Come over to this unit, it's got a 10 amp fuse in it. Man, lazy people, good grief. Right i mean again. I know i should be thankful that this person's giving me work, but my gosh, this video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition.

All right, today's call um is gon na, be i kind of have an idea what i'm walking into, but we got a service call that they um had a thermostat fall off the wall: okay, i'll pop up a screenshot of it right now. Well, in fact, that is not a thermostat okay, they have internet controlled thermostats here they use a bayweb system and the thing that's missing is actually just kind of a human interface. It's really just logged into the bay web system with a custom dashboard made. So it really doesn't offer much control, so the customer didn't realize that that really doesn't do a whole lot, other than kind of let them monitor, system temperatures and stuff.

Now um i have, i should have access. It's been at least a year since i've logged into this system. Hopefully i can still get into it um, but i can already tell you that it's been months and months since i've been up on this roof, you've got a lid to an exhaust fan right there. I can guarantee you we're to have plugged up belts or uh plugged up filters, broken belts, i mean look at this.

10 20 was the last time those filters were changed and uh they're plugged, so the panel's laying on the ground the winds blow everything off this. This happens in this area because we have high winds and everything so we're just going to go through the acs. I'm going to do kind of a triage, just kind of assess. What's going on, they said the entire dining room they didn't realize they have so many acs up here.

So we're just gon na kind of assess the situation, get a running list and then we'll start tackling problems again. I can guarantee you we're gon na have to clean everything belts all that stuff. So i'm just working my way through these units and uh, i put them all into heat mode, and i'm just you know troubleshooting. I think two of them turned on the rest of them aren't so i just come over and i'm troubleshooting a few things going into the thermostat wiring testing to see.

If we have a call for heat, we don't just kind of observing things, and i come over here and this catches my eye, that's a 15 amp fuse on the control board. Um yeah, that's supposed to be a 5 amp fuse. We don't do that kind of crap come on people. I ended up getting all the heaters to fire up.

It was just a matter of uh getting the thermostats to work correctly, so once i got them all to fire up, we know that they work now we're gon na go through and clean up the units. I've already got the customer's permission, we're going to go ahead and clean the units up belts filters all that good stuff clean the condensers too, which they actually don't. Look that dirty even the evaporators um they're, not that dirty i mean they could use a good rinse, but that's about it. I don't think we're gon na have to get crazy with cleaners and stuff on the evaporators uh, but filters definitely haven't been changed since uh october of 20 and we're now right now in march of 21.

So it's been a few months, i'm just taking a a list of things. So i open this unit up um belt's loose, it's kind of worn, rounded out in weird ways. It's kind of dirty too pulley, pulleys worn out, not the greatest. I mean i guess it doesn't have to be changed today, we'll give them the option on that one.

But this uh mixed air temperature sensor is just laying down on the bottom right there. So we're gon na have to get them a new mixed air temperature sensor and figure out what happened here. I don't know if it just a belt broke or something it's kind of weird um. So all that i'm doing from these ac's is just kind of getting an idea, we're going to come back with filters and clean the units up.

I just going to get a big list of things, pull all the filters out too. So i don't pull them out when i come back. This is the unit that the panel was laying right here. Look at this evaporator we're gon na have to clean this one for sure this guy's toasted all the way down into there nice, these things uh.

You know these units they get old man. I think these units are from uh 2005. It looks like maybe it's about right. I think these restaurants were built like 0405 and 06 was when a bunch of these were built, so uh yeah, we'll have to do that.

There's so much going on here that you know, and it's already noon, there's no way, i'm going to get this whole building cleaned up and operating the way that it should be. So that's why i'm just making sure they're working kind of triaging - i haven't even put them into cooling mode. Yet we'll do that once we clean the units up and stuff when i went to go turn this guy back on the indoor blower motor was stalled and it was like locked up making a loud, humming sound. I walked over and it was just barely like buzz.

