We have to dig in further, we don't ignore the other walk-ins just because that's not the one we were called on, because that potentially was what caused our problem. So you got ta. Look at the big picture, guys it's no joke. When i say this.

Big picture. Diagnosis thing: okay, because what was the root cause symptoms? We can fix those all day long, but finding the problem is the important thing this video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. I'm going to apologize really quick for the very beginning of this video because the audio is kind of jacked up and i had to narrate it okay, so i had to remove the natural audio and then narrate through, and then you guys will see when it kicks Back in there was something about the camera was using my bluetooth, but while i'm here, i do want to take this point to go ahead and promote um the merch that's available on the website at hvacrvideos.com. If you guys are interested in supporting the channel.

That's a great way to do so, all kinds of merch. On there i got the new flag, t-shirt design, the original big picture, diagnosis, design. We got zip up, hoodies, hats and beanies. So if you guys are interested check it out and we're gon na go ahead and get on with the video now today we have a service call on a beer walk-in that is not working uh, it's actually 60 degrees in here right now, so it's quite warm.

So we are actually gon na go ahead and start up on the roof, because i don't see any ice. Everything seems to be working properly. Evaporative fan motors are running um, the temperature controller back behind that coil controls a solenoid valve in that right-hand side and uh. When the temp control is calling, we should have uh the system running up on the roof, so my beer, walking condensing unit, is right here.

Uh, the condenser fan motor is not running, doesn't sound like the compressor is running so we're gon na go ahead and open. It up and see what's going on all right before we start pushing and pulling we're just doing a visual inspection right off the bat it looks like the high pressure control has since been replaced with an auto reset secondary control by itself. Okay, i'm just doing a visual. We got a low pressure control time clock.

Nothing is really jumping out at me, so we need to get a meter out and uh do some testing to see exactly what's going on in here, um the condenser fan motor. I want to spin that and it's spinning, but you see how it's just kind of slowing it's kind of tight. You know, so we definitely need to look into that. A bit more um got again.

It's really dusty inside here uh, but nothing's really jumping out at me. So we need to go ahead and get a meter out. So main power comes into this. Disconnect switch right here, but we're gon na take a shortcut and actually check on the line voltage side of the contactor okay line, one to two.

We got really nothing line, two to three: nothing and then line one two, three, nothing, that's interesting. So we need to open up that disconnect switch and see what's going on inside there, all right, let's go ahead and check inside this disconnect switch so line one to two. Nothing line, two to three, nothing in line one to three; nothing! That's interesting! So that's on the line voltage side, so we're going to check the fuses real quick. Now you can't hear this, but i have an audible tone across all three fuses.

The fuses are all good okay, so we don't see a problem there, i'm just using the continuity test with the audible tone. With that being said, we need to go downstairs because we've lost power somewhere. What we are going to do is leave the disconnect switch off right here so that way we're assuming that the problem is in the condensing unit and we can turn the breaker on and then come and troubleshoot from that point again, i'm making an ass on myself, Though, because i made a big mistake here, i really shouldn't be doing this: here's the beer, walking breaker and it's tripped got to turn it off. Don't reset it chris, don't do it.

Oh it tripped again. I wonder why. Where was the mistake that i made here? Okay, so i screwed up - and i didn't test for a direct short to ground on the line voltage side. I'm testing right now and i have a direct short to ground.

So the mistake that i made was i tested on the load side, not on the line side. We've got a problem in that conduit more than likely, while between the disconnect switch and the breaker panel, i would assume more than likely it's going to be somewhere between that junction box, and this conduit right here, all right with the power turned off and isolated at The breaker downstairs i tested and found a direct short to ground on the number three, the blue wire at that disconnect switch on the line voltage side. Okay, so then i come over here to this junction box and i disconnected the line voltage coming from the breaker and i isolated it and i'm testing to ground in between the disconnect switch and right here and i have a direct short to ground. So i've now proved that my direct short is right here between these wires right here somewhere in that conduit going over to the disconnect switch all right.

I went ahead and pulled those wires out and look what i found right here. The blue wire has got a it's just completely destroyed and it was totally grounded, which is really interesting and it like split the jacket or the insulating jacket completely off, so something happened there. I'm really surprised that i didn't find that problem with the other wires, though like in the same area, there's no damage to the other wires. I don't know what caused this yet.

