This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition, all right, um, they're, complaining that the thermostat is not working and it has no display on it. But it's nice and cool in the dining room right here in the kitchen right now. So what we're going to do is go between r and c. We've got 27 volts and we have no display on this guy just completely blank when you put it on nothing, changes so definitely got a bad thermostat, but we're not gon na stop.

Just there all right got the new thermostat installed. If you look at the sub base for the old one up here in this top corner, probably turn my light on, you can see it a little bit better. There's some uh looks like water damage and that happens, and it kind of looks like a little bit of water damage on here too. So uh we got thermostat changed out, we're going to uh program it real, quick and uh.

Do the start and stop times, then we're going to jump on the roof and go through the unit cause. I guarantee it's dirty and probably has loose belts and everything all right. This is my package unit right here. This is the kitchen ac.

So let's go ahead and open this guy up. I love these door handles on these older units, dirty in here, big old cobwebs, right off the bat. We have an error code number 22 off the top of my head: that's a first stage: low pressure, yep 22. First stage, low pressure looks like all the other compressors are running.

This guy is beat down, needs a good cleaning. Look at the combustion chamber down in here. Oh yeah, don't you know all right, um condenser fan motors are all running, so that's a good sign. Condenser itself is pretty dirty on the inside.

What about the outside? It's, not horrible, but uh definitely needs a cleaning. Let's look at the metal mesh filters. There's one missing so we'll work on that and condenser looks like you could use a cleaning. Um doesn't look horrible.

Definitely got a low pressure code, so we're going to uh have to dig in a little bit deeper. Now i don't know. If i'm going to do this all today, i got them operational. I think that we're going to be returning when i could bring uh someone else back with me and have them go to town cleaning this equipment, because i have other calls to get to right now so uh, let's have a look at this blower assembly, see what It looks like in here oh yeah, loose belt too, so yeah we'll talk with them.

What the heck is going on here. Why is the equalizer line like twisted out like this? What a mess look at all this wiring in here this is a giant mess. Something happened here: someone changed something because look at like the bend on that is ridiculous. Huh.

I almost think that maybe it had a broken belt and they grabbed that line and yanked it down that's kind of what it looks like to me, because there's wires everywhere yeah. This looks like maybe the belt grabbed something and just jerked it, and that would be the first stage too problem. Well, i'm guessing yeah. It is because the other two liquid lines are warm this one's cold, because it's not running, i bet you, it jerked it down and broke the capillary or something maybe even right in here yeah we're going to be returning for this one, i'm going to be coming Back so i'm going to get some information off this unit.

We got them operational. Changing the thermostat, we'll bring back some belts. Let's have a look at the filters. Filters are pretty dirty.

They use these filters from the filter. Changing company it looks like they were last changed in november, but they are trash. Thing is just dirty really dirty, so we're probably gon na need to put some filters in it too. Lack of maintenance does a lot.

So first off you see the cobwebs in here. Right but look at the head of the compressor. The paint is flaking off because it's been running really high discharge temps for a long time to the point that it's flaked, all the paint off this unit needs some serious love. So okay, they're operational, like i said, we're gon na come back um, probably tomorrow or the next day and uh really go to town on this year.

All right we are back today. I had some guys come in and just do quick cleaning on the equipment. Condensers are clean. You know the customer doesn't want us to spend a ton of time, but we're going to dive into this guy, because we had low pressure codes on the first stage.

If i remember right and we're just going to go through the unit with a fine tooth comb, get the customer a big picture quote so they can, you know better make decisions on whether or not they want to repair or replace uh a lot of times these Customers are repairing right now because uh the lead time on these new linux units is like six months out so um we're just gon na start, checking everything out and going through the first observations. Just looking in here, um number one look at the head of this compressor. The paint is peeling off. That's an indication that we've had high discharge temps for a very prolonged period of time.

Each compressor is doing that the paint is peeling off same thing on this one. The paint is peeling off. This is from running dirty, condensers, all the time we're seeing this more and more all the time, because customers are not doing routine preventative maintenance all right. So we're trying to put our probes on the system right now on the first stage and it's it's out of gas.

