This video is brought to you by Sporland. Quality, integrity and tradition. Happy Sunday Everybody it is. Uh September 17th about nine something A.M We got a service call for a walk-in freezer not working.

You can clearly hear the hissing sound of the refrigerant flowing through the system. To me, it sounds like it's going to be low on charge, but you know, who knows once. I Get up on the roof, but what's really concerning is that that panels off I Had a discussion with the manager and told them dude, stop trying to take things off. This guy likes to play with things and trying to fix it himself I said he goes well I didn't do that.

Someone must have hit it or something I said no, you someone opened that you know you got to stop that. someone's gonna get electrocuted. They don't seem to listen, but it is what it is. Um, so let's hop up onto the roof because these evaporator fan motors are controlled from a, uh, a fan delay defrost termination switch that's inside the right side of that coil and the evaporator coil has to get cold enough for the fans to turn on.

So I can hear refrigerant flowing. So to me, just looking at it preliminarily, it seems like it's not getting cold enough. So let's hop up on the roof and see what we find. All right, the condensed units right here and it's short cycling.

it's turning on and off. So I'm going to take all the covers off and we'll get into it all right. This guy is shutting off on low pressure. the sight glass is empty because I can barely see any vapor going through it.

You can kind of see something moving around in there just Trace Amounts of like oil refrigerant or something. It's about 67 degrees outside see on that guy and we are running low pressure. So I've already purged all my gauges. We're going to go ahead and once it starts running, I'm gonna go ahead and add some refrigerant to the system.

This is a 404a system. so I got a Drama 404 right here. Let me verify I got the right one. Yep, and we're just adding refrigerant.

What's probably happening here and we'll find out in a minute we're watching it. We don't want to flood this guy back, but I am feeding in through the the suction filter. We're actually going through the accumulator first, so we have a little bit of safety protection there, but I'm just adding some refrigerant you can clearly see as I'm adding it. It's running now.

Okay, longer and longer. It's still going to be low. so I'm going to add some refrigerant and then once I start seeing some action in the sight glass. I'll explain a little bit more of what is actually going on here.

I added a little bit of refrigerant. The cyclist started to flash immediately once we got above about 180. PSI which indicates that the head pressure control valve back there was bypassing. Um, it looks to be that we have a clear sight glass now and it's consistently running.

I'm also checking both sides of this suction line filter dryer. This is a filter dryer, not a suction. Line Filter There is a difference I Want to make sure that this isn't restricted. so on one side I have 26 PSI and dropping.

Okay, let's go to the other side, see what's going on there. Make sure we don't have a restriction. I Don't really think we have a restriction. It was dropping still so we're 24.7 so I don't think there's a problem there.

We now have a clear sight glass, which indicates at this point in the system we have a solid column of liquid. Okay, but that doesn't mean that everything's hunky-dory Okay, there still could be problems. Notice that we're running 205 head pressure now. Um, I Think that the evaporator fan motors just turned on judging by how my suction pressure went up.

so we're actually absorbing heat from down inside the freezer now. So I think what happened here realistically. I only added a couple pounds of gas. Total system charge on this is going to be pretty high.

You can see the last time we worked on it, we marked the liquid level so I will check that in a minute. I Think that we were just slightly low on refrigerant. just enough for the winter charge or the flooded charge. Okay, which is the extra refrigerant needed when the head pressure control valve bypasses.

Now, we are having kind of like our first cool weekend 68 degrees right now. Like I said earlier. Okay, and uh, that would allow for the head pressure control valve to bypass and then if it didn't have the right amount of refrigerant, it would starve the system and like it was doing. Shut the system off on low pressure.

Okay, so I'm gonna keep watching the system operate for a minute and then we'll do a pump down on the receiver and check the actual liquid level. So the evaporative families are running now. Um, it's getting cold in here, so that's a good sign. I Gotta go get my thermal imaging camera and we're gonna check that liquid level now.

Something that I'm noticing too is that this thing's getting way too low before it shuts off. and look at the pressure control. Someone got in here and cranked on it. Look at this.

I Just tapped it. Someone doesn't know I'm telling you they play with things here. Someone got in here and adjusted on that pressure control Way too low. So let's say that this system has a refrigerant leak in it.

