This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. All right, we've got complaints that we've got a beer walk in well, actually that we've got warm beer tacks, so i'm in the beer walking right now just investigating, and it is about 37 degrees. In here uh, whenever you have a beer foaming issue, warm beer pouring out the taps. You always want to start with the beer walking so no issues in here nice and cold, we're gon na jump on to their uh, their power pack or their glycol units.

Now i've done some work up here before on this unit right here, but i already see a big old chunk of ice on the suction side. Of that compressor, i wouldn't be the least bit surprised if we have a bad pump, so these units keep the the beer lines cool from the beer walk into the taps and uh look at that, so we're gon na get this uh opened up. It says this unit's at 76 degrees. Again, i did a repair on this one.

I got to change a temp control on it. If i remember right, yeah and then i cleaned up this area, it was all messy. This is the one with the uh fancy mini split up here, which is awesome, things still cranking. I love this thing.

Man best glycol room ever yep open up the reservoir and the pump's not running just stagnant that doesn't look very glycoly either. It's interesting, though, look at this unit same thing: pump's not running what the heck. What is going on here interesting this unit says 73 too. What is going on here? Why would we have this many pumps not running so i shut off all the pumps right now.

Well, look at this guy's still running. That's weird huh! I'm just pretty bizarre! I know what happened here. Well, no, i wonder if these things are off on high pressure, let's get the covers pulled off. So when i came up here, this was open and it shouldn't have been that was open into the attic.

Maybe it's possible that it just overheated up here, no because there's frost, so it's not off on high pressure same thing on this. It's running. This is very bizarre. I don't know what's going on here, so that's odd.

I shut this guy off and the motor's still spinning. I'm gon na pull this guy off and see if we've destroyed the inside of the pump like the little impeller interesting. What are the odds? You think that they can have multiple pumps bad at the same time, that'd be really bizarre. Look at that man same thing wore out the pump or the motor yeah.

This thing is won't even spin. It's brutally hard to turn wow. I can't believe that that is insane. I've never seen this many bad pumps we're gon na go over here and see if we have bad pumps on this one too.

This one moves kind of freely it's a little tight though, but it's not worn out, but this one right here. We need to get off now. Okay, both of these don't look too bad, but the pumps are really hard to turn that one spins that one spins they both work interesting, i don't know - what's going on here again - doesn't sound very good inside that motor either um. I'm not an expert with these glycol units.

I don't know what their piping arrangement is. I don't know if these are like ran in series together or what i would assume that one side is for. One tap side of the bar one side is for another tap side of the bar, but i really don't know for sure very interesting. So after setting leaving it off for a few minutes, i put this one back together and we're moving glycol now makes me wonder if the heat exchanger was frozen, but look at how nasty that is now that i'm moving it it's gross in there.

I also wonder i'm going to do a refractometer test, because that sure looks really watery. We could have frozen heat exchangers again. This is so bizarre, but look at how nasty that stuff is that's gross all right and uh. Let's turn on this second pump.

Now it's really flowing, so that's just with one unit. One pump turned it off now: here's the other pump, that's flowing yeah, okay, so both pumps are moving, but i need to get a refractometer on there, because that really looks like water to me. Um we're gon na leave the compressor off, because i have a feeling that heat exchanger's frozen so we're just gon na. Let it sit there put this one back on.

Oh, it's not plugged in that's! Why? That's that one down there! So this one's not ran through the switch for some reason it's running now and it's cool yeah, it's pumping pumping like it should be. I can feel it because it got cold all of a sudden. This is worn out and that's worn out. I don't know if i can get this well, i ha.

I brought one pump and motor assembly with me, so i know for sure we need to change that one and then i need to get the refractometer on that. Both of these have a fruity smell, so it is propylene glycol, but this right here is sitting up here and it doesn't have a fruity smell at all. So this is pretty much pure water at that, and i bet you anything they added water to. These probably is my assumption, but okay, we're going to confirm that i'll get the refractometer and we're going to bring up a pump and a motor we're going to use the refractometer okay, and this is a basically a concentration tester.

So what you do is you take a little bit of distilled water. You put it on the glass right here and you hold the glass up to a light: okay and you're. Looking for with distilled water in there, the water line to be down there, you see that blue. That blue is basically the indicator for the water line.