You know i didn't catch it on film and i just kind of pushed on the pulley and it really didn't get running. So i powered down the unit and then turned it back on and all of a sudden it started. But while it was starting, you could tell it was running slow and i checked three phase power. So this is our blower contactor one two and on the yellow - and i have three phase power going to it.

But the contactor looks like dirt. Doesn't look good um, but it's making contact, but the motor is definitely spinning slow. So we're going to talk to them about replacing that indoor blower motor too. It also needs a pulley a belt.

So we'll add that one to the list forget the squealing sound, because that's just a bad belt. The motor is making a buzzing sound and it's not spinning properly and we have the right voltage, i'm also inspecting every heat exchanger as i go through the units, and surprisingly, i haven't come across a bad heat exchanger. Yet just doing visuals and running the seams and everything, but then again you know again here in california. We don't really know what cold is.

So you know our heaters, don't run for very, very long. In fact, uh i often will find yeah this. I think this is a two stage. I will often find that second stage is never hooked up.

This one is this: one actually is, but often i will find it to where second stage has never even been hooked up. Um and we've run. I've found restaurants that have been running for 25 years, with only first stage, because again, our extreme extreme low for like a couple days a year is like you know, in the look or the high 20s low 30s and then our average. I would say in the area we're in right now is 50 degrees in the winter time.

So, if you fill up a restaurant with people, you honestly don't even need to run the heater here, because the body heat's gon na warm up the building gee man. This is so annoying, don't be lazy, guys, look at there's no caps on either one of those guaranteed. This guy's gon na be low on charge. People i like i mean yes, it keeps me busy, but good grief man.

My gosh come over to this unit. It's got a 10 amp fuse in it, man, lazy people, good grief. Right, i mean again. I know i should be thankful that this person's giving me work, but my gosh, these are from their kitchen ac.

These things are covered in grease, it's very common, but the evaporator's not too dirty again, just a good rinse, all right so we're back. Today we got a box of filters or boxes of filters. We got a crap ton of belts. Um got another person here with me today we're going to start by rinsing, so the units, i don't even think we're going to really need coil cleaner for the condensers, because the condensers aren't too bad the you know the kitchen ac evaporator was greasy and then one Of the other evaporators, where the units uh that one over there, where the unit um panel was laying on the ground, is dirty, but everything else is just gon na need a rinse.

So the what we're going to do is we're going to rinse, adjust all the belts filters and then we'll start troubleshooting through the units and see you know what cooling problems we might have and stuff get them a big list. Refrigeration technologies has a new foam, sprayer uh it has. You can change the little tips on it to make it foam more or less, but it's super nice when you fill it up with appropriate cleaner for the evaporator. You can actually get in there and look at that - and this is the yellow venom pack super awesome.

Really gets in there and allows you to really penetrate into that coil, so uh, i'm sure be able to find these at true tech tools that it's still fairly new, but i'm sure it'll pop up in all the different supply houses. All your sources for refrigeration technologies, products, this stuff is awesome. Man with that new foam gun, good gosh comes out nice and good. So the cool thing about the foam is, you know it's penetrating, but it also really helps you.

You know you don't necessarily have to cover every inch with cleaner because the foam is kind of expanding and getting in there, which is awesome, but you do have to watch out because the yellow, cleaner does bubble up a lot. So you got to be cautious to let that kind of dissipate. Um or you know it'll overflow, the drain pan the customer. Doesn't you know they gave me approval to to get these units cleaned up and get them operating, but i know what they want and you know they don't want me to do a full measure, quick analysis on every ac.

So here's what we're doing we cleaned them up. We got them running the heat fires. To be honest with you, we don't really need to worry too much about that, because we're going to be out of heating season in a couple weeks here in california, but still the heat fires, i'm not going to go any further with that. But as far as the cooling goes, all that i'm doing is put them in full cool and then testing uh the temperature differential across the evaporator.

