that's why you'll see really high delta t's when you have high load now, there's a high and low limit to that. It's not like it's going to run a 40 degree delta t if it's 90 degrees inside the space. You know that's not going to happen, but you are going to see fairly consistent discharge temperatures when you're at set point when you've achieved uh when you, when the space is at temperature, i should say all right and that's on there so see i did have beer.

Can cold here field test the suction line anyway, it's just fun anyway. Are you really a technician? If, when you walk up to a condenser, you don't feel the discharge grab the suction line. That's what i want to know. I don't think you can be a real technician if you don't do that, all right protect the customer space.

This is all fake because it's showing bert actually protecting a customer space and he doesn't believe in that stuff yeah. No, he actually does yeah he's got his shoe covers bert, had a previous life as a painter, so he knows all about that. Yep lay down drop claws, prepare the area i'm here you see you see in this picture here this mirror. I would probably if it comes off easily, i would probably go ahead and ask the customer if i can pull that off the wall or ask them if they want to pull it off the wall, probably a better way, see i adjust it ask them if they Want to pull it off the wall and then if they say you can do it, then you might company policy, follow what your company says.

This is my master bedroom that this picture's taken in, so it would be fine and if he broke it, i would just take it out of his pay. That's a joke! Oh boy, there's none on the ceiling! Stop it. This isn't professional. We have very important corporate sponsors here: okay, visually inspect the full system.

Um so just make sure that you're not seeing anything, that's visually, showing an issue, the one that i prefer, i mean again, you got to do safety shut off power, confirm it's off all that i always want you. Looking for tubing, rub outs, um, there's actually in the in the slack group. There's a uh there's, actually a bet on how many times i'm gon na say rub out in the uh during this uh event uh. But that is the right name for it.

When tubing uh creates a leak, because it's rubbing out on other tubing, that is something to uh to inspect, for electrical connections and then biggest thing i suggest is look for signs of oil. So you see any signs of oil. You see anything on your flares, especially on ductless, because flares are the number one leak point you see any signs of oil whatsoever. I don't care if you put bubbles on it and don't see bubbles because you can get really small micro bubbles.

I mean you want to get it on there, so it's nice and still and then watch it. But i would suggest getting your electronic out at that point again. Make sure that you're not just picking up excess from your ports but flare leaks, are so common and if you can save a flare leak while you're there, either on the air handler or on the condenser, wherever they are a lot of times. You're not going to be able to get to them on the air handler, but wherever you see oil address it when you're there in terms of value to the customer, that's enormous anything with with wires that are chafed, see that's what a chafing that's the word.

I need to go for anything that you see. That's a that's due to the operation of the system and damage that you can prevent is a bigger value to the customer than almost anything else. You're going to do and in terms of maintenance, that's huge, because if you do that maintenance and then you walk away and three months later, there's a significant problem of any kind. That customer is not going to be happy if you could have prevented it and they don't always know, but they're not happy either way.

So, while cleaning is critical, a huge part of ductless maintenance or any system maintenance is preventing future breakdowns by using your eyes and looking broadly and catching things before they become a problem all right. Next, when you do your cleaning you're going to definitely wear ppe, the biggest thing is safety glasses. By far most of the cleaners that we suggest to use with this or really all of them, that we suggest to use with coil jet and with the ductless is going to be essentially neutral, cleaners, non-caustic, so non-acid, non-alkaline, or at least only mildly alkaline cleaners and Diluted appropriately diluted to the kind of the mild concentration um, you do not want to create damage to that evaporator coil, because in a lot of these coils that copper is super thin. I mean super thin if you've seen ductless units and we've seen plenty that start to get attacked and due to chemicals even in the air and formic area.

Corrosion will form right in the center of these coils. When i first started seeing it, i didn't believe it. I thought there was like something in the manufacturing process, but you actually strip the fins away and you'll see this little formic leak right in the center, and that can happen if you're using caustic cleaners. So, in terms of your equipment, you don't want to use caustic cleaners and in terms of your, your meaning, your cleaning equipment and the equipment itself, but gon na say pumps.

Yes, yes, condensate pumps is a big one. We we had some. We had some techs running. Some nasty stuff through condensate pumps and they would fail shortly thereafter, so yeah you only want to use very, very mild cleaners.