Okay, so what we've done is we've confirmed that our refractometer is accurate if it's not accurate, there's a little adjustment right here and it comes with a tiny screwdriver. You put distilled water in there and you bring the water line down to 32 degrees. Okay, now we're going to dry it off and we're going to take a sample of the glycol. There's a little uh sampler thing right here, we're going to take a sample of the glycol and then we're going to see what the freeze point is of the existing glycol.

All right, let's go ahead and take a look. Okay, propylene glycol is on the left, we're using the fahrenheit scale and, according to this, our freeze point is about eight degrees. Fahrenheit that doesn't seem bad. It doesn't seem bad at all, at least for this one, but man this glycol is pure black.

Look at that. That is nasty what the heck is going on here. This is very interesting. I did talk to the manager and they did say that they flushed their system with some sort of a machine that clears the glycol lines.

I i don't know if yeah i don't know, i have no idea um. This is very interesting. Well, i'm gon na get started on replacing that one pump over there. That's bad we're gon na.

Do that one for sure, because i have that one in the truck on this second unit we're gon na test it right now. Okay, again the propylene glycol scale, the freeze points about eight degrees. I i don't see a problem with that looks okay. I just used this little refractometer.

I got from the supply house, i don't know if that's the part number or not, but it's that whole little kit keep these in all of our trucks. So i'm intrigued to know why these units were frozen up. They were clearly frozen up because this one i didn't do anything. I pulled the pumps apart to inspect them, they didn't look great, but in turning off the compressor we started to get glycol flow, maybe whatever the manager did again.

I don't know what he meant by. He ran hot water through the machines. Again, i'm not super, i'm assuming he has a machine that pumps hot water through the system to flush out the lines. But how did he get the glycol concentration right after and did he leave the glycol units running with just hot water in them? I don't know it's interesting.

Okay. I got some clarification because i couldn't make sense of what they were talking about. Flushing she kept saying they were flushing the glycol lines and they weren't flushing the glycol lines. They were just flushing, the beer taps, so they hook up to the taps, flush, water through them and go to the other end where the keg's at so what he did has nothing to do with my glycol, unit's.

Theoretically, freezing up. I still don't understand that. It's interesting but yeah: okay, well we're gon na start with changing that pump and then we're gon na fire these guys up and see if they come down to town okay. So i'm gon na try to cheat here and uh leave the cradle on the existing uh unit and just swap the pump over or the motor over.

I should say, and we don't have to unbolt the cradle. It's imperative that you get this ground wire on, because this is a resilient mount. So the motor has no ground without this wire because it's sitting on a rubber mount so you've got to make sure you get that on the old one. The existing one doesn't have the ground wire on it, and the existing one only has one strap holding it.

Look at this, so this existing one doesn't even have the strap on the back and the ground wires flowing freely. I want to figure out a way to fix that the common wire neutral is uh slightly exposed just gon na give it a tape. It's like they didn't push the wire far enough into the fitting. So just do that just to be safe.

This unit actually does have a dedicated ground so that ground to the housing isn't as critical. After all, still it was a little sketch to see that ground cut off, but yeah there's a dedicated ground here, so got a tiny little quarter inch ratchet wrench. Hopefully i can get that ground screw on the back it's in an awkward place, so i certainly know why the person didn't connect it last time, pumps and i still got to insulate everything, but i want to make sure it's working and no leaks before i insulate It all up so at this point we need to go ahead and plug our unit back in which is way up there and then turn them on. So all the pumps, the compressors off, i'm gon na clean up a bit and then plug it in.

Let's turn this guy on what a curiosity, oh, okay! Well, this one is plugged into a receptacle, so i was curious where the power's at okay, we're running now didn't blow up on me pumping the other one doesn't do anything! So let's find this plug right here. For this other pump plug it in okay pumps are running, pumps are running now. I want to turn this on, and i was thinking about something i want to know if they came up here and played with the temp control. Maybe so, let's turn it on see where it's set up 29 degrees.

