Um, i'm up here and i'm like: why is there a pan here? Uh, that's a ballast that's being used and whoever wired it in put the pan there to protect it. That's a interesting one! This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. All right this morning, the customer is complaining about an exhaust fan, not working, so i had them turn on their hood switches and they all fired up now. Um, i hear a noise coming from this one i don't know exactly which well, no, i do know what fan it is uh and it's actually not this fan, but this is one's not working either.

I can hear the motor like turning on and off on internal overload, let's lift okay, so that's not good, but this is the one they're actually complaining about, because this is one of their main hoods and it's not running now all of their hoods are controlled off The main uh one main hood switch so this one's running this one's running and this one's running um we're still going to check them out. They do not do routine maintenance here, so i wouldn't be surprised if we don't have broken belts and stuff we're going to open this one up and see. What's going on, though, because this is the primary fan, i have not checked power, but the fan itself. You can tell it's been overheating because look at the sticker, the motor is not hot um.

I have not tried to rotate anything. The belt looks fine, let's go ahead and kill the power. Oh check that out. Oh interesting, look at that, so someone had turned it off, so it looks like this motor we're gon na have to get in there and check power to see if we actually have three phase going to it.

So someone must have come up onto the roof and tried to turn it off or something, but this one right here is doing something, so we can't ignore this one. At the same time, i uh opened up the uh disconnect switch. Okay, we've got my meter right here. We're gon na go ahead and check power and see what we got here so line one to two.

We have 116 volts line. Two to three. We have 213 volts and line one two three, we have 117 volts now. This is a 208 three phase system, so we don't have the proper power which makes me believe that these two issues might be related, because this one sounds like it's going off on overload too all right now, this fan is actually 115 volts.

It's not a three-phase fan and we have 122 volts 120 volts. Whatever you want to call it, we have 122 going to it, so this motor is going to be bad. Now i will tell you that this is not a critical exhaust fan this one right here. Um so i'll talk to the customer, but we definitely have to figure out the issue with this one right here in the voltage issue, so we're going to go downstairs figure out where this power's coming from maybe find the motor starters and evaluate a little bit.

First, all right: this is their hood panel up here. Talk about some serious inaccessibility, look at this motor starter cabinet, but i'm having to reach over this to get over into here what a nightmare this is, but we need to check power at one of those starters. More than likely we have a bad starter and or we could have a bad breaker for that exhaust rate. So, but we need to get in there.

So i'm going to try to remove some tiles. It's going to be difficult, but all right in order to uh get this tile down, so i can access this panel. I got to pull this emergency light down, so i'm currently disconnecting power safely, and then we got ta fish. This tile out with these uh fire sprinkler in there too, all right i'm able to get up here now it was a chore, but getting these tiles down around fire sprinklers is fun, there's definitely an art to it.

So um, i'm up here and i'm like. Why is there a pan here? Uh, that's a ballast that's being used and whoever wired it in put the pan there to protect it. That's a interesting one, all right so coming in here: um i've narrowed it down to exhaust fan number two: the motor starter's actually tripped, but it's not. The motor starter is bad because we still have power.

So, let's go one and two: we have 213 2 and 3. We have 115 and 1 and 3. We have 117 so that motor starter is bad and it's not properly disengaging the uh contact portion, so um power's disconnected at the roof. I'm gon na hit reset and see what happens now.

We're reset okay and let's check power to see. What's going on here, one to two to twelve two to three two fourteen one, two, three, two twelve, so the motor starter itself is bad because it when it disengages it's not, you know working properly. But what caused the motor starter to trip is a whole nother question. We don't know what caused it to trip.

Is it just a bad motor starter or is it a bad motor regardless we're going to have to change that motor starter, because there's uh we got to have that thing functioning properly? Let's do a voltage drop test. One uh cross line two nothing cross line. Three! Nothing so we have no voltage drop across the contactor itself, but when it tried to disengage or trip that's when uh it single phase the motor interesting. Judging by the heat pattern on that motor too, i'm not gon na i'm gon na think this thing's been single phasing for a while all right, so we're back up on the roof.

