This video is brought to you by Sportlin. Quality, integrity and tradition. All right This morning, this is a customer out in the desert and they're complaining that all their ACS are not working. They say that this one has a blank thermostat which is a little split system.

Then they say that all the AC is around two or three in the afternoon. The entire building, kitchen, dining room, and bar all go 80 plus degrees. Um, the I've been trying to get them to let me redo all these drains during the pandemic. They rerouted all the drains because they used to drain out to their parking lot and they would see customers out there because they were doing the outdoor dining thing and so they came up here and decided to reroute all these drains and it was a nightmare because they're all going uphill.

It's a pain in the butt so that'll be another thing. I Bring up to them. But today we need to get into this unit. They're all Linux units.

Let's see what this guy has going on: Freeze Stat. Open High pressure, Low Pressure Comp 3 High pressure I Mean just problem after problem. It's probably all going to be just full of sand and everything because you see the sand right here. Uh, let's look at the filters.

Bet you anything they're plugged solid with sand. This restaurant gets a lot of sand and you can tell because we've got sand dunes on the roof that have plants growing out of them. It's insane. So let's have a look at the condenser since we're over here.

and then you look Ice machines blow right into the sink. Yeah, they look like they're a little dirty. Let's see right here. Oh did you see that? see all that sand? Oh yeah, look at that.

look at. Filters are plugged solid with sand. Let me get all those pulled out. I'm going to shut down the unit to pull the filters out because sand is going to go flying everywhere.

Let's uh, real quick. Open this up. I'm curious if they indoor blowers running so that's good. I mean just everything you do.

We get sand, sand, sand, sand. It's all everywhere. All right. I'm gonna get the filters pulled out of every.

AC Uh I have another guy coming with filters because I suspected this was the problem. so he's on his way with all new filters. Well check this out. Foreign.

Is that not insane? That's just from one filter? That's nuts. sand I Hate sand. Insert your Star Wars references like that. returning to the scene of the crime where the disconnect switch was all jacked up by the electrician.

Um, every unit look at drains are plugged up. Their maintenance is actually due. So the guy that I have bringing filters is gonna clean everything too. which I'm gonna have to help because I need to get this stuff operational so we're in Crazy mode right now.

Super busy, lots of calls this morning AC is down everywhere so this place needs a maintenance normally I send someone out before I come out to troubleshoot but this location gets to be 120 degrees so I needed to get out here to figure out what was wrong. If there is anything, it could just be plugged up filters, dirty condensers which I'm going to help him take care of and then I'll let him do the easy stuff downstairs cleaning coils and all that good stuff but just need to keep moving through. so I'm getting all the filters pulled out. It's really important though that I shut off the equipment when I'm pulling the filters out because all that sand is going right through the coil.

so we want to reduce the amount of stuff blowing in the building. It's inevitable that they're going to have stuff blowing in the building. and if you look right here, look at this drain just plugged up with sand. So yeah, see this drain.

What they did was they grabbed the existing copper that used to run to a floor drain over here and they ran it uphill. So check this out. Well that's not as impressive as I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to drain a lot more than that.

let's kick this guy. Yeah, it's just there we go. stuff stuck in the Trap just pure mud coming out so we'll get the water hose blow this thing out. but I can see that drain's completely plugged up with sand.

Lovely. All right, this condenser. We've got really good water pressure here, but it's just sand is just blowing out. Look at I Cleaned the floor just to give perspective.

It's just sand everywhere. It's nuts. It's just embedded in everything. So I'm gonna get this guy clean.

We'll get some cleaner on it. We got to do the same for every AC. So in a situation like this, their PM services do. but their PM service is just a quarterly thing that they do and it doesn't cover the extensive amount of cleaning that I'm going to have to do today.

So what I'll do in this situation is my other technician. I'll give them all his time on the PM. but all my time is billable time because this is insane. The amount of sand and everything and like the filters, those will be covered under the PM.

But all the cleaning that I'm going to be doing here and then troubleshooting is not covered under the PM service. micro Channel condensers. You cannot use any brightener cleaners. The yellow Venom pack or the Viper HD cleaner are completely micro Channel safe.

They're not going to cause any damage used. uh, using it putting it in here. right now. we're going to get this guy rinsed off and hopefully move on to the next one.

