This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. Today we have a call from the customer and this this happens, this one's a little confusing, but they said they have air conditioners, not working. Then, when i get here, the manager on duty says now. I think they just didn't know how to use the thermostats.

He thinks the air conditioners are working fine, so he shows me the thermostats and every one of the thermostats is set incorrectly and they took it out of the schedule mode, so they're all set to cool. Only and they don't shut them off at nighttime, so they've been running 24, 7. Okay, but that's a whole nother issue. I instructed them.

They need to stay in the schedule mode because then they automatically turn on and off. But so then i have to figure something out because he says yeah everything's working fine, but i come up onto the roof just looking to see because i'm not going to ignore the service call okay. So the first thing i do is i just go to every unit. Okay, when i go to every unit, i'm just quickly checking the belts to see if they're working properly and then because these units have prodigy controllers, i'm going to go into the prodigy control, i'm looking for an active alarm on any of them and i see no Active alarms, so then, what we're going to do is we're going to go into data and we're going to go to history and we're going to look at the alarms and we're going to see what kind of history we have.

So, on june 24th the controller lost power: that's a power down: okay um! Then we have uh on june 24th. Today alarming value compressor one low pressure. So that's not good! So then, let's keep going. It cleared it low pressure again.

So this guy has low pressure and low pressure on two. Oh that's interesting. So we've seen low pressure on compressor one and two. So when i got up here there was no active alarms, but the history has a low pressure code.

So we're going to investigate that. To see if there's anything going on with that, the first thing i checked was: if the belt was tight and it is now i did that on every ac and i didn't find any codes. But what's interesting is we came over here to this kitchen ac right here, all right again, it's very vague what they called me on, so i'm just kind of doing a quick look. I come over here and this thing was pouring water out the drain, actually not out the drain out the side of the unit.

It was all right here, so i was able to clear the drain without even having to take the unit or bring a hose up here and just poured the trap out and the chunks came out. But when i look in here, you can still see water all through here, but look at how it's frosting up on the first stage. Compressor, that's not good! That's not good at all! So that's an issue, and you know something else. This is very interesting.

This unit does not have txvs, it must have just a piston huh. That's interesting and it's a micro channel. That's weird! I don't know if i've ever noticed that that there's no txv huh that's really weird anyways um, so we got ta look into this kitchen ac too, because something's going on there, but first and foremost we're gon na finish up on this ac right here. We're gon na go ahead and probe up on first and second stage and uh see if we actually do have low pressures all right.

We probed up on this guy high and low on first and second stage, and this is really interesting so check this out. We have that right. There, 20 psi 24 psi low pressure on first and second stage. High pressure is 20 psi 24 psi.

So this thing is out of gas on both first and second stage and we're connected good. So we've got a big leak somewhere. We've got to look for it now. I don't know if 24 psi is enough or not we'll try to use that to do a quick leak search and see if anything comes up.

We're currently disassembling this unit uh, looking for a leak, we're probably gon na - have to pressurize with nitrogen, because nothing's coming up we're trying to get to the condenser, but i couldn't help but notice this anybody see anything wrong here. That is a smoke detector. This ac was installed by another company, not me about a year and a half ago really haven't had any problems here, but uh they never took out the plugs for the smoke detectors so that smoke detector is not doing a single thing, so there was already 410 Just some vapor in there, so we just pressurized with nitrogen to 183 psi on the first stage and 196 psi on the second stage, so we're gon na. Let it sit for a few minutes and then start doing a leak check to see now, because both of them are low.

I'm i'm trying to think okay. How could this leak have been between the two? So maybe like the lines from the first and the second stage are rubbing together, like just thinking about stuff like that, but then we're gon na check the condenser. We gave ourselves access to the condenser right here, so we can leak check that too. So we're using the field piece, dr 82, and we're picking it up right up here every once in a while, and i actually see oil right there on that pressure control, there's oil all over it.