We got a question from the back. No, there are foaming cleaners that are still neutral or are very close to neutral. I mean again and i'm not, i don't know exactly what the ph is, but you want to definitely have something: that's not advertised as a as an alkaline. You don't want something that's going to and again it is generally the strong alkaline cleaners that are like the crazy foaming ones, the ones that look really dramatic, but you can still use cleaners.

That are, you know, mildly mildly, foaming that still work and, generally speaking, to be safe. I would suggest using cleaners that specify evaporator cleaners, that those are your safest ones, they're going to be the most neutral in terms of and going to cause the least corrosion evaporator. Anything that says it's an evaporator self rent option is also going to be mild because it's designed to actually sit on the coil. So you can use that too and again, you'll find your favorite favorite products that work best for you, um clean the air filters.

Obviously, blower wheel, evaporator, coil, condenser coil, remove debris from the condenser base and wash the coil. This is just a good practice anyway, because you've got your compressor in there. You've got everything in there and if debris is starting to build up and water's starting to get in there, you're going to begin to get corrosion in these units. Everything is really close together, so you want to prevent stuff from getting in there in the first place and then clean the drain line and the condensate pump, if applicable and cleaning the condensate pump the reservoir the screen.

All of that is one of the biggest things i see get missed um. So if you got one you got to clean it. So the question is about using something like viper, a silicon enzyme. We use it and it works good.

The thing i would be careful with, though, is that you have very low tolerance for anything: that's high, highly viscous, and so that viper spray is more viscous, meaning it's it's thicker, and so i wouldn't suggest getting that into your pump. I, like i, wouldn't blow it straight into your pump if you want to put a little in there and then blow your line out or something like that, that's fine, but the same thing is also true like you: don't want to apply that to a drain. Pin that has water in it. You don't want to just spray it right on top of the water, that's not how you use that product.

You get the drain, pan cleaned out and then fairly dry. It's not like it's got to be bone dry, but you get it cleaned out and fairly dry, and then you spray it in there, because it's just going to it's going to be less likely to cause problems because of the silicone. It is a it's. It's just thicker, you know so, and we have had a few issues with that right: yeah, yes and it's 10 o'clock, so i was just gon na.

Let you know that that's about about 20 more minutes, but i think we're covering some decent stuff here. You know. I don't need to be rushed. Okay, so run test and observe, take key measurements, we're going to go over what some of these are, but we already talked about discharge.

Air temperature is one of the best and suction pressure, and super heat at full cooling can be valuable, but it's mostly just telling you you mostly are just looking for a really low number, some cases even zero. A lot of manufacturers are going to tell you not to do it at all because they don't want you messing with the charge and that's fine, i'm not telling you not to do what manufacturers say, but if you use a probe, that's not going to have loss. You know you're comfortable with it. You know the straighter disengages properly, so it's just going to be that's the technical term puts then that's not going to be significant, and you can do that.

If you want, you know, you get some markets where customers just really want to see you hook a gauge up and if you're going to do that, use a stubby, but that isn't the most valuable measurement and then uh check your applied voltage check your amperage. Make sure that that's all all what you would expect already talked about some of this all right, so, let's we're going to go ahead and move forward to the mini split bib kit and the coil jet and bert's going to do a quick demonstration. Are you ready to do a demonstration? Okay, all right, so you want me to yes, yes, yes, i do so like um. You have the the drain right here and i'll disconnect it from a pump.

If it has it and i'll actually push up in and clean that as part of before, i actually flush out the whole drain, because there is, it seems like in this plastic, there is build up that happens in there and if you don't push something like a Small brush through there and actually clean it out it yeah yeah, so use the brush with the pan the drain, the port, all that and really you do want to kind of. If you can get in and disconnect it, that's the way to go pumps make it challenging, because not everybody installs pumps in the same place, sometimes you can get to the reservoir, but really getting to the pump can be major surgery. So that's not always going to be the same. Generally speaking the discharge line of the pump so long as it's run properly isn't going to clog because it's got that pressure.

You know. That's not the part that clogs it's everything from the reservoir or before it actually gets to the pump. That becomes the problem. So anything that's under pressure.