We're gon na verify that that was the right motor starter. I was taking a guess so because i was the only one that had bad power so line one to two 213, two to three, two, twelve one, two, three, two twelve. So we have three phase power. We need to put the switch cover back on, so we can actuate it, and then we got ta test current and again because of the heat high heat, you can see how it's been running under a load and it wouldn't trip until it potentially tripped a breaker.

So i don't trust this motor, but i i still want to see what's going on, maybe what caused it to trip? We also need to inspect the internals of the fan, because sometimes i can get towels in there. So we don't know what initially caused the motor starter to try to trip safely close the lid, where nothing was going to short out, because we need to lift this fan up. Um pull this guy again. You don't want to do this with this running.

Let's open this up and see if there's any damage in the wheel, um oh check that out looks like a bird was trying to make a nest in here, and maybe this fan got turned on. I don't see anything crazy. The top of the wheel definitely needs to be cleaned. I don't see anything crazy in here, but i have a feeling.

Someone got a surprise that could have something to do with this fan doing this, but i don't know you know it's hard to say other than that when we lift this up um, i'm not seeing any issues here, nothing's stuck it moves, there's no uh no play In the motor no play in the bearings, everything looks fine. There i mean at this point. We really just need to fire this thing up and see if it runs we're allowed to run 4.2 amps. It says right there for 230., so 4.2 amps is what we're allowed to run.

We've got that guy on there. Let's turn it on and see what happens? One two three yeah, i think, sounds rough yeah. That motor sounds like crap. It's got bearings going bad in the motor and those bearings over there need to be greased for sure yeah.

That thing is rough sounding, so i have a feeling we just have a motor going bad, it's been overheating and single phasing because it tripped the motor starter. Um huh, okay, so i got ta find a motor and i got ta go see if i have a motor starter, but i got to get this thing up and running so at a minimum, we're going to put a motor in it for now all right. It took me forever, so i left my office this morning at seven, took me an hour to get up here hour to diagnose hour, to drive back down to civilization, because i'm out in the boonies and then uh hour to pick up it's just taking forever um. It's like 12, 12.

30 p.m. Right now, so i got everything i need got a new motor. I do have a new motor starter too. I'm gon na try to replace it because i'm actually worried about it being stuck and potentially ruining the new motor.

So we're gon na try, um conduit band, saw part of everything that i think i'd need. I got a giant bag for bringing that stuff up buckets all that stuff works too, but we're gon na get this motor swapped out all right. I got the new motor installed, got the old motors sitting down here now when it comes to doing this motors they're a little heavy. It's not the end of the world, but what i do is take all three bolts out and leave one in then push your stomach up against the motor pull the nut off and drop the motor down.

Now this motor is manageable. If it was a, you know, 100 pound motor. Maybe you'd need to do something different, because you don't want to hurt your back now. Next thing is, i got the pulley put on.

I adjusted it closed to where the other one was out. It's the same pulley and i just barely got the key in there. It's the the height isn't set. Yet i loosened up the tension on the motor tensioning bolts right here.

So that way we can put the the belt on the belt is loose because you typically don't want to stretch these things out, trying to get them on and then now we're going to line up the pulleys and adjust the tension on the belt and then finish In the electrical and everything so we're not just ignoring the obvious, as i'm doing this, i'm noticing that this this box is cracked in multiple places and we have a burnt wire. It's going to be hard for you guys to see, but right in here there's a wire that looks like it's got some corrosion going on with it, so it's inevitable that we're going to have to replace this disconnect switch too. But i can't do that right now, because i don't have it, and on top of that i don't even know if i can change the motor starter today, we're going to hope that we don't run into any problems, because i might have to come back first thing Tomorrow morning today is friday, but i might have to come tomorrow morning because this exhaust fan uh. According to my other technician, i haven't gone down there.

All these exhaust fans are controlled off of the same breaker. So, in order to change the motor starter, i'm gon na have to shut off power, but i can't shut off power to the rest of their hoods. So i'm going to do my best to get this motor up and running and i'll have to investigate some more to see if it's safe to leave, running or not all right got it all wired in as best as possible. This definitely needs to be replaced.

We're going to bump it to see if it's going in the right direction and it is not going in the right direction. You can clearly tell from this style of fan. The rotation should be this way, there's also a rotation arrow, so we need to reverse the rotation. We can very easily do that at these connections right here, so we're gon na flip two phases and then tape them all up and then uh actually we're gon na start it up and test uh current and voltage when it's running just to make sure we're not Getting a voltage drop all right, we are running in the right direction, a little rattle going on, but we'll silence that it's probably something that needs to be tightened.