Just to see you know where it's at so that unit right there i had a 20 degree return to supply td. I don't think we need to go any further with that one. Okay, this one right here. I do not have a 20 degree td, so i'm just marking an x right here, um right now we're at 53 and 66 for our temperatures.

So we're going to dig into this one a little bit further and i'm going to continue to do that for every ac, just double checking to see if we have a decent td and then that will tell me to investigate further customers, sometimes want you to. You know be super thorough and go through everything, but you know this time. They just want me to do the bare minimum, make sure everything's operational and, of course, i'm going to document everything and let them know you know all that i did was make sure that they run and that's it. I did not evaluate system pressures to make sure.

There's not you know, bigger issues and stuff all right, so we were able to get uh all the acs, except for two working. Okay, that one right there had the busted sensor. I was able to repair that sensor uh the far unit behind that one way over there um needs a new indoor blower motor. So we got to do that.

The kitchen ac is the other one that wasn't working right, doesn't have a good td. So what i did is i went ahead and attached all my probes. It looks like a giant mess in there, but measure quick now has multiple super heat mode. I'm sorry uh multi-circuit, multi-stage all that stuff.

So i'm going to be able to diagnose both stages at the same time, so i got all my probes set up and mapped where they need to be mapped. Uh, air probes in and everything so we're going to put the panel on i've got jumpers on here. So it's gon na fire up and cooling right away and uh, we'll pull it up on measure quick and see what it has to say all right, we're in multi-stage mode right now or multi-circuit mode. I guess whatever uh first stage.

First off there's like a weird glitch something's going on with measured quick, but it's still functioning all right, um, we're profiled! Let me show you my system profile, we're profiled as a package unit, two stages: seven and a half ton: r22 piston 10 to 12 seer. Okay, we've got all of our probes in the system. First stage: super heat is really high. Sub cooling is right in there, but remember.

Sub coin is not an accurate number, because it's using discharge pressure instead of liquid line pressure discharge line's fine. We do not have a very good temperature split at the time. It seems that we have low airflow. I don't think that's quite accurate um, let's go ahead and scroll on over to the second stage: okay, second stage sub coin's at 19 degrees superheat's at 31 degrees.

Second stage doesn't look as bad to me looks like mainly. My issue is with the first stage and judging by these numbers, it's either low on charge or it's a plugged up metering device. So my system, what's interesting, is let's see if we can see it over here we're kind of frosting up on the metering device back down in here. I don't know if i can get you guys a clear view of this or not.

No, i can't really get you guys, a clear view, but the first stage is frosting up right at the little uh orifices, i'm leaning more towards uh restriction in the the fixed orifice metering devices. But i'm going to try to add a little refrigerant to it and see how it reacts on the first stage, but paying attention to that sub cooling. Again, you got to be careful on these guys with the sub cooling because uh it's using discharge pressure. So, okay, when i'm charging with the smart probes, i use the little uh t right there and a ball valve okay, you're gon na put that guy up there, and then i uh purge to here and then also leave this loose right here, open this up, so That way, it's purging out to here we're good to go, go ahead and close that ball valve.

I weighed the tank at the van, so we know actually it's right here, so it says 29 pounds. So when i go back down that way, i didn't have to bring my scale up. I know how much refrigerant i use, so i'm just going to add a little bit of refrigerant and see what happens obviously, going to flip the cylinder over we're going to charge with a liquid refrigerant, just kind of slowly adding gas watching the pressures as we're doing It all right, i've added i'd, say a pound or two we'll see when i go down to the van, but my evaporator temperature is not really changing. My suction pressure is not really changing.

All i'm doing is stacking liquid in the condenser uh. I got my sub cooling up to about 20 degrees. That's where my other circuits running my head. Pressure is going up, but nothing else is really following, so i'm leaning towards a plugged up metering device on this guy is what it's going to be.

So it's not going to get too much better than this. I'm not gon na add any more refrigerant, because uh yeah, that's just gon na, be a problem all right, yeah um! I i don't see the need in going any further with this guy. I wish i could show you guys. Oh, i can show you, i don't know if you guys can see this down here.