There's no gas in this one, so we're gon na proceed with the next one, we'll go ahead and pull the plug off. I know there's a lot of people that are gon na say you need to be careful, pulling the fusible plugs off, because that can be damaged and blow out. Okay, so first stage we're gon na stop right now and we're gon na keep troubleshooting. Second and third stage getting a big picture idea of what's going on on this unit right when it comes to the placement of the probes, you need to understand how your equipment's working we have discharge, we have suction.

We have discharge line temperature. We have liquid line pressure liquid line temperature suction line temperature, but the question is: where do we put our outside air probe? Well, if you open up the installation, instructions, it'll actually break it down for you and tell you what part of the condenser is wet. So i used this and then i drew on here so the upper part of the outside is circuit. One upper part of the inside is circuit two and then the bottom of inside and outside is circuit three.

So when we're taking air temperatures, especially on really hot days, it can really matter where you put your probe, so you wan na make sure you're putting it in front of the the air right there. This is in the shade all day long if it's 115 degrees outside in the sun, it might be 110 in the shade and that will make a difference when it comes to diagnosing your unit, so always pay attention so to troubleshoot circuit 2, we're putting our outside Air probe right up in here, and in fact we might even put it right over here to get a better. You know, measurement of the uh uh outside air, for that unit now again see this side's in the sun right now. This side is not all right.

Now we got the unit operational, we put it into test mode. Uh went through the settings, put it into c11, which is all stages now keep in mind. The first stage is not gon na be running okay um and we're uh gon na. Let it run for about five minutes and then we'll start evaluating.

What's going on with the system paying attention to everything. Now, let's talk about probe placement again you're working on a package unit. It's not always perfect! You want to do your best, but get about 12. 18, inches away from the discharge of the compressor: okay: pay attention to high side pressure.

Are you trying to measure sub cooling because high side pressure is going to have a difference across it? Okay, so let's check it out right now so high side pressure right now is what we're measuring it's 194 psi. But let's change that in our toolbox go to high side 2! Look at this 181 psi! That's the liquid line pressure as we let it run longer and longer the pressure differential or pressure drop is going to become more and more so. 185. 202.

Okay, so it does matter, and you don't necessarily want to measure sub cooling off the discharge line. If you can get away with doing it, i want to measure subcoin off of the liquid line. So that way we can get a proper, accurate, sub cooling. Reading.

Okay, now linux doesn't publish sub cooling numbers, they actually publish the approach temperature approach. Temperature is kind of a backwards way to sub cooling, it's outside air temperature and liquid line surface temperature, and then you can gain your approach temperature. So it's a backwards way to figuring out sub coin, but we can use an actual sub coin. So we're going to let this unit continue to run and we're just observing while we're waiting.

Now, when it comes to the other temperatures liquid line temperature, i like to get the liquid line temperature uh off the condenser, all right as close as possible to the exit of the condenser right now there could be an argument to get it closer to the uh Expansion valve that that's a fair argument, but in this situation, because i'm working on a package unit, i'm going to put it right here, um and then air probes. Let's go talk about the air probes in the supply and the return. So different things are going to happen. So let's open this up and let's make an observation as to what's going on in here.

We have a return air probe, okay, but notice we have outside air dampers. We actually want to close those when we're trying to troubleshoot the refrigeration circuit, because it's mixing the air with outside air. So it's not going to give us an accurate representation of what the building air is. Okay in a perfect world, we put this a little bit further down in the duct.

Same thing goes for the supply air sensor. This is a package unit, so i have it in the discharge. It's awfully close to the heat exchanger and the evaporator in a perfect world. This is down at a diffuser, but it's not a perfect world, and we can't always do that.

So we put it at the furthest point inside the package as we're running. I want to go ahead and point out what we're seeing here. So look at our high side pressure and look at our sub cooling. Now i can already tell you this is using the actual high side pressure and not the liquid line pressure that sub cooling is low compared to what these units normally run at okay.