We got a lot of condensers to clean right now so I still got to get to all the other condensers too. And then as I was coming up I Noticed that the breaker for the hoods this trip like this is just a disaster. And the trick? Using the Viper gun. you get better concentrations and better use of their chemicals, but you just want to spray it on.

We don't need to use crazy settings, we're using the minimal concentration level. we got it on the A setting and we're just letting it sit on there. Just let it sit and then in about five six minutes we'll go over and we'll rinse it off and that's where the coil cleaner's magic comes in. Again, completely micro.

Channel safe so you're not going to harm anything and it's coming out nice and good. getting a good rinse, you can see all the stuff we're washing out all that dirt I Gotta go turn their hoods on man! I don't know I'm worried there's going to be a problem with their hoods too because the main breaker was tripped that controls both their exhaust fans how it works, right? Mondays This is the one that I just cleaned the condenser on I Put it all back together and started it up. This middle condenser fan motor did not start right away and it slowly span and then picked up speed. kind of like maybe it might have a bad capacitor.

So we definitely need to check into that because remember, we were getting a lot of high pressure codes. We were also getting freeze stack codes which could have been the filters being plugged so we got this one up and running. We'll definitely check the capacitors now. if you asked me yesterday, what I thought I would be doing today I Can guarantee you I wasn't going to say picking Weeds on a roof, but uh, you know, gotta do what you got to do right.

Stupid satellite dishes. In my way, it's not even being used so I'm getting rid of it if I can get in here and get all these screws out. Understand: people, abandon a satellite dish and then leave it up here so that we can't even access our units. I am uh, just about done.

I'm not going to be able to finish today. There's no way in heck, it's just too hot. Um, humidity is creeping up. it's not that high yet.

it's probably about 30 40 percent. but uh, we're not used to that. And the outdoor temperature? it's only like 11 A.M It's already 107 in the shade so uh, it's only going to last so much longer. I Got all the ACs running the filters all changed.

the drain's all cleaned out. All the compressors are running. this one right here though is going off on high pressure. Still need to check on those capacitors, but all the fan motors are running right now.

I had a high pressure on the second stage an error message but it reset and it's running now. Um I'm about to put uh, thermometers in every other AC and that 106 was in the shade. By the way, we go out in the sun and it's just brutal. So yeah, I'm kind of dying right now.

Um, but I'm gonna do TDS on the ACs and see if they're at least doing something I think they are because it feels pretty good down in that building. So we're just going to get TDS and again, we'll come back on another morning when we can troubleshoot one AC at a time. I Might look at the little split system that they had over there real quick because the breaker was tripped I'm going to make sure it's not a bad capacitor or something. Got to be careful and got to know your body.

you know I'm starting to hurt right now I went down, had a lunch drink some Waters chilled out for a few minutes. took about 20 minutes to take a break. Now I'm come back up but again heat stroke. Once you feel the symptoms, it's too late.

So I'm all over the place. My brain isn't really working right I Was going to jump on that split system but I was checking TDS Looks like maybe this guy blew out a terminal. I'm thinking maybe I don't know. There's oil everywhere.

something blew out, contactor looks like junk. Oh this compressor sounds like death. Well it didn't blow out the terminals because it has gas in it I Turned it off. Looks like the oil's not here.

I Don't know where this oil is coming from. it's just all around. the compressor. might be coming from this pressure control right here you think it is actually I'm gonna go get a leak detector.

We're gonna test that guy for the life of me. I Cannot find a leak on this guy I Guess maybe on the I Was kind of wondering if it was the Schraders leaking. I wasn't thinking straight and I put my gauges on it right quick. Looks like that one's leaking.

So I think we might just have leaking Schraders. That's a lot of oil though. that's scary. but I guess under high pressure it starts really leaking.

huh? I I Checked the compressor plugs I checked all around the compressor. the pressure control. nothing. So I'm thinking that it's just bad shaders so we could probably change those straighters out.

These are uh, core. Max fittings I Got the tool for that so we could probably change those out. Charge this guy up! I'm wondering what the deal is with this. This compressor sounds like junk and it looks like it'd been flooding back like the whole compressor itself is just very discolored.

It's a trip. I'm wondering if it was because the um, the higher fancy unit right there had freeze stats all in it. This one didn't have freeze stats and it had plugged up filters so we could have just been flooding back. And that compressor sounds like dirt now so could have ruined the compressor.

