This video is brought to you by Sporland Quality integrity and tradition. Today we have a service call on a wing cooler that's getting too cold. So it's 23 degrees in here right now and they want to maintain 28 to 32 preferably right around 30 degrees. This guy probably has a mechanical thermostat which they're notorious for drifting as far as like what the set point and you know they get all kind of out of whack.

You can never trust the numbers on the mechanical stats. So I'm going to grab a ladder and uh, we're going to get up in there and see what it's set for. and if we have to change it, we'll change it. My equipment is probably going to be this one.

I Think this is our wing walk-in Yeah! Wing Walk-in 404. it's kind of hard for you guys to see, but it's still running and it's at 23 degrees. So this guy's got an issue for sure that temp control is getting way too cold. Um, this is what I call a hybrid system because it's a walk-in freezer evaporator coil.

uh, electric defrost. but they just don't maintain negative 10 basically. So I'm going to open up the uh time clock compartment right here and have a look in there. The time clock seems to have the right time on it.

This is one of those knockoff ones that shows it in 24 hour time or military time, but it's close enough. 12 p.m is 12 p.m and then just work your way through there. But the time clock seems fine so and it's not off like it has the right time on it. Got several defrosts throughout the day.

That's pretty typical on this guy. Um, at this point what we're going to do is go ahead and power cycle. We'll go ahead and shut it off. Not even power cycle.

We'll just shut it down and uh, have a look at the condenser. It's a little dirty, but it doesn't look bad. Definitely could be cleaned though. Um, we're gonna go downstairs and have a look inside the coil.

Look at the thermostat. All right. My evaporator coil. They certainly installed this in tight quarters.

You can't even get into that side panel. That's a bit ridiculous. They definitely didn't follow the installation instructions because this, uh, shouldn't have been this big of a coil in here. but that thermostat is going to have an issue.

It is currently set for about 25 degrees. It's currently well. last I looked at it, it was actually 20 degrees in here. So now it's 26.

but it was 20 when I walked in. So this thermostat's bad. But the next thing is you see all that blue coloring that is a copper capillary tube. and it's covered in the blue coating.

that's just. um. and you see the blue right there too. That is corrosion from the products that they're keeping inside this box and it's becoming airborne.

and it's attacking the dissimilar metals while it's attacking the copper. So what I'm going to do is we're going to change this thermostat. We're going to probably I'm gonna go to my truck and probably put in a digital thermostat. Um, and go from there.

So the sequence of operation on this guy is that you got three phase power on the roof at the condensing unit. That three-phase power energizes the number four terminal. As long as it's not in Defrost. it sends power down on the number four terminal and the N terminal.

Those two is 208 volt power for the refrigeration circuit. If it goes into defrost, then it disengages. The number four terminal sends power on 3 and N as in Nancy. So Refrigeration is 4 and N when 4 comes down, it runs through the thermostat.

if the thermostat says it's warm enough in here, then it turns the thermostat on, opens the liquid line solenoid valve which is right there allows the refrigerant pressure to rise. Then the pressure control on the roof sees the higher pressure in the suction line, turns the compressor on and it runs until this thermostat satisfies. Then the thermostat closes the liquid line solenoid valve again and the system turns off until it warms up again. But clearly our thermostat has got a mind of its own and it's getting Way too cold.

Uh, below 20 degrees. Basically freezing the product in this hybrid freezer. They want to be maintained again in a perfect world. About 30 degrees in here and it's just getting too cold.

So I'm going to change that thermostat out. So I pulled this bracket off to where we can access the control gives us a little bit easier. We are going to have to wire into this side because power comes in on four and N so we're going to have to wire into this maybe I don't know where I'm going to mount the thermostat I'll have to figure that out. This is our schematic right here so it gives you different options.

We're using the one. no heater or evaporator fan contact during condensing unit. So this is the time clock and then this is the evaporator coil wiring and it basically does exactly what I said it did. Power comes down on four.

there's that right there. jumps over to F2 Just it's all right there. So now I need to go to my truck and see what thermostats I have I do not have a brand loyalty I use whatever works best for me I carry Ronco thermostats I carry ke2 thermostats um Johnson pen thermostats and depending on the situation you know I go with whatever I need to. In this case, we're going to use a Ronco Etc 141000 that is a Nema 4X enclosure so it has tabs to mount and everything.