It looks like it's okay, nine degrees, but let's go ahead and make the switch over. So again, this is discharge pressure, so we go into here and we look right here. High side pressure is 206 psi. Liquid line pressure is 192., so let's go ahead and change this one to the high side.

Pressure hit home and we can watch the change there. We go, we've already changed over. It's dropped down, so it's using this probe as the high side probe now and look at our sub cooling number super heat number everything changed: okay, so understanding which probes to use and where to locate them is very important in troubleshooting, these units keep in mind we're Missing one compressor, so we're operating, we have to kind of you know, make some assumptions here. First off this building does not have a load on it right now.

Okay, so let's go through notice. Our superheat is low. All right, as we're going in here outside air temperature, 68 degrees, look at the return. Air temperature, 63 degrees return, air, temp, okay, look at our supply air temp 52.

All right! We don't have the greatest temperature split across the unit about 11 degrees. Airflow is kind of bouncing around, but that will happen when you're missing a compressor because of the way they estimate the airflow um all right. So as we're going through on this, we have to understand that low superheat will happen when you are running a low load. It is common for that to happen.

Okay, um, i am not seeing anything that is making me scared about this second stage. Okay, it is operating its doing a decent job as best as we can tell with no load on the system. Okay, so we are going to go ahead and jump over to the third stage. We're going to give this one an okay jump to the third stage, and then once we evaluate the third stage, then we will try to do a leak search on the first stage to figure out if it's an actual, repairable leak.

All right remember: we don't have a load right now: okay, that is affecting things, but we get to this third stage, and these numbers aren't looking too great. Okay, now notice, our evaporator temperature is 28 degrees. This is our 22., so that is very cold okay, but we also have no load notice. Measure quick's target is about where it's at we can't run just by looking at pressures pressures.

Don't tell us the whole story. Look at our sub cooling. That's non-existent! Look at our superheat, that's extremely high, compared to the second stage, which was doing kinda. Okay, all right, i'm leaning towards this guy, potentially having a low refrigerant charge.

Okay, so we are going to keep that in mind when we're evaluating the system, we might have to look for a leak on the set or the third stage, also all right, so that kind of makes sense, because we're only missing one compressor, but we only have A 10 degree td, you know i'd, expect it to be a little bit higher tdb and return versus supply air temperature, okay, but we don't just use one metric to gauge anything. We can't look at our pressures and our td and say the unit's working right that doesn't tell us everything. We need to pay attention to everything and be observant. Look at the paint missing on the top of the compressor.

All right. Remember that we're running a low load situation, so that is going to affect things we're 10 most of the time going to run a lower than normal superheat in that situation. But in this situation with the superheat this high, it's not helping the compressor cooling. The head of this compressor is insane.

Let's look at our discharge line. Temperature discharge line is 175 degrees right now, that's really high for um for our ambient conditions and stuff right now. Okay, so that's part of the reason why we're missing the paint on the head of our compressor. We don't have any kind of discharge protection on this unit.

Okay, everything matters now next question condenser fan motors: we got to pay attention to condenser fan motors too. Okay. We need to make sure that they're working appropriately, let's go ahead and drive them on and we'll make sure that that isn't affecting our readings. I don't think it is all right.

I made a mistake and it happens, but you know our job is not cookie cutter. It's not constantly checking through everything i i didn't check to see if those other two condenser fan motors were running and they weren't and it did affect everything. So we need to go back and recheck that second stage, we probably don't have an all clear on that, because we were artificially driving our head pressure up. Okay, so look at how much worse the third stage got: okay, yeah we've got some problems here and we're gon na go ahead and uh.

The third stage isn't looking good to me. We're looking like a potential low charge on the third stage too. So we're gon na go back to the second stage and evaluate that one, so the second stage actually still isn't looking too bad. Okay, we're connected back on.

It still looks a little off um again, our evaporator temperature is low, but we have no load superheat's. A little bit more in line all right, but superheat is not an indication of charge because we have a thermostatic expansion valve and the thermostatic expansion valve is going to do everything it can based off of the line temperatures to open and close when needed. Okay, so sub cooling, though, is not too bad. We still look a little low to me.