This is really interesting, but we're gon na have to see what we can do to repair this. It's really interesting. The walk-in freezer condenser is vibrating, really bad, and i think that had something to do with this broken wire, because i didn't find any water damage or anything but anyways. I went ahead and ran all new conduit.

I ran it underneath the condensing units and supported it in multiple places, using hanger, straps, okay and ran it all the way back and all the way into the junction box. And now we're going to go ahead and pull that wire that i cut through the conduit and see if we can hopefully solve this problem. I've said this before, but you know i really don't see the need for a fish tape on a run. This short, when i can just push the wires through, of course, we're going to run into struggles when we get over to the 90 on that conduit over there, but i'll just undo the 90 and push the wires through the rest of the way.

So i'm lazy and really don't want to bring anything else up that i don't have to got everything all back together. We went through the same penetration hole right through that box um. We just basically have to hook it up with the disconnect switch now so across our fingers. It didn't trip and let's go ahead and test voltage to see if we did our job right so line one to line two.

We have 219 volts. Okay, that's good line. Two to line three and we have 215 all right - that's good and line one to line three. We have 217 volts.

Okay, so we're doing good. We have proper power, we're not tripping the breaker, all right now's the moment. Let's go ahead and start it up and see what happens? Okay, so the unit started up. You guys can't hear it, but that condenser fan motor there's something funky about the way that it's running right now: okay, so i'm gon na shut off the disconnect switch again and watch the condenser fan motor watch.

How fast it stops boom that condenser fan motor has bad bearings, okay watch when i start it back up again: okay, we're gon na start it up, and it's gon na start really slow. Okay, we definitely have a condenser fan motor going bad. We need to dig into that. It is running sight.

Glass is clear, um. I still want to pump down the receiver and check the liquid level, but system's at 60 degrees right now, and i kind of want to get there walking down to temperature. So i'm probably gon na go ahead and let this run through the night. Like i said it's operating, i don't see the need to put gauges on it.

Yet uh condenser fan motor definitely needs to be replaced, but there's also a vibration to it. The whole thing's shaking and in my experience these motor brackets they they've, been we've been having a lot of those break lately. So i'll probably come back with a motor bracket, a motor and a blade and then uh we'll give these units a cleaning and then we'll probably, i have a feeling we're gon na need a motor and a motor bracket for this one too, because it's vibrating, it's Running so we're gon na, let them run through the night. All right, we are back it's now the next day, um something i didn't show on video was when i was leaving yesterday.

I checked the back of this coil and it feels like a blanket. So it's plugged, so i actually brought someone else with me and he's going to clean the evaporator coil clean the condenser on the roof. I'm actually going to tackle another reach in service call. They have and then, when we're done, cleaning i'll go through and look at that condenser fan motor and evaluate the rest of the system.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that this evaporator has refrigerant leaks too. So we'll see all right we're back up here today and when i came up yesterday, this one was vibrating really bad. But what i actually found was that that panel wasn't on and i got to put some screws in there, but because when the panel was off, it was actually causing the crazy vibration. I don't know if i can get it to do it again.

I don't think i can, but the panel being off once i put the panel on the vibration stopped, so i'm still going to open it up and look at the fan motors on that certainly doesn't sound the best. But i need to focus on this one. We're going to go ahead and change the fan mode to the condenser fan motor and then i'm waiting for my guy downstairs to finish cleaning the evaporator coil. So i've shown this a bunch, but i take a quarter inch ratchet wrench one of those little malco bits.

5, 16 can be anything and this little thumb driver. I got this at kmart many years ago. I'm sure you can find them. I don't know craftsman, maybe lowe's now, because this is a craftsman, but you put it on here and it allows you to get into tight spaces.

But then, if it's so tight, then you can use the ratchet wrench to get you some leverage and loosen it. So really dig this little tool. It came pretty clean, but i'll probably still give it a rinse with the hose, but you can see this condenser is completely deteriorating. I mean look at how it's just flaking away.

Um interesting is that uh with the um i'm getting? I'm assuming it's from the power wires and somehow coming from the ground. I don't know this is this is interesting because i'm getting shocked, i have no power and there's a static electricity shock that happens whenever i get the blower near those wires. My assumption is that somehow yeah - i don't know, that's interesting, it could just be static, but why is it only when i come around those wires again? There's no power, i verified, but it's interesting. It's a pretty good tap tap tap tap shock.