Which we know it does because it's low on charge, right? So every time it runs, if that refrigerant leak happens to be on the low side of the system, every time it pumps down, it pulls a little bit of air into the system theoretically it could and then that would be a problem. So this pressure controls out of whack. Look It 16 PSI What the heck? It looks like it's adjusted for like 5 PSI or something. Something's going on here.

Yeah, this thing's all wonky. Something's really screwy with this. Okay, so I pumped the system down Okay I Front seated the King valve. This is the only King valve on the system.

This is on the outlet of the receiver. Okay, every other valve on a system is a service valve. This is a suction service valve. If there was a valve on the discharge line like a rotoloc valve, it would be a discharge service valve.

If there's a valve on the inlet of the receiver, it's called a queen valve. So Inlet of the receiver's Queen valves Outlet of the receiver's King valve. If there's valves right here, those are service valves. Okay, the only true king valve is the outlet of the receiver.

All right. So I front seat of the king valve. push the stem all the way in. Then what happened is the compressor continued to run and the refrigerant basically went through the compressor through the condenser.

but it couldn't leave the receiver. The receiver acts as a giant storage vessel. All that refrigerant backs up into the receiver until the system satisfies on low pressure. Okay, now that we know we have all the refrigerant trapped in the receiver.

I'm going to take a heat producing device and I'm going to heat up the receiver mild heat. Okay, we're not going to go crazy and then we're going to look at it with the thermal imaging camera and see where our liquid level is all right. If you look at the receiver right now. okay I have it on like a hybrid view where you can see the actual shape of the receiver not just the thermal.

and you look you can see the purple is going to be cold and the orangish and the reddish color is going to be warmer. Okay, you can see the suction line filter dryer is pretty cold, the accumulator is pretty cold and the compressor is cold up to the suction line. but then all of a sudden it gets warm and you can see the crankcase heater is energized at the moment. Okay, system just cycled because the pressure got high enough and it's gonna.

it's just pumping down. the king valve is still closed. All right. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a heat producing device and I'm going to heat this guy up all right.

Now if we look the yellow is really hot and as I scroll down look towards the bottom of the receiver and all of a sudden we turn purple at the bottom of it. Okay, the liquid level is right there where that purple line is. Okay, the top is vapor. We need the liquid level all the way up to the top.

So this guy's severely low in refrigerant. So I Got to add a bunch of refrigerant to this guy. That liquid level you can also feel it with your hand is literally right here. Right There is our liquid level and this is the Pumped down level that we left it on.

126.22 was all the way up here. so we've leaked out a significant amount of refrigerant. Now, it doesn't necessarily need all that refrigerant at the moment. It's only 70 degrees.

To be honest with you, the head pressure control valve is not bypassing that 70 degrees. I Probably should have said that earlier. It was colder last night. it's warming up as it, so it probably got down to like 60 64 degrees something like that last night.

and that was probably enough for the head pressure control valve to bypass. and then it didn't have the required refrigerant needed. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to add refrigerant. Now This doesn't need all this because I Cleared the sight glass at this temperature, right? So when I clear the sight glass at the temperature, it is outside.

right now. that's enough refrigerant for this temperature. but anything below that, potentially the head pressure control valve would require more refrigerant for the system to operate properly, if that makes sense. Okay, the colder it gets, the more refrigerant you need for the flooded charge.

So we are going to go ahead and top off the charge. Now this to this, this level right here is not necessarily the amount of refrigerant. This system needs to operate in the lowest ambient conditions. But when you're a field tech and you're out in the field, honestly, it's the easiest and the fastest way is just put the maximum amount of refrigerant in the system.

But you got to be careful because sometimes there could be drastically oversized receivers and adding to the three-quarter level of the receiver when it's pumped down, you could theoretically put 20, 30, 40 extra pounds depending on the size of the receiver that it doesn't really need. right? In this situation, it's going to be a couple pounds. It's going to cost the customer less money for me to put that refrigerant level up to the three-quarter Mark I Get to go home. We'll come back on another day and come and try to find the leak when we're not on overtime because I'd rather be sitting down with my family on a Sunday morning than staring here trying to find a refrigerant leak.

So I'm gonna go ahead and add some refrigerant to the system. Another trick very carefully. and I mean very carefully. I'm going to go ahead and leave the system pumped down and add refrigerant to it with the system.

Uh, basically pumped down so it's just stacking in the receiver. so I'm just going to add a little bit of refrigerant, get the pressure control to kick on, and then once it kicks on, try to get it to kick on here in just a sec. Uh, once it kicks on, then I'll just continue to add refrigerant and it'll just continue stacking in the receiver. But again, you got to be very, very careful because you could flood back on this compressor.