Um, that's the best that I'm going to do on this one. We're not going to try to get too crazy I have a Ke2 low temp controllers too that incorporate defrost and everything, but that's a pretty lengthy process to install those. I need to get this back up and running. This guy's going to work just fine for that.

Still going to utilize the defrost clock on the roof or defrost and when it does go into Defrost, this thermostat's going to go blank because it's going to lose the number four terminal which is what's going to power this guy. It's okay, it has memory, it'll turn back on, start back up when the defrost is over so it's not going to be a problem. If I had more time to plan then I would get approvals and we'd install. you know, a Ke2 low temp freezer stat which has built-in defrost and everything for for uh, electric defrost.

Basically you know, not just off cycle but um, you know I'd have to ask for approvals and different things and I just want to get this done on this one. So again, I have no brand loyalty. it just depends on the situation. All right.

I plan on using a straight seal type connector through that hole right there I'm gonna fish it through there, hook the seal tied up to it, bring it down, figure out where I want it to be I think the control is going to get mounted right there. We'll bring the seal tight with a 90. into the bottom of it the sensing bulb will go straight up. We'll mount it so it gets return air for this control to work.

You need power and a common. So the way they were set up right here, they were just taking power and breaking it on the old thermostat. Well, that's not going to work on this guy. So what we're going to do in order for this thermostat to work.

you need power and a neutral or a common. Okay, in our case it's 208. so we have a hot leg and common. Um, unlike the old thermostat which was just mechanical and it was just breaking power.

Okay, but the way that they wired this coil were bringing a neutral or a common in through the solenoid. So I'm going to be able to grab that and we'll use that to power this guy. So The plan is to put this straight seal type connector on the other side of this. We'll run our electrical down.

It'll go to a 90 seal type connector into the bottom of the temp control. I think I'm going to mount it right in this area. so that's what I'm working on right now is getting it all set up. So that way once I get it hooked up, then I can figure out how long I need the conduit to be and we'll be able to cut the conduit short.

I've got that and I've got my bandsaw right here so that way we can do all that I am capable of pre-wiring the control right. so I'm setting it up to where blue is going to be my switched leg and then red is going to be common. Black is going to be the dedicated power leg. Red is powering the blue switch leg.

So now I can go ahead and put this together. Mount The Control: Hook it up and do all the wiring over here. So I've got the thermostat mounted. you can see the conduit goes up, it just connects into there and then I made these extra long so I can make my connections in here.

but I did it because these right here are going to go to the same wire right the same uh, power source. We got line one and line two. so these are going to go to one of the lines, the black's going to go to the other line and then the blue is going to be the switched leg. so we'll wire those into this guy.

All right. It's a hot mess. but I Zip tied it all up in here and I double zip tied it so it's not going to rub out. We're making all of our connections.

we're not touching any copper lines. I Made sure to be careful of that so this guy is ready to be powered. I Just need to mount this the sensor up high. All right.

we've got the power turned back on. It's cold enough that the evaporative fan motor is turned on, so we need to set this guy. It's currently 43 degrees in here. Wow, 43 where that is.

So we're gonna set this guy for 27 with a Three Degree differential and we should hear a click. There we go. Solenoid valve now works via the temperature controller. We're set for 40.

Well, it's currently reading 42, but that's not accurate. We're set for 27 with a Three Degree differential. So we're going to maintain 30 degrees in the box like they want to. All right, this guy is operating I Watched it come up in temp, turn back on and go down.

It's going to maintain about 30 degrees. The temperature is about a degree off on this. So in all, actually, it's about two degrees off. so it's actually 30 degrees in the box right now.

That happens on some of the digital stuff. So um, this evaporator coil is very dirty. I'm going to talk to them about letting me clean that along with the condenser, but we have to schedule that. so let's hop up under the roof and make sure everything's good up there.

All right. Everything seems to be fine up here. Sight glass is running clear. uh, don't see any need to put service gauges on there.