So that's a kind of interesting phenomena. That's happening there, but okay, we're gon na get this condenser fan motor changed out. I'm gon na inspect this bracket. I did bring a new bracket and these things have been failing a lot lately.

So we'll see uh, probably change that the motor and the blade we'll see, maybe all right, i've got the or the condenser fan motor installed and ready to go. It's a reverse. Airflow blade you've got to make sure you get the right ones. On this i went ahead and did a leak check on the system too.

I haven't even applied service gauges, but we turned it off while it was still running so there's pressure on both sides down at the evaporator too, and since we were cleaning the evaporator. I ran the leak detector across that didn't pick up. Any leaks ran it up here, didn't pick up any leaks now i have no idea. If this is low on charge or not odds, are it probably is we'll check the liquid level in that receiver? We should have left it at three quarters.

The last time we worked on it. I went through my records. We haven't worked on this in like two years um, so uh. We know there's no leaks at the condensing unit or the evaporator, but you know there could be small leaks.

I guess, but i'm using the detect stratus. It picks them up pretty good, so um but anyways. I just did that just because i was waiting, i'm still waiting for him to turn that back on. So i can turn this on gon na get all these condensers wet and then we're just gon na put a little bit of cleaner they're, not gon na.

Take a lot um. I don't even see the need to pull the condenser fan motors on these other ones, because they're not that bad condensers are definitely in really bad shape. So just getting it wet. Giving the coil cleaner a surface to move down, and i've got some right here already in a bottle.

This is the viper hd cleaner, just going to get it all in there. Nice and good stuff won't hurt anything really i mean on. If you used on an evaporator with the viper hd, it's actually um capable of being non-rinse as long as you have enough condensation on the evaporator. So we'll just let this sit on there for a few minutes, do its magic and then we'll give it a rinse.

All right, it's been sitting for a few, so we're gon na give it a rinse real, quick being careful because i do have the condenser fan motor in there. We don't want to uh um soak the niche familiar with water. You know so we're being cautious. How we're spraying not going too direct making sure it's not getting it wet, yeah coming out nice and clear nice and good, especially shining up the fins pretty good too so yeah that one's looking good.

So this guy right here this is the one that was every once in a while vibrating and making a weird sound. It's not really making the loud sound right now and the motors sound fine. I know you guys can't see this because of the frame rate or whatever, but this motor is vibrating pretty bad, like it has a bent blade. Probably this one's not as bad.

So i think that's the problem right there, that's uh. This is their walk-in freezer unit and that's what's causing the issue because that thing's just vibrating to all hell. So all right, i'm doing this out of precaution, because we don't know what caused those wires to rub out or break or that wire, i should say, singular. Um, but i noticed the vibration it kind of came and went back and forth, so i i noticed that this one was acting funny and look what happened when i pulled the blade out.

It's got a fat crack in the blade. Okay, personal experience is these brackets. We've been having a heck of a time with these brackets lately, so every time i i can probably count on my hands 10 times. Probably i don't know - maybe i'm exaggerating, but where we've changed motor and blade and then like two three months later, we have to go back because we have broken brackets.

These things are all from like 2003, 2002, so they're just starting to fail, and then, when you have a vibration like this, it's definitely getting a bracket. So i have another motor and bracket and blade we're going to change them all right here. Okay, when you have a vibration, this bad too did it damage the bearings. You don't know these motors are so cheap, it's just better off just changing the motor too, because then you're done and you got no worries about it.

All right motors installed wired in. I still have to zip tie the wires, but i'm waiting for someone to bring me those. Let's turn it on right direction and the vibration is gone. So we're good now again remember that broken wire that caused the beer walking to not work which caused them to give me a service call was a symptom, a symptom of what we have to dig in further.

We don't ignore the other walk-ins just because that's not the one we were called on, because that potentially was what caused our problem. So you got ta. Look at the big picture, guys! It's no joke! When i say this. Big picture diagnosis thing: okay, because what was the root cause symptoms? We can fix those all day long, but finding the problem is the important thing.

Those two are taken care of now, it's time to get back onto this guy. So let's turn it on. Maybe the evaporator's not on yet i'm confused. Why it's not turning on hmm.