You know condensate clogs because it doesn't have that that pressure to it but be really really thorough with the reservoir itself, with the line that feeds the reservoir, the pan. All of that brushes all that sort of thing. So, what's that a lot of times, you can take the air handler unclip it from the bottom and lean it out and you'll have a gap about that much, and so you can pull um because you still have your copper connected. You don't want to disconnect copper to clean anything, so that's about how much room you'll have for the cleaning again remember.

He said with a condensate pump. So if you have a condensate pump, you've got to get to wherever that reservoir is so wherever the reservoir is. That's where it's going to connect, and so that's what we're talking about here, you there really shouldn't be a circumstance in which you can't get to the reservoir. If there is it's installed wrong, and you should quote the customer some sort of new solution to install the reservoir in a place, you can service, because if you don't service, the reservoir you're going to have problems again, if you're in utah you're.

In you know, death valley, california, maybe maybe it's not a problem, but in florida louisiana. Where i come from from groveland florida, we have to maintain our our uh reservoirs, so you got to get to where the reservoir is so bert's going to now demonstrate i'm going to do like play-by-play. I've always wanted to be a sports announcer, so um you're not going to be able to hear the color commentator. Okay, okay, so it's mine, it's mine, now yeah just walk away, yeah! So um.

At this point, i've left the main face cover on which is not that difficult to take off, but i just wanted to show you that you can take off the the front door here and the filters out and very quickly access. Most of this, when you're setting up your bib kit it'll take a couple. Practice runs to be quick at it, and so it comes with directions which is also great with pictures. So i already have this set up here in place, one of the things that they they did to help you not make a mess.

Is these back plates here that go behind your unit? So what you'll do is you'll stuff these up, underneath the air handler and that'll get just the random drips that aren't pouring out where the blower is so that will be necessary and then you take your bag and you tuck it in behind that, and that will Keep your wall clean, so i just wanted to say that that's a really commonly mistaken and incorrectly done part i mean again, you know, read the fabulous manual that makes it a lot easier and they have really great instructions, and also this guide is available. I'm quite certain it's still available on the speedclean.com website, which gives you know step-by-step instructions. This is all based on that guide, which you can download the free, pdf um, so bert is going to use the the coil jet here. Do you want to put it up on the table, so everybody can see it there? I don't know if they'll actually be able to coil jet is probably you know easily the best way of doing this to get good flow.

That's actually going to be effective at cleaning, some people will use, pump sprayers and you can use a pump sprayer. You just don't get you don't get the flow of water again. This isn't going to produce pressure. Washer type of pressure.

That's going to potentially damage the coil, but it's going to produce enough flow that you can actually get a really good, really good cleaning on it. It makes that little like kind of like sound and that's just when it pressurizes when people first use it. They expect it to be running all the time, but it's not going to it's only going to start running as pressure is escaping purge like a kitten. So you can see even even right now his handle, because this is this thing's been in service for quite some time.

His handle is even dripping just a little bit, but because he has a mini split, bib kit. It's not going to hurt anything if you've ever taken a pump sprayer into somebody's house on their carpet. What are the odds that that thing doesn't drip at least a few drips? I mean it's just not going to happen and it creates complete chaos. So when you're working in an environment where you've got to clean a ductless system, a lot of people say: well, i just pull it apart.

Well, that's great, but you're not pulling the evaporator coil out right. So how are you going to clean it? Well, you can use a brush. Well, i mean it's not going to get it really clean. Now again, it isn't to say that this has to happen every single time, but when it needs it, it needs it.

I remember, i remember the first time i had to clean one of these was in a data center. It was a small data center and i got to it and the blower was completely gummed up. I mean just really really bad and i didn't know how to clean them. I couldn't the things over like racks, you know of computers and stuff, and - and i so i literally took high pressure, nitrogen and a shop vac, and i started blowing the blower wheel with high pressure nitrogen.

Well, you can imagine that strap vac caught. All of that not you know like i'm panicking, because i just blew snot all over these people's computer room and i'm like i got my rag wiping it up. So when you have that level of suffering, you see where this type of solution works great and you can really get everything very, very clean in this case he's leaving the blower wheel on we actually, like i mentioned in a lot of cases, you can easily pull It apart and disassemble it um. We have videos on specifically how to do that.

It does depend a little bit on your brand. So that's why it's not super helpful to go over it step by step, but, generally speaking, you just take the entire cover plate off. You release the evaporator coil just slightly. That gives you enough room to slide the blower wheel out, and so it's a little bit of an art.

