This episode of the HVAC school podcast is made possible by our great sponsors carrier and carrier comm. We are excited to be joining carrier and their ductless dealer program as see fad dealers did carrier really has a full line of products now, they're, really covering all the bases, and I'm excited to see what they're doing you can find out more by going to carrier Comm refrigeration technologies at refridge, tech, comm, the pan and drain spray is pretty neat stuff. If you and try to get the one thing I do want to say, is you want to kind of dry the pan out before you spray it down with the pan and drain spray? It allows it to kind of adhere to the surface of the pan. A little bit better, but it's good stuff, we've really been enjoying using it.

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This is the HVC school podcast, I'm Brian. This is the podcast that helps you remember some things that you might have forgot along the way as well as helps you remember some things you forgot to know. In the first place, this episode is about maintaining small refrigeration units in our AC tax, primarily and then we end up working on refrigeration. That's how a lot of us get into refrigeration and if there's a technician who is used to doing maintenance on an air conditioning system, they may be kind of overwhelmed by the idea of doing maintenance on refrigeration, and so I talked with experienced technician Erik Mele about This he's done a lot of refrigeration and a lot of air conditioning and now I'm proud to say he works at kalo Services.

So we're really excited to have Erik on board the kalos teams. You're gon na be hearing more from him on the podcast in the future. I'm sure - and so here we go Erik Mele talking about doing maintenance on small refrigeration units, so we've got a different situation here. Erik Mele who's been on the podcast many times, not as many times as Jim Bergman or Jamie kitchen, but other than that.

I think probably one of the most popular guests on HVAC school, but he's actually working with us at kalos. Now we're glad to have him on board he's gon na be working down, and so the South East Florida market doing what he does, which is a little bit of everything, so we're excited for that. So thanks for coming on the podcast! Well, it's mandatory now! So you don't have to thank me right. That is screw that now you get paid to podcast.

I've made it in life, I'm getting paid to podcast right. You are actually a paid broadcaster at this point, so you can say that you're, a professional broadcaster, you put that in your LinkedIn profile, all right. It's going on there that'll be good sort of like on my LinkedIn profile. I say that I'm a pretend radio guy, which is about right, I'm sitting in my office - and I thought he's been here for a week, just doing random stuff learning our paperwork processes and our website and all that jazz.

Although you haven't been doing as much of that and a lot more of just working, which is what I came here for anyway - so fixing broken stuff, which is good. But now he's gon na be going back down south and I figure we got to do an in-person podcast before he does, or at least one and he was kind enough to come on. But before we get into it. We're gon na be talking about small refrigeration maintenance.

The reason why I want to talk about it is because, as we do more and more of this sort of thing, the last two years kalos has been doing a lot more refrigeration than we have in the past and we're getting to the point. Now, where it looks like we're, gon na be getting some refrigeration maintenance contracts in addition to AC, and we want to make sure we know what that looks like, because, obviously it's not air conditioning, so it's a little different. So we're going to talk to that. But before we do that, give us a quick rundown of what you've worked on so far this week, so started out working on an open air case in a convenience store that had some issues from how it was installed by a different contractor, thank goodness yeah.

Thankfully. So looked at what we had to do to resolve those issues by contacting the OEM and going with their recommendations, line sizing, mostly yeah. It was line sizing and proximity to the automatic doors. So the case like a lot of this indoor stuff is rated to only be in a certain ambient temp, this one being maximum 75 degrees at 55 percent.

Relative humidity, which 4 feet away from constantly opening automatic doors in Florida, is probably not likely most of the year. Just on a side note we didn't talk about this, but do you think an air curtain might help with that? It has an air curtain who does have one already, but that's only doing so much right and the building isn't a positive pressure which is helpful but still four feet and it all depends. Do customers prop the door open for a length of time? Do they get really busy? What's the ambient temperature? What's the humidity, that's what it comes down to it's Florida, so 90 and 80, and then also radiant, so the closer you are to a glass or the more radiant heat you're gon na get as well. Even if the door is closed depending I did to have a vestibule like an area and no vestibule yeah.