Are we in defest not in defrost, interesting and perplexed right now as to why this didn't fire right up it should have. I wonder if my tech didn't turn on the evaporator, yet all right, yeah, my tech, had it off downstairs. Okay, so we are back together. We are running, i'm gon na go ahead and gauge up so we can evaluate this properly and then we're also gon na check the liquid level on the receiver to make sure that we have the proper charge interesting.

So i've just got my hiding fro at low side. I'm not worried about superheat right now, we're just going to make sure that we got the refrigerant charged. But when i loosened this cap it sprayed gas out at me. So the leak detector didn't pick it up, but there's a leak on that uh receiver stem so something to keep in mind.

These caps are not meant to hold back pressure like they're, not going to seal. So if it pisses out, you know from there it's it's leaking, it's probably just very slow, but it's leaking so all right. So we're going to do a quick pump down right here and then we'll check the liquid level on the receiver. You can see too that when i front seated the valve, it's just pissing gas out so i'll put this on temporarily, but it's not going to hold back a lot.

I'm trying not to burn my hands right now. There we go, don't burn yourselves! All right! That slowed it down for the moment and then uh we'll wait for it to satisfy our pump down. It's like the pressure control could use a little bit of an adjustment. Too came quite low, um all right.

We're pumped down we're gon na take our heat producing device warm up the receiver not exceeding the soft plug temperature. You need to know how to look at these things. The soft plug is right there and it's actually labeled 221 degrees celsius. Is the uh blowout temperature of that guy? So we're not going to heat that part up we're just going to get it warm and then we're going to check the liquid level we'll grab it with our fingers and then we'll look at it with a thermal camera too.

All right! Looking at the receiver, you can clearly see that the liquid level is quite low. It's about a third of the way up right about here. You can see where the yellow really starts, so we're definitely low on refrigerant and again this was just a hunch, even though i didn't pick it up with the leak detector. It just has small leaks all over the place, probably um, so we're gon na go ahead and top off the charge.

We're gon na fill it up to the three quarter level and then check it again. Now, why am i filling the receiver up to the three-quarter mark? Why not just use the spoiling 90-30-1 method, which is the best way to do it whenever possible? Okay, here's the deal my system is not flashing right now i check the refrigerant level. Out of precaution, just because i know this is an old system, so it's not low enough yet that it's flashing. Now, if i came out on a cold day sure, maybe it would flash, but right now, it's 75 degrees outside the head pressure control valve isn't bypassing yet so i have no way of knowing if it's low or not other than checking the liquid level.

This is that instance. Of course, i always recommend either leaning on the manufacturer or checking with spoiling and adding the right amount of refrigerant spoiling would be using the 90-30-1 method. Only if you have a tube and fin condenser like we have, but in my situation it was showing no signs of a refrigerant shortage. Okay, but i just know that we filled this receiver.

The last time we worked on it up to the three-quarter mark, because i read the invoice okay, we didn't mark it, but i read the invoice where it said we filled it up to the three-quarter mark. So with that being said, the only way to add the right amount of refrigerant right now, okay, without showing signs of a flashing sight, glass would be to recover the entire charge start from the factory chart, or i mean you know clear: the sight glass from the Beginning and then add in the factory charge, but we're not going to go through all that right now. I just so happen to know the factory charge because on that panel over there i have it written from the factory. I believe it's like 3.8 pounds or something like that, but anyways regardless today we're just going to go ahead and fill that receiver up to the three-quarter mark, because i don't like to do any more work than i have to.

What i did in this situation was when i got my refrigerant. This is an r22 system. I weighed the cylinder down there. This is a brand new cylinder with 32 pounds um.

Actually, no, it's not brand new. We've used a little bit, but uh yeah. It weighs 32 pounds that way i didn't have to bring my scale up, so i'm just gon na use what i need and then weigh it. When i go down that way, i know how much to charge the customer for so i'm gon na charge with my smart probes, okay, to charge with my smart probes, i have a quarter inch process hose with ball valves on each end.

Okay, i got a new hose here and what i did was i connected it to this side. This has active refrigerant in it and as i'm connecting it to the tank, i just crack this valve, so ever so slightly that refrigerant pressure is coming out to ensure that no air is getting into this line, then we're good to go all right. We can clearly see our liquid level now is at the three-quarter mark, so we're good to go. That's the maximum amount of refrigerant that i can safely put in this system, while still being able to pump it down at the receiver.