But once you do it a couple times i mean even even i can do it and that's saying quite a bit because i'm not very good with tools. Let's be real honest, a microphone, not tools. Question is rule of thumb. No, i i do not like rules of thumb, because you have to clean things when they get dirty.

If it gets dirty every six months, then you need to clean it every six months in our market. They get dirty a lot if it gets dirty. Every three years - and you can get away with that - okay, i'm not telling you that you've got to take this whole rig in there every single time. Just because you saw it in a podcast, you don't see things in the podcast anyway, you do it because it needs it and when it needs it, then you do it.

If you doesn't need it and the coil is not dirty and the blower wheel's not dirty. Well, then, you can go in and just use an evaporator cleaner. You know, use it with a use it with a pump sprayer and go in and just kind of sanitize or use it or use an actual sanitizing product. That's specifically designed for it of which there are several um, but you don't.

You don't want to do this unless you need to, because you are still you know this. It's this isn't like you're still prepping right, but when you need to do it, this is really the only way to do it. You don't really have a lot of other great options to do it. Well, everything else is kind of a workaround.

Exactly you can pull out the blower wheel, you can pull stuff out and take it and clean it, but a lot of times these mini splits will uh sometimes develop a smell from things that have grown on the coil and that's where we get a lot of Calls or they'll we'll get calls to where the blower's been spitting, something out, and you can take that blower and clean it. But it's if it's been spitting. It's also been spitting the whole inside of that coil, and so this is really the only way to have something like this, where you can take water and pressure and push into that coil and give it a really thorough cleaning and that's helped huge with the smell Complaints - and you know you try to put a little cleaner on and it's not going to cut it. So i'm basically just going to do two other things in this presentation.

Some high points here, i'm going to go over some of the the tools that you should have available to you and it's not to say that you have to have these on your truck 24 hours a day. That may not be realistic, but when you're going to go, do a ductless cleaning. These are things that you should make sure that you've got so coil jet would definitely suggest having at least a few of these in your organization. If you, you know, if you don't have one on every truck, i've got one on my truck.

Bert has one on his um. If you're not doing them all the time, then at least have a couple in your company a wet dry vac important to have always anyway, everybody should have a good functioning, clean, wet, dry, vac, clean it out in between don't leave a big mess because you're going To have to bring it in the house, i suggest having the wet dry vac sitting right next to you, and some people say well why? Why do you need it? Well, you need it because you don't know what kind of what could happen and having a wet dry vac there has you prepared, have some safe cleaners available to you? Don't just use the same cleaner for everything if you're doing that you're using the same cleaner for every application, you're doing it wrong. You need to have cleaners that are designed for tough applications. You know more heavily alkaline.

That's for cleaning really dirty condensers! That sort of thing and then cleaners for evaporative coils and conditions that are also going to be in the air, the customer breathes. You don't want to use anything, that's going to have any strong odors when the customer could potentially breathe it keep some contact cleaner on the truck when you're working on ductless a lot of stuff can get in around the boards and everything, and so having some contact. Cleaner to get that all cleaned off without creating damage is really big: dry steam and surface cleaner. This is a product that speedclean makes and this product or there's a lot of these sorts of products out there.

This product is really great. If you are working in cases where the customer has zero tolerance for chemicals, if you have a customer who doesn't want any chemicals at all and they are out there there's actually quite a bit of them, steam is the way to go now. Steam is not going to clean the same way that chemicals are it's not going to do like this big foaming action and all that, so it's going to take a little longer, but it's really great at sanitizing and in fact, if you have somebody where they're having You're getting odors from any unit, this isn't just ductless systems if you're working in restaurants, whatever in fact in restaurants. This is the best application for for a steam cleaner, where you have a lot of grease steam.

Cleaners, come in really really handy for that and it's a nice thing to know how to use and maybe have one or two in an organization you go into a case. Customer has chemical sensitivities, it's great you're, going to be working with something. That's got an odor. You get dirty sock syndrome, whatever like that steam works great for that as well.

A lot of studies have been done on steam for our specific industry by the epa, and it's it's an effective product. You just have to get right on it all right. So we've talked a little bit about the step-by-step process, we're going to go over some more of the testing specifics. Now you need to have that discharge outlet, air temperature between 40 and 50 degrees is going to be typical field test on the suction line is generally acceptable.