It's a very good possibility. this one I was hoping is off on overload. Let's check with the meter because it wasn't running but it had power going to it. All right.

The trick to this is to break these free with wrenches. get them loose. same thing, then you snap this guy on. man, it's getting up there 110 like I said.

it's about 40 percent outside air or relative humidity outside. Oh man. taking lots of breaks. Okay, two hands on this so push this in.

Twist it off. I Got two new Coremax fittings in my pocket trying to cool the head of this compressor, not the head trying to cool off this compressor. and I don't really want to use a water hose because you have all the components and then it's going to leak into the like. this area down here.

so this isn't really meant for water so it's a bag of ice. but I'm a little worried. I've got this guy on here so that way it'll tell me when it closes the overload. All right.

It reset. we. uh, let it sit for about five minutes after it reset. We're gonna check all phases.

All three legs have reset. Yep, so we the thermal overload reset. Whether or not the compressor is good, that's another question. So we've got gauges on it.

We're going to turn this guy on and see what happens. I've got some refrigerant too. We can charge it up if we have to. All right, We turn the disconnect back on.

We're waiting for it to call for cooling. In fact. I'll get some jumpers and I'll jump this guy out so we don't got to wait for this turned on on its own. Let It Go That sounds like it's like going backwards or something.

Something's not right. Hold on, push it in again and let's test. Oh, it's pulled in now. push it in and let's test voltage or test voltage on the across all three legs.

209 209. I Think this contactor is bad. Look at how it's not full of pulling in. This one sounds like junk.

This contactor is toasted. You can see it's just completely hammered. So I'm going to swap out the contactor and hope that that fixes our problem. This guy I questioned whether it was running backwards.

It's not. I Think the compressor's just beat down from running with the dirty filters. You can see what looks like it's been flooding back a lot. So let's swap this out.

All right, let's see what happens here. One two three. please don't blow up. We're gonna have 60 Hertz.

We should be calling for Colon. Give it a second. Oh yeah, this guy's dead compressor sounds like dirt. Let it run 58 amps.

We're gonna blow the main right now. Yeah, this guy's dead. bad. Compressor running at 58 amps.

This one sounds like crap too. So, but this one's still running. So I think we can let it run. but we have three phase power going to it.

We'll check it one more time just to make sure. But yeah, it's it's dead. All right. this guy is still running.

It's on its last leg. This one won't run. I Pulled the Molex plug. I'm waiting for the contactor to pull in so that way we can test voltage to make sure it was getting proper voltage.

but I know it was because it's brand new contactor. This one right here is running 21 amps. There it goes. It just pulls in.

This one's running 21 amps. This one was running 60 amps. Um, let's check voltage real quick. 209 210 210.

so we've got correct voltage. It just sounds like dirt. It's 108 outside in the shade. By the way, it's not 108 where I'm standing.

Condenser fan motors are running I'll make sure they're all running but I'm pretty sure they are. We're gonna put this guy back together. They're only running with one compressor. Let's uh for Giggles Let's test the voltage on this.

So 211 209 Yeah, we're good 210 So we have three phase going to this one. but the compressor is just dead. It's five because of those plugged up filters. Not much you can do.

We'll recover the charge, change the dryer in both compressors I Got up a little early this morning because we're heading out to the desert to finish up this uh compressor job and uh I'm sitting in traffic that stinks. What the heck is going on man. we were moving I was cruising and then all of a sudden the freeway just stopped the whole thing. Of course it was right after I hit something in the road too I had to stop at a rest stop I was really Blown Away with how many people are sleeping in a rest stop like I know trucks stopped there and stuff but like there's a lot of regular cars, some of them look to be homeless people but then other didn't look to be homeless and they're all just filling up.

the rest stop completely full of people. parking on the Overflow areas. kind of crazy, but yeah, good morning. Southern California Traffic huh? All right I am back.

It's windy today I Brought in easier but we're not gonna be able to put it up until this wind dies down. If it does die down, you gotta be careful too because it's blowing sand everywhere so my luck I Get it in my eyes, we gotta recover the gas out of this one. I Have my high flow Schrader depressors. These are not core removers.

these just depress the Schrader You got to be careful though because you don't want to go too much. so I'm going to get those connected and then I have to come up with a power solution I brought my uh, cheater cord right here and I do have a breaker panel with 115 volts in it over here, but there's no receptacle so I should be able to steal something off of that. Get a safe temporary power, all right. Got power hooked up scale, zeroed out.

