These higher end units. When they're working properly, you have the ability to put the units into test mode. You can jump them out from on the roof, but if you jump from the roof, if you put it in test mode, you're not testing the thermostat system I very easily. Could have just ran jumpers on this unit and been like yeah, it's working I Don't know what to tell you guys, you know always do it from the thermostat.

Once you're sure that the thermostat is working, then you can come up here and start troubleshooting jumping things out. But do your best to make sure that you're always testing the full systems operation looking at the big picture and then start using tools that help you take shortcuts. If you choose to do so, this video is brought to you by spoilin quality, integrity and tradition. Well, we have a complaint of Kitchen AC not working properly.

Actually, they put it in as the makeup air units not cooling their makeup. Again, it doesn't have any cooling, it's it's just 100 outside air. Um, so we're going to look into the kitchen ACS Now this particular kitchen AC right here I Have a history with actually I have a history with both of these. This is the one a while back.

Smoke detector was wired to 240 volts. Um, fan shrouds broken this kitchen AC Right here there's two kitchen. ACS This one had a bad condenser coil I Believe it has a leak in the one of the stages and one of them has already been repaired before. Um, they were supposed to be replacing this AC throughout the last year and clearly they never did.

Um, now they're complaining that it's not working again now. I did get them running, it was operating but just not. you know with all stages. but I don't know if there's more wrong with it.

I think I had to change a condenser fan motor on it too. I'm fuzzy though because it was like a year two years ago. Something like that. So I'm going to look at these two because they're both the kitchen.

ACS We're going to see what we can find. Clearly nobody's really been up here. There's spider webs everywhere. We just recently were up here changing belts on exhaust fans and I believe we changed the belts on it.

one of the ACs I don't know if it was kitchen or not, but yeah, let's get into it. Um I'm gonna put them both into test mode and get them fired up and see what we can figure out. Oh this is the small one. first one and it has, uh, nothing going on at this board.

Don't know if it has power or not. see what's going on in here? This Guy's in the on position. They have a filter changing company that changes filters. They were changed June something or other so this guy isn't running.

Let's go look at this guy. What's going on with this guy? Uh, open this guy up. This guy has power. It says compressor one low pressure S87 That's probably the one that has the leak in the condenser coil.

That's the only active error code at the moment. All right. I Opened up the disconnect switch to see if we had power in here. I Was thinking that, uh, we didn't have power, but we do.

We have 208. Let's check three phase and line one two, three, line two to three. And the last but not least, so we have three phase power coming into this disconnect switch. Let's see if we've got it going out.

Yep, that's out. Okay, we have. Wait, let me make sure that was a little. Yeah, we have proper three-phase power coming out of the disconnect switch.

so we've got no power going to The Prodigy board. Now if I Remember right again, it was a year and a half two years ago. Something like that. It was.

a while back someone had a really big low voltage fuse in here. Don't know if that has anything to do with this problem we're having today or not. I Put the right size fuse in there. I'm gonna put this cover back on and we'll continue troubleshooting.

You know what? I'm sitting here thinking about it. This is not a kitchen. AC Because they have a dining room, they have a bar and they have this little kitchen. AC So this is only the kitchen right here.

that makes more sense. Um, this is a 10 ton unit so it's a 120 on the Linux model number 120 000 BTUs So divide that by 12 000 BTUs you get 10 ton unit. so this one right here. We're not even going to worry about this one right now because that's not what they're asking me for.

and we're crazy busy right now so I'm not really reaching for work. Um, so we're going to dig into this a little bit more. These silly lights are inconvenient and look at it. it's actually full of water.

Silly. Kind of useless. really. All right.

Well let's dig into here we have behind this guy. Right here is Transformer and all that stuff. I Got to get all these spider webs out of my way. So our next step is to check to see if the Transformer has voltage.

All right. I Took this panel and just pushed it down so I can actually see inside here. Um I Pulled this cover off just to be able to look and we actually have a heartbeat indicator on the board. so that kind of implies there might just be a problem with the display.

but I don't know for sure. the next thing we need to do I Don't know if I can do this without everything falling off. That might work. We need to get in here.

We need to check that fuse and then check to see if we've got 24 volts. Okay, I Took the light off also because it was annoying me in my way. Unhooked it. All right? So let's go from R to C.

That'll tell us if we have 24 volts. r C Hard to see we have 27 volts. Is our Transformer Taps Wrong? No, it's not. But all right.

Um, so we've got proper voltage coming into the unit. Transformer is good. What about the fuse? Let's see if our fuse is blown. So I'm going to test across the fuse and we have nothing.

That is a good sign. If I go from each side of the fuse to ground, we should have 24 volts. So I'm pretty confident that fuse is good and there's not a problem there. Let's see if I can do this, you'll have to just believe me.