You want to ensure that your suction line temperature drops below 55 degrees fahrenheit if it's staying above 55 degrees. There's basically, no circumstance other than maybe the most extreme that you would ever see in our industry, where you should have a suction line on a ductless system. That's floating above 55.. Do your visual inspection, all the stuff we talked about.

That is a picture of a blower wheel that needed a cleaning. Obviously, safety practices make sure that everything is completely off. I wanted to talk quickly about the condenser when washing a ductless condenser, the condenser needle. You want to grab that real quick, so they can see that the condenser needle is a really great product to have.

You can also use coil shot, which is another product that uses tablets and makes it easy to clean condensers. And it's a nice maintenance cleaning you're not going to generally use coil shop for like a really extreme deep cleaning. But in terms of not having to carry chemical and stuff, it's a nice product for that and you attend you attach this wand to it and that helps you get in. So you can actually wash that condenser nicely and easily generally on ductless systems, you're going to pull the top.

That gives you access to that condenser coil, but there's a lot of stuff - that's tight in there, so it can help with that you're staying in my way. I can't read my sign whenever you are using cleaners always important to allow it to dwell so don't just put cleaner on and again properly mixed chemicals properly mixed, proper chemical, allow it to work for five minutes, at least to give it five minutes to do its Thing before you rinse it and then rinse it really well, if you got to do it again, do it again, but give it time for the chemical to work before you rush right into rinsing. We talked about using this another nice thing to use. They have this cling tape, product that you can.

It comes in the the bucket kit. I think it still comes in the bucket kit either way you can get it and that's really nice for covering your electrical components. When you're going to do this cleaning before you do the cleaning make sure that you cover that really well tersh. It depends.

The question was: are we okay to still use regular, condenser coil cleaner? I would only ever use the the most caustic cleaner. You must use, which means that generally we're using cleaners that are too caustic, so i would differentiate a cleaning where the thing is so stinking dirty that it's not working right to a maintenance, cleaning, maintenance, cleanings and a lot of cases you're not even going to use A cleaner in a lot of cases, water is fine. Generally speaking for a condenser, you generally use water, especially in the asian micro channel, where you really want to follow the manufacturer's instructions, and generally manufacturers are telling you never use cleaner at all. Some of them will give exceptions for very mild cleaners, but aluminum is not tolerant to highly alkaline cleaners.

It just doesn't do well, and so you will damage them very quickly and, as you know, micro channel, the walls are super super thin on that. So it really depends on the application, but i would suggest for maintenances what we're talking about here: go to water or a very, very mild, cleaner or a typical, cleaner, but highly diluted yeah. So that and that's a good. So tersh is a business owner, and so he thinks like a business owner, which is a really good way to think about this.

It's not just a matter of what i as a technician, do how do i communicate it to my people, and this is actually because i've thought a lot about this and i don't and i haven't actually done it so do what i say not what i do Here, um, a really good practice would be to give people their standard cleaning solution so using something like the the very basic low. Very you know kind of simple cleaner that you would use in the coil shot, giving that to everybody and saying this is what you use for: condenser, coils, here's, the product you lose for evaporators and if you need something more call your supervisor, something like that. Because then they're not going to do any harm, i would almost prefer water and - and i so you could say water or this basic cleaner, but the challenge there becomes. You know with maintenance - and this is a this - is a side product customers kind of expect cleaner.

Sometimes you know and that - and i don't like to even say that, because it's it's kind of a compromise, but they kind of do. And so, if you are going to use cleaner use like the most mild thing that you possibly can as a standard practice. So, whatever product you use, make sure that it's mild as a standard, that's what i would suggest all right, get everything in place properly. Putting the deflector plates in the right place putting the adhesive wrap on it is really big, clean everything really well.

You can use something like this, this bbj product afterwards, once you do a really good cleaning on it to do that kind of like antimicrobial treatment at the end, but make sure that you're not mixing chemicals, that weren't designed to be mixed. That's where it's better to use a family of products that are designed to work together. It's just a good general practice and if you don't know you should ask the manufacturer get them to get them to weigh in maybe get them to send you an email on it. You know that might be nice to have that in writing.

