This video is brought to you by Sportland Quality Integrity and tradition. We are called on a glycol unit not working Now this is a beer. Chiller unit circulates glycol for a long draw draft system to keep the beer lines cold from point A to point B point A be in the beer Walkin all the way to the TAPS in the bar. So customer states that they just had another service technician from the beverage company out here to change a pump that it looks like he just left in the Attic cuz he didn't care.

Look at people and uh, that suction line is covered in mold. Interesting, it's not frozen because you can see the pipe right there. What the heck. And he left a bunch of rock stars and crap up here.

What people are idiots like this I don't understand people that don't clean up after themselves but he said that uh, it had a bad pump and he changed the pump but the unit still wasn't Cooling and it was all Frozen up and they said they told the manager that if uh, the pump didn't fix the problem that they needed to call the refrigeration guys cuz it's probably a bad compressor. Well I don't know. None of that really makes sense to me. I Get up here the pump is not running.

system's at 27. What the heck is going on here? So fun stuff. I'm going to climb up here but I look at the switches. Looks like the pump is off.

What is going on here? What are we doing over here? The pump was off first and foremost. doesn't look like the condensing unit switch works. That's odd. or maybe it does.

Maybe it just interrupts the control. Power But yeah, this guy there that does work. So I almost wonder if the technician just simply shut off the wrong thing. So the way that these work is, there's a glycol bath up in here with a heat exchanger in it and the pump circulates fluid across that.

This thing was running the compressor without running the pump and you can't do that. So it basically is just going to freeze up and honestly, you can actually rupture the heat exchanger. I've seen or I haven't seen it. but I've heard about it so that's something you need to be careful about.

So I'm worried. why did he leave the pump off and the compressor on? Have a feeling he flipped the wrong dip switches. So uh, compressor's off. You can see it's calling for cooling.

but I have it shut off at the switch now and I turned the pump on. So we need to circulate that warm glycol over that heat exchanger and hopefully melt any of the ice that's causing the whole freeze up inside of here. and hope that there wasn't a uh heat exchanger rupture. Get up in here and Tim control says 27 and it's not rising and I've had the compressor off for like 10 minutes.

That should be rising. Pull the reservoir off and it doesn't look Frozen up. Stick my finger in there. That is not 27.

It's more like 60. So we're going to put a thermometer up in here and see what the thermometer says the temperature of the glycol is. Yeah, it is just sitting at 54. so I don't think it's iced up.

I Also, to me, that glycol level looks low I think it's supposed to be like 2 in within the heat exchanger. but I don't know. Maybe not. actually.

No, no, that's probably right because that's the Overflow Yeah, it's a little bit low, but I wouldn't say bad. Um, not enough to have to really do anything. I Think we have a bad temperature sensor for this guy right here. Uh, it goes into like a little.

it's super tight in this attic. it's hard for you guys to see. but right up in here is a silver rod and there's a sensor that's put into that. So the sensor is in that little rod and it's definitely not 27.

So you've got this little I can't remember if this is going to leak glycol or not I unplug the unit. Oh no. Oh yeah, no, it will. e glycol Yeah, there's a feral on there and I don't have that sensor.

so no, that's not going to happen. We need to order that so there's a feral and it locks it onto that sensor and we are not going to have that guy. So what I'm going to do is we will just run the sensor and dip it into the glycol for now until we can order the proper part. So I need to run out to my van and get a uh, a dixel sensor which I have.

By the way, this unit needs to be replaced. It's horrendous. This whole thing is just trashed. Old school thing too.

I'm surprised this thing's still in operation, but um, yeah, so that sensor has a feral on the little Rod that was sticking through to kind of keep it from sealing or keep it from leaking. So um, we're not going to be able to work with that. but I'll just hook a new sensor up and run it and over and dip it into the glycol for now I Carry these sensors in my truck so all we got to do is just unplug this one. plug it in.

we'll droop it over the top temporarily. It'll be fine until we get back with the right sensor that you know runs through that housing. This is a tight space and that piece right there in my head. do not mix.

Whacked it hard. Luckily I just got a tetus shot because I hit my head in another attic and got a nail through it. All right? Well, I've got this. I'm going to put the screws back in I've got the sensor ran over and uh, we'll plug it back in here in just a sec.

All right, this may not. It may be the control. that's bad because it's back and running. Let's see if that temp goes up, may need to change the control itself.

It's better than it was, but still, that's it. Should be much higher than 37 right now cuz it's 55 in that glycol. Reservoir All right, yeah. I Think there's something going on with the control causing the problem? I Keep a universal dixel controller in my van.

So basically just plug in play I'll just pull the old one out, put the new one in, plug it in. Let's hope that fixes the problem. It's set it up as Tc2. Let's go ahead and set our set point.

so it has a auto setup mode when you. uh. okay. so we're on.

So now we're reading 40. a little more accurate. Pump motor's on, compressor's on. We're going to let it run for a few minutes, let it drop down in temp and see what it does.

We go. It's climbing in temp like it's supposed to because it's circulating the glycol and the temp's high. So all right, we're going to give it some time to come down to Temp it's going to be a while so I'm going to was it for a little bit and then as long as I see a satisfying come down a temp or get close I'll button the unit up and I'll start cleaning up all the other people's trash from up in here. So when I initially put the sensor on there, this is what I should have seen was once: I turned the pump on.

we should have seen it run up to like 52. So that's what indicated to me that there was a problem within the control itself also. So, but yeah now I've got good um feelings about this and you know, like I said, we'll just watching come down to Temp All right, it is struggling to come down the temp and it's been about 45 minutes half an hour. So so we are going to go ahead and gauge up.