I'm going to test it right now. All right. there's nothing wrong with the fuse. It's not blown so fuse is good.

So our issue is the customer says they don't have proper Cooling and this guy doesn't have a display but we don't know that the unit's not working. I Need to go down and look at their thermostat system. Let's go see their thermostat and see if it's calling for cooling at the moment. Well, I don't know why, but the thermostat was turned off I'll throw up an image right now.

So I turned the thermostat back on. Came up here and it's calling for Y1. Looks like the indoor fan is running and Y1 is running Y2 is not running yet. We're gonna let it do its thing naturally.

Now let's talk about something. these higher end units when they're working properly, you have the ability to put the units into test mode. You can jump them out from on the roof, but if you jump from the roof, if you put it in test mode, you're not testing the thermostat system I very easily could have just ran jumpers on this unit and been like yeah, it's working I Don't know what to tell you guys, you know always do it from the thermostat. Once you're sure that the thermostat is working, then you can come up here and start troubleshooting, jumping things out.

But do your best to make sure that you're always testing the full systems operation looking at the big picture and then start using tools that help you take shortcuts if you choose to do so. Now one thing I will say while we're waiting is I only see one condenser fan motor running I Don't see two of them running. This one right here is just moving because that one's moving. So I am gonna while I'm waiting for the second stage to come on.

I'm going to open this up and we're going to test voltage to this motor to see if there's something wrong with it. I Don't even have to test voltage for this one. Look right there. one of the wires is broken off the motor and it's just down below the terminal connector.

Now another thing is, this unit's vibrating pretty bad. We've got broken shrouds up in there which I've told them about. sorry about the flashing seizure warning. Seizure warning.

Um, they've got broken shrouds on this unit. So I'm gonna have to take the side panel off and we're going to get in there and see if we can get this motor back up and running before. I shut it down I Threw some thermometers in here just to get a quick reference. We have a 53 degree Supply It's only been running for about five minutes and we have a 76 degree return, so that's a pretty good indication that the unit is doing something.

Obviously we're down a condenser fan motor though, so let's go ahead and kill the power to this guy and then we'll uh, we'll come over here and pull this side panel off and have a look at this motor. Now the unit's vibrating too. I Bet you it's the indoor blower motor. I Bet you there's something off with that, but we'll dig into that in a minute.

Let's get this side panel off and see if we can get this condenser family to restart it. Looking in here, you can see we just have a broken off wire. So I'm gonna get a new connector. We'll slide it on there see if we can get this guy to run.

That's interesting. I Just turned it back on. Now the board has a display on it I Never cared for these Prodigy One controllers. They were always a pain.

This is the White Version Uh, the newer version The Prodigy 2 was much easier. There was a lot of quirks with this version. Lots of issues. these displays would be messed up all the time.

It was just a pain in the butt. All right. So we're waiting for this guy to turn back on I redid all the electrical connections for every one of the wires because they were all just disintegrated and we're gonna see if this guy starts up and then we'll finish troubleshooting from there. All right.

Um what? I did look at the back of this board. there's a bunch of corrosion. So what I suspect happened is someone left this door open at one point and it rained inside here and it ruined this because this thing says it's acting like I need to set up the board like it's brand new. but then I once I set it up it goes back and says guy did set up again.

It keeps taking you through that like it's stuck in a boot loop or something but it's still functioning. The unit's still working this uh, 2032 battery I tested it. It has the right voltage so the battery is not dead so there's just something going on. One of the problems with these units is you never know where the problem lies.

Is it the main board and the programming? or is it the the add-on display. Obviously, it's cheaper to order the add-on display and then try that, but it also sucks to have to go back and forth. Um, if I go right here. One condenser fan motor is running .96 the other one's running 0.95 They're both allowed to run like 2.4 so they're running under current.

Don't see a problem there. Both of them are running now. The unit does out of a pretty good death wobble going to it though. pretty strong, but both of them are running and moving air.

I Gotta put all the rest of the screws back in. Um I Guess what I'll do is uh, finish troubleshooting the unit. Uh, we'll get measure quick. dialed up on it and all my probes and stuff.

We'll check the belt see how that's doing. The units seem to run pretty well. What I ended up doing was I was able to get the board to respond uh from the display and I was able to get into test mode. First off, I went into the history.

it's very inaccurate it it just says bad Display: basically no display. So I went into test mode and I turned on just the indoor blower assembly. Okay, with just the indoor blower assembly, this whole unit is still shaking pretty bad. The panels are running The Blower's out of balance but we're going to keep going.

We'll turn that off and it's good to turn off. If I can there we go. I Turned the blower off. Now let's just turn the fans on.