Purged all the way up to here. so we're basically ready to open this guy up right here. Let it dump in, We'll turn on the recovery machine and let it get going. So I'm going to start prepping I have another tech coming to help me because possibly we're going to change them both today.

Um, I'm going to start sanding and just getting everything I can to get ready. All right. Got this one recovered. Got about five pounds and four ounces out of it.

I'm Gonna Leave This one running as long as possible because this is the one that's still operating. I'm going to wait till my other technician gets here and we actually get the compressors up here. but since this one's down, that's why I'm doing this one. So um, keep in mind I am going to unsweat these compressor terminals.

so I need to make sure that I have something on here in case pressure builds up in the system. Um, so just you know you want to be careful about that if you if you evacuate a system down to, you know. negative 10. There's still the potential that there's a little bit of vapor trapped in the oil and it'll boil out.

so if you take your gauges off, you theoretically could build up a little bit of pressure and that could lead to a flame out or someone getting hurt. So always want to be careful about that. I've lifted compressors. This is only a seven ton, but I've lifted them before but there's no point I got a left so we're just going to lift it up to the roof Edge set it down and carry it over.

Got both compressors up here pulling out some other stuff. Got the recovery machine going on the other one now. Hopefully get this recovered before it gets too hot because it's starting to get warm. Tank pressure's at 440.

so we still got a little room to go. but moving along all right. Got one compressor in. It's not sweating yet but it's in.

We got these guys bent out of the way because we're going to purge the system with nitrogen. I have my Purge adapter right here. This is from JB Industries I Don't know the part number but um, you can just look it up for just better tools. You can get that and then my buddy Chris Hughes um just invented a new version of this that goes on the outside of the pipe.

Uh, you can find it at Trutech Tools. it's uh, distributed by Subco. Um, it's a purge boot I think is what he calls it so definitely check it out if you do it at True Tech tools. uh, use my offer code big picture, you'll get a eight percent discount and then I get a small commission from that.

Not really anything I could film but it was a bit tricky. So we're putting in ball valves right here. We use the refrigeration Technologies heat blanket. um and uh, it because it just kept flaming up the insulation in the top.

so we did that. We made sure there's no fire. like I said I have a second person here with me. so we got those two braised and then now we're just going to kind of blast the system with nitrogen to make sure there's not just like a crap ton of Trapped oil and then we'll get the dryers finished up.

Something weird about these dryers. they were. It's like an old dryer that the supply house gave me and um, it's like the copper Coatings kind of messed up or something but I was able to get it. It just took a minute to get it brazed in right? but we've been protecting it with the heat blocking compound the whole time making sure we're not overheating things.

So we just got to do this braised joint and this braised joint right here. and then that'll be for the second stage. All right. We got our dryers installed right there.

We got ball valve so that we can valve them off and replace the dryers if need be. We strapped them in with that. We actually use the same straps just got longer screws so those are in nice and good. Compressors are both brazed in.

This one passed its pressure test. We're going to put a vacuum pump on it. We're currently doing a pressure test on this one. It's getting really hot so we're trying to get our butts out of here because uh, it's supposed to be like 111 I think here today 115 somewhere in there so trying to get out of here I'd say right now it's probably like 98.

So all right. we're also changing the other contactor because I changed this one the other day. So we're changing that. Um I'm doing the evacuation on the second stage.

it's looking good so far. um we had a couple ripples. let's see if I can zoom I don't know how the hell there you go? how do you? I don't know how this thing works? Yeah I don't know how to work this out but it had a couple ripples up at the top. There you go you can see like and what I did when I saw it like going up was I started shaking the compressor and just getting nitrogen out of the oil is what I think was happening and I do think we have a little bit of Trapped oil right in here that I probably should have blown out, but I noticed when I was recovering it was kind of frosting up right here.

We tried to blow everything out to see if we had any majorly trapped oil. I'm hoping that the whole oil charge from the old compressor isn't in the unit. There's not really much we could do about it, but we're getting there liking it. We have a target of 500.

we're almost there so it's just moving along. I already got the compressor wired up I had to cut the uh Molex plug off and uh wire it up. we're good on that crankcase. heater is wired up.

we're going to zip tie up some wires. so this thing was down to about 520 530 and then what I did was I just started shaking everything again and it's jumping all the way up to eight and now it's starting to drop again. So what's doing is to see that it came down and it's just kind of bouncing around and then now it's dropping again. but it's because again, I'm agitating the oil and I'm shaking that and pulling all the nitrogen and stuff out of it that would have shown up in the Decay test.