So here's what we're gon na do we're gon na go ahead and power down the unit right after we do some electrical checks. We're gon na do some some voltage drop tests, we're going to power down the unit, we're going to put some nitrogen and some r22 into this guy, do a leak check and then we're going to leak check the rest of the system. While we have it apart because we're going to end up disassembling this whole unit, all right for troubleshooting purposes, we're going to save them a couple bucks we're not going to use r22 okay because we're not fixing this we're not going to run it with this. But i have some old 404 a that's in the van.

It's not bad. I recovered it recently we're just using it for a trace gas and i'm not even going to charge it as a liquid, i'm just going to use vapor because we're never going to use this to fix anything. This is going to be disposed of, but since we're doing an epa approved leak, search where we're going to use a trace gas and then dump nitrogen on top of it. Why not use some scrap 404 that i have in the van right? Then i don't even have to charge them, for it save them a couple bucks, so purge still gon na dump a bunch of 404 in there i'm using gauges, because it's easier, in my opinion, to charge with those so we're gon na dump.

You know 50 psi of 404 then put a bunch of nitrogen. On top of it all right, we've got the sides taken off the condenser, we're just doing a visual. The copper does not look very good. It looks very deteriorated.

Okay, we're coming down here. I don't see any signs of oil that doesn't mean there's not any leaks, we'll come over to the other side. We're doing a big picture quote here, so we're being thorough. Okay, so we're gon na leak check this side too again, i don't see any oil, but again that doesn't necessarily mean it.

You can clearly see that people been cleaning this condenser incorrectly by just using the condenser cleaning door and just hammering the condenser, because it's all jammed up inside all right. So we come over here and uh. We get into the evaporator section same thing. Take these panels off and we're going to be super thorough, but first off this is really suspect to me.

Why is this line like right here where it looks like maybe a belt grabbed it and ripped it down? Okay, that looks like crud, but look at this. There's oil all over this line. This is the third stage right there, there's oil all over it, and these those are my marks like i usually go around and mark all the leaks. I wonder if i tried to quote this and they didn't approve it.

One time we'll go through and we'll see are the leaks still in the same spots, but we keep coming down here. Look at how bad that is look at how bad that is down there. There's oil everywhere, so we're gon na do a thorough leak check on everything all right. We actually got no hits at the condenser, but we're getting hits all over the evaporator down here right in here somewhere in here.

Let's see if we pick it up again, it's like it's small leaks, they're right down in here. I've got the leak detector, there's one little blip yeah. We just keep getting hits all over the place. So at this point there's so many leaks.

We know that they're here we're just gon na douse this with uh big blue leak, detector, fluid and pinpoint them all, and it looks like these ones that i have marked are still actively leaking like the customer, never fixed them, so see these ones. I have marked already that's the third stage, so we're gon na coat the whole thing with big blue and then identify the leaks visually all right. So big blue, you do a test, get a steady stream coming out of it. You make sure it's on the stream feature and you're gon na start at the top and you're gon na work.

Your way down we're going to spray every joint nice and smooth without blowing bubbles all over it because you get it nice and smooth and then 10 minutes later you come back and if you see bubbles, it's a leak. But if you spray it on in the fan setting, then it's going to create bubbles and it's going to be harder to identify small leaks. That's that's where big blue really shines is finding micro, leafs micro clusters. I mean you can buy any leak, detection fluid, but this stuff, the way the consistency is and everything it does.

A great job of seeing these little itty bitty micro leaks that we can already see right in here. Look at those tiny little guys right there right where the arrows are pointing on the inside of that weld, they're already bubbling up, so we already know that one's leaking for sure all right. We have leaks all over the third stage. We marked them they're everywhere, right.

Those can all be fixed, there's there's a few leaks in the second stage here and there there's a massive leak down here. The big blue is really shining on this one and it was kind of hard to see, but look at that, it's bubbling for sure. So that's right where this line is hanging. This is the equalizer line for the txv um also got big blue all inside the txv sensing or the the distributor tubes we're leak, checking those so yeah.