That is the fixed, orifice metering devices down there and they are frosting up again. It's going to be hard because of the the fan and everything running, but yeah these guys are frosting up so um we're clearly got a plugged up metering device on this guy. All right people have asked me: there's videos out there that you can clear the metering devices by heating them up and doing that kind of stuff. I've tried it.

I've had limited success, it's never been like. Oh my gosh. You know it kind of works a little bit but nothing great. I have actually tried to clear the metering devices on this unit a long time ago.

We've since changed a compressor in it and it helped, but it's obviously coming back um. So yeah there's no point in this one. To be honest with you, i really want the customer to change this package unit. I don't think they're gon na do it, but this thing is just beat down all the panels are just destroyed.

Um. You can see that we've changed that first stage compressor before it was grounded out and when that happened, i i went ahead and tried to clear the metering devices, then because there was some of the crap stuck in there and it helped. But it's still not perfect. So um, like i said, i'm not gon na, add any more gas to it.

This is gon na, be it on this guy and we're just gon na talk to the customer and they're gon na have to make a decision. The original call on this one was the customer said: the dining room was really cold, okay and they they're. They said you know the thermostat had fallen off the wall. Well, when i got there, that's not actually a thermostat kind of, like i explained in the video.

That's literally a human interface, just so the customer, it's got a custom dashboard on it and all it does is show the temperatures of the room. Now they do have control of the temperatures, but it's literally for like a half an hour they can and they can only go like three degrees in each direction. So it's literally just a custom dashboard with the bay web thermostat system that they have. Okay.

The system is capable and that that human interface really doesn't control anything, because it's all in the the thermostat's logic and the web portal. Basically that controls everything so the the system was already running, but here's what happened. The on-site management does not have any control really of the thermostats and there is not automatic changeover, so it was set to cool mode. Okay and we've been through the winter, but our dining rooms are just opening up out here.

We just opened up here. It is uh march 20th 21 and we just opened to 25 indoor capacity, we're still making people sit outside, so they haven't used their dining rooms pretty much all year. There was a brief window that we opened for a couple of weeks. I think back in june or something like that, but that that's it like and they closed back down again, so these guys haven't used their dining rooms, and this is going to happen more and more as we start to open up people, don't even know that they've Got air conditioners that are broken refrigeration units that are broken so we're going to have a we're going gon na, you know, get pretty busy here uh as this starts to open up and they start to fill their dining rooms with more and more capacity.

They're really gon na realize, like hey, we got problems, okay, um, so the cold, dining room. In fact the customer said hey. I want these heaters on right, so i turned the heaters on and when i came back the next day they were like. Oh my gosh.

It was too hot in our dining room, okay, so kind of, like i mentioned in the video most of the time, we don't even use heaters out here, because um the body heat from the building, even at 25 capacity, brought the building temperatures up because it's not As cold as it is, maybe in the midwest or the northeast, or something like that, okay, so i believe that the complaint from the cold dining room was in fact just that panel. That was laying off that that return air panel, where the filters were at was off and because our units run all the time. We were just pulling all that outside air into the building and they just couldn't control the temperature right. So, by putting that panel back on, i think that would have solved the problem, but the customer wanted me to turn the heaters on.

So i put them into heat mode for one night and they were like. Oh no, it was too hot. You know we needed the cooling to be able to come on, so i went ahead and took them back out of heat mode and just put them into cooling mode, and we haven't had a complaint since and it's been about a week so um or less than A week it's been a couple days but um, so it just kind of goes to show like how much we don't really need heating here. Okay, these units, though this is the other thing.

These units are all in bad shape, they're dirty um, and they just need to be maintained. Now, i'm not blaming the customer for this. I know i get a lot of people in the chat saying these guys are too cheap. They don't fix anything guys.

