This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. Today we got a dell field, actually they're, just complaining about the cold rail up here, not working they're, saying that it just stopped working over the weekend. So this one has actually had some interesting stuff done to it so um because they're in a high ambient environment, the kitchen gets really hot. We actually had to separate it used to have a single condensing unit around the top and the bottom, and we actually have the condensing unit in there running the bottom now and we added a condensing unit right here.

That runs just the top. So keep that in mind when we're troubleshooting all right, so we've got a condensing unit here with the receiver. We have a power switch right here and then um. It's got a low pressure control and a high pressure control.

We got a time clock that turns it on and off at night time, and then we have a temperature controller. That's been added back in here, solenoid valve and i'm sorry, a temperature controller and solenoid valve right here so um. First off this solenoid valve is red. Hot, so that indicates to me that the temperature controller, more than likely, is calling, but we're certainly going to go through it, and the condensed unit is not running at all.

Looking at the defrost clock, we have a green light which indicates that it's not in defrost. The time is 9. Am the time is correct. It shuts off from 1am to 4am and then just runs all day long.

You know controlled by the temperature control, we're going to open this guy up and look back in here all right. The way that we made this unit, this thing literally just pulls right off just a little cover that i had made, keep a filter media right there, filter's, not bad um condenser looks dirty, so we can slide this condensing unit out. There's no schematic for this because it's a custom unit, but i made it so and you see i got a service loop back there, um low pressure and high pressure control, interrupt line voltage to the condensing unit. So let's push the high pressure control there.

We go condenser fan motor starts right up, so we're going to start by uh watching the unit operate, we'll put some service gauges on there, we'll probably end up cleaning the condenser, but i want to see it operate first, so the sight glass cleared right up. So i don't think we're going to be low on gas. I'm still going to gauge up just to check it out. It's moving air, it's not really hot.

As it stands blowing out. I mean it's warm, but i have a feeling what happened here. You see that trash can right there. I have a feeling, they put it right there and block the condenser off.

That happens a lot in these restaurants, but we're gon na continue to go through it and we'll clean the condenser anyways. I joined the canipix family super stoked, i'm digging these so far. All right, the box is running it's coming down. Um.

The super heat is really swinging when the valve opens and closes. So typically, you want to run about six to eight degrees superheat. This is a static cold. Realm mean there's no fan motor up there.

We just have covers blocking it right now, uh, but watch the super heat. Now it's going to climb all the way up to like 25 30 and then it's going to go back down, but again the box is still pulling down in temperature right now. This is not a really accurate temperature, but it says it's 55 in there right now. If we go over here, temp control says 34, but that temp control is actually just grabbing the suction line temperature.

You can see the sensor right there. It's just grabbing the suction line temp, so it's probably set for like zero degrees or something these things. You they're not like super precise, but we're gon na. Let it run for a little bit longer.

Um. The sight glass is clear running. So that's a good sign. Um, i'm not seeing abnormally high head pressure, even though the condenser is a little bit dirty.

It's not! The end of the world, so uh, it's normal too, on these you know as far as rules of thumb, you're, probably only going to run maybe 15 degrees over ambient. Probably let's see what the condenser td is right. Now condenser td is about 14.8 yeah so and right now the evap t is 56 degrees, but again it's still pulling down. You know you got to be careful using these numbers and we're not getting a very super accurate measurement.

I've got a temperature probe underneath the pans. It's not super super highly accurate. I'm not seeing anything. That's scaring me too much right now.

Discharge line, temp wasn't too high. Sub cooling is non-existent, but it's because it has a receiver you're not going to get a really good, measurable, sub coin on this guy. So we're going to watch it run for a little bit longer and then we're going to clean the condenser and then see how that affects the performance. All right.

We are seriously stabilizing out now. So what i did was, i actually went and put empty pans in there and filled all the gaps and i've got my air probe in there. So it's about 33 degrees underneath the pans at the moment. Um everything's looking good here, 78 degree, air, uh, superheat's, still kind of the valve's opening and closing um, but it drops down to about six degrees and then it kind of goes back and forth as it stabilizes out more and more it'll calm down.