So I'm going to go in here. Oh sorry, you guys can't really see what's going on here. This display is kind of wonky. Fans Fan Number one turned it on.

Foreign running the unit's vibrating. It's hitting the Shroud too, but it's actually not vibrating. too bad, maybe a little bit. I Turned on the other condenser fan motor and it's not vibrating nearly as much.

It's very minimal. The vibration actually seems to be coming from the indoor blower motor and from this condenser fan motor and blade. So so far because the vibration from the indoor blower motor is something's out of balance in there. I'll check the belt, but it looks like it's something's out of balance and then this guy is going to need at least this guy a new condenser, fan, motor and blade to stop the vibration from this one.

And then we're going to need shrouds for each side. Um, but we're going to keep going. I'm going to turn the whole unit off right now. and then we're going to test the we're going to look at the blower assembly and see if anything's funky at that.

In with the blower, power's off, the pulleys worn out, but the Belt doesn't seem to be getting stuck in it. but there's something out of balance in the blower. The blower looks very dirty. Oh yeah, totally gummed up.

but I'm not going to go through the hassle of chain of pulling that blower assembly out. It's a pain in the butt. It slides, but it's a pain. Um, with something that bad.

And if it's been vibrating so long, when you start to get vibrations and blower assemblies, they can actually ruin themselves. Sometimes when you go to clean them, then they'll just vibrate. Even worse, it's it's kind of weird. Um, so yeah, they got some problems here.

But all right, well, it's working. Um, we know that they need a lot of stuff. This unit is beat down too. and I actually this customer.

they probably wouldn't even approve the quote to fix it. they're they're like, now, let's just change it. Um, but yeah, let me get my probes and we're gonna probe up on this guy and see if the refrigeration circuit's working. All right.

We've been running for a few minutes. Um, first stage is not looking bad at all. This is a 410A system. Um I mean 90 degrees outside? We're not looking bad.

Okay, let's go to second second stage. I Mean it's not horrible. Super eats a little bit on the low side, but uh, subcoins a hair on the high side. Remember, we're using discharge pressure though.

I'm not too scared Away by much. That also for the superheat. I Have my uh my probes because of the orientation. They're a little bit close to the evaporator so it's it's going to be a little bit colder.

Um I'm not seeing anything that's scaring me temp split. It's a little on the high side, but it's calling for 22 so that's not too bad delivered. Capacity is right on the money. Uh, I'm not seeing anything wrong with this unit other than the crazy vibrations that we're seeing on everything.

For everybody that's asking. The software that I'm using is Measure Quick. It's software that works with a bunch of different tool platforms I happen to be using the fields jobbling probes if you're interested. These jobling probes are pretty awesome.

I Do like them. If you're interested in purchasing any of the tools that you see me using majority of the time, you can find them at Truetechtools.com If you go to Truetechtools.com and use my offer code big picture on most of the items on their website, you can get an eight percent discount and when you use my offer code I get a small commission. doesn't cost you anything extra and it helps to support the channel. A good majority of the tools that I use can be found at Truetechtools.com So um I mean the unit's working so first and foremost it was off of the thermostat I don't know who turned it off.

They do have internet controlled thermostats. They have a company that monitors them. It's possible that the company that the condenser fan motor over here that was bad was causing the unit to go off on high pressure and then the company I've seen this happen where they don't see a big change in the cooling for the unit, so they'll just shut it off. Um, who knows.

Okay, so I turned the thermostat back on and then saw that this fan motor wasn't working. Was able to fix an electrical connection and the unit's working after that, but it has a lot of problems. This left condenser fan motor has a vibration in it with the blade and the motor somewhere. Both of the shrouds for both condenser fan motors are bad.

The indoor blower assembly is vibrating pretty bad. The display is bad. Possibly an issue with the board. Um, this unit's just beat down.

Just beat down. It's got an improper trap, it's just a mess, but it's functional and it's working. So my job is done for today. I'm not going to spend too much more time.

Uh, we'll let the customer know. Um, you know. Honestly, these guys don't like to repair these units very much. They really like to replace them.

so I'll give them quotes and see where they want to go with this. But uh, that's pretty much going to be it on this one. I Was in and out of here before it got too hot. It's only uh 9 40 in the morning, so on to the next one where I'm sure it's going to be a lot warmer so really appreciate you making it to the end of the video.

Thank you so much and we'll catch you in the closing words: I Can only do what my customers want me to do and if they don't want to spend a bunch of money, you know it's what it is. So I gave them all the information I still don't know why the thermostat was turned off when I got there. Okay but what? I have seen on some of these the the restaurants that have the building automation systems or the energy management systems. uh I have seen where the people that monitor the systems sometimes when they don't see a change in temperatures or a big enough change in temperatures.