So we're like right in there that's one leak, but that doesn't account for the other stage, so we got to figure that out all right. So this is interesting. What are the odds that both what look to be fan cycle controls are leaking refrigerant? They both have oil on them. That's odd, so we're gon na get some bubbles on there and figure out where the actual leak is at.

When we open this ac up. We've seen like what looked to be oil right here and we didn't understand because there was nothing here, but it's been dripping, so we have bubbles big blue on there, and you can clearly see it's leaking from the flare connection on that one. And this one we're still trying to pinpoint this one where it's leaking from, so this one is leaking, there's a bubble right there, so it's leaking right on there, but i can't help but think it might be leaking down here on the pressure control too right here, Because we're getting some bubbles coming out of here, too yeah, that's interesting, all right! This is kind of nuts look at this, i'm not even trying this thing isn't even tightened on all right. Where's the inspected buy sticker who inspected this unit, come on.

I'm gon na find his name and we're gon na call him out right now, where's he at usually it says who inspected the unit on linux. Come on i'm trying to find your name. I don't see it so i don't know all right. I don't see the inspected by name.

I was trying to throw someone under the bus, but all right uh looks like both of those pressure. Controls literally just need to be tightened. Okay, i tightened them down. We cleaned them up, we're not picking up any more traces of a leak in here.

Nothing and we'll come over to this one, nothing! All's looking good! So what we're gon na do, because this we had like 20 psi of 410 and we dump nitro on top. This thing never ran out of gas, so there's no need to have to change the dryer. So all that we're gon na do is uh pull a good vacuum on both and then weigh in the factory charge. Okay, um we're pulling both compressors.

At the same time, it's a little unorthodox, but it works. I have two micron gauges got one right here and then one on the other side. Now i have the gas ballast open because the system was in a little bit of positive pressure, um ever so slightly, but i think it's probably already pulling down, looks like this. Guy's battery's going dead, so i'm gon na have to change it.

In fact, we're gon na go ahead and pull this off now before it gets too crazy change the battery and then we'll put it on um. The other thing that sucked too was uh. I had to use a cheater cord uh, a widowmaker cord, i'm not a fan of these, but essentially i couldn't find power anywhere up here, so we're tying into one hot leg of the three-phase power and then the the common or the neutrals going to ground, and Then ground it works, you just got to be careful um and then i unplugged the compressor so there's no potential of them. Turning on and then also unplug the thermostat wire.

So there's no potential of the fan coming on. So all right. We're waiting for the other unit to vacuum down, so we came over to the kitchen ac. I will say that there's some notes saying that we've had to add gas to this unit before, but i'm still evaluating it like i've, never seen it.

Okay um! This is a it's a 12 and a half ton unit, um. So first stage look at my uh. This also is a fixed, orifice metering device. It's got like a piston in it.

Okay, so we've got really high superheat, not good uh, suction, pressure's low. Look at that evaporator temperature, 25 degrees. That's not good! Condensing temps! Pretty good sub cooling is interesting. That's not horrible! Um! The approach is really low for the first stage.

The temperature split is horrible, 12 and a half degrees between supply and return. So, let's jump over to the second stage. Second stage is looking kinda, okay, not great, but it's much better. Our target superheat right now, because we have a fixed orifice, is 13 degrees, so we're looking pretty good for superheat sub coins decent.

What i need to do, i have a feeling it's going to be low in refrigerant, but i want to make sure we don't have a restriction first, so we're going to do a temperature drop across the dryer, so we're going to go back to the first stage. Okay, first stage, liquid line temperature on one side of the dryer is 83 degrees. We're going to check the other side. The other side of the dryer is 82.2.

So no there's not a temperature drop across the dryer, so i don't think the dryer is restricted. We're going to try adding a little bit of refrigerant and see how the system reacts so we're slowly, adding refrigerant to the suction side. I'm just metering it through this ball valve, and it's going into my probe right there now, unfortunately, um this uh won't seal. All the way, but it should be okay, so we're just adding refrigerant, slowly, just to kind of see how it reacts paying attention to everything else, the sub coin and the head pressure.