So you might as well do it now. I Went through the test it went into Decay and it says pass so it uses their algorithm. Okay, so if I hit quit, you can see slowly. Rising but it's basically calculated that it's fine.

So at this point I'm going to turn off the vacuum pump and get hooked up to the other system. We're getting some lunch. I Actually have my other technician that's here with me went to go get us some lunch and I'll get this one running and then we'll start charging this one. I Can't believe this.

This unit does not have low pressure controls. I Went through the evaporator section. It just has freeze stats. My gosh, that's such a budget unit.

It has all this other crap. Why doesn't have low pressure controls? It has high pressure controls and freeze stats. That's insane. Um, okay.

so I'm doing the evacuation on this one. I Went ahead and disconnected compressor contactor because no low pressure control right? So that way I can turn the unit on and go ahead and charge up the second stage. At least get something going in their kitchen. We're running on this guy right now for the other stage so we're looking good.

Um I guess one two three, please don't blow up, huh? Make sure it doesn't sound horrible. Nope. sounds fine. So we'll just wait for the Uh system to kick on.

Indoor blower motor is running so we're just waiting for the thermostat to cool and then uh, we will require seven pounds, eight ounces. so I was able to put five pounds in it. There goes first stage. So second stage should kick on here any second.

and there we go. we are running. Let's go and put some gas in it. It's running, don't hear any problems.

It's running in the right direction. It's a high suction pressure though. Why? that's why? Because I didn't have this open there. we go Much better now.

It's got a low suction pressure because it needs gas. so we got to get up to seven pounds. Eight ounces. We're at Five three right now.

This guy's running good. I Put my gauges off I'm gonna probe up in a few minutes. I'm still pulling the evacuation on the other one. we're at about 900 microns.

I Just put another micron gauge on there too because this one was acting kind of funny. but I think I have oil in this one I need to clean it but we're looking good. Um, you can see we had like a little hiccup though here because I shook the compressor a bunch and stuff. So yeah, we're just dropping below our Target but we will.

Really? I Mean we're just dropping below the Thousand microns? We really want to see it down to 500. So all right. well. I'm gonna finish pulling that and then we'll get charging on it and then we'll probe up with measure quick.

But I don't suspect there's going to be any problems. The last clip cut off because my phone was overheating. but um, all right, my system is completely up and running. We're looking at both stages I think I have a probe placement problem because both stages my targets are a little bit higher than what we're actually running inside the unit.

but I will say that I know this system has some ductwork problems and I'm sure it's going to be reflected. So first stage superheat's still a little bit high. This thing just turned on. It's still nice and warm in there.

Okay, sub cooling is where I'd expect it to be outside Air temps about 108 degrees. Um yeah, my return is 90 degrees right now. it's hot in that kitchen. so um yeah.

but I I think that's mixing some outside air right there too because of where I had the probe. Um, check this out though. my 10 splits 30 degrees. see I told you I know I have some uh I think what it's doing I think it's pulling some attic air if I Remember right? let's scroll over here.

Look, we have zero latent load right now. just no humidity. Barely any at all. Uh, delivered.

capacity looks fine. Let's go to Circuit two it's doing about the same thing about 18 degrees compressor superheat. Coming back, we're looking okay. Yeah, all right, that's pretty much it.

I'm dying up here right now. We need to get our stuff off this roof. I Got more done than I wanted to get done today because I was only planning on doing one compressor but since I had someone else come with me, we did them both. We knocked it out, turned out good.

Uh, we got ball valves in there in case the dryers ever go bad. We're secured, everything's good, no leaks. so we're going to clean up all of our messes and get the heck out of here. Uh, tell the customer I Really like to come back and put low pressure controls on this guy I'm not doing it today because I'm done on the roof today.

Um, and then I already told him last time they need to be calling us whenever they have sandstorms because I believe the sandstorm is what caused all this problem. No low pressure controls, they only have freeze stats. they just had no airflow and we probably, uh, just ruined the compressors because we had liquid refrigerant coming back. These are fixed orifice metering devices.