That's about right! I don't see anything wrong with that. It's running all right! Well, we're going to open this guy up, let it come down to temp, we'll check the sight, glass and all that stuff we're going to see. If this thing comes down in time um i can already feel heat being discharged out of the condenser and it's probably hard for you guys to see. But there is a sight glass down there and that sight glass is clear, um.

So there's no point in putting service gauges on this, because this thing has a very small refrigerant charge and see. If i can see what the refrigerant charge is well, actually it's a little bit bigger than i thought it's three pounds, but still we've got a clear sight: glass, i'm just gon na blow that condenser out i did bring that blower up so we'll blow those guys Out real quick, this bad boy is probably gon na make it all dusty up here. There's one filter doesn't look bad. We just take a straw, stick it through there, but we're going to watch the temp drops at 61..

It's already dropping. Let me go over to this other side and we'll clean this guy up this stuff's gon na get all dirty yeah filter media is not bad at all. Okay, see all the condensation from the suction, on the compressor that was all frozen up. Okay, let's see it's interesting, this one has power when the compressor things off 28 degrees.

That's right. Let's turn it on okay, we're gon na. Let it uh run make sure that sight glass clears up on this guy too. Let's see here again, i know it's hard to see, but that's a clear sight: glass, don't see any problems with this one either so we're just gon na.

Let him run and see him drop in temp. Hopefully, this side over here is dropping pretty fast, but the other side has taken a while, but uh there's pretty even discharge air blowing out. Let's go over here and see where this one was at this one started at 78, and it's only at 65. something's not right about this one.

This still isn't working right, makes more sense. Now, look at that the temperature of the glycol is 49 degrees, but that guy says 62. that so that explains why this unit was frozen up. It's never shutting off basically, and it froze everything i'm assuming i you know, because this guy is actually colder than what it says: um, okay.

Well, we got to figure out a sensor issue with that one right now and this one is pretty accurate. 39 degrees. It's a little off, but it's much better than the other one. Okay, it's kind of funny, 43 degrees.

All of a sudden. This thing like started working. It says 40, now still going to address it, but it's just watching it. It's kind of funny they're, both almost down to temperature, so they're kicking butt, just got back with the new i'm going to replace the whole temp control, so this side's just about to satisfy right now.

On this side, i decided to go with the dixon controller um. I'm you know usually pushing the oem stuff, but uh. We don't really have time to wait for this one, and i know that this dixon will work just as good as the ul control fuel, ul or whatever you want to call it. So i disconnected power over there, so we can kind of get this guy taken apart and swap out that control the hardest part is going to be running the sensor.

I think i've shown that before it's a pain in the butt to get it in there um you got to like pull this whole side apart to be able to get to that sensor wire, it's ran up and ran in it's kind of a chore, but we're Almost there powered back up need to set it 36 we're going to set that for 28.. Okay, now we need to go through and we need to adjust the parameters, because this is set up for built-in defrost and everything. So i'm going to have to go through and do all that i'm going to put this unit together too, i have the controller configured and if i did it right, it won't blow up on me. Let's turn on the other pump, i'm going to turn on the compressor compressor started up that temperature should significantly drop as the glycol starts flowing over the sensor.

While we're waiting for the temperature to drop, i'm going to go ahead and finish assembling that panel and uh, hopefully you see this thing satisfy yeah. It's dropping like a brick all right, this guy's, almost down to temperature. This guy is sitting right at like two degrees from tim. I still don't fully know what caused these units to freeze up, because both of them were frozen up, but this one had a pump that it failed.

This one had no flow at all, but when i turned it off it started flowing my assumption is the heat exchanger got too cold because the temp control was getting too cold. It's hard to say, though it's really weird, but the the glycol temperature was low enough. That i don't think it i don't know. This is really interesting, but regardless they're operational, i could only fix what i could see was wrong.

Temp sensor was erratically going up and down. I changed the whole control. I am going to recommend that they get the beverage company out here to change the glycol and i'm going to recommend they consider replacing all the rest of these pumps because they all look like crap and they were all hard to turn so they're gummed up inside And that's going to cause premature motor and pump failure this one right here, everything's good with it too after i changed that pump, so it was really interesting. Though i mean you know it's possible, it could have something to do with the manager.