The first stage is looking pretty good. We just added a little bit of refrigerant and it's pretty good. Our target for superheat is about seven degrees, but it's kind of still moving around, so i'm not going to add any more gas at this time. We actually have a green flag from measure quick.

Let's see what our temperature split is: temperature splits about 15 degrees, we're gon na, give it a little bit longer. Let's see what our target is calculated target is eight degrees. That's not right! Oh this! This is this whole measure. Quick thing.

This is acting wonky um. It's because it's in the multi-circuit mode there's some weird bugs in that it's kind of weird too, because when you're in multi-circuit mode, you don't set it up as a system. You set it up as individual, so you have to do six ton for first stage, six ton for second stage, it's kind of silly but okay yeah our our temperature splits. Looking pretty good i'd like to see it go a little bit higher, so we'll give it a little bit more time, but yeah we're looking good so far, so we're gon na let this kind of run.

We also are gon na clean this condenser, because it's a little bit dusty so we'll give that a quick clean. We are not finding a refrigerant leak um. The last time we added gas to this unit was in 2017, so it is a very, very small leak. Wherever it is we're just going over the last part of it, but we've leak checked everything we could, because we didn't have to add that much gas we're probably not going to put too much more effort into this unit and uh we're still just waiting for that.

Other one over there to finish evacuating right. We uh took lunch. Let the vacuum run, we're in decay right now. It's slowly rising uh we're about 400 microns on both of them and slowly slowly rising.

So we're gon na go ahead and uh start taking all the vacuum stuff. Apart, start getting ready to charge this guy up, we're gon na put the panels back on and go from there. The unit did good pulled down to a good vacuum, held a good decay. So we currently are charging it up.

We just charged up the first stage. It's took the whole charge without turning it on the second stage. I don't know if we're gon na be so lucky we're looking for seven pounds, one or two ounces i'll look again, but uh, there's not a whole lot left in that drum. I actually got another drum too just in case so uh we're just charging the second stage right now and we're gon na get ready to start this guy back up all right, we're uh it it's a pound shy, so it did six so we're gon na put One pound in once we get it running on the low side, so i had to do that.

So what i'm gon na do is go over here to uh service select, test cool cool too. Both stages will turn on now. There we go and then i add the rest of the pound that i need through the low side right here and once we get to seven pounds. What was it two ounces or one ounce, two seven pounds, two ounces yeah.

So, but this is the first uh. I mean this is all good so far, so just get it to this, i'm just throttling it via the ball valve there we go seven pounds two ounces, so we were good on that condenser fan motors are running we're going to let this guy run and put All the normal probes on it and finish going through it to make sure there's nothing else wrong with it. The system is running um, it doesn't look horrible, there's a very low load, it's not very hot, outside we're near the coast, so it's only about 80 degrees outside right now, 76 degrees outside. So it's really not that bad and the load on the system is really low too return air temperature 69 degrees, so we're kind of freezing them out.

But first stage looks okay to me again, i'm not too worried about it. We weighed in the factory charge the expansion valve's still kind of throttling. Second stage is pretty much running identical and it's taking a little bit for everything to kind of calm down and stabilize out, so we're going to leave it at this. I'm not concerned about the system, we know we found the leak.

We know we fixed it. Um everything's, looking good, we weighed in the factory charge yeah, i'm a happy camper. It's running a lot colder than it ever will, because it's probably not even going to call for cooling for very long looks like yeah they're calling for y1 at the moment. But it's not going to call for very long, so we're going to wrap this one up fix the leak on the pressure controls.

It was a simple one. We didn't even have to change the dryer, so all is well so far. So as much as i want to sell the customer parts, i just couldn't justify really in this one selling them the filter dryers the liquid line, filter dryers, because the system never ran out of refrigerant. So there really was no need to change the dryers um.

I mean you know, i guess someone could argue, but i just didn't see the need to do it in this situation. So um we were able to find the leaks, which was very interesting. You notice that the leaks were both in the same spot on the pressure controls and both the pressure controls just simply weren't tightened down enough. So that's a trip.

