This video is brought to you by Sporland. quality, integrity and tradition. That sounds like it's a problem. Oh man, that's some serious ice.

It's backed way up into there and it's actually not that bad here. so it's from them leaving the door open. It's just the defrost heaters are taking care of the ice on the coil, but it's not getting the ice that builds up in front of the coils. What's happening? So I'm gonna go throw this guy into a defrost and we're gonna get water hoses in here.

We'll get it pulled apart and we'll try to figure out. You know what's going on here. All right, My condensed unit's right here. I'll have to get these screws taken out, we can open it up and then we'll be able to get in there and get it put into defrost mode.

All right, Defrost Clock I Mean nothing looks too crazy in here, just a little. Dusty No maintenance done here, so clock says the incorrect time. It's off by quite a bit, but it's probably about 8 30 a.m right now, but they probably shut off breakers on the regular so it should be somewhere around there. Um, I'm gonna go and put it into a really long defrost.

We'll disconnect the X terminal and we'll let the Defrost heater start melting stuff while we're getting all of our hoses and everything ready. This has been doing this for a long time and the customer just hasn't been calling is what's been happening like they just haven't. Probably wanted to make the service call, but it's pretty bad. I Mean look at the damage like this thing is is jacked up.

Um what I'm going to do right now just real quick. We're going to do our due diligence and we're going to go through them. We're going to amp every heater to make sure they have current. so I Got to get back in there.

there's another one. so so far that's two and it looks like there's one more three. So I think there's only three heaters in this? There's yeah. I think that's it Is those three.

There's one on the bottom, one in the middle and then one in the top. So that's all the heaters. So we know the heaters are working so that's good. So at this point now we're gonna go shut off the disconnect switch and we're gonna start breaking out this ice now.

Unfortunately, because of how frozen up it is, we're not going to be able to not get the motors wet. That's unfortunate, but it is what it is, you know? Especially since they waited this long to call us all right when, uh, when we're doing this. I have a wand. but I Also use this and this works.

It's the same as the wand, it just doesn't have the length you know? But it's really nice because you can put it on the low shower setting and like carefully get around the motor. you can even put it on a Mist setting. And because the ice is so thick up on the back I put down pans down here because there is inevitably going to be water dripping down there. So I'm just gonna go to town and get this all defrosted all right.

I Went ahead and grabbed some new blades because the old ones were really beat up and they've been hitting the ice and man, look at this coil, you can clearly tell that management has been beaten on this trying to melt ice and stuff. so they beat the heck out of it. But we're gonna slap these new blades on and then get it started up and hopefully be done with it. So getting these fan guards on is a chore because there's no speed nut holding it in place like on the heatcraft ones.

This is a wrestle one so the fan wants to fall backwards so it's kind of a trick. You got to kind of thread these on one corner at a time, but we got it in. Motors are wired in, ice is all melted. It's time to turn this guy on.

make sure there's nothing else wrong. but we have a history with this one and it's such a small box and they put so much product in here. they're in and out of it all day long. They use it like a reach-in freezer.

The cooks are walking in and out all day long. delivery companies leave the doors open it just Icees up. It's just common and I'm gonna have to talk to them because they gotta stop beating it. Looks like they're beating it with a hammer trying to defrost it themselves.

It's ridiculous. I Also have a uh a Twist timer on the door and they just don't twist it. You know? I mean we could put door switches on it I mean I Guess that's the next thing. Customer really doesn't want to do that though.

I Brought it to their attention many times. so it kind of is what it is. We just come out and defrost it once every two three months. So when this starts up, the fan motor should not start immediately.

They should have a delayed reaction because it has, uh, temperature, um, delay. Basically it clicks on that won't close the power to the fan motors until the coil gets to a certain temperature to try to reduce steam blowing off the coil, water droplets and things like that also reduce the load on the compressor on. Startup So this is the correct operation and then here in a second when the coil gets to a certain temperature usually around 20 to 30 degrees, somewhere in there it'll turn the evaporative fan motors on and hopefully we don't hear that clunk clunk clunk sound anymore. All right, Evaporator fan motors are running.