Uh, we'll see I'd like to cut them open if I can so we'll have to see how that goes, but that's going to be it for now. everything's looking good. Compressors are all running good contactors. Yeah, that's it.

And then the last time we were here too, we changed the filters on every AC posed off every condenser. Um, it's like already a little Dusty Yeah, everything else is good, so that's it. Like I said, we're going to clean up our messes and get the heck out of here. I Just got done cutting this thing open.

Now this is the one that was actually locked up. It would not run. Okay, that's the one that was still running. You definitely know that these things had flood back.

I Pulled absolutely no oil out of this compressor. There was nothing I Tipped it over. There was a little bit of oil in the floating seal. There was no oil in the sump.

So what does that mean? This thing did not blow out all the refrigerant. so that means the oil is still in the evaporator, more than likely all stuck in the evaporator. and we have a fixed orifice metering device. Because we have a fixed orifice metering device, it's going to feed refrigerant based on the pressure in the system.

We are going to ruin the next compressor the compressor we just installed if the customer doesn't allow me to go back in. I Don't even know how to get that oil out of the evaporator. This is the second circuit. Like really, their best bet is just change the evaporator coil, but they ain't going to do it in that unit.

I'll bring it up to the customer. but I bet you anything they're not going to do a single thing about this and they're going to say just let's see what happens. But that evaporator is logged with 1.7 liters of oil, It's not in here. That's nuts.

all right. So when you're cutting these compressors I've gotten pretty good at cutting them. What? I'd suggest very carefully. You've got to be careful about this.

What? I like to do? Okay, here's the head. There's the check valve Muffler plate floating seal looks pretty darn good, doesn't it? all right? So what I do is I Cut Basically I can show you on this one right here. I Cut: Go with a piece of tape, wrap it around it, cut right above the Weld and right below the weld, then cut just to the side of this seam, all the way down and then on the other side. What you want to do is you want to look inside the compressor and you can see the motor down in there.

You just cut right alongside the motor without damaging it too much. If you want to be pretty about it, try to cut the bottom flat right there and then you have a stand for the compressor. So if you want to present it, use it for demonstrations or anything like that. Just got to be very careful.

The first one, two, three of these you cut up, you're gonna butcher. Okay, then you'll start getting good at them. I Went through one two, three, four, five, six, seven grinder discs. Luckily I have a nine amp battery battery so that was fully charged I didn't even have to change the battery.

Um, so let's get this pulled apart and see what it looks like on the inside. Well, let's go through this. So when we pull off top compressor. I've got a check valve.

Doesn't look too crazy in there. Okay, then we got the muffler plate. All right. Nothing too crazy, right? I Mean, doesn't look too bad? All right.

Then we got the floating seal. I Mean it looks pretty darn good. This is a 410A compressor. Remember, no big issues there.

No weird grooves right here. Seems like everything's been good. Okay looking good so far. A little bit of oil right up in here.

nothing too bad. Top of the scroll plate. Okay, we got some scroll galling going on in there. Some pretty deep calling looks like metallic flakes.

Let's get up into this guy. Oh yeah. look at that. That one's not looking good at all.

Let's look at the bottom of this guy. Oh, that's an indicator right there. Look at that. It's a tiny crack running straight down the inside of that inner race right there.

Look at that surface in there. All right that axes are bearing right there. Look. Oh, that's not good.

Wow. Metal on metal action right there for sure. Come on up into here. Oldham Couplings still intact.

Top of here. Oh yeah. some overheating going on and that bearing surface too. Okay, look at that.

Oh yeah, that's not good. Look at that overheating that we had going on. We had some metal on metal action going on. This is a massive lack of oil.

That's what happens when you run out of oil on these guys. It no longer turns. Wow though. Yeah, that's bad.