Notice that I switched my uh pressure port to the other side of the suction line filter dryer. So I have that much more added protection. It's going to go into the dryer, through the dryer, into the accumulator into the compressor. so there's less potential of flood back when the system's pump down like it is, because the only refrigerant it's really getting is liquid refrigerant, right? But I am going through a Shrader too and I'm metering it slowly.

All right. So now we're just slowly adding refrigerant. It's just saving us a couple minutes of having to pump it down again and I'm just going to add it slowly and then I'll check the liquid level periodically and then proceed until I get the Liquid level to where I want it I was actually having a problem with these Traders they're like restricting the flow of refrigerant for some reason I don't know what's going on so I switched over to the suction line service valve. but I got to be really careful now because I don't have an accumulator to protect me anymore so I just got to be careful charging it.

But on the plus side, I did make a slight adjustment to the pressure control and it's cutting out a little bit higher now I need to make a slight adjustment though because it's a little bit High it cut out at about 15 psi. so I'll make a little bit more of an adjustment. get it a little bit lower. But yeah, this thing's out of whack though because it doesn't look like 15 where I have it set at.

What can happen though is this thing can just be slid the wrong direction right so this might need to slide down slightly. It looks like they have paint on there where the screw to indicate where it should be set at, but I think it's kind of out of whack. Fun stuff, right? All right? So we're gonna go and put a little gas in there. it's turned on and I'll keep adding gas and I'll check the liquid level.

The liquid level hadn't been moving so that's why I was doing that all right. and now if we look at it, the liquid level is right up at the three-quarter Mark The the scale is off on this guy a little bit, but the liquid level is now at the three-quarter Mark You don't see the purple down there anymore, so we are good to go. As far as our refrigerant charge, we now know that we have the maximum amount of refrigerant in the system. It's back up where it should be and again, the scale is kind of off on that, but our liquid level is right there.

So um, we're good to go on that. that's the maximum amount of refrigerant the system can hold. Uh I'm gonna go ahead and play with this pressure control a little bit more and then watch the box come down to Temp a bit, see where I get it to cut in I cut it out at about 9 PSI There we go. Yeah, okay, so pressure control is doing better now.

you can see it shut off again at nine. but I just barely cracked the king valve. So now we're letting the refrigerant through for real and uh, yeah, something's definitely going on with that pressure control I don't know what's if it was someone playing with it or what? Who knows. Um, so now I'm opening the king valves all the way because we don't have any gauges attached to it.

We'll put the cap on it and we're gonna watch the system operate and watch the box come down to 10. I'm gonna go downstairs and put a little bit of uh, effort into just looking for a giant leak. I'm not going to spend all day here on on a Sunday I'm just looking for anything Giant and if I don't find anything, then we're going to come back during the week and do a proper Leak search and then give them a full evaluation on the system. The way that I operate it is if I can get away with it.

I'm not going to have myself or my employees spending an entire day on a Sunday trying to find something especially for customers that don't do routine maintenance. they're they're just getting, uh, get up and running, get them through the weekend, and we'll come back on straight time when it's not just about money to me. I mean if my employees want to spend the Sunday here I don't care, but I don't you know I'd rather be at home I Went ahead and ran my leak detector and all the common spots in the pressure control on the old pressure control that's not being used down in the evaporator. I'm not finding anything on these service fittings right here here.

Nothing. So it's not like a giant ginormous leak unless it's somewhere in the line set. but I really don't think it is I think they just have a small leak somewhere. So again, we'll come back and we'll spend a little bit of time here.

Um, but it's not going to happen today, so that is it for today. The box is significantly colder and uh, I'm gonna go and wrap my stuff up all right. I am back. It's a normal day it is.

uh Tuesday September 19th. So we're going to get into this and try to finish this one up. A couple things that you didn't see on the last video: number one: I did have to put refrigerant into it so I'm gonna do a leak search on it I did talk to the customer and the customer is going to go ahead and opt to replace this equipment. They are a very proactive customer at doing that and when we start to have a lot of problems depending on the age of the equipment, they like to go and replace it.