Another thing is: is there there's supposed to be a gasket under this, this space right here and the gasket's missing, so it is going to have a little metal on metal and i believe, uh my wrenches might be part of this too. You know it's amazing how hot this fan is right now how much heat is coming out of it. They've been cooking the entire time, which is crazy, um, but we're running undercurrent. We're allowed to run 4.8 amps.

I don't know if you guys can see that or not. Oh yeah. We're allowed to run 4.8 amps we're running 2.9 going in the right direction. The pulley set, where the other one was so now.

We need to do a couple tests to make sure we're getting proper voltage and i got to decide what we're going to do about that motor start. You know, there's a lot of people in this trade, there's a lot of technicians out there. How do you separate yourself between every other technician, how i do it is by going the extra mile by looking at the big picture, trying to diagnose things looking at everything right and then it's the little things. Picking up your trash, these little tailings oftentimes.

I will see them left on the roof: yeah they're, small yeah. You know what the customer's probably never going to come up here. You know but clean up after yourself and then do some. Now i'm not going to clean up this entire roof, but you can clearly see that the customers left stuff up here.

You know there's stuff over here. I pick up a couple things every time i come up and throw things in the trash leave it. You know if you were in the scouts, you know the motto right: leave it better than you when you arrived right so same thing, try to take it upon yourself to clean up after yourself and be thorough, and that is how i separate myself from everybody else. All right, i am back today now um.

I gave the management specific shutdown instructions to get them through the night temporarily they shut down the breakers. So that way they didn't single phase the motor um. I have the control voltage turned off for this and i don't know if you guys can tell, but this contactor is welded shut and that's why it was single phasing. So when the motor starter tripped, the contactor wouldn't completely shut and or anytime they shut off the hoods, it single phases, the motors so we're gon na, go and replace that got a new motor starter right here.

So it's just a process of switching it over wire. For wire, it's kind of tight, but you know it's not a big deal, we'll get it done just going to double check one more time. I already tested everything but make sure we have no voltage in here. No coil voltage everything's dead, so we're good to go still proceed with caution.

You don't want to mix things up, it's a little tight in here, so i am going to mark the wires. So so all right it was tight, but we got it installed. Nice and neat everything's, good everything, looks fine. I double tightened or pulled on everything to make sure nothing was pulling out now.

Remember these motor starters come in a tripped position: um redid a little bit because the old motor starter had uh the coil voltage coming into the top. So i ended up pulling the wire we'll end up putting all these uh line hides back on the covers and everything uh. So we can go ahead and hit uh well i'll turn the power on and then we'll reset it we got to set the current too. That's another thing: the old module was set like way too high, like 10 amps.

That's a mess too so um yeah, all right, we're gon na make sure we set it right. But let me turn on the the control voltage first and test the operation. Okay, control voltage is back on all the motor starters are pulled in so when we hit reset there. We go we're pulled in now and you can clearly see we're good, so we're going to set the current the over current and then we're going to put the panel back together and then go verify just double check the exhaust fans running in the right direction.

But we're pretty much done as long as the exhaust fan is running in the right direction. All right, we are running um. Everything is good. It's the right direction running at about three amps of current all is well i'm wrapping this one up again.

I talk about this all the time, but understanding how your systems work right. We can't understand everything, but even having a general understanding of how the basic exhaust fan systems work is truly going to help you to be able to diagnose better. So i kind of had an idea what exhaust fans did, what i knew that the secondary fan that wasn't running isn't a priority, so i brought that up to the customer we'll deal with that at a later date. I needed to get their primary fan going.

Okay, this particular customer - i told them to stop cooking, but they didn't listen to me so so be it. It's not my problem now, where you need to really be careful, is some hood setups right. Sometimes the cooking equipment is very, very close to the hood. They may have it elevated on stands and different things like that.

What i have seen in the past is especially on fryers. You can actually set off the ansel system or the fire suppression system if the exhaust fan is not running, especially on the ones where the cooking appliances are elevated or the hood system is a lower profile hood system. So it's very important that you cover your butt. The last thing you want to do is have a fire suppression system go off while you're working on something and then the customer try to blame you.