So we know, i know just from experience with this system that this is more than enough gas to make the system operate. Now, let me reiterate something too just because we have three quarters of the receiver full. While it's pumped down doesn't necessarily mean that's enough gas for the entire system. Uh depends on if the receiver and the condensing was sized correctly from the factory.

So you have to know that from experience all right, we got the charge correct, we're going to go ahead and wrap this guy up. Take everything apart and give the customer a big picture quote we're going to tell them they need to change the receiver. We clean the evaporator, we change the condenser fan motor, but i'm going to tell you right now again. I keep saying this in most of my videos.

My customer here is probably not going to repair this equipment. It's r22 they're going to go ahead and more than likely have us replace the condensing unit and evaporate or convert it over to 448a, but we'll see what they want to do. I just give them all the information and we're going to call this one done all right. Well, you can see that i made a mistake in that video, okay and i really really got ahead of myself.

I made an ass on myself by assuming that the direct short was in the condensing unit, because, most of the time it is okay, most of the time it's a rubbed out wire in the condensing unit, a bad contact or bad compressor. Bad condenser fan motor. So i just i don't know, i don't know what i was thinking, but i didn't check the line voltage side. Okay and obviously we had a direct short in the conduit.

Okay, it happens. You know i'm not in the habit of resetting breakers. I really don't like to reset a breaker like that and have it trip again that that's a big? No, no, because you know what happens if something catastrophic happened: okay, i've tripped mains before by um by trying to reset just a regular breaker, and it's not good. Okay, but anyways.

The whole point i want to make with these videos is just to share my mistakes and hopes that you guys don't make the same mistakes or you learn from my mistakes. Okay, i'm certainly human and make them all the time. This is one of those ones, though, where the customer called me you know, and the electrical short okay. That was a problem right.

I had to repair the electrical short, but what caused the electrical shorts see? The electrical short was just a symptom right, so my assumption is: is that the vibration of that walk-in, freezer condensing unit was what caused the electrical short, because the conduit was really strapped to the bottom of that, and i i have a feeling: that's the only thing That could have happened. The wires could have been. You know, maybe not, that great inside that conduit they could have been in a weird position to where the just the vibration over time caused an electrical short. I don't know it's really interesting.

I went ahead and repaired. It you know the short and then went ahead and changed all the condenser fan motors again, big picture diagnosis, guys going through everything, okay - and i can't stress enough - i didn't just stop there right big picture. I made an assumption, or while i had everything off, i went ahead and did a leak search because those are old units and i know that they have lots of refrigerant leaks and i did find a leak. But even before so i went ahead and checked the receiver level and found that the system was actually low on gas before it was even showing symptoms of being low on gas.

Okay, again, big picture guys, don't just assume that the first problem that you solve is the only problem. Now there could be more going on, of course, there's a point at which you have to stop right. I got a big enough list of things and i'm able to go to the customer and say: hey here's what's going on. What do you want to do now? They haven't come back with me on this one, yet they haven't decided to replace it or repair it or anything, but i did everything to the best of my ability and gave them all the information and let them make the decisions all right again.

I really really appreciate you guys taking the time to make it to the end of these videos. Okay, it it's very humbling to see all the support and the comments and everything um. It's awesome. So thank you guys.

So very much, okay really appreciate it. Uh remember. I do live streams on monday evenings at 5 p.m, pacific on youtube on my channel and then i also go live on the hvac overtime, youtube channel. There's a link in the show notes with my buddies and we kind of talk about the week and just kind of blow off some steam have a beer or two and just relax.

Okay. So definitely, if you guys are interested, come check out the hvac overtime show and uh, please, if you guys, haven't already subscribe to the youtube channel, it really does help me leave me. Some feedback give me a thumbs up a thumbs down and if you guys are interested in purchasing any tools, there's another way that you guys can support the channel the easiest way to support. It is just watch to this point, so you guys are doing awesome.

Okay, you can uh if you're interested in purchasing tools, you can go to truetechtools.com. I have an offer code. Big picture. One word if you enter that offer code on checkout you'll save eight percent on your order and if you guys know what you're going to purchase shoot me, an email and i'll generate an affiliate link, and it helps me out just a little bit more and you Still get to use your eight percent offer code, okay, really really appreciate you guys and we will catch you on the next one.