This is gon na, be one of those nights. Look at the stuff that i'm pulling out of this dream pan it's like pure slime. This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. So it's a monday may 10th about 7 24 p.m, and i got a service call on a walk-in cooler, not working and uh.

It's all iced up and for these fan motors to slow down the whole coil is frozen up and it's extremely dirty too. So i'll take you around the back side. It doesn't look as frozen on the back side, but you can definitely tell that the coil is plugged, so it's probably plugged up top too and it's probably low on gas, nice and solid. This thing hasn't been able to breathe for a long time, so uh come back around get in here, yeah, it's all frozen in there, so we're gon na get these fan blades taken off, get the coil defrosted.

So when i do walk-in coolers and stuff, i take everything out. Blades motors. The first thing i'm gon na tell you right now is that blade is awfully far back in there. Something looks off about that thing.

Huh, it's weird! Oh, that's what it is. They must have two different rotation motors in here: oh okay, yeah yeah that one's rotating that way that one's rotating. That way, i knew something was off about this thing, but it's fine, but they're, just uh rotating different ways. I'm gon na have to have a talk with someone, because i hate using these universal motors as evaporator motors look at how it's literally smashed into the coil they're too tall, and these wires are tied to here where they're gon na.

I just hate this. I don't have motors in brackets right now, but i don't know if we did this or someone else. I don't think we did because my guys know better than this. This is going to be a long night.

I am pulling. The drain is plugged, it's not draining and look at this this this is coming out of the drain. The whole drain pan is full of this. It's just slime, but it's connected to the walk-in freezer and the beer walk and all connected together and by myself.

I got ta figure out how to blow this thing out now, so i got it to break free, but then everything from the drain pan keeps plugging it up. So i have a few tools that i keep in my truck. First off um. I always make these.

You can thread the hose into that. If you need to put this into one side of a p-trap, you can put this into another side, i'm sorry of a union, and then i also have this guy as a stop for when you have interconnected drain. So you can plug up another one, but this is my little guy right now also have this guy with a little wand, so i can get in there and blow the drain out as it plugs up it's so plugged up. I just pulled it out.

Look at this gunk look at that. It's nasty, i'm gon na, go wash it out in the kitchen that way, i don't keep plugging the drain up. Look at that stuff. I mean just coming off it's gross and that stuff, just nasty.

This thing hasn't been cleaned in ages. My luck, the compressor is going to take a crap. When i get it all cleaned and all the sudden it can breathe, then the compressor will take a dump. So i took a bunch of the viper cleaner and just saturated the coil.

I'm actually going to put a little bit more on this side, but we're just letting it break everything down and then we're going to give it a rinse here in just a minute. Stuff is awesome man. It really gets in there gon na get in here and spray it from this side too. Really let it get in there penetrate as much as it can all the way through, not so much worried about the surface over here.

I really want to get it down deep in there, so it's expanding deep into that stuff. This coil needs to be replaced, but this will get us by for now and get it breathing again. I always want to get in here make sure it's not iced up. There's just a little bit of frost on the feeder tube, so we're going to uh our distribution tubes so but looks pretty good coil's.

Looking pretty darn good, i mean it's polishing the turd, but we're getting there. This blade, i couldn't even get off. I had to take it off as a whole assembly things we're gon na change this motor and we're gon na change this motor - i don't have them with me, but we're going to come back. I managed to get it back in here.

For now. I don't like how it's smashed up against the coil, but we're going to get it operational and then we'll probably come back with new brackets motors and blades holy moly. It's actually moving air. It's insane how much air is coming out of there, so we're gon na jump on the roof and check out the condensing unit.

Now, all right, i'm up on the roof. It's a mess up here, there's like a pump spray around like there's just so much trash. There's belts everywhere, damn all right, um, side glass is clear, but i'm gon na go ahead and put some gauges on it. Just check the refrigerant pressures make sure all is well uh time, clocks right there, condenser coil is dusty, but it doesn't look bad.

It's 9 p.m. It's off! By about two hours, the clock's really gummy too. I might need to consider replacing that. But again, i'm only getting them operational tonight we're going to come back with a a list of crap.

So i'd say it's still dropping it's about 65 degrees out here. Condenser fan motors are running again. Cyclist is clear. R22 20 degree evaporator not too bad.

181 head. That's a 94 degree, condensing temp yeah. I mean we're right there uh. You know i everything's looking good up here, so we're going to go downstairs and see if the box is coming down in temp, but i'm not seeing anything scary up the condensing unit.