So that's also a factor yeah. Those are like important things for us to assess earlier than later in a customer relationship, and that's something that Eric is gon na, be definitely helping train our staff on is that if there are installation errors, you don't want to have serviced a store for two three Years before, finally, you mention it because then that becomes awkward like. Why didn't you tell me beforehand so yeah all right? What else so also came across our 290 reach-in freezer, which was the first time I've encountered one in the wild. I've seen some videos that were put on YouTube by the OEM regarding working on them, but the first one I've seen in person and there seems to be quite a few in service from this particular customer, from what I've seen so far.

Luckily, in this instance, it was an electrical component, because opening the refrigerant side is kind of tedious. So what did you find out as far as because the one thing is with our 290? They don't want you leaving fittings in place. You can service it. If you need to, but then you're supposed to seal it up again, once you're done with that and are they wanting you to use torches just flow nitrogen and then use torches right yeah while you have it open flow nitrogen, they want you to purge it for, Like two minutes with nitrogen, before you even attempt to braise on it, and then you have to add temporary fittings to it and then after you're done they want you to use a pinch off tool and braze it shut.

That's the fun part. They want you to bubble test it and use a gas leak detector to make sure there's nothing coming through your pinch off tool right, combustible gas leak, detector, that's always going to be the scary part yeah the moment of truth right there. What's the worst. That can happen just a giant explosion.

I think they are only allowing up to five and change ounces of propane, but still you have it contained in a vessel, which is why that whole nitrogen displacement thing is so critical that you get it all out and then you're charging it and then you're pinching. It off so you are pinching it off and braising right on the other side of it mm-hmm yeah geez. You would definitely want to make sure that you're controlling your heat then because, if you accidentally reached I mean it would be pretty extreme circumstance. I guess yeah got ta know what you're doing is what it comes down to yeah.

Do they want you doing that outside I mean because these are small, they say well-ventilated area, so preferably, if you could wheel it out that you'd be better off all right. That'd be good thinking all right, so today we're talking about small fridge. Eration maintenance, like I mentioned, we're just gon na, go through a list of different best practices. Ways you can do it tools you need to have when you do it.

One thing I like about Eric is he's very systematic in his approach to these things. He's got that way about him now. I did force him into this podcast without being able to prepare, which makes him very uncomfortable, but we're gon na get through it here. So the first thing, with small forgers maintenance in my book is condenser coil cleaning.

That seems to be the thing that gets missed most often yeah condenser coils, especially if they're located indoors, they can get plugged up pretty fast and in proximity to whatever other equipment might be in use. So if it's really near cooking equipment, you're gon na give a lot of grease on it. I also have serviced in the past customer that did ice cream and candy, so it would get just just really sticky nasty stuff on the coils that was hard to get off, sometimes you're, lucky, and if it's just like convenience store setting, it doesn't get too bad. You're gon na want to have a good assortment of like little plastic brushes to help clean off the bulk of stuff and obviously, if you have to use quote cleaner, that's what you got to do, but also the attachment for the shop vac that you probably never Used the one with all the brushes on it that works good on the coils, without beating them up.

If it just has that light dust that can do a pretty good job also, you can blow them out with nitrogen or co2, even right compressed air. If you have that haven't have that yeah either way, that's a good way, some of the coils I've seen they don't actually have fins on them. Well, first time I saw one I'm like this. Is God it's supposed to be like this right, but you really need like a long pipe, cleaner, looking brush to get in there and knock all the dirt off for fairly soft bristle right, yeah, plastic bristle brushes be careful what you're doing if you're cleaning one of Those like I just described, don't stick it into the fan.

You probably want to shut the unit off. You got to protect the components that you don't want to get coil cleaner on and stuff like that also fan blades for those condensers can get dirty fairly dirty. So you want to take those off and clean them. You usually have to pull them out of there because they're in there too tight.

So you probably unbolt the motor you'll find you'll need a lot of special little wrenches to get the stuff apart to make it easy, having a good set of wrenches, maybe some little gear wrenches and some good sockets. That obviously keep that on you all. That sort of stuff is going to be important when you're working different equipment, we're so used to in air conditioning using quarter-inch and 5/16, and occasionally a 3/8 you're gon na need a greater assortment of tools at the ready when you're working on refrigeration yeah. Maybe, while I'm here, we can shoot a quick video of some of this stuff, I'm describing and put it up on the YouTube channel, some of the little tools that you can get to make your life a lot easier right.