I don't know anyway, the manufacturers are glaring at me now they all want more phone calls clean the drain really really well, if you do nothing else well, in your entire career and the only thing you ever do and it's only one thing clean drains and drain Pans and condensate pumps, the whole dang drain system, the whole condensate assembly clean it well and, however, well you're cleaning it right now start doing it better and your life will be better and everybody will love you so so focus on drains drainage drains drains drains matter. You know whatever make sure that you take care of drains respect the full system, i'm getting to a point here then do once you get to the end. Do your run test and your run test. This is one of the more challenging parts.

Is that if you've just washed your evaporator coil with this kit, you need to run that thing before you take the bib off, and so that needs to be part of your process before you go reassembling all this. Obviously you got to get the blower wheel back in, but if you run this before, if you run it after, you pull the bib off you're going to make a mess all over the place so like this is another one of these quick tips that you know. I'm just trying to save you some heartache, because i've done it in my own house and blown stuff all over my master bedroom and then my wife, maybe sleep on the couch for three weeks, but that's normal anyway. So you want to make sure to do that.

You also want to make sure to allow it to run long enough for everything to stabilize and the most critical part. There is the condenser coil. If the condenser coil's still wet, you can't really test the equipment appropriately. So you need to give yourself in your maintenance.

10 minutes for run time, and that's when you can do your cleanup, you can start doing your paperwork. You can start doing all that, but you got to give it a little time for run time once you get done with that. It's the same things we already talked about suction line temperature at the condenser. If you want to do super heat, you can do super heat.

Just recognize it's going to be close to zero. Five to zero is going to be very typical on a ductless system. That's running at high stage. This is again i'm talking like every manufacturer's the same and they're not, but, generally speaking, that's what you're going to see as a standard as a standard procedure, i say measured the applied voltage because that's the sort of thing you're supposed to do supposed to say in Terms of the things that are really important - it's not nearly as critical as checking your discharge outlet, air temperature, but i want to get to this this slide, and it's in the guide explains to you how to do the under load test, the actual delivered capacity running Things actually operating in normal conditions test to see if it's producing proper btus.

This tells you the calculation delta h times cfm times 4.5 equals operating, vtv and transfer. But here's the real answer just use psychrometers and measure quick, look at the table from the manufacturer on what airflow it's producing at what speed so you're going to want to actually drive it directly into like high speed. Look at the chart as long as everything's clean and i've tested a lot of units. It's pretty much going to produce the cfm.

That's on the chart. This chart tells you it's going to produce 400 cfm at high speed and everything's clean. That's what it's going to produce. You can pretty much trust that there's no i've used attack to test it.

I'm mitsubishi and carrier units. I've used uh. You know a vein anemometer a lot of different things and they all come in very, very close. So the point being that when you're using measure quick and you profile it - and you say it's a 12 000 or 15 000 btu ductless system and then you've looked at that chart from the manufacturer - and it says 400 cfm at high speed.

You can plug that into the equation, as your airflow then use your two psychrometers, and it's going to tell you what btus it's producing now, it's not always going to be the same depending on load conditions, but it's going to be pretty close. You look at the chart, it's going to tell you what the capacity is keep in mind. The capacity is not always just because it says it's a you know, it has an 18 and a model number doesn't mean it's going to always produce a ton and a half they just because you know that's not how it works. That's your nominal capacity.

You've got to look back at what the manufacturer actually produces at rate rated conditions to know what to expect. But if you want to give the customer that peace of mind, if, as part of your procedure, you want to know on a ductless maintenance that you are. It's working, that's how you do it. I know that most people aren't going to do that.

So, if you're not going to do that check suction line temperature and check your discharge, air temperature, that's that's kind of the you know. That's that's the slackers way, but if you want to do it right, take a cyclometer put it on top of the unit at the intake. Take a cyclometer put it at the outlet. Don't stick it in the fan.

We've seen that happen a lot of times it yeah. It makes a big mess and ruins a lot of stuff. So don't do that. Just put it one one and one sometimes getting it to stay.

There is kind of tricky, so you got to kind of come up with a little rig to keep it there. But once you look at the chart, you know the flow. That's all you need two two sensors airflow measurement from the manufacturer. It'll tell you what btus you're producing as long as your sensors are working right.

So that's it! That's how that's how you do it in terms of cleaning top tips are. Have the right tools be prepared? Don't damage customer stuff lay down drop claws?.