So it's already down to 39 degrees in here, so we're good for now, like i said we're going to come back, i'm going to change both of those fan motors we're going to take care of them the equipment it like the evaporator is pretty messed up, but I actually think it's salvageable, so we'll talk to the customer and see what they want to do, though um so we're back, and we are gon na go ahead and replace this right. Motor okay, uh get rid of all this crappy wiring. The left motor i had mentioned that i couldn't get the blade off there. It's like, i don't know what they did.

Someone twisted it on, but we're gon na go ahead and put in two new motors, two new blades, two new brackets. Now, as far as the brackets go, we've been having a run of these brackets cracking like crazy lately. So that's why we're changing them um the motor i want to get rid of the one. That's smashing the evaporator.

This motor right here sounded funny. Has a bunch of play and then also both the blades are different. I want to get them back to the right style too. One more thing i like to do is given the opportunity, if you notice, there's quarter inch screws right here, uh quarter inch screws here.

There's 5 16. Here these units originally came with quarter inch, but i prefer to have them all the same. It's just something silly, but when you're working on them, it's kind of a pain in the butt before you know now that we have those malco flip bits or whatever you can have quarter inch to 5 16 before you'd have to change your bit, and it was Just a pain in the butt, so anyways we're going to go ahead and change everything to 5 16. Concerning the motors that way, it's all uniform and easier when we're working on it all right, so we got new blades motors everything's secured properly.

The motors are no longer hitting the evaporator because they're the proper motors the blades, are set where we want them, everything's screwed back in, and you see what i'm saying, how i put 5 16 all the way across that way. That's all we're doing now. Um, eventually, we'll probably change the side panels to 5 16 too, as we work on them, but everything's good. The coil's been working fine, since i was here we're gon na jump on the roof and check the equipment out up there now.

So when i was here that night um, this defrost clock felt really rough to spin, but it's keeping time it's 10 a.m. Right now and it's accurate, so i'm not going to change it, we're going to leave it, be we'll just monitor it all right. So we're up on the roof, the equipment's still running, fine, we're still running a clear sight glass, but i noticed that this motor right here has some pretty mean vibration to it. Um.

You can kind of see it in this right here and what i noticed, though too, is when you shut it off this one doesn't seem to be vibrating as bad. I think it's in this motor, but the blade is also in too far this one's sticking out of the shroud like it should be this one's all the way tucked back in so we're also not moving the proper air, but the blade is bent now these blades. They come bent. I mean they're, never perfect, but this one's enough that it's causing a vibration um, it's marginal, whether or not i need to change it or not, but we're going to keep checking everything out.

So we were able to get the blade and uh we're gon na put on a new motor too, to try to get rid of that vibration. Let's hope that this new blade isn't bent too, because they always come then um. It's a little tool that i have to do the uh, the weird access thing, so we got a quarter inch ratchet wrench one of the malco bits, and then i got that little thumb drive and it helps to get into those tight little spaces. This little guy right here, so it's all just a couple different pieces but works good.

We brought the hose up too, give it a rinse, because everything is just full of sand up here: everything's, all sandy nasty, so we're being a little cautious because we didn't pull this motor out, but this one we can go to town as usual. We rinsed everything off, but we're uh rinsing all the crap down because again it'll as soon as the water evaporates it'll just get sucked right back up now we are in the desert, so this is only going to do so much but there's already i mean i Washed, my van last night and just driving out here my van - is covered in dirt. So it's just you know it's in the air, but we want to do the best we can to try to prevent any future stuff got the new motor and blade installed. Everything's, good vibration problem solved, everything's cool, so we're gon na just uh watch the system operate, pull it up on measure quick and make sure everything else is doing good all right.

So i just turned the system back on the super heat's a little bit low, but earlier when i checked it before, we did all the work we just did. It was about 11 12 degrees, so the super heat's fine again it's just flooding right now, because it just turned on everything else seems fine. We have a clear sight, glass um, so that doesn't concern me uh sub cooling, i'm not too concerned with. That seems a little high, but again the system has a receiver outdoor air temperature is about 90 degrees.

Everything else is cool. Let's look at our evaporator, so it's currently 40 degrees in the box 39 degrees. So it looks like it's about ready to satisfy 33 degree. Air or 36 degree air coming out of the coil, i'm pretty happy with all of this.