I've seen where they'll shut the units off I don't know I guess the manager could have shut the unit off I thought when this restaurant had these thermostats installed I thought the whole purpose was so that way someone else could control the temperatures. so I I didn't think that the managers had the ability to take the thermostat and turn it to system off, but maybe they do I don't know, but we don't just stop at the thermostat being turned off next. I Made a little public service announcement at the beginning of the video. You always want to be careful about jumping things out.

This is a pet peeve of mine if you're going to use jumpers. If you're going to use anything to make your job faster and easier. Shortcuts: Stuff like that, you need to know that sometimes there can be consequences to those shortcuts. If you're using decade boxes or jumper boxes or jumper wires, instead of testing out the thermostat, you could very easily miss the the actual problem, which is a bad thermostat, right? So it's very possible.

So be cautious about just putting a unit into test mode or just taking a jumper box and jumping the unit out. now. I Believe that, you know I Use jumpers all the time. as long as I know that the thermostat is working.

Okay, okay, so if you're going to use decade boxes or jumper boxes or anything like that, um, you know that's fine, but just make sure you know that you should always be testing the control system before you start using that stuff. Okay, and if you guys want to know what a decade box is, it's it's you can use them as jumper boxes, but you can also use them to, um, basically simulate certain resistance values for fancy. Control Systems Uh, on some of the older train systems and things like that, you could use decade boxes to kind of simulate different resistance values. but anyways, that's a whole other thing.

Just Google Search Decade boxes if you're interested in that. Um, you know, just going through this right? So once I found the condenser fan motor wire I didn't stop there once I found the thermostat was off I didn't stop there. It's all about looking at the big picture within reason. Okay, I Understand that you know you can't just tear the entire building apart right within budget.

You want to look at the big picture. Give the customer the best value you can give them right. Give them the best bang for their Buck They're paying good money. They should be paying really good money for you to be coming out to that job site.

So therefore, you should be giving them something that's worth their money, right? So important? Um, of course. But again, you need to make sure you're charging enough for your time. Don't be giving away your services for free, right? So I did my best I came up with a big picture quote and then I just presented the information to the customer. Now my suspicion is that uh, they're either not going to do anything at all or they're going to replace the unit.

Okay, but you know I just have to wait for them to approve the quotes or deny the quotes or reject them or whatever. and let them be the people that make decisions. Okay, that's all that I'm doing is just giving them information and giving them the prices and then letting them make the decisions. All right.

Hey uh, if you're interested in supporting the channel, there's a couple different ways you can do so. the easiest way is simply just watch the videos from beginning to end. Okay, that's the easiest way. If you want to support the channel financially, you can do it through: PayPal Patreon YouTube Channel memberships I Mentioned in the video you can go to Truetechtools.com I have an offer code Big picture One word: use that.

You get an eight percent discount on majority of the items on their website and when you use that offer code I get a small commission helps to support the channel. Another great way to help support the channel if you're interested in doing so is going to my website Hvacrvideos.com We have merchandise available. we have hats available. This is the hat that I wear every day.

It's a flex fit, curved bill. Um, very breathable material actually. I Was working today and it was really hot outside. It just soaked the Hat through it on my head.

The only thing you got to be careful about soaking hats, especially when they're black, is they can start to pull assaults out of your skin. and it can stain the hat with salts because your body can be full of them. so just be careful about that. If you're walking around, you don't want to be wetting these things all the time.

They're not meant to be like cooling towels, although they are kind of nice when it's really hot. If you just like. My hat had fallen over in the on the roof today and got all dirty. so I was like I gotta wash it off So I wash it off under the hose bib and then threw it on my head and I was like oh that's kind of nice you know? so that's kind of cool.

But just be cautious if you are going to get these wet because of the color they will start to. If you do it often, it'll start pulling the salt out of your skin so just be wary. Um, we got a couple other designs on the hats. We have the flat bill hat.

We have the dad hat. that's like a relaxed fit for the bald guys or if you have a really short forehead that'll be good for you. For me, this hat doesn't fit because I have a really tall forehead and it just doesn't quite look right on me. Well my buddy Bill Russell really likes this hat.

So um yeah, Hvacrvideos.com if you want to support the channel and that is pretty much it. Uh, remember that I go live on the HVAC overtime YouTube channel with my friends typically Friday evening about 605 PM Pacific That is a very, very uncensored show, so be weary if you are into the Clean Cut content like you see on this channel all the time. Uh, and you don't like you know edgy content then you probably don't want to check out the overtime show. But if you're open to all that stuff, definitely come give it a a watch on the HVAC Overtime YouTube channel Friday Evening 605 p.m Pacific Uh, that's it I Really really do appreciate you all.

Thank you very much for all the support. Leave me some feedback down in the comments. Let me know what you think and that is it. We will catch you on the next one.