Now we gotta figure out. like I said, how am I going to uh I got to get the customer to let me go back in there. But I mean literally, they're gonna have to change the evaporator coil and hope that all the oil's still in there and hasn't made it into the condenser back into the new compressors. Are any of you guys? just like, really exhausted from this summer I'm just getting beat down I don't know if it shows it in my face, but I'm just tired.

like I really am I'm actually tired because it got up super early this morning too. It's currently August 16th. it's uh, 409 p.m and my day started I mean for me really early. my day started about 4 45 actually I got up at four o'clock but I left the house about five something and uh, went and did some stuff.

but regardless, um, knowing my locations before I service them I I have a very good familiarity with all the locations that I service and when this customer called and said they had three ACS actually Four ACS not working I kind of already had an idea I I figured they probably had a sandstorm and so I had set up for another technician to come out about an hour and a half after I got there and he was going to bring filters now I specifically scheduled him a little bit later than me because I wanted to get out there and make sure there was nothing crazy going on. The location is out in the Southern California low desert, about hour and a half two hours away from my shop and they have supply houses out there, but sometimes they don't have everything we need. so I had him kind of hold off come out a little bit later just in case. I was to call him and say I need this and I need that.

you know he could pick it up instead of having to drive all the way back to town. So it worked out that he brought out the filters and that I had him actually do the preventative maintenance while he was there at least part of it and we cleaned everything off I hosed everything off and then just did like a triage rundown on everything. Uh, you know for the most part the biggest issues were just dirty condensers, loose belts, and plugged up filters so we took care of that. But then we obviously found the two bad compressors on their kitchen.

AC So I did everything I could to get them operational. but at the same time you know I had to put a limit like I wasn't going to change a compressor that day. There was no way I was already beat down just from cleaning that equipment. Also had a pretty good discussion with the customer just telling them like look, everything that I did today could have been prevented or in this video could have been prevented.

These two compressors that were ridiculously expensive. It was insane how much they cost for this entire job. Um, but it it basically could have been prevented had they called me right after the sandstorm. Okay, if they'd called me right after the sandstorm and said oh my gosh, we had a big Sandstorm They knew they.

they know that. Okay, they know that we always have to come out and change filters and stuff so logic would tell you that they should have called me. But I did have a discussion and just told them guys, you guys spent an astronomical amount of money having me change compressors when we could have prevented this had you just called me. So next time when you guys have a sandstorm, you need to call me ahead of time.

Even ahead of time. Yeah, call me and let me know. Hey, we're about to have a sandstorm this week. Get it on my radar so that way we can be ready to come out after the sandstorm.

You know, let's get proactive on this. and let's let's try to take care of these issues. They can't predict that the sandstorms are coming, but they typically have an idea when the high winds are going to pick up. Um, but anyways, you know, so let's hope that they learn from this mistake because had they called me I think they ran for a good two weeks after the sandstorm and that's inevitably what killed the compressors.

Now, as far as the oil, where's it at? I I Mean you guys saw that there was a ridiculous amount of oil inside the unit, but I pulled out a little over five pounds out of that unit, so it's not like it leaked out its entire charge. I think the total charge was six pounds, maybe? I set it in the video at six or seven pounds so it wasn't really that far off. I Think the well I know the only refrigerant leaks were on those Cormax fittings. so I think some of that oil was the oil that was in the compressor, but that was not 1.77 liters inside that unit.

I Still think that there's oil trapped inside the system. so I brought it up to the customer's attention I said hey, you really need to put in a service call. let me come back out and let me try to, you know, evaluate the system and see if we can figure out where this oil is. I Don't think there's a whole lot I can do I Realistically think their best bet is is just to change the entire evaporator coil.

Have me come in and do that. but you know I mean I can't force them I can't force them to do that. And like I said I don't think they're going to do it I Think they're just gonna see what happens and just wait. The issue is is that if if it's not me that comes back out here, the next guy that comes in to change a compressor you know is going to find out the hard way too after the fact when he pours it out like you know if someone doesn't know ahead of time like we gotta.

if we had another compressor go bad in this I Would absolutely tell him you have to change the evaporatorical evaporator and compressor. You know there's no way. Um, I haven't cut open the first compressor, the one that was still running I'm sure that one's very low on oil too. I Don't think that one was completely out of oil because it was running, but the noise that we heard is probably metal on metal action because it doesn't have enough oil in it and I'm completely blown away I'd Never realized that these units did not have low pressure controls either.

Had they had low pressure controls, there's a very good possibility that this unit would have shut itself down. But now that I say that, I'm thinking in my head, there's no, there's no safeties on this that prevent the system from short cycling. Okay, so this exact system has a freeze stat and it has a high pressure control. If it goes off on either one of those, there's no lockout device because this is like a Budget model unit.