Now it's getting cold. we've got a cool suction line, but I wouldn't doubt that we're a little low on refrigerant. That uh, rotor lock or that flare fitting on that compressor is all rusted out. I wouldn't be surprised if that's leaking, that's not leaking.

Um, this thing's just in pretty bad shape. The automatic expansion valve that was in here was all rotted out too. So this I'm going to tell the customer they need to replace this unit. but I'm going to uh, go get some uh probes and or service gauges and gauge up on this guy real quick.

All right, it's not horrible. this is an older unit too. Um, we're at 44. it's about 71 up here as far as pressures I've probed up to with minimal loss and I purged.

Basically put that on and purged it as I was hooking it up to the tank. So that way we know we don't have any air in the system. Um, this is 134a. So I would expect about 25 to 30 over ambient on a unit like this without weighing in the charge.

Total charge on this is only 9 oz. So uh, if it is low, it's It's just slightly low cuz we're at about 90 88 over ambient as far as condensing saturation temp. So we'll just add a little bit of refrigerant see what it does for us. It won't take much because again, total charges 9 oz on this guy, right? So every time you take off your gauges, even with probes, you're going to have a little blowback and a little the loss.

So yeah, it's expected that this thing would be just slightly low because if someone took their gauges off, you know it happens. These are older units too, so we'll just watch it for a little bit. just little bits out of time. Now you know people might ask like how do I know that I need to charge to 30 over ambient? You know it's more or less.

Um, that's a rule of thumb and you don't just use that. But because this is an older piece of junk system, we're not going to put a crap ton of effort into this. Um, again, I'm going to tell them to replace it. So I'm not going to get a scale and weigh the charge in cuz we'd have to vacuum it down and everything and we don't need to go that crazy.

This thing just needs a little bit of gas. Um, I'm already noticing it performing a little bit better. Uh, it's going to take time. They're going to have to start running their beer.

Uh, meaning they need to clear the warm beer out of the lines. Um, but we're looking a lot better as far as our saturation temps. Um, we're getting a lot closer. so we're at right at about 100 so we're just under 30 over ambient.

Uh, low side pressure? I Don't see a problem with that. about a 20 evaporator right now. That seems pretty good. No issues there.

So at this point I probably put 2 3 o of gas in it. I Think that's plenty and uh, we'll take the probes off and then, uh, just go down and have them start running some beer through the lines so all they got to do is clear all the warm beer out of the lines and this temperature will drop significantly. So I'm going to go ahead and clean up some of this stuff and organize this attic. Clean up everybody's trash.

Check this out like what is this? It's a fish tape. Like a retractable fish tape someone left up here. It's kind of cool. Throw that in my van and then there's a bunch of conduit and crap.

I'm not cleaning that up, but all right. I Cleaned it up a little bit some of the trash. Glyco units at 40 like I said, it'll take a little while for it to get down to the 28 set point. Seems like my office just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier.

There's more clutter going around. I've got too too many compress compressors stacked up that are taken apart in the background. This is turning into Dexter's Laboratory over here. So uh, Glycol unit, right? Uh, Beverage? Chiller unit.

uh. It's very common that there's like a gray area with these units where the beverage company doesn't do any refrigerant repairs Refrigeration repairs. but then they will change pumps. They will service the glycol, change the glycol lines I personally will not.

I Don't mind changing glycol every once in a while, but I usually don't stock it. It's cheaper for the beverage company to do it. but I won't run the glycol lines I Don't deal with any of that stuff so there is kind of a an overlap and they do have to be involved. But when it's getting harder and harder to find employees, right? typically on the beverage side, it's even harder for them to find employees and they're running into serious problems.

Uh, the beverage companies? I Mean they don't pay a lot of money, at least for most most technicians. I'm sure there's some technicians out there that are amazing beverage technicians and they can probably name their price. Um, just like an air conditioning in refrigeration, electricians, plumbers, there could be bad Techs in all the different trades I'm not saying that the technician that was on site on this one was a bad Tech Maybe he wasn't, you know, as as clean as I'd like him to be. Uh, maybe he made a mistake and simply just turned off the wrong switch when he was leaving.

Regardless, I was going to have to come out to fix it anyways because he doesn't deal with the electrical, the controllers, or anything like that. It is frustrating though when you get up there and it's like, yeah, he changed a pump and you're like, well, there's the pump like pick up your trash people I mean that's common sense stuff Regardless, I got up in there. Those units are always in weird, precarious locations but I got up in there I was able to diagnose it I thought it was going to be just a sensor so I tried changing the sensor that didn't fix the problem I wasn't happy with the results, went ahead and changed the whole controller and all was well now. I did did bring to the customers attention that I did a temporary install on the sensor and I recommended.

Hey, you guys really need to consider replacing this unit personally. They don't buy those units from me I Shouldn't say personally, but they don't buy those units from me they buy them from the beverage company so that's between them and the beverage company. They did tell me though, they don't want me to worry about changing the other sensor, they just want to leave what's there. Who knows.

I'll go back two years from now and it'll still be that same sensor. So hey, if it works, it works right? All I can do is give the customer the information, give them my best diagnosis, and let them make the decisions on what they want to do. So I really appreciate you making it to the end of the video. Thank you so very much constantly for coming back and watching these leave me some feedback down in the YouTube comments, tell me what you think if you haven't already, please consider subscribing to my channel.

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