So brushes, maybe like a long bottle. Brush type of brush that you can reach into tight to harder each places you talked about the brush on the end of the vacuum, I notice you have a Milwaukee cordless vacuum. Is that what you generally use with that, or do you use something a little? I've been using that a lot lately, I don't have a brush in for that particular one. Yet I'm gon na get one for it, but and it's not absolutely necessary - you can just get close, but the soft brushes help to just break it off and as soon as you're breaking it off you're, sucking it in the vacuum not pushing it further in.

That's always been my approach when you describe cleaning there generally isn't a single approach that works. It's like a culmination of a lot of different approaches, depending on what type of soil you have, and so I would suggest, probably having a combination of maybe using a little bit of nitrogen, using your brushes using your shop, vac kind of having that all there, especially When you're doing a maintenance just bring that all in put it on a card or something so you've got it all there and then, when you get in the shop back and even having some nice microfiber towels it's great to have because they can kind of help. You trap that stuff, so you're not blowing it all over the place, because I can just imagine seeing a new guy using nitrogen and a condenser and just going in and just blowing the crap all over the kitchen or the work area. And obviously, if you're gon na do that, if you're gon na use something like nitrogen or especially coil, cleaner you've got to be present there so that you can contain anything that may be making its way where you don't want it exactly, and sometimes nitrogen works really Good, but if you're working around food prep areas make sure that they're covering up any food they have out, you don't want to ruin their product if they notice it, which hopefully they would or maybe they don't notice it and they stock product.

That's been contaminated with big chunks of dust out of a condenser coil right, that's not a good day, so condenser coil cleaning and the key to any cleaning. Because we're going to talk about a couple cleaning things is just clean till it's clean, don't damage anything by using steel, bristle, brushes or anything hard like that. Don't work against the grain of a coil. Obviously, there's a lot of talk that goes on about you.

Don't want to impact dirt into a coil, and that is true. The the sense that sometimes texts have is that you should never work on the dirty side of a coil, and my experience is is that you do work on the dirty side, the coil, sometimes to get the heavy soil off you're gon na use brushes, maybe rags. You, maybe even what kind of work from the I'm using hand lotions here soon, if you can see, but if you're imagining using like a nitrogen tank or compressed air or whatever working from the top down and kind of peeling that stuff off of the face. Especially if it's loose and dry and then obviously, if it's soil, that you need to use a coil cleaner on then yeah, you want to work from the other side where you can, but in a lot of cases you are kind of stuck working from the face Side as well - and you just have to manage it - you have to manage the mess, make sure that you keep everything covered, one of the first refrigeration jobs I ever did.

I was 17 working with an old-time refrigeration guy guy I've talked about a lot Dave barefoot. We're working on little pizza joint here in Clermont, we were doing a cleaning on a condenser, it was actually on top of a freezer and he said: go ahead and clean that coil and I just started spraying the thing down with coil cleaner and got it all Over a condenser fan motor ruined the motor, we ended up having to get a new motor and replace it, and he was not very happy with me, but it's common sense stuff that when a lot of newer guys, they say here clean it. When you got to clean something - or you got to do a job like this it most of the work is prep thinking through how you're gon na do it and then sort of managing that process yep all right, so that's condenser, coil cleaning. You already mentioned a little bit on the fan blades and a lot of cases.

You're gon na have to pull them off. Obviously, we're used to blower wheels and air conditioning getting dirty fan. Blades aren't gon na tend to get as dirty as blower. Wheels tend to get because they have a larger surface area, but any amount of soil on them is something you want to address.

I like what you mentioned and when it comes to cleaning which we're gon na talk about a bunch of cleaning things here, which is that, if you have dirt on something in a kitchen or in a food, prep area or anywhere like that, you pretty much need To get it off exactly just like when you're what I like to do, if I'm changing a filter and a sealing grill, you see they're, always super dirty and people just throw another filter and before I pull the old filter out - and this is way off topic At this podcast I take like a clean paintbrush that you use for mastic and I brush it off. It sucks it on the old filter and then you can take the old filter out. Put the new one in and the grill looks nice and clean right make the area look clean, especially if it's food prep, it's everybody's gon na appreciate it. That's a huge thing.