It literally just goes off on low pressure until the pressure's equalized, then it turns back on and then goes off, and then it turns back on. So I mean that's not really that good either. If I was to put in a low pressure control, it would be really smart to put some sort of a time delay in there. or even a holding relay or something where you know, a compressor lockout device or something.

Uh, you know, even like those ones that they have on carriers, the compressor lockout boards where if it doesn't sense a change in current or if any one of the pressure switch is open, it just locks itself out. That's what they need on this. and this is what happens when they buy Budget model units. I Did not sell these to the customer that big fancy one in the middle I actually sold them that one many, many, many years ago.

but they bought their own of the other ones and they bought the Budget model units and this is what they get. You know it is what it is. So I can only do my best I am not a perfect technician. and of course, when you're battling the elements like I was, it was just so ridiculously hot, my brain wasn't working right I had to take so many breaks I mean what realistically should have taken me I Don't know.

Three four hours to come out there, clean the condensers, change all the filters, check the belts, and just triage the units took me like nine hours that day. That first day, it was like nine hours I was on the roof because when you hit in that heat and you technicians from the Arizona area, uh, you know the the desert area of Texas Um, you know you guys know what it's like to work in this ridiculously hot temperatures and don't give me any of that. but it's a dry heat thing. Okay, when it's 110 degrees, 30 to 40 percent humidity throws that heat index so ridiculously high, it's just unbearable.

I Understand that if you're hitting like 80 90 humidity, it's going to be even more miserable. But anything over 100 degrees is not safe for us technicians to be working in without taking proper breaks and proper precautions. We need to remember that this is a job. Okay, um, you know now I own my own company, right? And and you know, but still I Worry about my own guys out in the field too.

Um, it's not worth your life to be out there just trying to fix something because you just feel like you want to be the hero. to say you know, make everybody cool off like you gotta know your body and you've got to take breaks. So what should have taken me three to four hours Took me, you know, eight to nine hours or something. It it is what it is and the customer gets charged for that period because when you're working in extreme conditions, they just have to understand that everything slows down.

You know you got to take a lot of breaks and you got to make sure you stay cool. It is what it is. Always try to take care of yourself. Okay, so um, I'll bring it to the customer's attention you know, and see what they have to say.

But other than that, there's nothing else to do. I got another cool Conversation Piece Compressor right there. It's getting ridiculous how many compressors I probably got three or four cut up ones in my garage I've thrown away a crap ton, but I've been getting better at cutting them up to where they actually can sit on a stand and they look kind of cool. Um, so I'm gonna I don't know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna have to find a place to put all these things, but you know it'd be really nice to be able to use these in the future.

I'd like to spend some time and like polish up the edges so that way they're not sharp Burrs and different things like that. but it's fun. The more of these things you cut up, the more you really understand about the system. Um, this one.

I was blown away with the how good a shape those compressors were in other than the fact that it just ran out of oil. Now that oil damage was new that didn't just like you know that didn't happen over time that that you could tell just instantly happened because the compressor didn't have signs of overheating in the head in the muffler plate like everything looked good. The floating seal was super clean. It had been a clean Tight and Dry system for many, many years up until they plugged up the filters and we had a flood of liquid refrigerant come.

and. So what probably happened in here is that the liquid refrigerant made its way back because it's a fixed orifice metering device that doesn't discriminate. it doesn't Throttle Down The liquid or anything. it just constantly feeds a set amount of liquid based off of the the liquid pressure, right? So it's just constantly feeding liquid to this thing and eventually this liquid gets trapped in the compressor and it starts to wash the oil out in off.

Cycles The the refrigerant might migrate to the compressor depending on the temperatures outside and stuff, but it inevitably we washed all the oil out of this compressor and it got trapped inside the system until the compressor ran and ran and ran and it started getting metal on metal. action. You can see from the the metal fatigue that was inside of there on the bearing races and everything and that just completely disintegrated the compressor. So that's why when I turned it on it started to make a loud noise and then it was hitting like 60 amps because it that motor was trying.

that motor was doing everything it can. it's just a fixed Speed Motor It's not a variable speed or anything, it just turned on and said let's pump but the metal on metal action. There was no lubrication. it was just like nope, we're not going to do it.

It was dead you know, but it is a lot of fun to cut these things open. The more and more you do, the more you're going to understand the operation. And I am not an expert by any means, but it is really neat to be able to do that. I Really appreciate you guys making it to the end of the video.

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