No vibrations, no wobbles. That's a good sign. so we're gonna watch. We're gonna start assembling the coil, putting the side panels back on, and just kind of watching it drop in temperature.

I'll take a walk upstairs, look at the condensed unit, make sure we don't see any issues there. but I think we're going to be good. We are running and the sight glass is clear. I'll take you down in here I Don't really see a need to put service gauges on this guy because it was just iced up in front of the coil in any issues.

So I'm going to set the defrost clock I still got to turn off power, hook up the defrost termination back to it, and we're going to set it appropriately and then just watch the unit operate for a bit. I used to do a lot of writing on equipment and I don't write as much anymore. but I do like writing startup information. So for me I have a bunch of data that I took on Startup crankcase heater amps at the voltage right? because if you just have amps, that doesn't mean anything when the voltage can change because our voltage fluctuates so evap heaters, total current, individual heaters, and then down here startup, total charge, receiver level, evaporator superheat.

it would have been smart for me What? I didn't do right here because things can change right? It would have been smart to write the Box temp at which I measured that superheat and it would have been smart to measure the ambient temperature at which I measured the condensing TD Those are all good things just to help someone in the future, so that way they can know if things change. So I'm currently waiting for someone downstairs to finish putting the panels on I have the equipment turned off I fixed the defrost put uh, put it to 45 minute defrost, one long one in the middle of the night and then throughout the day. Actually, this one doesn't need to be there throughout the day. Again, this customer is just bad at uh, icing this box up all the time.

Always double check its true colors came out. this fan motor is pushing air. this fan motor is just coasting and the low speed is disconnected, but it's something's going on inside and it's running on low speed. So I gotta go get one of those.

Motors now too. This is the frustrating thing. It was so iced up before we couldn't Not, you know, Do it. Ah, frustrating.

It's funny now. this guy's spinning on high speed so it's intermittent. But I got a new motor anyways because there's something internally shorted and it could have been wet because we had to hose it down or what. But we're going to change this motor for sure.

All right. got the new motor in back up and running like it should be now on this particular unit. we actually don't even use the two speed feature because it just created a lot of issues, especially with them icing it up all the time. So we run the single speed on this so that's how I knew that motor was bad because the red wire was disconnected and taped off.

and the way that these motors work is one leg of power. The 208 volt comes in to the red wire and then it runs on low speed. So it runs on high speed if you only have power to the black and the white. but if you bring up the power leg to the red, then it goes to low speed.

So with the red wire disconnected and taped off when it was running on low speed, what I know is there's an internal malfunction in the motor. something got wet, who knows and it just caused the malfunction. so we got to change down. I'm going to try to pull the old motor apart now, but customer's good to load the Box up now.

I Don't see an abnormal amount of moisture in here. I Will say that I I broke the motor taking it out, but these wires come over and just solder to here and to here and here and I broke it. but I mean there's nothing funky going on. I mean it's an ECM motor.

so I don't see any water damage, but clearly something happened and it was just wet and it was shorting causing it to run on low speed. So but I've heard about these things being full of water. I'm not seeing that I don't see any water in there even after washing the dang thing off and look at the back of the case like I don't It looked like it was still sealed but whatever, we changed the motor. it's good to go.

Now we're going to give the keys to the customer and tell them to keep an eye on it. I Really need to get this customer on board with put and door switches on this I'm it's starting to get silly I Was at this location. it's actually been more than a couple months. It's been about eight months since I was there last, but from the looks of that evaporatorical, it looks like the customer has been trying to defrost it themselves by using a hammer or something.

which we all know how that ends right? Um, you know when it comes to doing this, even though it seems like such an easy task, you know? and it seems like I'm just going to defrost a coil. you still go through everything. still check the heaters. now.

one thing I Want to point out as I was editing the video I realized that you know that Defrost clock, being that far off in time is a little suspect. There's a little something going on there I Really think that the customer has been turning off the breaker I Think that's what's been happening and the reason why I think that is because the ice wasn't on the coil per se. it was in front of the coil and just in the back on the top. like in the very very top.