These restaurants are just trying to stay afloat: okay, there's so many restaurants that have closed down permanently all right. So the fact that we still have restaurants that are still open that haven't had indoor dining for almost an entire year and they've only been operating via takeout and delivery service. These places are struggling to survive. So i in no way do i blame these restaurants for not doing preventative, maintenance and stuff like that during these crazy times.

Okay, it is what it is, and you know we all got to kind of try to survive through this. So now is the time we're going in, and so what i do in this situation was. They called me out about the units not working, and then i approached um corporate and i just said hey, you guys want me to just service all these units and get them cleaned up and they said yeah and then we just got them a list of things. So we're quoting to replace i'm going to go ahead and quote to replace the entire evaporator with the fixed orifice metering devices for that kitchen ac.

Of course, i'm going to urge them to replace the whole unit, but we'll see where they want to go with that and then for the back unit with the blower motor i'm going to go ahead and replace the blower motor pull that blower assembly out, because it Was filthy, clean, the blower assembly and i'm going to make sure they understand that i can't troubleshoot the refrigeration circuit until i get that blower motor working properly so then we'll go through the unit, adjust the refrigerant charge accordingly and kind of go from there. This is going to happen more and more for us where it does get kind of difficult, because you know when it comes time for me to send service technicians out to these jobs. I mean people really have to be able to go through everything and multitask right, because you go there with one thing in mind, but then all of a sudden you're looking at every ac - and you have a lot of tasks going on this - can get quite difficult. Uh, if you're, not a good multitasker or you know, if you can't really look at the big picture, it can get kind of kind of hectic.

So when i do send people out, i don't necessarily expect my guys to go through everything. The way that i did you know in a short amount of time, um just because you know i've got more experience than a lot of people and i'm i'm really good at kind of understanding. You know what i'm allowed to do and how far so, while i was there, i went ahead and uh we cleaned up the units. We did a quick, you know troubleshooting on all of them, just kind of triaged them.

We cleaned the refrigeration rack. We changed all the belts on every ac, no matter what we changed, all the belts on the exhaust fans. We left spares um, you know, so we just we kind of went through the entire rooftop. Now, the second day, i did bring another technician back with me and he was helping me by hosing stuff off.

While i was just going through just you know, checking out every unit. So you have to be able to know when it's time to look at the big picture and also know when it's time to focus on what they called about and that's when you really need to lean on your management. Ask them what it is that they expect of you. You know as a loan service technician uh.

You know that has people above you. You definitely don't want to just show up to this place and park yourself and stay there for 12 hours, and i don't want to get that impression. You know first off i'm a business owner right, so i am allowed to do that kind of thing. You know my technicians, i don't want them to go park at a restaurant for 12 hours, like i'm doing right now and not communicate with me right.

So you know my technicians, they go out there, they tell me what's going on, they call me and say: hey dude. This whole place is a mess. What do you want me to do and i usually say focus on what they asked you to do and then work your way through that and kind of make you know, get get a big picture diagnosis but of course, you've got to make sure that you solve The one problem they called you about, there's nothing worse than going out there, seeing everything going on getting tunnel vision and then never even addressing the actual complaint. And another thing important to remember is sometimes the customers can be incorrect in the information they give.

You and that's when it gets really tricky because they can lead you in the wrong direction. You know and you could be on a goose chase and then all of a sudden, oh, oh yeah, a new another manager comes in. You know and says hey. Why are you working on that you're supposed to be working on this? You know so it gets kind of tricky, sometimes working in these restaurants that have multiple managers, especially the bigger the restaurants, get, and sometimes you can get into some of these big restaurants that might have five six managers on duty and each one of them might have A different idea as to what they want you to work on and oh man, it can be a mess so um.

Hopefully this uh helped some of you guys out. You know this is just the way that i go through things, i'm not trying to say anybody's wrong for not doing it. My way, of course, i'm just trying to share the little bit of knowledge that i have. I really really appreciate you guys making it to the end of these videos.

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There's links to everything in the show notes of this video. I really appreciate you guys and uh. We will catch you on the next one: okay.