I wanted to make an announcement on a video um. The hvacr tools youtube channel is now live and active myself and the overtime crew adam joe and bill are going to be doing tool. Reviews on that channel not to mess with the vibe of this channel. So you'll see full tool.

Reviews on the hvacr tools, youtube channel there'll, be a link in the show notes of this video, but please go check it out. You can also follow us on our social media platforms on facebook, uh instagram. It's hvacr tools, it's simple! As that, okay, so please go check it out and give us some support. We want to try to build that channel up and grow it, and you know you guys can give us a hand all right.

Also, if you haven't already check out my website, hvacrvideos.com merch available on there and you can help to support the channel that way. So this video that i'm going to play today is actually a recorded video from back in june of 2020. So that'll make sense as to why we're in march and i'm talking about 96 degree temperatures, although here in southern california, i expect us to hit 96 degree temperatures within a month or so, but we're still kind of tailing off from our our fake 50 degree. Winter.

Right now, so that should give you some context. Let's get on with the video. This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. Look at these filters completely plugged last change february.

Look at these ones! These ac's all need to be cleaned badly, but yeah. These are plugged too all right. We are having cooling complaints with the acs. We've got a kitchen.

Well, the whole entire kitchen's hot is what they're telling us. So i was here yesterday working on a glycol unit and i came up here. You notice it's dirty, but it's really dirty inside. So i came up yesterday.

Actually did it again, this stage is not running. I can feel cool air blowing out of there and hot air blowing out of here. So that indicates to me that we've got one compressor that is down, so i reset it yesterday temporarily and got that got it running, but i don't know how long it lasted, but today we're gon na start by cleaning the unit just because i know it needs To be clean, uh, i pulled the filters out yesterday, so we're gon na do this for two different acs. We've got an office ac right here too, it's not horrendous, but it's actually pretty dirty.

It's just got grease all over it. So we're going to clean and sanitize the evaporator we're going to clean this unit up we'll give them a list of things. They obviously need a metal mesh filter and then also yesterday, i found that this evaporative cooler, the makeup air for the kitchen. The water pump wasn't running well, actually, the water pump was running, but what happened was the pump basket and i'll show it a little bit later.

The pump basket was all dirty, so it wasn't allowing any water to get to the pump itself. So i just pulled it out: cleaned the basket quickly, not thoroughly just quickly and got it running, so we can get them some cooling, the biggest thing that started all this was when i was working on the glycol unit. It had tripped on high head pressure and it's a little self-contained region downstairs, and i noticed the entire time i was working on. It ended up being a bad compressor and a bad temp control, but the entire time i was working on it.

I noticed it was really hot in the kitchen, so we got our authorization we're going to clean these guys up now, all right we got the top pulled off of both units um this one right here. If you come over here, see it's pretty dirty pretty dirty down in there. We haven't cleaned this in about a year as far as the splitting the coils, so splitting the coils is not part of our normal preventative maintenance. Customers don't want to pay for splitting coils.

So when they have, you do pms majority of the time they just want you to clean the surface. We always give them the option, but they don't ever want to pay for that. Rpms are usually you know, we quote them and they're all set prices. So this guy's kind of greasy too so we're going to clean this, and we went ahead and pulled the blower assembly for this one because it was pretty dirty.

Look at all the uh belt dust. That's in here it's kind of silly how much there is um. I'm gon na go ahead and pull this blower assembly too. It's got quite a bit of gunk build up.

I have two people here, so normally it's hard to pull one this big, but since i have two people, we're gon na knock this out. We're spraying cleaner on this one right here right now, getting through from both sides, nice and good um yeah. So we're getting long all right - we're definitely going to vacuum this, but this gives us the ability to get to the other side of the drain pen that doesn't get cleaned usually and we're going to clean this guy super thoroughly. So i've shown this a bunch of times but we're using the venom pack um.

We already used some of this cleaner, but we only filled it up about an inch. Okay and we've already got this whole ac. We haven't done the evaporator yet, but we've done both blower assemblies, they're soaking in cleaner right now and then we're going to rinse them so that stuff lasts a long time. I really dig this stuff because this you know you take one thing up and you can clean so many coils and you don't got to carry gallons and gallons.

Like that's my coil cleaning bucket lately, it's got evap cleaner, sanitizer, all that stuff. So all right we're still moving along we're going to get some cleaner on this ac. Now, all right so before i put cleaner on this coil. The first thing you do is rinse the big debris off, get the coil really wet with just normal water.

Try to rinse out any big debris then put the cleaner on. So that way, the cleaner has a nice smooth surface to glide across we're going gon na do the same thing for the evaporator too. I'm spraying this stuff on i'm going a little i'm using the b setting, which is you know, um the second least amount of cleaner being used. I guess is the right way to say it so uh, i'm just gon na get it on there liberally spray it from all sides and then we'll.