I've seen this coil before iced up like all the way through and that wasn't the case. So I'm definitely going to be paying a visit to the customer here because this this happened this week. actually two days ago. it's uh, actually yesterday it's it's uh, April 19th right now and I did this on April 18th was when I defrosted it and changed all those parts.

Uh, On another note that ECM motor is insanely expensive. It's it's sad how much those things cost, but it is what it is. You really can't find an alternative to that motor without changing the brackets and the whole setup because of the wattage of the motor they make ECM replacement motors. even us Motors makes an aftermarket one that you can buy from the supply house, but the wattage isn't there for the amount of uh, you know, work that motor has to do.

so you're kind of stuck with that OEM motor. and I think the manufacturers of the motor knows that. you know kind of a thing. But anyways, back to it.

Always do your due diligence go through everything you know you saw that I decided to change the blades because they were really beat up. obviously they were hitting the ice and then even after I started it up. and defrosted it and everything was working. I came back in and I noticed that one of the fan motors was spinning on low speed.

you know? So that's the kind of stuff we need to catch. Don't just like knock it out and you know it's defrosted. I'm out. it's running, you know? wait, watch.

The Box come down to Temp I Did not see a reason to have to put service gauges on it again. If you're not super experienced and you're being sent out to do something like this, then I highly suggest that you go through the gamut putting your gauges on it. This is not a critically charged piece of equipment that only holds six ounces of refrigerant. This thing holds 40 pounds of gas probably or 31 Pounds or whatever it is.

It's a ridiculous amount of gas, so putting your service gauges on it or even your probes is not going to be a big deal. So I highly suggest you do that just to make sure that everything's working properly. Maybe do a pump down test. check the liquid level again.

I Marked it so that liquid level should be the same level all the time. right when it's pumped down. You know that kind of stuff now. I didn't see the need to do that again.

I took a shortcut sometimes I I take shortcuts and I take that risk that there could be something going on. but I you know I'm using my judgment I'm using my knowledge and the skills that I have and I'm making an educated guess if you want to call it that, right. So that way you know I don't think I need to put service gauges on it I didn't need to go that far because you know that didn't seem like it was the issue Now I will tell you that again. Uh, I'm gonna approach the customer and and understand something I work for corporations, right? I don't work for the local management, so the local management just calls me when there's a problem.

But if I want to get something okayed I have to go to the corporate office. So what I'm probably going to suggest is that they let me go in with something. Um, you know that's an all-in-one controller. You know something that we can, uh, monitor, defrost, have a door switch, and have it all integrated into one controller.

Maybe the defrost is built into the controller? That'd be something that I really think they should consider. but again, it's up to them, right? I have to give them the information and then they choose to do what they want with it. A lot of times in the past I've told them hey, let's put door switches on here. Let's put this.

let's put that and a lot of times I Like nah nah nah, Just you know if you got to go out there twice a year, you know they're like, that's fine. You know they don't mind doing that so it's just a game you have to play. So I'll bring everything up to them and see where they want to go with this. But I can't stress enough big picture diagnoses right? Always look at everything now.

I'm very familiar with this location in fact I've been servicing this location for over 20 years like since I was even before I was officially doing HVAC working with my father I was servicing this location with him as a little kid. So you know I have a very big history at this location and I know their habits and I know what goes on. um, and I know what you know Typically that the biggest issue here is the food delivery. They are a very small restaurant.

They do a lot of volume. They get a lot of food delivered to the point that you can't even walk in that box very easily. It's kind of ridiculous. Now, they do keep the food away from the coil.

They're good about that, but it's just they're such a small location and they don't have a lot of room for equipment as far as refrigerators and freezers go in the kitchen. So what they do is they have a small freezer, but they end up using this as a back and forth back and forth. And obviously we know that this isn't really designed for that and it's such a small box that when you open that door, it's just ridiculous. You know the amount of heat that comes in there and it's a whole issue, but you just want to make sure that you're very thorough.

Big picture diagnos OC Stuff right? You want to kind of look at everything and don't just be a knock it out and move on, you know, So just be thorough I Really appreciate y'all making it to the end of the video. As usual, it's really awesome to see the support the comments the feedback I get from you. it is really cool if you're interested. uh, check out my website Hvacrvideos.com and we have merchandise available.

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