They were complaining that it was getting too cold in the box, which it was just clearly a bad thermostat this guy's pumping down I think right now. Yeah, so it's getting ready to satisfy. So Solenoid valve shut, pressure control is going to cut it out. there.

we go the low pressure control, cut the compressor out and it's waiting for the temperature controller to kick back on to open the solenoid to raise the low side pressure. So that way the compressor turns back on and that's how this guy. Cycles everything else looks good. contactor looks fairly new.

I Looked through the system and it is fairly new. Um, you could tell that I didn't install it though because the writing is upside down. I'm a Nut about that. Uh yeah, everything's looking good there.

So I'm going to talk to the customer about, uh scheduling to come back and clean the evaporator and clean the condenser. But for now, change the thermostat and they are good to go. We're going to give them the keys and tell them to keep an eye on it so there's something that I didn't show and I realized in editing sometimes when I'm on these service calls I do things without turning the camera on and What? I didn't show you was something that could have gotten me into trouble had I not checked for it. Just because a box is getting too cold doesn't necessarily mean that the thermostat is the problem.

There is times that liquid line solenoid valves can actually stick open even partially and cause the box to never shut down. Okay, now in this situation, What? I did and for whatever reason I didn't catch it on camera is I cycled the thermostat off before I went to go replace it and watch the system shut down. That was a pretty good indication that the problem was the thermostat. The fact that when I cycled it off, the system shut down completely.

if it was a liquid line solenoid valve that was sticking open. The theory is is that it wouldn't have pumped down and shut off. Now there's also the possibility that sometimes liquid line solenoid valves are just sticky and they just every once in a while get stuck. Another thing that can actually cause liquid line solenoid valves to fail.

Well, not so much. To yeah to fail is if they are not sized correctly. It's really important when you're sizing a liquid line solenoid valve that you don't just look at the line sizes. In fact, the line sizes are pretty much irrelevant and you size the solenoid valve itself based off of the type of equipment you're putting it in and based off of the tonnage of the roof of the equipment.

Okay, it is possible to have a solenoid valve that is not properly sized and therefore it has a hard time shutting when you go to shut the system off. So keep that in mind, you're not supposed to size liquid line solenoid valves based off of the line size and what I mean by that. just because you have a 3 8 liquid line doesn't mean that. you you need a solenoid valve that has a 3 8 liquid line.

It's not completely uncommon sometimes to have a liquid line solenoid valve that's a half inch, but the line going into it is only 3 8 or vice versa. So you always want to pay attention to the actual tonnage of the equipment and make sure that the valve is sized appropriately. If you open up the manual or even on the box of the Sporland Liquid line solenoid valve, it tells you approximate tonnages and if you look into their Tech data, I'll show a a PDF in the show notes of this video for the Sporland Liquid Line Valve solenoid valve information That will help you to understand how to properly size them. Okay, so anyways, I Verified once I verified that the solenoid valve itself was not the problem.

Then I proceeded with changing the thermostat and you could clearly see that the thermostat was just covered in corrosion. It was in bad shape. It was time to replace it. So like I said in the video, I Don't really go with one particular brand when it comes to temperature controllers I Keep a couple different types on my vehicle and it just depends on the situation.

I Prefer to go digital whenever possible, but I do keep mechanical thermostats in my truck just like the one that I pulled out that's an A19 something I don't know the part number. it's a pin Johnson Control But anyways, I keep a remote bulb and a coiled bulb when it comes to the mechanical controls too. Okay, also, keep so on my van for refrigeration controls I have OEM controls I usually carry a Ronco 111 000 and 141 000. that one of them is Anema four one of them's not.

Um. I usually carry Ke2 controllers I have a few different varieties of those and then I also carry dixel controllers. So I have several different types of thermostats on my vehicle and each situation depends on what I'm going to use. you know, or each situation dictates which control I'm going to use in that particular situation.

All right. I really appreciate you making it to the end of the video. Uh, so uh on this one too. I Also talked to the customer.

they declined to have me clean the evaporator and the condenser at this time. I'm sure that they're going to end up calling me back, but you know I can only do what I can do I give them the information and I let them make the decisions. I'm not pressuring them into anything you know. Um, so uh, if you haven't already, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel.

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