This is an original condensed unit probably I'm guessing 06 07 2007 is the original install date and uh, they've been replacing it all now I'm not a huge fan. you know they don't go without as high quality of equipment putting as their Replacements but it is what it is. But bottom line: I still have to get the equipment operational and make it last until they get replacement equipment which might be a month or so. It just depends on what the availability is now.

I Know I can certainly get equipment sooner, but this has to go through like a PO process and it has nothing to do with me. The customer purchases their own equipment. It takes a while so, but what I have to do today is I have to make sure that we are operational until they potentially get new replacement equipment. So we're going to do a leak search on the equipment.

make sure there's no ginormous leaks that are going to leak out in a day or anything like that. Then they also have a Twist timer downstairs that acts as an off-cycle timer for when they open the doors. Basically, they're supposed to turn it. It's a spring wound 15 minute timer that interrupts the power to the solenoid valve.

It basically breaks the common leg and then, uh, you know, after 15 minutes it automatically turns the solenoid valve back out on allows the system. It's not just the solenoid valve actually. I shouldn't say that it breaks the common to the evaporator coil and that eliminates everything. That's 208 volt in the evaporator coil essentially breaks a leg of it.

So um, that twist timer is bad. They also need door hinges on their door I don't have door hinges with me, but I do have the twist timer I carry them in my truck for those that are interested. It's not a standard timer you can get at Home Depot it's made by Intermatic It looks like a standard timer part number: ff315 Mary It's a double pull double throw, so it has the ability to open or close a circuit when you turn it and it's 15 minutes. That's a difficult thing so you can buy the Intermatic timers at Home Depot but they're typically 60 minute timers so you have to order this.

but again, it's just a standard timer from Intermatic Oh, single pole double throw is what it is I apologize. So anyways, I'm gonna go downstairs. uh, we're gonna do another Leak search on this I Did a quick one over the weekend, but nothing you know in depth. so I turned off the equipment on the roof and I'm gonna go downstairs, change the twist timer, then we'll turn the equipment back on and uh, let the pressures in the system equalize out between high side and low side.

At the moment it was pumped down when I walked up. that's another thing too. If you're going to do a leak search on equipment, you got to make sure that it's in the operating position. It can't be in a pumped down mode.

So as I was walking up to the roof, the equipment was running and it cycled off on its own. So that means that the solenoid valve downstairs closed if I tried to do a leak search when the solenoid valve was closed. So if I just came up and turned off power and tried to leak search, there's not very much pressure if any pressure at all. 10 psi in the low side because it was pumped down.

So you want the system operating, you want it running and if it's running, uh, you know, then when you shut it off, you'll have a little bit more pressure in the low side. Best case scenario: you put gauges on it and you equalize out the gauges so you eat. You know you? Uh, basically take the high side pressure, dump it into the low side pressure, then the system pressures on high and low side of the system would be equal, and then do a leak search. Okay, that's that's a quick way to not have to pressurize the system with nitrogen because sometimes you know.

A simple Leak search is a little difficult with lower pressures in the system if that makes sense. But anyways, now that I've talked forever, let's go ahead and go downstairs and change this twist timer, get this replaced, and then we'll proceed with doing another Leak search. This is their timer right here. It had a knob, but I just pulled it off.

You can see there's like a lot of goo or calcium I Don't know what that's like like goo or something behind there. but what tends to happen on these is they get full of moisture. If you look at this, the insulation in the walls tends to have an issue. Now this is a bolt-on door right here.

but you can see there's condensation all over everything and the cold air. Oftentimes they'll prop these doors open. This one right here isn't shutting by itself. So look at this.

Let's see. that's another thing. See, it needs door hinges because it's not shutting. so you'll get a lot of cold air and condensation will form and it tends to mess up these timers.

So let's get it pulled out and look at that. look at the whole inside of that thing's all rusted out full of moisture. That's pretty typical on these. So I'll get it off, get the new one installed, and if you if you look back in here, it's not really in the Box per se, it's more or less just on the front and it's just condensation building up from the cold air from the door being left open and stuff.