Let it sit for 10 minutes again. This stuff will not eat the condenser away, so the it works by letting it sit for a while um and it breaks everything down and then everything will rinse out really good and you know sometimes, if you have a really really greasy coil, you might have to Go higher concentrations, you know all right. Some of the grease the evaporator was pretty greased up, so i had to get some of the brightener, which is a big time. Heavy duty cleaner.

You got to be careful, it's non-acid, but still got to be careful but um yeah, i'm using that and it's coming coming good um. You got to be very careful, but you can see the grease is really coming out of there now. So we're gon na keep going at it got some on that coil too, look at the stuff coming out of the evaporator. It's pure black, because this is all grease, we're having to put some uh of their brightener on there, because the customer just has a greasy kitchen.

So this is the last last resort. You typically don't want to use this in the occupied space, and you also got to be very careful not to let the customer breathe this. I rinsed off all the heavy duty cleaners and we're spraying the evaporator cleaner on there it'll give it a nice smell and it foams up really good too surprisingly, even after all the heavy duty cleaners, the evaporator cleaners pulling stuff out of the coil too. So we're almost done look at the chunks of stuff that are coming out of that right now from the evaporator cleaner.

It's doing a really good job, too of pulling all that gunk out. So we're just about done rinsing the evaporator. The last thing we're going to do is spray some sanitizer on there, so i've got the viper strike back sanitizer we're just going to spray this on and you're not going to rinse it this. I can't you know, i don't know i'm on the commercial side, i'm not really selling this to my customers, but it's just kind of a cool thing to tell them that when you were all done, you sanitized it.

You know all right last bit we're going to spray sanitizer on this one and then just let it stay on there just spray it on anything that we're touching as we're putting it together, we'll spray it on just peace of mind, like i said this guy right Here and again, this is their strike back. Sanitizer comes in a concentrated thing and you just put a few pumps or i think it's one and a half pumps. I think fire. No, it's two pumps.

I have to look at the instructions, but you just got ta read the instructions and then you fill it up with water, we're putting this back together and uh. The old zip ties had the little hook, chinguses that would go through and when they go bad. What you can actually do is just cut off the old, zip tie and still use the ratcheting part, and a new zip tie will go right through that. So then you can still secure everything all right see.

This is what i'm talking about. So it goes nice and secure nice and secure and i'm doing everything i can to keep the electrical lines from rubbing out. So we'll cut all the ends off and everything all right. We got both the units running.

All compressors are running on this. There's lots of things i want to do this. Condenser fan motor doesn't belong in here. These things are rotted out.

We taped them up for now. I'd love to change that, but you know the customer only wants to spend so much money. If it's working, they don't want to change it same thing on this one. This uh fan motor is the wrong fan motor and it's sitting way too far down.

I know it doesn't look like it's running right, but it is i'd. Love to change that fan motor too, but again, if it's working, you know the customer's not going to do it uh so they're both running right. Now this one's been running for about a half an hour, i'm going to go ahead and hook up measure quick to it. Let this one run for a while and stabilize and uh we'll make sure this, i'm sure they're going to be fine.

Now that we cleaned them up but i'll check it all out all right, my unit's been running for a while right now and here's what i'm seeing refrigerant pressures. Let me show you how i have it: profiled we've got a package unit 5 tons r22, approximately 10 to 12 seer, that's kind of what i think, all right. We're going to hit submit we're going to go through the numbers. So right now, we've got high suction line.

Temp high super heat sub cooling equation to measure quick, is on point. It's a little bit high for my uh comfort, i'd like to see that sub cooling a little bit lower personally liquid line. Temp is okay. Saturation temp on the evaporator is a little bit cold.

I would expect it it's pretty warm inside and it's pretty warm outside, so about 35 degree, evaporator seems kind of low to me. Let's keep scrolling through outdoor air is just under 90 degrees. Discharge line temp is pretty good on point all right. We got a 23 degree temperature split just under 2 000 cfm's of airflow.

Approximately that looks pretty good to me. Um. This isn't looking completely horrible btu output's about 53 000., a little bit low, okay, so um i'll pull up diagnostics. But i kind of think that the unit is looking like it might be a little low on charge and that sub cooling is a little bit high and i believe the reason.

Why is because our condenser coil is damaged and that condenser fan motor is sitting too low? The fan blade is not in the shroud properly and i think we're recirculating some of the discharge air, but we are going to try to bring the superheat down just a little bit, we're going to add a little refrigerant. Now, let's pull up measure quick diagnostics, suction line temperature, too high system may be undercharged with refrigerant and there may be a restriction, um dirty condenser non-condensables that again messed up condenser. So this unit's not going to be perfect. We're going to try putting a little bit refrigerant in there get the superheat down, get the suction line, temp down just a little bit and we'll see where that gets us all right.