I don't know man this this one's pretty bad. So what i'm thinking i'm gon na do i'm gon na try to get a hold of the customer, but i don't know that i'm gon na be able to get a hold of them to approve everything right now. So what we'll do is uh, we'll add a little refrigerant to the second and third stage, get them operating as best as possible, and then we'll give the customer a quote for this one, i'm concerned, because this is r22. Unfortunately, these compressors have mineral oil.

I don't think they're worth changing the oil in because of the high temperature on the top. I believe the damage is already done so uh. You know if the customer can't get a unit, you know i'll give them a bunch of options you know, but what i would highly suggest if they want to get a couple more years out of this unit is, let me go in and weld on. All of these, let me go ahead and recover the existing r22.

I can make these two work. Maybe we can put in a new compressor on the first stage with poe oil charge it with 407c and then you know, then they have a fully functional unit. But realistically, with all these leaks i mean it's going to keep happening, though so you know i need to kind of see where they want to go with this. But clearly this thing is just leaking like crazy up in here.

So all right, so we're going to have to talk to the customer now in the past, with this particular customer they've, given me approval to just proceed with certain repairs - and i normally would have just done this one myself, but with the rising cost of refrigerants and Things uh repair like this is gon na be depending on which route they want to go is if they want me to put r22 back in we're gon na, be in excess of eight thousand dollars in repairs on this um. I can't make those decisions on my own anymore, so i'm gon na have to do a full quote. I am not gon na top off the charge on those other two compressors at this moment, because they are operating. We're going to close this work order out, submit a legit quote and give the customer a few different options.

I'm going to highly suggest that you know i mean in a perfect world. They, let me use r22. That would be the easiest just put r22 back in i'm very reluctant to try to pull the oil out of this compressor because you would have to unsweat it and pour it out um. I don't really trust that you know i.

I know some people are just going to say, add some poe and put 407c in it. I'm reluctant to do that. I just don't like that um, but you know i'll give the customer some options and see where they want to go. But remember the damage is already done to these compressors.

That's something we need to understand the paint's already peeling off. So if i change over to an alternative and it potentially runs higher discharge temps, maybe this compressor is not even going to last a couple months. You know who's to say it's going to last a couple months, even if we put 22 back in it, it's hard to say because we don't know the damage. But what i do know is this customer does not do routine maintenance, um and the only time this condenser truly gets cleaned is when we do it and it typically happens once a year.

They do have a filter changing company that supposedly cleans things, but they don't clean. So the only time it truly gets cleaned is when we do it um, so yeah we're going to leave this one flat. Disconnected we taped it up. It's not going to turn on anyways, because the low pressure switch, the other two can still run.

They are low on charge, it's not going to be great, but they are operating kind of okay um. I switched the condenser fan motor by that i had bypassed back over to where normal operation, so this unit is back in normal operation. Belt's tight. The last thing we need to do is adjust the uh outside air damper back to where it was because i did close it for troubleshooting purposes.

It was about right there, so that's set back to where it needs to go every day is not uh. You know just bam, bam, bam, repairs, there's days when all i'm doing is going out and spending a couple hours finding leaks and then submitting quotes and waiting for the customer to approve them. Okay, my my days, don't consist of just constant boom boom boom boom service work. There's the other side, the office work, the the paperwork, and the one thing i will say is the more information, the better the more you cover yourself in your notes and your descriptions.

The better right we were just having this discussion, i do a show with my friends on friday nights called the hvac overtime show. If you guys don't already know what it is, there should be a link in the show notes of this video or just search hvac overtime on youtube. Okay, now keep in mind the hvc overtime show is a very uncensored show. It's four guys, just normal guys.

Talking sometimes we talk work, sometimes we're educational. Sometimes we talk random stuff. Okay, so be prepared. It's not safe for work kind of a thing right, but we were just having this discussion about the types of notes that you leave and my notes are very descriptive and they cover my butt when i, when i break things down, but it's not just the notes.

I'm actually doing the investigating to back up what i'm writing in the notes. Okay, so you see how thorough i was just to find refrigerant leaks. I found you know something like 12 refrigerant leaks or something like that it was. It was significant.