So we start by pre-rinsing, just with hot water get it wet, then we're gon na put the coil cleaner on there, so uh notice how, even though i sprayed it from the front, it's actually pulling the dirt out, as you can see dirt in that crap. It's pretty cool how it works. This is the viper condenser coil cleaner and we can uh just start rinsing it off and you'll see it pull the stuff out. It does a pretty darn good job.

If you got a really greasy environment, then i go get the viper hd cleaner out of the van, but this does a really good job. If you don't want to make a huge production out of it, and you can see the stuff's coming out of there pretty good all right, it's coming nice and clean just doing another final rinse, but you can see what a difference that condenser looks like. So this stuff does really well, while i'm here too i'm gon na go ahead and pull that guy out and clean that guy, since i'm right next to it. So another thing i want to point out is on these cold rails.

You want to see even frost patterns all the way around. You want to see it nice and even all the way across what can happen. Is these refrigeration lines there's a refrigeration line right there. It can become separated, it's usually like tack, welded or something you always want to pay attention to that even frost line.

Now, above that's going to be hard because it's affected by the ambient conditions, heat lamps and different things like that, but below you want to see even frost lines all right, this guy's looking good um we're not going to get much more out of this. The box tim's 29 degrees. The temperature control is set for zero. It's not gon na get to zero degrees in the box, because, again, that's suction line temperature.

It's currently suction line temp is 26 degrees according to that thermostat. So we use suction line temp. Just because you can't get an accurate reading on the static, but where i have my thermometer up in the top is reading what did i say, 29 degrees, so that's pretty darn close reading the suction line temp, but yeah we're looking good right now. The superheat ranges when the valve opens and closes so it's uh, usually maintaining about six degrees.

Super heat, it kind of is hunting back and forth as it's bringing the box down to temp once it like. I said earlier once it stabilizes out and gets a lot closer to set point that superheat is gon na. Just you know hang out where it's supposed to be so you're gon na see it right now, it's gon na drop down and it's gon na hang right around six eight degrees and just hang right there. So it's not like it's dropping it down to zero.

It's actually maintaining so we're looking good we're gon na call this one done. We're gon na tell the customer to make sure they don't put stuff in front of that uh. That panel and i went ahead and cleaned that one too, while i had it apart, yeah we're good to go. So that's it on this one all right, sometimes um.

It can be things that aren't as obvious as you'd. Imagine you know uh. It was really easy for me to think hey. It was just a dirty condenser, but once i put my service gauges on it before i cleaned it and you know - and it wasn't that bad um and then also the amount of heat coming out being rejected.

Out of the condenser wasn't that bad and you start to notice things the more you work on stuff. You know you, you notice that hey! If it's, if it's a dirty condenser, you notice that you know it's really hot. You know uh the heat coming out of the condenser or you know you just start to notice certain signs. Okay.

So in this situation i really don't think the problem had anything to do with the dirty condenser. I'm sure it escalated the issue a little bit, but the condenser - i don't know if you guys saw too. I really didn't point it out on the video, but you can actually see light. If you go back and look, you can see light through the condenser, even though there was some gunk.

You know some some lint and stuff on there. So i really think that what happened was the customer had pushed that trash can in front of there and caused the unit to go off on high head pressure or trip the high pressure control? Okay, once uh it's now been about a week since i did that call, we've had no more complaints. The customer was happy. Another thing i kind of wanted to point out too, is you know, cleaning the other condenser right, the one for the base section, because i already had the cover off.

I had my stuff right there. It's just something that you should. You know try to be smart and i try to be as polite as possible to these customers. In this situation i put the pan under the condenser kind of sloped it down and cleaned it.

So all the the you know the water just goes into the pan. It makes less of a mess for me to have to clean up after the fact, okay uh when it comes to these cold rail boxes too. You know a lot of people do ask questions about the cold rails. How do they work? Okay, um? It's pretty basic refrigeration right there, okay, so the refrigeration lines, the copper lines are affixed to the other side of that stainless steel.