Even though it's not your problem, but always cover your butt. Tell the customer stop cooking, you know and then leave it at them. If they don't stop cooking, then so be it right, but i understood what was going on and i knew that you know i needed to look further than just the simple uh. You know motor starter tripped right.

It could have been easy for me to reset that motor starter and move on because it had the right voltage when i reset it right and the motor started up, but it sounded really rough. And then you just kind of look at everything i get people asking me all the time. Why don't i change bearings and motors, because you have no idea what kind of damage has been done inside that motor in this particular situation, you could tell that this unit had more than likely been single phasing for a very long time and understanding what happened every Time they would turn the hood system off that motor would single phase and then potentially it might restart, or it might run tripped. You know so, and you can also tell from the paint damage the way that the paint had been just peeling off, that motor.

It melted the stickers off the motor that motor more than likely had some serious internal damage, so i didn't feel comfortable leaving that motor running now. I know my customer and my customer wants to get it done and they want it fixed and they don't want me to have to come back. So i decided to go ahead and change the motor along with the bad motor starter. Now i did bring up to them too that uh, you know we need to change that that power switch, because it's got some cracks in it.

It's no longer nema 4.. It no longer has waterproof um uh features to it, essentially right, because the the thing is cracked on the top. So i definitely want to do that. I want to replace that, but that wasn't part of today's scope.

It was more or less just getting the fan up and running. Now i had all intentions of also replacing the motor starter on the first day right, because this was a two-day job friday and saturday. I had all intentions of changing the motor starter, but by the time i got back from driving out, you know to where i had to go, get the parts and stuff which was at least an hour away. It was already the middle of their lunch shift and they were cooking on all their other fans, including this one, and there was no way that i could shut down the system for 45 minutes.

You know we would clearly set off a fire suppression system if they didn't stop cooking and i gave them the option i said hey. I can fix this and be done with it today, but you have to shut down. I told them for at least an hour. Let me change this motor starter, then we could fire you back up and we'll be done and they opted to have me come in the next morning, which i didn't have a problem with it i shot in there.

I was in and out of there in about an hour and a half two hours uh, you know, so it wasn't a big deal. But again, let's go back to the the opening clip um. You know that was kind of funny. You you run into weird stuff.

In these restaurants, right and so be observant and make sure you cover your butt, i did bring that up to the customer. Let them know that whoever installed that light ballast for them, you know didn't install it properly. They should have installed it in the light fixture itself, but for whatever reason they didn't so you know i'm covering my butt taking mental note of everything. Uh.

Remember that when we're on the roof you shouldn't be wearing headphones if you're wearing headphones. I understand it for hearing protection in certain situations, but you can hear so much about how the equipment operates. You can hear things across the roof. You know i could hear that that exhaust fan turning on and off on overload the first one that was 115 volts.

So always uh, look at the big picture. Take a step back, be thorough and separate yourself from the next guy. That's what i try to do is always try to separate myself from the next guy trying to be thorough and then, if the next guy comes in after me right, he has nothing to talk like he can't talk crap about my work, because i try my best And i note everything down and even when i don't do the best job, i bring it up to the customer and i noted in the invoice you know. Basically you know eliminating any criticism because i already told them look.

We had to do what we had to do to get you operational. This is how i had to approach it. Customer signed off on it, we're good to go so cover your butt. I really really appreciate you guys making it to the end.

If you guys have questions or things you want me to cover, throw them in the comments shoot me an email, hvacr videos, gmail.com uh, there's great ways to support the channel if you're interested in doing so, the easiest way is watch the video from beginning to end. Without skipping through anything, there's patreon paypal, youtube channel memberships, there's links in the show notes of the video. If you want to purchase any tools truetechtools.com, you can use my offer code, big picture. One word: if you know what you're going to buy shoot me an email, i can generate an affiliate link.

I get a little affiliate commission when you use my offer code and i get a little affiliate commission when you use my affiliate link. It's not a lot, but every little bit helps so do me a favor. Let me know if you're interested in purchasing any tools, i can generate those links and uh yeah. That's it.

I really really appreciate you and we will catch you on the next one. Okay.