I've had to learn because early on, when I did, maintenance is especially - and I did a lot when I first started on commercial and residential. I kind of had this mindset of well, it doesn't matter. I, like that, doesn't matter well, the thing is, is that a huge part of maintenance is aesthetics and we can disregard that and say. Well, that's not my job, but the fact is it's just like.

If you were gon na wash a car people don't wash their cars largely because of fuel mileage, although there is some slight impact, they wash their cars because they like having a clean car and because it makes them feel better about it, there's nothing wrong with that. We all accept the fact that having a filthy car is gross and having a clean car is nice, but for some reason we don't get our head around the fact that our customers feel the same way about their equipment. They like it to be clean because it's part of their business, it's part of their home. They just want it clean.

Once you get in that mindset of clean until it's clean, then it makes it a lot easier to just sort of like accept the fact that any sort of cleaning that relates to the air conditioning refrigeration equipment that you can do is part of your responsibility and Just accept that all right, I want to take a quick pause here and mention the Viper spray cleaner, the Viper in a can, the aerosol can Viper the red can that you probably have seen at your supply houses if they don't have Viper will and by golly. You need to ask them to get it, because these break in the Viper cleaner is really really great. For things like working on refrigeration, condensers are working in refrigeration units in general. What I like about Viper is that it just doesn't have a nasty smell to it.

It's safe to use. Obviously you don't want to get it in your eyes or anything, but it's just not nasty like a lot of this other cleaners and you spray it on you. Let it dwell you, let it foam up, you rinse it off you suck it out with a shop vac, you brush it off with a brush and do it a couple times. Stuff works great works, great, with kind of greasy environments or great with regular soil.

It's just a good all-around product is the Viper spray cans, the spray cans, a Viper, cleaner, you'll, see them on the shelves, they're nice-looking, red cans with the snake on the front and that's from refrigeration technologies at ref tech comm. You can also find these by going to true tech tools. Calm, look them up and you can get a great discount by using the offer code, get schooled all right back to Eric. So the next thing that I have on my list is drains drains drains drains.

It's always drained so on refrigeration. How do you approach drains pretty much the same way, you approach any other drain. You have to find a point that it's good to clean it out from somewhere. You can take it apart easily and try to vacuum it out blow it out with nitrogen, pour some water in to test.

If you can just do what you can to make sure the drain doesn't back up, because it's the main thing that causes callbacks and stuff is drains in low temperatures. It shows up in terms of ice formation versus puddles of water, because obviously it's only gon na drain when a defrost and once it kicks back into a normal operation that water's gon na freeze into ice and so you're gon na see all these ice formations. Underneath the drain pan or wherever it's backing up and that's an indication, obviously that you've got a drain issue there, but regardless, whether it's low, temp, medium temp, no matter what it is, you still have to clean those drains, which means that in some cases, you're gon Na have to get in there and actually get some hot water or something in there. What technique do you use as it relates to the lower temp side with drains whatever I have to do, like you said, sometimes it's challenging to like, if you're in a walk-in box, to really do much for them.

Luckily, they don't really get that nasty, especially a freezer, coz, there's really it's either below freezing or it's just getting heated the crap out of it. So usually, as long as your heaters work and you're taking care to vacuum out the drain lines, which are typically short, you don't really have issues until you'd. Like you said, you start to lose heaters and then build-up ice, and then you have issues right. I actually got a steam cleaner from dry steam machine.

Of course it's not really dry steam, but they call it dry steam because there's not a lot of volume of water, and I think that would actually be a pretty interesting tool to use. If you had to work on low temp cleaning, not drain drain pans, the evaporator coils that sort of thing it is pretty neat because it's obviously hot and it's using water. But it's not using a ton of water, like you, have with a pump sprayer, because that's the challenge when you use a pump sprayer with hot water, which is a technique, that's often used to defrost, coils and low temp applications is that you get all this water. Now that you got to deal with which can be challenging, because I mean those your options either got hot water, you got a heat gun.

Well, one thing: that's more effective than a heat gun is like those blower fans can get at Home Depot. All right. You can get that and just prop it up to be blowing air onto the coil. That helps a lot.