I have it written down somewhere, but we found all those refrigerant leaks and we're looking at the big picture, we're overall looking at the shape of the unit. Now i would tell you right now: if there wasn't equipment shortages, i would tell them to change this package unit in a heartbeat, okay, but right now, oftentimes. These customers are repairing these things. So i'm trying to think what's going to be the best bet for repairing this unit now i know it sounds extreme that i said, let's change the compressor, but i'm telling you first off.

That is the first stage compressor. That is the one that runs the absolute most in this equipment all the time right. It runs the longest and everything whenever they call for first stage cooling, the first stage compressor once so that one, if any of them is going to have the most damage inside of it. Okay, now, the other ones, i'm sure they potentially have it too.

But the fact that we see paint peeling off the head of the compressor, the internal damage on that. That just means that the compressor has been getting so hot, that it's literally melting, the paint off the paint is no longer able to adhere and it's flaking off. The damage inside that compressor is going to be catastrophic, okay and then, when compressors get that hot. My buddy trevor matthews that refrigeration mentor talks about this quite often when he has compressor analysis courses and different things that he does.

If you guys don't know about trevor. Definitely go check him out over at refrigerationmentor.com, okay, trevor's, a cool dude, but the damage inside this the whole picture right. Understanding the story of the compressor as trevor would say that compressor has led a hard life and, judging from experience that compressors internals are going to be cooked and when a compressor gets that hot, so does the oil. The oil is probably ruined in that compressor.

So i don't think it's worth it to pull the compressor and try to pull the or pour the oil out so that way we can do a polyester oil change and then be able to use 407c. I don't think this compressor is worth it. I think their best bet, if they want to get another couple years out of this unit, is to let me go ahead and put at least a new first stage compressor now, if they let me put in all three new compressors, we could put 407c in all The different stages clean the unit up, we can braise all the refrigerant leaks and they'd probably get a couple more years out of this unit. But that's not my decision to make, and you know it is what it is.

So i just give the customer all the information. I do all the footwork okay. So all together the original call on this unit, it wasn't working the thermostat wasn't responding. I found a bad thermostat, but i did not stop there.

Okay, yes, i fixed it and they probably would have been fine because we're not even in the summer time yet, okay, but i'm about the big picture. So i'm going to give the customer a full idea of what's going on now what we did after that was. I got approval from the customer, i sent out two of my texts and they went out there and did a not a crazy cleaning, but they cleaned up the units changed. The filters tightened up, the belts cleaned the condensers got them operational.

Okay. Now we didn't go through and vacuum the entire unit out the return air panels are still really dirt. Sections are still really dirty. Customer didn't want all that, okay, so we did that and then i came back the day of the video or the second part of the video and went through and diagnosed the unit.

Okay and then got a big picture idea of what's going on, and then i give the customer the quote and see where they want to go all right. I have no idea what they're going to do. It's really up in the air um. I honestly haven't even sent the email, yet okay, so i'll, send the email with lots of pictures and then we'll see what they have to say.

I have a feeling they're going to have me repair the unit, but let's see okay. I really appreciate you guys making it to the end of the video. If you haven't already, please consider checking out my website. Hvacr videos.com there's a merchandise these hats, shirts, beanies sweaters, all that stuff's available on there to help out and soon, not quite yet, but soon we're going to have stickers available.

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If you shoot me an email, i can generate an affiliate link which will help me a little bit more and you'll still be able to use my offer code. Big picture. Okay, i really really appreciate you guys, remember guys, there's a lot of craziness going on be kind to one another. Sometimes it can be so simple.

Other people are going through bad things. We have no idea, it doesn't justify them being a jerk, but sometimes there's reasons as to why they are being a jerk. Just remember that, okay again, i'm not justifying you know someone being a jerk, but there's always a reason. Why something's going on, and just remember that and be kind to one another? It's really simple: to do a random act of kindness for someone.

It really does make a difference. In my opinion. Okay, so again be kind to one another and we will catch you guys on the next one: okay.