Typically, what they do in the newer boxes, they actually affix them and then fill it with glycol. Now this is an older one. So i don't think it has the glycol bath inside of it, but um generally the cold war. There's something of fixing the copper line.

Now, if you've ever seen, one make uh made they'll, usually take like little stainless steel brackets and just kind of tack. The stainless steel brackets on the copper hold it to the wall and then um they'll fill it with some sort of an insulating foam, and then you know that's your. Your evaporator essentially is what it becomes. Okay, they're, not the most efficient in the world.

You guys noticed that i had mentioned in the video that we had it set at zero degrees for the temperature controller, okay, because of the high ambience here. This box does not work very well in the summertime. They have a hard time and a lot of times when people have these units, one of the things they try to do with the customer. You know when it hits high temps in one weird spot.

Usually it's because there's warm air radiating down and it you know, there's a heat, lamp or some sort of heat source is causing heat and it has a hard time. It needs to have that even frost all the way around so often times what the customers will do is they think they're going to solve a problem by filling that ice bath with ice cubes? Okay, that actually creates a bigger issue. The reason why they can't film with ice cubes is because an ice cube is 32 degrees right. So, even if you put water inside there, the coldest you're ever really going to get in there is 32 degrees.

It creates a problem. It acts almost as an insulator. Now, yes, i understand if it gets colder and colder and colder. Eventually it could drop below 32.

But you got to understand these boxes. They don't you know they put 40 degree food in them, okay, so, in order for the ice cubes to get below, i mean the ice that the bath, the slush or slurry. You want to call it that they end up making by putting ice and water inside that bath in order for it to get below 32 degrees, it would also have to bring the food temperature. That's in the pans below 32 degrees.

You know it just it. It never really happens so by putting ice and water in there, they actually keep the temperature higher by taking everything out. Usually the biggest issues with these cold rails is they're, not sealing the pans 100 and i'm talking even the slightest bend in the top. They have to be a hundred percent sealed.

You cannot have beat up bent pans that have little air gaps that just ruins everything it has to be completely sealed. That's an important thing, too, is, if you read any of the installation instructions from the manufacturers or the service instructions. Technically, the customer is supposed to rotate the food with new cold food every couple of hours, which is kind of ludicrous. If you think about it.

So the manufacturer that box wants the customer to put in their. You know, uh, i shouldn't say 32 degrees, but they want to put food that is below 40 degrees in the pans. But then they want them to only fill the pans up about a third of the way to a halfway, and then they want them to exchange them for fresh pans with fresh cold food in there, which creates a problem for the customers. Um with like shelf life of food and stuff, like that, because they'd be having to take a pan, that's been you know sitting there with.

You know some food in it put it down in the bottom. It just creates an issue but um. You know the biggest issue i see with these. Is the customer not putting the food in the top correctly coming up? I have one restaurant that uh had these brackets made, so they can store bottles of ketchup and different vinegars and different things like that.

So they have like a stainless steel flat plate that fits right in the spot of a pan, and then it has holes in it and they just set bottles in there. Well, then, all that air is escaping out of the box. It's it's just a nightmare. So these things to be honest with you - are horrible: they they're not efficient whatsoever, they're a pain in the butt um.

I prefer the older style uh that had the fan motor kyrak made them um, but those were inefficient because they had a lot of repair issues. They were the best at maintaining product temperatures, but they just had lots of service issues drains being plugged up fan motors going bad units icing up that kind of thing. So it's it's a constant battle with these. Now there is some new technology in some of these kyrak makes a new box that doesn't have a fan motor in the cold rail, but they circulate glycol.

They maintain a consistent temperature on the glycol. Those are a little bit nicer. This particular manufacturer of this box is del field. They have a new technology that they actually filled the cold wrap with glycol, but it's not being circulated.

It's just glycol sitting in there. It works a little bit better than this particular one. That's here, but anyways, i'm rambling. I really really appreciate you guys making it to this point in the video uh.

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I want to give hints, but i can't uh it'll, be a cool video, some people. Some people are going to be very, very happy at the end of the video, because uh yeah they're just going to be very, very happy so stay tuned for that video. Okay, guys really really appreciate you guys and we will catch you on the next one.