If you don't want to use water, water is going to be way faster, but sometimes don't want to get water everywhere and if something's really badly frozen. I think you mentioned this before in some cases, it's better just if it's a region or something just unload it and shut it off, let it defrost and come back later and fix it. Obviously, if it's a walk-in and it's their entire kitchen capacity and they've got nowhere else to put the stuff and sometimes you're forced to get it taken care of, while it's still near temperature. So a little more challenging a big part of this, and so there is the drain.

Cleaning Bart drain pans drain lines, making sure that your pan heaters are working. Obviously, if your pant heaters aren't working whole thing's gon na be full of ice. Basically, so that's something to look for, but a lot of this is just visual observation too: it's not just cleaning what there is to clean. It's finding problems that are clearly existing light ice patterns around the door, seals where the doors aren't closing properly and anything.

That's abnormal addressing that, while you're looking at it and inspecting door gaskets and hinges if you see that the doors are sagging on the case and they're closed and really sloppy, probably want to address that before it gets worse right, because a big part of maintenance on The refrigeration side, so there's the cleaning aspect, which is very important, but then the other aspect is catching problems before they become worse before you get called out Sunday night, because the door gasket fell off. That was hanging on by a thread when you were there. Last time, right from a testing standpoint, there's not a whole lot of readings that you take on refrigeration as much as we do when we do a checklist on air-conditioning, where we're taking all these air temperature splits and all this stuff. Obviously you're.

Looking at the Box temperature, when you arrive, is the thing maintaining box temperature, that's something everybody looks at hmm. What are some other things that you maybe look for from a readings or visual inspection standpoint, the Box temperature is the main thing and verifying your coils are clean. All your fans are operating. That's what you want to look at if your box is not meeting temp before you try to worry about refrigerant, make sure all that other stuff is the way it needs to be because there's very little room for error on a lot of this equipment.

The message here is you're not gon na in gauges of this stuff, you're not connecting gauge it's to it unless there's a reason to kind of cage us to it. If there's some sign that the thing hasn't been working properly, some indication that something's going wrong, then at that point you would connect, and obviously it varies depending on the size of the equipment, the type of the equipment, whether or not you would connect. Obviously, you're not gon na putting piercing valves and connect to equipment. That's completely hermetically sealed pretty much.

For any reason, unless you are very confident, there's a refrigerant sight issue on the equipment, I think amperages are still useful to take making sure that you don't have over amperages on fan motors and compressors wire connections checking all of your wire connections. I think this is huge and just making sure that you're not showing any sense of arcing or overheating. I worked on a region recently that the thing was actually running, but when you took it apart, I mean it was just all sorts of melted connections down inside the control box and it was a giant mess. I don't even know how the thing was working and addressing that obviously helps prevent a call back or an issue later on and then testing capacitors.

If you have capacitors in the system which you're not always going to have, but in some cases you will, depending on the type of equipment you're working on or it may not be fully accessible, you do want to check those one thing that I'm going to give An opinion on which goes against everything you've, probably learned on refrigeration equipment. You will run into start gear from time to time and people will say, as they always have, that you cannot check a start capacitor with the bleed resistor in place that you have to cut it out. Don't do that just check it with the bleed resistor in place, because, obviously the start capacitor is functioning with the bleed resistor in place right? Yes, I always wonder why, and I guess the thinking is - is that, of course, when you're testing you're not testing on the full voltage and under different conditions. But you can test a start capacitor with the bleed resistor in place and you will get a measurement on that start.

Capacitor, it's going to be very close to the range or should be I've always seen it within their range with the bleed resistor. In the cases where it's not within the range, then I'll cut the bleed resistor, and I also make sure - and you guys can look for these - they make Spade connectors with a set screw connection. So if you cut a bleed resistor just make sure to leave enough tail and you can put it back if you were wrong, but I always check first and then I cut the bleed, resistor and check again and every time I've done that I've had the same Result, it's still not functional right and so at that point you've got to put in a new start capacitor anyway, but I see that all the time well, you can't check them out. I think it's been in some of the training manuals since the beginning of time, and it's something everybody says, but my experience is exactly the same as yours that it doesn't even make sense that you would have to cut it out because it's functioning with it in Maybe older capacitor testers, weren't credited and it just stuck nobody bothered to research that we have maybe better measurement tools.