I don't see any issues at all, so we're going to go ahead and give this guy the all clear all right. So, as i said, the sight glass is nice and clear: no issues there um, you know, we don't know if it has the proper winter charge, but i don't see the need to check that right. Now we're okay everything's, pretty good systems cleaned up as best as possible. We're gon na put it back together and uh give the keys back to the customer.

Every time i use my hoses, i always dry them drain them and clean them. Basically um. I know it's crazy, but that's how my hoses last so long put them away. Dry.

They're lighter, you know, wipe them down with the towel, got a towel right here, so i'm gon na run across drain. It dry it roll it up properly, and then we got another one to do here in just a second. It wasn't too difficult. It was, you know, just a standard, walk-in cooler, but it was dirty.

You know um. It was so dirty that the box basically was at 50 something degrees when i got there and it was partially iced up now, um. Obviously, the equipment has to be cleaned to allow proper air flow to allow proper heat transfer. This is where you run into the problem.

If you don't have proper heat transfer, then you know the expansion valve can only do so much to limit the amount of refrigerant that it's going to let into that coil and uh. You know it's still going to let refrigerant through that. Refrigerant is not going to boil off okay and it's going to make its way back up to the compressor, and it's going to start to cause issues you could have flooding back to the compressor. You could start washing the oil out, which eventually could lead to a catastrophic failure of the compressor.

Now, when it comes to issues like this, if it starts washing the oil out of the compressor um, what can happen is that oil can make its way down to the evaporator. And, let's say, for you know the customer wanted and then the compressor fails. Okay and then you go to change the compressor right. This is why it's so important to autopsy your compressors to figure out why they failed, because if it was an oil failure problem that oil is now down in the evaporator worst case scenario right, then you put in a new compressor and all that oil is going To come back and then you're going to have too much oil in the system, so you want, i mean that's just one thing that can happen so you want to be.

You know it's so important to make sure that equipment is cleaned and maintained. Obviously i have no control over my customers not wanting to do preventative maintenance, especially with this whole last year and a half that we've been going through with this pandemic and stuff, it's just nuts right. I understand customers had to they were in survival mode. They haven't been fixed in anything and we are still finding stuff like this.

I mean we have a lot of customers and we can't get to everything you know. So you know these are the repercussions, just understanding. What can happen right, and i mentioned something in the video about how i said you know now i got this thing cleaned you know now watch the compressor is going to fail and what i mean by that is, is you know it may have been, and i've From experience, these are things that i noticed that it's been limping along so long, it's been suffocating, basically right that system and then all of a sudden, we give it air flow, and then the compressor takes a dump, because basically the compressor potentially has been damaged already And just from experience in certain situations boom, then it happens. Okay now this was back in may we're.

Obviously, in june now you know i haven't had any other issues with it, but there can be some major issues when that happens: okay, um now, when it comes to changing the fan motors, okay, i know i'm gon na get a bunch of people asking me. Why did i change the fan motors? Okay, there's a lot of factors that goes into changing those phantom members. Yes, they were working okay, but one of them was smashing the evaporator coil right, the other one was running in the wrong direction. The blades were messed up.

There was a lot of play in the bearings and the motors okay, and i just didn't like that. Okay from experience, we have a high failure rate on these evaporator fan motors and those brackets that i was talking about. I also like to make things easier: okay, if people go in and start using the incorrect motors the incorrect blades, then what happens is if someone comes in and maybe is not so experienced and doesn't realize something, then he might put the wrong blade on the wrong Motor and it just leads to potential problems, i'm trying to eliminate potential problems and trying to make these things as easy as possible to work on. Okay, that's just the way that things go these days.

You have to make things simple. If it's too complicated, you tend to have issues. Okay, and i see that stuff and again, if it can it will, i try to eliminate those potential problems, okay, same thing with on the roof, okay, and i also would step back to the evaporator. I also like to try to eliminate potential problems that i know could happen, such as those fan brackets.

Failing we've been having a huge run of those fan brackets failing they're, really not made the best they're kind of janky. Really, you know the way that they make them and they just bend them. There's stress where they're bent it's just a pain but anyways on the roof. We ended up changing um the fan mode of the fan blade and we threw a bracket up there too.

On that left fan motor because it had a vibration, um, remember this whole big picture, diagnosis thing that i'm always talking about. You want to be thorough. Okay, of course you want to keep the customer in the loop and make sure that the customer wants to do the work. Remember we can always give a big picture quote and the customer's not necessarily always going to approve the big picture quote, but because we gave the big picture quote we covered our butts right, hey here's, the things that i found wrong with your system.

