What i like to do is just to be prepared in case any nefarious. People come or you know bad guys, try to come in and take whatever from the restaurant um i like to pack up some snowballs uh, you know so that way. I can defend myself in case the bad guys come. You know, so just always got to be prepared, guys, always stay on your toes.

This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition, so we're on a walk-in freezer. Today, the service calls that it's not warm or cold enough and uh. You can see the frost down here, it'll be hard for you guys to see, but it's iced up from top to bottom inside there so um. That can happen from a variety of things, but the first thing we're gon na do is actually go up under the roof and throw the unit into a defrost, and then we're gon na come down here and take all the panels apart and check to see.

If the defrost heaters are working while it's iced up and then we'll proceed with uh defrosting it with a hose and all that, if necessary, all right, this is a really old, uh restaurant really old rack. It's a small one, though so uh, it's labeled, walk-in freezer. On this one, it's it's running, but it's iced up, so we're going to open up the defrost clock, it's kind of hard to see so we'll pop this out and we have a green light hard to tell. But we have a green light in the defrost clock.

We've got four defrosts throughout the day. The current time is 4 p.m. It says 5 p.m. I mean the clock moves, we're gon na slap it into a defrost and see what happens.

The compressor should be pumping down and we're gon na, get our meter and check the voltage across the clock to see if it's working properly so we're checking power coming to the clock so we're going from in to one and we have 240. okay power coming in Now, in to three, we should have 240 volts. That's the heating circuit. All right n is our common and into four.

We should have zero volts when it's in defrost, and that is correct so into four. Is our refrigeration circuit uh? Four, i should say four is the refrigeration circuit and is the common to that, because this is a 240 volt system, so we're not sending power down on four when we're in defrost. Four right here is our switch leg, going down to the compressor solenoid valve or whatever you want to say, but it's going to a solenoid valve um and then three is our defrost heater right here. So three has power from one side of the contact to n, which is correct.

So our next step is to leave it into defrost, we'll leave it in a long defrost, while i'm disassembling the coil um, and we will uh go test. The defrost heaters to see if those are working depending on the setup - this is a rather you know, simple setup. You can actually test current up on the roof that we are getting a heater working, whether or not all the heaters are working is a whole different story, but it's currently at 6.4 amps, but again we'll go downstairs and look at every strip heater and verify that They're actually working. I say this all the time you got to be a small guy.

This is a small little walk-in. You got to make yourself think small, think skinny thoughts um. This is an old-school coil, it's actually from 93, so they sure got their life out of it. Come up into here and see the ice test.

The current on that heater 4.6 amps test, the current on that heater, there's only two heaters about two amps. So, let's just call it five amps and two amps, so that's about seven amps! It says right here: 1605 watts, 230 volts. You should be about seven amps, so we're right on the money um right about there. So at this point we're gon na.

Let the heaters keep running and i'm gon na start disassembling. The fan motors brackets blades all that stuff getting it out and then we'll get the water hose. As you can see, it's iced up all the way top to bottom um. A top to bottom freeze up is actually a good thing, because that indicates that you have you know you should have proper refrigeration if it was just top or bottom.

You know as long as all the heaters are working that could possibly indicate a refrigeration problem, but you know i mean there's a lot more. That goes into diagnosing refrigeration problems too. So but like i said we're just going to let this thing keep running in its natural defrost, while i'm getting everything ready to defrost it with a hose all right. I've shut off power um the heaters are still hot, so they're still crackling.

Now i don't always say to do this, but because this is an old-school, coil and there's a lot of room behind the fan motors and i have my wand. I actually don't have to take the fan motors out so long as i'm very careful not to get them wet, but you can see there's a lot of room behind that coil. So it's a sunday afternoon evening. You know four o'clock p.m.

On a sunday, basically august 15th and um, you know i don't want to be here, i'm in a rush, but it is what it is. You know it's a call uh at the same time, just because i'm in a rush doesn't mean i care less about the customer or their stuff. So when you're defrosting this you got to do it slow, i find the water hose is the fastest. I find that torches take way too long.

If you do it carefully, the water hose doesn't make a mess, just got to go slow and you just got to let the drain catch up too. You don't want to get any water on the floor in a walk-in freezer ever all right we're just about done um. You know i didn't mention earlier that the restaurants actually already closed and uh. They gave me the keys to open up to take care of this.

For them, so i'm here alone you know and there's always a risk when you're working alone in a building. To be honest with you, i don't let my employees do it for safety reasons, i'm the owner, so i can kind of do what i want. You know, but uh just in case you know, being that i live in california and our crazy gun laws and stuff. You know you always got to be prepared, you're not really allowed to carry.

You know you can get a cc. You know concealed carry permit, but it's a pain in the butt. But what i like to do is just to be prepared in case any nefarious. People come or you know bad guys, try to come in and take whatever from the restaurant i like to pack up some snowballs uh, you know so that way.