No, not really i mean, depending on how long he was flushing hot water through the beer lines. I guess he could have brought. No still doesn't make any sense to me because, when he's flushing the beer lines it wasn't affecting the glycol, although it raised the temperature of the glycol but yeah. This is a bizarre one, but again i'm not a professional when it comes to the beer systems.

I just know how to work on the power pack units i leave the mix into the glycol and all that stuff to the beverage people. I got enough problems on my hands all right. Well, we're gon na wrap this one up and uh tell them to keep an eye on it. The glycol units um they can be a little confusing for me.

I don't 100 understand how they they do the pumps, because i have seen some weird situations where i think that pumps are doing they're, not just pumping back and forth. There's i don't know, but i i do not understand the glycol systems completely. Okay, i fully understand how to work on the power pack units the refrigeration portion, but i always leave the glycol unit itself and the fluid transfer um really to the the beverage people. I have no problem changing a pump and a motor because those are easy.

So long as you put a like for like pump in um with a like, like motor, you know in this situation, these were third horsepower, pumps or third horsepower motors, and then i put the identical pump back in, which is just a. I had a flow pro proflow or i can't remember who makes the palm but anyways um. You know i brought to the customer's attention. It's it's been a week since i did this call everything's been running fine, no, more freezing up issues.

I did bring to the customers attention the dirty glycol and they actually asked me hey. Can you just change that for us and i'm like? No, i don't want to change the glycol because, to be honest with you, i'm sure i could dig further into these things, but it would just put more responsibility on my shoulders. For instance, maybe some of you beverage guys that are watching you can enlighten me in the chat, but i've worked on cobra tap systems before and i've messed up the glycol concentration, okay uh, whereas you know i used to basically want to get the freeze point. You know 30 degrees below the the box temp or whatever.

That was my thought. You know, but then on the um, the cobra tap systems. My understanding was that the freeze point has to be perfect. The viscosity of the glycol has to be perfect uh in order to get that frosting action going on on top of the cobra tap so yeah again, i know i'm probably talking another language to some people that don't completely understand this, but i barely know a little Bit about it, but the cobra tap systems are it's a tap head and it looks like a cobra head snake when it's all flared up and about to attack.

You know it has like the the ear shaped things coming out and it freezes up into a big old block of ice with that frost on it. It actually looks badass if you ever see a cobra tap, that's working properly, but there's a lot of things that affect the cobra taps, especially in conditions where the restaurant doesn't control humidity. You know different things like that, but anyways i'm going off on a tangent. As usual, i'm a little bit hesitant to play with the concentration of the glycol.

I leave that to the beverage people they're the guys that come out and solve the foaming beer issues so long as the beer walk ins, cold and the glycol is cold. Then that's where i stop my portion of it. It's one of those things out here. You know we run into some of those gray areas, for instance on a package unit, air conditioner.

You know the duct detector like i'll, install the duct detector, but i really don't want to mess with the alarm company's wiring. It's that weird crossover from trades, so i brought to the customers attention that they need to get the glycol changed. It's now been a week. The unit's working fine, they haven't gotten the glycol changed yet, but they're trying to figure out who they're supposed to call, and so it's a whole mess um something you know i've been really reflecting on this call and trying to figure out.

You know why were both of these units frozen up and i was still having a hard time with it and, as i was editing the video, i realized that there was some missing footage from the video i'm watching it going. Something doesn't add up. I remember this. Being different, so what was actually missing from the video was, there was pump savers and you may have caught a clip of a pump saver sitting on top of one of the glycol units, because i know there was a small clip of it, but a pump saver.

Essentially, is this plastic or neoprene little chingus, there's a plastic chingus that goes between the pump and the motor and it keeps um the brass shaft or impeller. I don't know what you call that piece that sticks out of the pump and it's it's a male portion, and essentially you have the motor that has like a female portion and it sits inside there and it spins it's like a little coupler. Well, the motor saver is a little plastic chingus that goes between the two and the the male part of the pump goes into a plastic chingus, and it keeps the brass away from the stainless steel. So you don't get that corrosion and that rusting or whatever is going on inside there.