There's always the potential that there's more things wrong, but this is what i found at this time. You know here's the main issue right: here's the symptom in a nutshell, right um, you know, but we can solve that eliminate that from happening again and we can eliminate some future problems. If we do all this stuff and then just lay it out and again, i'm okay if the customer doesn't want to, but most of the time my customers are pretty good. They know that you know i'm looking out for their best interests and of course you know.

I want to make money and i'm going to make money from this too, but i'm going to make it the right way. I'm going to be honest, i'm going to be fair um, you know, and - and i can sleep at night time right - so i'm not just throwing parts at these units, i'm changing parts that i know have a high failure rate that i know are going to lead To a potential problem later on down the line and also i'm trying to eliminate the potential of a callback right because, yes, i went out there and i cleaned the evaporator. That was the problem. I cleaned it.

Okay, it was dirty it couldn't breathe. I could have just done that, but we could have had a fan motor fail soon right. We could have had a refrigerant leak because that fan motor is smashing the coil we could have had a condenser fan motor fail on the roof right. So i'm trying to eliminate a future callback, even though it wouldn't be a callback, but the customer sees it because once you touch it, you own it in their eyes.

You know - and i say that all the time once i touch this i'm going to own it. So i'm going to be thorough, okay, and what i mean by that is, is i'm not going to take responsibility for the whole unit, but the customer in their eyes? You were just here last week. How come it's broke again? You know that's the way they see it and you're not going to retrain the customers you're not going to re-educate the customers, you're not going to change their their mindset right, but the at least the way that i think about it. Okay, so i'm just going to be thorough right and try to potentially eliminate any future callbacks that the customer may think is a callback.

So that way, you know we look better in their eyes yeah. They spent a few extra bucks right, but we potentially fixed some future problems. Okay, so call it what you will. I call it being honest and thorough okay um.

Now we evaluated the system. I also said something about the winter charge. We are, you know, full fledge in the middle of the summer, right now and uh. You know, i don't know if that system has the proper amount of refrigerant in it or not.

Okay - and this is the question that i get because people will ask me: why are you pumping down the receivers and checking the liquid level by heating them up? Why are you doing that? Why not just charge it the proper way right and there is a proper way to charge this system lean on the manufacturer, find out how much refrigerant they recommend in the system or lean on sporelin, and they have a tech bulletin spoil in 90-30-1, and it tells You how to calculate the proper flooded charge, because this system does have a head pressure control valve which requires extra refrigerant when it floods the condenser okay. So that's what i mean by the winter charge. Now we can lean on spoiling. We can find out the required amount of refrigerant, but there's a hole in that method.

Okay, you can calculate it. You can put the right amount in there, but how do you know when it starts getting low? Okay, of course, when it gets really low, the sight glass will start flashing and you'll have a refrigeration issue. But how do you prevent that service call of the system being low on refrigerant? Okay? How can you check the refrigerant level in the system if it's not flashing at the sight glass yet sometimes like on this particular system? Right here, i think off the top of my head. It takes about seven pounds of refrigerant.

After the sight, glass has been cleared to properly flood that condenser okay. So how can i tell if that system has the right amount of refrigerant when the sight glass is not flashing, yet there's no real good way to tell okay. So that's why i will pump down the receiver mark the liquid level. Now you could do this.

If you did the calculated flooded charge using spoilan's method or leaning on the manufacturer, then you could pump down the liquid line. Receiver mark it with a paint marker when it has the correct amount of refrigerant, then from that point forward, you could always check to see if it was at that level. That would be ideal now in a situation where you don't know. If it has the right amount of charge or not, you know one way that you could do.

It is put the maximum amount of refrigerant you can put in that system safely right, and you would assume that that would be the right amount of flooded charge. Now you are making an assumption there, because if the system's not engineered correctly, even if you put the maximum amount of refrigerant in the system, it may not be enough. Okay, but i know most of my systems and i'm comfortable, saying that on this system right here, what i can do is i can pump the liquid line receiver down and i can fill it up while it's pumped down to the three-quarter level, knowing that that's the Maximum amount of refrigerant that system can hold and that in my situation is plenty of refrigerant for the flooded charge in the winter. Now, yes, theoretically, there's probably an extra pound or two of refrigerant above the calculated method.

But you know it the amount of time it's going to take to do that, and you know it's just a necessary evil to do it that way. So, in my situation, where, in the heat of summer, i don't know if that's the right amount of flooded charge or not now, because there was no mark on the receiver right at the three-quarter level. That's why it's so important to mark them because there was no mark. I don't know if that system is low or if it has the right amount, because someone calculated it it's that tricky thing.