Now I don't know, maybe who knows Esther's or something to check I'm gon na state quickly that some of the best refrigeration guys I know most of them are up north and they will say, I never tested capacitor and I think that's because in certain areas there Is less capacitor failure than in others? Now again, if it's a reach-in, then it shouldn't make any difference, because most regions are gon na be in conditioned space anyway, but the most recent one that I found a capacitor fail in was a reach-in that was in an unconditioned garage I'd like a warehouse sort Of thing and it had a failed capacitor and we know the capacitors fail because of over temperature and because of over voltage. Those are the two primary reasons and also poor manufacturing in general. But those are the two main reasons, and so I think that you see fewer failures in other climates, where you don't have as much temperature variation on the high side of the temperature spectrum and potentially, where you don't have as much voltage problems. You don't have as much issues from the utility like we have down here in Florida, but in Florida I'm definitely gon na suggest testing capacitors as a regular thing to just prevent problems, it's good to test them, regular.

The only thing that I don't like to do that kind of decide on your own some of these condensing units. They have copper, that's coiled up behind them kind of like the old telephone cords, and you have to actually slide them out to check components. You don't really want to do that a lot, because it will eventually inevitably cause a leak in that car right right right. You don't want to probably do that every month use your judgment on it right right down on the equipment.

When the last time you check the capacitor, maybe do that annually or semi-annually - definitely not monthly yeah, if you're doing like regular twice a month to have maintenances or whatever, then I'm gon na definitely suggest that you don't do that every single time again. The first thing that you need to do with a good maintenance is do no harm. That's the first consideration, and so when you see guys who are constantly just doing their checklist and they're hooking up gauges and there's refrigerant loss and they're, pulling things in and out and they're stripping out screws because they're using their stupid impact drivers to drive things in And you're doing more harm than good when you do that, the key to a good maintenance, more than anything else, is being super observant. That is the number one skill that is required to do a good maintenance, and I would put on that list watching for oil.

Buildup anywhere everywhere, you're looking just always watch for oil, because that be an indication of you in a small leak tubes that are gon na, rub out or wires that are contacting somewhere that are going to rub out. You can also you'll run into stuff a lot of times. It happens when people replace these start capacitors on regions is a new ones, always inevitably shorter, and you always see some sketchy way that it's in there the way that I've found around a deal with that. I think I mentioned this on the other.

Podcast is, if you have a hose clamp, you can push it back into the plastic cap, which usually is gon na still fit on there, and then you can hose clamp it in place, so it's gon na be safe and not floating around in there and then, When you try to slide a condenser out, it flops it down into something which hopefully you can shut it off, but some of them I've seen you have to slide it out a little bit to get to the switch alright. So quick review lots of cleaning as appropriate. It's not one of these things where you clean stuff that ain't dirty you don't clean just to clean you're, not doing this for our health, you do it because it needs it when it needs it. This is a big shift, I think, from the HVAC air conditioning service contract.

Yes, ma'am no ma'am American flag, patch white shirt, type of maintenance, that's all about just doing the exact same process every time with refrigeration, at least my stance on it is that it's much more about being observant and doing what needs doing whenever it needs doing and Not doing stuff that's unnecessary, for example, you don't want to clean a condenser coil cleaner. Every time I mean that would be a total interruption to the business, and actually it's very rare that my brother says something profound, but he posted this on social media other day, and I think this is very true is that when you're working with commercial customers, especially You have to realize that you are no longer in air conditioning or refrigeration technician when you're in their store. You are in whatever business they are in. So if they're in the business of serving customers with healthy food, then you have to also be in that business.

While obviously you're still there doing what refrigeration guy does, but you have to make sure that you're not interrupting their business you're, not contaminating their food you're, not making a mess you're, not disrupting their customers, that you have to have that same mindset of whatever that business Is and in refrigeration that's a huge part of it because in most cases or a lot of cases, you're working in working kitchens or convenience stores or whatever yep. I approve that statement. Eric Mele approves this message, I'm feeling especially Tonchi today, for some reason I think you're just inspiring me, maybe it's your beard, probably seeing it in person, is very overwhelming. We'll put it that way, all right anything else.