So it happens. and they're just saying that they'll come in here, they'll notice the walk-in freezer fans aren't running and then they'll turn the timer and it just never turns itself back on. All right. I Turned on power so the system's back on I Kind of cheated because I pulled the wire from the Uh contactor so that way it won't start from the coil voltage.

the system turned on I Saw the sight glass uh, refrigerant flow through the sight glass so we know that my evaporator coil is calling now. Okay, at this point, I can go ahead and Leak search the system now. I'm going to let it sit on for a few more minutes, make sure that the pressure is truly equalized out because instead of opening up my gauges, all that I did was open up the solenoid valve but made it so the compressor can't run so the pressures are slowly equalizing from high side to low side. The refrigerant flowing through the solenoid valve but it's not being pumped, it's just flowing through from the static pressure.

so we're going to let it sit for a few more minutes. I'm going to get the leak detector warmed up and we're going to start going through this condensing unit again. and then we'll go down through the evaporators again. All right.

So I've got my Inficon Stratus or Detex Stratus out today. Um, I I interchange between Leak Detectors I Carry the field piece Dr-82 and the Stratus. Both of them both great. Leak Detectors So today I'm using the Stratus and all I'm going to do is just go around the mechanical fittings the obvious places first looking at, uh, listening to the leak detector because this one doesn't have a lighted tip like the field piece does, which is listening paying attention.

One of the really important things you want to do if you can ever do it is leak searching where you put your service fittings first if you can, research those, because once you put gauges on a system, you disturb that potential lead point. You can sometimes solve a problem before you even you know, realize it by putting gauges on a system or something maybe it's leaking out of Schrader So I always like to check any mechanical fittings I can just kind of going around and we'll just keep on going through the system and I'll let you guys know if I find anything up here. I didn't find anything up in the condensing unit. No big signs.

The pressure control is good so I jumped down into the line set penetration I'm not really picking anything up in here. it does go down into the the attic there. but I just wanted to check up in this area. Nothing.

So now we head downstairs, right? So this is actually the line set. Um, it's It's going to be difficult to change this line set which I don't think we're going to have to, but I kind of did an inspection, a leak search on it all the way through and I'm not seeing any leaks so we're good on this and we'll be able to use this for the new equipment. Tell you what, it's cold in here today. All right.

So I worked my way into here and we're picking something up I see like a slight bit of oil right in here. It was nothing big that I picked up I Kind of came through and looked the other day, but it might have just been that it was really low. We're picking something up right in this area I Suspect it's going to be around the solenoid valve itself because I'm sitting here looking. It doesn't look like it's coming from a weld, so let's get some big blue soap bubbles on this bad boy.

It's right in here on this solenoid valve. I've got uh, some big blue on there and it does a great job. It's basically it's super small, but it's right on the underside. right in here.

There's a couple little leaks on the mechanical fitting. um I Don't see anything on the stem. it's just right in here. It's really small, so it's a very, very slow slow leak.

So we're gonna put the coil back on, get it back up and running. And like I said, the customer has already opted to go ahead and replace this equipment so this isn't going to leak out overnight. this is Tiny They've already instructed me and if it's something minor, you know that'll get by. Just leave it alone.

That's what they want to do. So we're going to wrap this up. get it back up and running, and then they'll order that equipment. I'm curious.

Like do you guys when you go out on weekend service calls I mean are you just going to town fixing every single little thing? Or are you more or less getting them operational until you can come back during straight time? Um I I've always run it the way where I just get them operational I mean it's one thing if I got nothing else going on sometimes I'll go to town and just get things done because I'm so busy I don't have time to come back. That will happen occasionally in the summertime. Right now, you know I'm not Super Slam So I don't mind coming back next week, you know kind of a thing if I have to go out there on the weekend and the customer knows you know I tell them like look I'm not here to like fix everything because they don't do routine maintenance. You know that's the way I See it is.

It's one thing, if they were a customer that did routine maintenance and had me out there servicing their equipment every single day, then I'd spend a little more time but you know they're not doing that so it's like no, they're not getting all my time on Sunday So I usually go out, do what I have to do to get them operational and then we'll follow up come back out now in this situation I Talked to the the hierarchy of the company and you know they basically said hey, um, do what you have to do to get it operational but we're gonna go ahead and replace the equipment so in this case you know it has a small leak I got him going um you know and then we'll just have to come back out and we'll replace the equipment now I did go through I showed you guys a little bit, went through and like inspected the line set as best as possible too. Did a leak search on that uh most of the time I'm not chasing leaks on line sets but I just wanted to make sure you know uh and that also tells me that I'll be able to use that existing line set when we replace the equipment too because it's not in that bad of shape. So yeah, it is what it is. Hey, I Want to say thanks so much for making it to the end of the video? You know there's uh, there's quite a few of you that actually do that and I thank you so very much.

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