It's actually probably not stainless steel, it's a metal on the motor shaft actually or the female shaft receiver or whatever so the first unit um. Let me let me preface this the unit that had a bad pump that actually changed. The pump on the other pump had a broken um motor saver thing so that one had two pumps that weren't running and i was actually able to pull the motor saver out and just make a standard couple between the pump and the motor and got one of The pumps and motor assemblies on that unit running and then i replaced the other one. So that's more than likely why it froze up.

It was just running without either pump for a little while. Okay, now the other one had one of those motor savers broken. The other pump was still running so, but on top of that, the other one had a faulty temperature controller. Now you may ask why didn't i just change the sensor? Well, if you pay attention or go back and look at the video again, it started out when it was still saying, like 50 or 60 degrees, that it was colder right.

But then a few minutes later, all of a sudden it came down to temperature. So i didn't know if there was a problem in the temperature sensor and or the temperature controller. I didn't have either one of the factory parts and it was just easier and faster. Instead of me ordering the temperature controller and ordering the factory sensor, i just went and grabbed a dixon controller, threw it in there called it a day, we're good to go.

Okay unit's working now. So hopefully i didn't confuse the heck out of you guys, but so i believe that the first unit, when i came up there froze up because one of the pumps wasn't working because the little motor saver coupling was messed up and the temperature controller was not reading. Accurately, it was getting way too cold in the unit. I believe that's what froze that one up, the other one uh both of the pumps were not working.

One of them was actually bad, the other one. The motor saver thing was bad. I pulled it out. You know put it back together now those little motor saver things - i guess.

Theoretically, they save the pumps uh if the customer does normal preventative maintenance. In this situation, the pumps themselves are starting to fail because of that dirty glycol. That's in the system and it's gumming up the pumps and making them run uh, really it making them really hard to turn. So the motor saver is not doing a whole lot in that situation, because the pumps themselves are ruined from the inside.

Preventative maintenance goes a long way, but at the same time we understand right now in these crazy times that you know the customer is just basically doing what they can, in my opinion, to try to save any potential money they realize they know that preventative maintenance is King, but you know in this situation, they're just trying to make it through this crazy time. Right now, uh, essentially just taking a gamble. You know not doing preventative maintenance and just hoping that they don't have catastrophe. Okay, uh it sucks sometimes, but then also at the other side.

I see what's going on and i want the restaurants to survive this, so if this is what they have to do to make their numbers work to make the shareholders happy, i'm fine with it. Okay, it is what it is either way, i'm doing work. You know it's just. This is a little bit more of a headache, but i'm just thankful to even have the work that i have all right um.

So hopefully i didn't confuse the heck out of everybody. Um, i do want to preface this or not preface, but i want to conclude this too, with the fact that whenever people see my glycol videos, especially the people that don't understand beer systems - okay, i'm gon na make it clear right now the glycol does not touch The beer that people drink - okay, the glycol, is ran in a polypropylene line that is wrapped around the polypropylene line that the beer is ran in okay. So the glycol is not coming in contact with anything that someone is eating, so nasty glycol is not contaminating the beer or anything like that. Okay, for some reason, the last time i did one of these videos.

I got a bunch of people saying, oh my god, that's gross! That's disgusting! How come you touch that and no has that that's completely separate? Okay, not even getting you know, touching the beer or anything like that. So essentially this glycol unit. I've said it before all: it does is chill the beer lines from the beer walk-in to the beer taps. The beer walk-in makes the kegs cold, but when the kegs are pumped underground, that's the downside right, that's the problem.

We can't control the temperature of those keg lines underground, where it's 75 80 degrees. So we wrap these glycol lines in another polypropylene line around the beer lines. Then we insulate it really well, and this essentially just keeps it cool. You know from point a to point b so that way, when the customer gets it, they order their piss beer right, because you know the the better beers usually taste good around 50 degrees.

So you know i had to go with the piss beer reference right. So when they order their piss beer, you know it's got to be at 36 degrees or it tastes even more like piss, so yeah anyways hey. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to watch these videos. Do me a favor if you guys are considering any tool purchases check out truetechtools.com, if you like their pricing, i can vouch for their customer service and their shipping and theirs their quality of tools.

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That's it we'll catch you on the next one.