We're going to add a little gas to this bad boy and get that superheat down a little bit, so you got to do it slowly because you don't want to over charge it. So it's a little bit out of time. Remember we were calling for about five degrees. Super heat probably gon na leave it about there, but let's let it run for a little while and see how it operates all right at this point, um it's acting kind of interesting, see how my super heat's fluctuating like that.

That's a little bit scary, almost like there's non-condensables in there, but i don't think there is um. I i put a compressor in this like a year and a half ago and nobody, i don't think, has worked on it since me. This is interesting. We've been seeing a lot of those dirty units like that, okay, and even though this was recorded back in june of 2020, it's still the same.

You know every restaurant i go to units are just filthy like that. It's really important using the whole big picture thing. Don't get tunnel vision, don't go in there, just just assuming things. You know you really got.

Ta start over right, even if you've been servicing the restaurant for a very long time, you got ta start with the basics. Airflow is king on these units. If you don't have proper airflow, everything is gon na, be out of whack, okay and understand something too even measure quick when it does airflow it's an estimation. Okay, so you can't take it.

You know, for you know to be a hundred percent. You know highly highly accurate, i mean it's good, but you just got to kind of look at everything. Don't just assume all right, so we got the units cleaned up. We had to start there and we make observations as we're going along.

The condensers are all damaged. Really bad the the condenser fan motors are the incorrect motors. You know the wires are sticking out and in some cases the the stack on the motor is too big. So the fan blade's not sitting in the shroud properly.

You know all that stuff comes into play, and you have to remember that when you're trying to diagnose now on the ac7, the small one that i was showing on measure quick now that one had some interesting stuff going on with it. Okay and i didn't catch the footage uh on film, but i actually talked to the customer and told them like hey. You know what i'm really leaning towards a plugged up metering device, because this unit has a fixed, orifice header, very notorious on these carrier units for plugging up um. But at the same time, we also had that condenser fan motor that was incorrect and not sitting in there correctly.

Not you know putting the fan blade in the shroud. The condenser is also highly damaged. Okay, so i went ahead and gave the customer a quote to put a new condenser fan motor in there go back with the oem motor and blade and then also to change the the the liquid header, basically with the fixed, orifice metering devices in it, and they Have never approved that so that unit still stands and i'm sure i'll get another video, so i'll get another service call on it. Here come into the cooling season as we're coming out of our fake winter um in california, i should say: okay, fake winter, i'm not you guys, know what i mean, but i'm sure i'll get another call on it and we'll probably have another video.

Sometimes the customers. Don't always go for the big picture: repair right, those liquid uh meter or those fixed orifice metering, device, headers, they're kind of a pain in the butt to change, especially on those small units um. Actually, i've never changed. One.

I've tried to clean them before, but i mean it just getting in there. It's going to be a pain in the butt because you got to cut them individually, then braise them all on. It's it's a whole process, but it's doable. But again this customer hasn't made that decision um.

They just basically told us they wanted to leave it be because you know they made it through the rest of the summer and it did okay. But things like that. You know the unit may still operate, but what's it gon na lead to it's gon na lead to compressor failures and different things like that? Okay, if it's running in those bad conditions like that, so you have to uh, understand that and remember that, and it's also best to keep good notes of the equipment so that way uh you can um. Remember that you know a year from now when i go to service it again, all right.

Also another thing when you guys see - and i explain it sometimes, but sometimes i don't explain it in the videos on these carrier units and a lot of other units. You can't just get fixated on a super heat and a sub cooling number again. You have to look at the big picture and you have to remember something okay, this unit, if you guys, are familiar with the carrier units, they do not have a liquid line. Pressure.

Tap you're getting discharge pressure so that sub cooling number is skewed: okay or there's only a few package units that actually come with a liquid line pressure tap. So you can't just always aim for a sub cooling when you're. Looking at these, you have to be able to think about it and be like. Why is that sub cooling number so weird? Oh, you know that's discharge line pressure and there's a pressure drop once the refrigerant goes from the compressor's discharge line through the condenser before it gets to the meter device.

There's a pressure drop right there, okay and that pressure drop is gon na make the liquid line pressure, uh lower and therefore change your sub coiling, so important things to think about when you're diagnosing these units - okay, hopefully this uh was a cool video for you guys. I really really appreciate you making it to the end. Please. If you haven't already consider subscribing to the hvacr tools, youtube channel help us to grow that channel, so that we can really start to uh produce more content on there.

Okay, there's also a patreon page for the hvacr tools, youtube channel. Just look in the show notes. You guys can help to support the tools channel and help us to get some new cool tools to talk about. Okay really appreciate you and we will catch you on the next one: okay,.