I wonder how long it's been down. You know with all this craziness of last year and restaurants being shut down. I wouldn't be surprised if this ac has just been sitting with barely any refrigerant in it for a very long time. You know and then now that we're in the summer they're just starting to notice also i went ahead and went over to the kitchen ac and when i was looking for a leak, i made sure i looked in the same spot on that pressure.

Control no dice - and i was kind of blown away on that kitchen ac, that it was an actual piston uh. I don't know that i've ever seen that on a micro channel 410a higher seer unit to see a piston that was interesting. I was kind of surprised at first. I was like what.

Why is there no expansion valves, but then you can actually see the spot where the pistons at um, which was kind of a trip but hey. You know it is what it is um. So on the ac, though, the the main dining room, ac, you know, um you've got to be careful not to ignore things, and it happens. You know when i opened up the ac.

I saw all that oil and i was like what is that, and there was like what looked to be like bugs in it. You know - and it was just kind of weird, but i didn't think much of it and i'm really starting to try to work on training myself better to you know it's it's one of those things that's hard to describe like. I saw that and i knew something was off about it, but i didn't connect the dots i didn't put two and two together that maybe it was oil, because all i had to do was take that oil and look straight up and the pressure control would have Been right in my face, so you know sometimes it happens to the best of us that we, we don't see the obvious right, quick, but eventually you come to find it so um. We went ahead and pressurized the system with nitrogen bumped, the pressures up and even still it was.

It was a small leak on each pressure control, but it was enough, and that probably makes sense as to why the system wasn't completely out of gas but yeah. It's still still a trip to think that the pressure controls just weren't tightened from the factory, properly kind of blows your mind. Sometimes this stuff that passes the quality assurance or quality inspections, whatever they call it, and i was kind of joking around saying i wanted to find the inspection sticker because usually you find this unit was inspected by bob or whatever, and i just thought it'd be funny. But yeah i couldn't find it on this one for sure so, but just basic, run-of-the-mill repair, uh weighed in the factory charge.

I find that on these micro channels, like i was working on one recently, i don't think i made a video on it yet and man they sometimes are difficult to dial in the charge without just weighing it in um, especially when you have weird conditions like low Load, um and high ambient and a possible dirty condenser, it's really hard. You know you got to get all that stuff taken care of in the low load, there's not a whole lot. You can do about that. You can always open up a return air vent or something and open it to the outside and blend a little air, but anyways going off on a tangent um, but yeah.

This one was nothing too crazy. Just a run-of-the-mill um refrigerant leak, you know uh finding that smoke detector was kind of a trip too um. You know and now that i think about it. I should have gone and inspected every other unit on that roof to see if the smoke detectors are also still have the the plugs in them.

Those come from the factory when they're factory installed duct detectors. They have those little plugs in there for shipping purposes and the startup. You know these units just never had a proper startup. I think i've made videos showing issues.

You know when these were installed a long time ago, because i made them come in and call the company back and uh. We had to go in and redo all the thermostat programming, because they didn't program anything right and then also uh. They had to come back in and redo a bunch of gas lines and drain lines because they weren't piped right um. You know yeah whatever, for whatever reason i didn't get this one.

I don't remember the circumstances behind this one, but oh well. I get to fix all the problems after the fact, so it's all good all right. Well, i really really appreciate you guys if you haven't already, please check out my website hvacrvideos.com a cool way to support the channel, there's merchandise available on there. You can also uh support the channel.

The easiest way actually is just simply watch the videos from beginning to end without skipping through anything um. That's the easiest way, but then uh you can support me via patreon. You can support me via youtube, channel memberships via paypal. There's links in the show notes of this video to all that stuff.

Uh, remember that i go live on the hvac overtime youtube channel on friday evenings about 605 pm, with my buddies uh permitting uh that i get off work in time and then i also go live on my own channel on monday evenings at 5 p.m. Pacific on youtube again permitting that i get off work in time, so check that out and uh yeah, that's it! We will catch you on the next one: okay.