I can defend myself in case the bad guys come. You know, so just always got to be prepared. Guys always stay on your toes. I didn't think that one through very well, because my snowball's melted, but it's okay, because we made it through safely.

We got the coil back together. Um, you know i just got ta be vigilant and uh we're gon na go up onto the roof and uh turn the system back on i've kind of feeling, like i'm gon na change the defrost clock. I know this restaurant really well. They have no way of turning off the power to the rack or to that defrost clock, because it's controlled up on the rack and i know that they don't get up there.

Um and uh we've been here doing a preventative maintenance couple weeks ago. I know that i set that clock, so my gut is telling me that we've got a bad defrost clock, so i'm going to trust my gut go ahead and replace it. I'm still going to come back tomorrow. Today.

Sunday, like i said, still going to come back tomorrow and follow up but uh yeah, i'm going to go and change the clock too. So i'm going to get up there and do that right now. All right, i got the clock changed out. I need to set the time um we're going to uh check that one in the trash again, i just have a gut feeling, so i'm going with it on this one uh, like i said, we'll, set the time it's right about five i'll check right now and Then we're gon na fire it up and then check everything else out.

All right. We are back on and running, i'm gon na start putting the panels back on the sides. Watch it come down to temperature and then, like i said i'll, be following up probably tomorrow. When you have enough experience in the industry, you you, you start to recognize things, and i encourage you for the experience guys.

You know to trust your gut when things are going on this particular customer. I know very well. I know that they don't prop their door. Open, we didn't see an issue with the thermostat.

I know i didn't talk about that in the video, but it's not getting too cold in the box. Defrost clocks have a high failure rate, so i went ahead and changed the defrost clock. Of course, i discussed it with the customer, i called them, even though they weren't on site anymore. I called my contact and just said: hey here's.

Here's where i kind of feel like we should go with this um. You know, and i gave him my justifications because we had just done the preventative maintenance. You know we try to be as uh caring and honest with the customers. You know so i give them all the facts and i let them make the decisions and they chose to go ahead and have me change the defrost clock.

They trust what i have to say. Uh. You know i'm not constantly out there trying to sell them. You know yeah it's an old system, but it's still working.

You know, of course i tell them like hey this thing. Is you know at the tail end of its life, but it's still operating so there's no sense in trying to upgrade their system unnecessarily. You know unless they want it. Of course, i give them the facts and give them all the information.

You know, energy efficiency, all that good stuff, but you know uh honestly on these older systems, basically from 95 and before they lasted forever. They really did you know it case. In point i mean this is an early 90s system and it's still functioning to this day um. I think the compressor had been changed.

Yeah yeah, because the system had been converted to 404 because it was originally a 502 system. So um on a 502 system, if you change the condensing unit as long as you got majority of the oil out of the evaporator coil, if there was any logged in there, then you could just put a new 404a condensing unit and run 404 in it. You could use the same txv because the 502 and 404 use the same powerhead on the the txv, so you could get away with it, but yeah. I saw no other reason to do anything else on the system.

Just swapped out a defrost clock so for the people out there, because i know i get them all the time. How come i'm still using conventional defrost clocks? Again it works. Okay, um! You know yes, there's times that i'll put in uh. You know uh digital controllers that have defrost built in now.

In this case, this is a walk-in freezer. You know you got to kind of do a few things. There's special controllers. You have to use that have defrost contacts and things in them, but we're not going to try to reinvent the wheel for these guys um.

This is a small mom-and-pop place and you know they don't want to spend a crap ton of money unnecessarily. So we just try to get them up and running and we try to be as honest as possible with them and let them know you know when it is time. I want them to choose me to do replacements, but we don't have to unnecessarily do a replacement. If not needed, okay, we're not a sales company, we're not out there to just bam, bam bam, knock out, crap and you know, sell, sell, sell we're there to make money.

I need to be successful um my particular business model, and you know criticize me whatever. I don't care, but my particular business model is treat them right. So that way they call you when they really need you. Okay, that's how we operate we're not out there.

You know pounding on their doors saying you need to change this, because i mean sure i can sell them on all kinds of stuff and to be honest with you, this customer would trust me. They would listen to me if i told them to upgrade their system, but i want to be honest and i want to be fair with them. Okay, i have a reputation and i want that reputation to you know stay the way that it is. I want people to trust me, so we try to take care of them as best as possible.

Now, there's a couple other things in this that could have been an issue i did not address it in the video which would be the defrost termination fan. Delay switch. Now this is a very old evaporator coil and, to be honest with you, the defrost termination fan delay switches last forever on these okay, 95 and newer. You start to have more problems with them, because you know the new uh, cheaper components and different things like that.

They don't last as long, but clearly you can see that this system is still in proper order and honestly, not much has been changed. On this i mean i can pretty much tell you that we've changed a compressor on it. We've defrosted the coils a few times changed a couple, defrost clocks and changed the thermostat on this thing and other than that there hasn't been any major repairs done to the system. Okay, so you know, if you take care of your equipment, it will last especially the older stuff.

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