Anything else missed as it relates to maintaining small refrigeration equipment. We covered a lot of it. Possibly we missed some stuff, especially maybe some really equipment. Specific stuff, like we said with cleanliness, look at the general cleanliness like all those little holes that the air blows out of the case, if they're all plugged with dust, it's gon na affect operation so stuff, like that, not just the coils and the fan blades everything That you can clean should be cleaned.

What are your thoughts on like using hog, hair filters or media filters for condenser coil filtration I've seen him get dirty through those filters, but I've never done any sort of scientific approach to him. Some people insist on them. Some people - don't the poly throwaway media, doesn't seem super restrictive. So if you're gon na use anything, probably that yeah dick words talks about it in his book, refrigeration for air conditioning technicians and he's a very pro as part of a maintenance agreement like if you set up a customer for the maintance agreement.

Just making that part of it just cutting some of these pieces and making that part of it, and I guess it's really a question of how regularly you're going to be doing it, because, obviously, if you're adding filtration to a condenser coil, you are increasing the air Resistance by the very nature of adding that media, so you can't let it get very dirty, but in the process of doing that, you do reduce the likelihood that you're gon na have a severe event where you need to use coil cleaner and make a big mess. Potentially, so guess it's a trade-off. It all depends how often you're there if you're there once a year, probably not the best thing to do, because it's gon na get clogged up and then you're gon na have more likelihood again adding in a filter where there wasn't a filter is actually going to Increase the resistance and is going to cause a high head pressure event sooner than not having it, but it does help protect the equipment, at least to a certain degree. I imagine in cases where there's maybe a lot of grease.

It might be good because, when you're in very greasy environments, that can become very difficult to get off in some cases. Speaking of that, though, if you have a really greasy impacted in denser coil, what is you generally gon na use for that I've used degreaser on them? Some of them get so bad restaurants that do a lot of real greasy food. It gets pretty bad, especially if they're right, if it's a prep region, that's right next to their cooking area. Cuz.

It's always gon na be in use. They're gon na always be open in the door that thing's almost never gon na shut off while they're cooking. So they get bad actually Spencer told me he had a customer. Where did a lot of flour and frying and they said they were coming in their weekly just to clean condensers.

It was a weekly contract yeah. I could see that happening in a certain situation. If you're doing a lot of business and your condenser can't be remoted and it's just getting totally packed with cooking materials right, if you were going to do it weekly like that, that would be a case where I would probably use a filter, medium sort yeah. That would be an approach.

I would take. There's some really good channels out there that address this stuff HVAC. Our video is obviously Eric's channel, which is Eric. What is it Eric, Adam yeah, on YouTube? I don't think I have a lot of refrigeration stuff on mine.

Well, you have a lot of good stuff anyway, yeah, okay, it's kind of hard to get footage of that because you usually always have people around and customer interactions. I just feel weird about recording that inside yeah you have all that ambient stuff that ends up in the video and NorCal Dave. Obviously, he's got a great channel and then Chris Stevens Channel h vcr videos. It's probably one of my favorite refrigeration channels.

Right now, cuz. He does go pretty in-depth. My belief he's the owner of the business, so it makes it a little bit easier for him to do what he does. So those are some great resources, but what you notice with these guys pretty quickly and the same thing is true and Eric's channel - is just mostly the large air conditioning stuff on his channel.

Is that the guys who are really good in the commercial side are more about suiting the solution to the problem, rather than having a specific checklist that they follow every single time? In a lot of cases, there may be checklists for certain customers, but that's more for the customer, like that's more for them to feel good about what you did. The reality is about doing no harm interrupting business as little as possible, preventing problems before they happen and keeping the equipment clean. If you do that, then you've done a good maintenance, it's not so much about. I did my 22 point checklist kind of a thing that we think about in air conditioning so often not that I'm bashing that, but it just requires thought and attention and attentiveness in order to do a good maintenance.

In my opinion, yes, boom drop the mic all right man thanks for taking the time to do it. Hopefully we can do it again sometime, yes, indeed, indeed, now you get paid to do it. So that's the good news. Well, this time anyway, professional podcaster I and thanks all right thanks for listening to this episode of the HVAC school podcast first off.

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