So that's why, whenever i do fill the receivers up, whether i use the calculated flooded charge or whether i put the maximum amount of refrigerant in there, i always mark the receiver. That's the best way to do it so that way, the next guy that comes behind you knows, hey the person that was here before me, filled it up to this level, so it should be at this level. Okay, so there was no paint mark or no marking on that receiver, so i didn't see the need to dive any deeper into that there's always the potential that it is a little bit low. It's not at the point where it's flashing, yet it's not at the point where it's problematic.

Of course we could go further on that one, but i didn't see the need to do that right now. We can address that later on. If we need to okay um and again, you know - i say big picture diagnosis doesn't mean that i'm always gon na spend two days on that job. Okay, i'm just going to do the best that i can i'm not perfect.

You know in this situation. I did make an assumption that we're okay right, but i understand that there's going to be repercussions, you know and there's potentially going to be an issue, a potential callback. You know, but i'm taking that on my self right, because i'm you know i'm okay with letting that one go on this one, okay, so anyways! Now that i've babbled and gone off on a tangent as usual, i want to say thank you guys so very much. I really appreciate you guys making it to the end.

It is so awesome and so humbling um these videos, you know, while they are frustrating and stressful for me, um, because you know hey it's it's just kind of like i'm. I get kind of frustrated with like routines. Sometimes you know where it seems like groundhog day you wake up. You do this.

You do that boom boom and i'm kind of getting that way. Sometimes, with these videos and like my normal work schedule, because i go to work, i come home. I work on videos, i go to bed, i go to work, i come home, you know and it's like boom boom boom. So i have about two days a week that i don't do anything with the videos and you know the days sometimes because of other scheduling things and my craziness in my head.

I get really frustrated so today is june 8th right. So i usually do my videos the day before they upload so normally. I would be doing this video on wednesday and i have something going on and it's like uh man, i i just didn't, want to do a video today, i'm tired, you know but um. I did it right and when i'm editing this and when i get to this point, where i do the outro and stuff, i really do enjoy it, but it's just frustrating to get myself into the office sometimes, but where i was going with this is your guys's Feedback really helps me to continue to do this.

Okay, i appreciate the response, the the views, the words of encouragement that i get from you guys like. I really do appreciate that, and it helps me okay and of course i have to say thank you so very much to all of you that have chosen to support me right, because we have so many patreon patrons. We have youtube channel members. We have people doing paypal donations like i do appreciate.

All of that. It does help a little bit with my mental craziness. With this stuff too, and of course, i have all of you guys that have gone and supported me by purchasing merch from my website. Hvacr videos.com um, you know we, we have the hats, the shirts, the beanies and thank you to all of you, whether it be just watching my videos, whether it be leaving me a comment supporting me financially, you guys are all so awesome again, it's very humbling.

I'm just a dude trying to share the little bit of knowledge that i have sometimes i feel like. I get this whole imposter syndrome thing because i see the views and the comments and whatever and it's like i'm i'm just another service tech like i don't see myself as anything other than just another service tech. Maybe i'm incorrect in that way, but i mean i just see myself as a normal dude and to be able to upload these videos and get the support and the views is, is really cool. It's really humbling.

So thank you guys so very much now. Um remember. I do live streams tentatively now. I have missed the last two live streams.

Okay, so tentatively work permitting it's getting busy, so it's getting harder to make it to the live streams, but i do live streams monday, evenings 5 p.m, pacific on youtube, and then i also tentatively go live on friday evenings with my buddies on the hvac overtime, youtube Channel where we just kind of hang out and talk about the work week and stuff um so keep an eye out for those there's links to the overtime channel and stuff in the show notes. Remember if you guys are interested in purchasing any tools. Another way to to help me out is: i have an offer code, big picture, one word uh. If you put that in on checkout when you're at truetechtools.com, you can save you get a discount on your order and it helps to support me because i get a small commission from that.

I can also generate an affiliate link that helps me out a little bit more. You can still use my offer code and i get an even bigger commission if you guys use my affiliate link. So if you guys are interested in purchasing any tools and you find truetech tools to have what you want with good prices and you like them and stuff use my offer code, big picture, you can shoot me an email. Let me know what you want to buy.

I can generate an affiliate link and that is another way to help support this channel. Okay, so thank you guys so very much and we will catch you on the next one. Okay.