One of the things we built the business on is training education and bringing up young technicians. So when ethan kirby sent me this video on cleaning common drains, i was really excited and thankful that he has the passion to turn on the camera and video himself. It's a little different than some of the videos that we've done, but i think you'll find there's some really great tips in here. Thanks ethan, hey guys, this is kirby and today we're going to be doing a video on how to perform a common drain cleaning.

So today, we're working in a big apartment, complex they're, mainly vacation rentals and they all have shared common drains. So it's hard to actually do a a good job, doing a drain cleaning on these because they all go to a common drain. So it's not like you know you could suck it out from the outside with a with a shop vac and do a traditional way. We would do a drain cleaning, but there's actually a little bit of a different way to still get that same result of a perfectly clear train.

That's not going to give you any issues, so, first we're going to focus on the drain pan. I always clean the drain pan first, because all that gunk all that slime, all that build up that you clean out of the pan, is going to go straight down the drain. So we always do the pan first and then we move our way to the rest of the drain. First off we're just going to use some rags and some brushes and we're going to clean up all this gunk inside of here and then another important thing that to make sure you always do when you're cleaning one of these drains or one of the any unit.

Really is to take a big bandwidth, strap and you could use anything that really fits, but to clean these tiny little drain tracks. If you have access to the return underneath you can clean those tracks. But if you don't like in this situation, you could use this panduit strap to really clean all that gunk out of there and make sure that water that's coming off. The coil is actually able to make it to the front of the pan.

I've seen a lot of times where people don't clean that, and they have issues where the water will drain will be clear. But the tracks won't and then it'll overflow and go down into the return, because it can't make it to the front of the pan to drain properly um you're, also going to want to just make sure, when you're doing your inspection to make sure that the unit Is level because if it's not level and it's leaning backwards, if the platform's starting to sink, then you'll also could potentially have drainage issues. You're also going to look at the pitch of your actual drain itself to make sure it has a good pitch and is able to drain freely, and another important thing is to make sure that you're not afraid to take apart the drain and clean the inside. A lot of times these will have buildup on the inside of slime in bad situations, you're going to want to cut these open and redo this or just cut it open and clean it out.

If you're able to just put a union in here and that way, you make sure you know the rest of the drain, your drink could be clean. Pan could be clean, but if this is clogged it'll, overflow and trip this floats, but you have you'll have a problem. So let's get started and let's uh, let's start with cleaning the pan and i'll come back after that. So now that our pan is free from debris, we're going to want to make sure we flush out those pan tracks that we loosened up by just dumping water um back in the sides of the coil, not a whole lot, because uh it'll go down and drip Down but you're going to want to dump some water down, so it runs down the coil and cleans out.

Those tracks brings that buildup out to the front of the pan, so you're able to clean it better. So now we're going to be using, i like to use a funnel. It just makes it easier on me now we're going to be cleaning out the rest of the portion of the common drain, so we're going to do is we're going to put our funnel in and we're going to pour about a gallon of water through and after You pour that water through you're, going to want to make sure that you use nitrogen. You could use nitrogen and i like to use something called a drain dog.

This expands to the diameter of the pvc that you're cleaning and it creates a seal, so you're actually able to blow out the drain with more pressure and more it's more control, you're going to want to make sure that in the situation and the access that you Have that you're able to uh put this drain dog down far enough, where it's not good, it's going to blow water and dirt and anything up back up into the pan. So you're going to pour some water down you're going to blow it out with nitrogen. For a couple of seconds pour more water down blow that out with nitrogen, more water, nitrogen until you feel that it's super clean and then, when you just pour water down it drains nicely with no hesitation and that it's just draining and flowing well. So we're gon na get started on that now after you've done all the clearing with water and nitrogen, and it's flowing nicely now you're going to want to make sure you put one last gallon of water through and make sure that it is filling up.

The trap make sure it's flowing nicely and also you're going to want to make sure that, after you fill up the trap, we're going to use our wonderful viper products, we're going to use the viper pan treatment and we're going to dry out the pan. Make sure the pan is dry before you apply this and we're going to apply the viper and then on the coil we're just going to spray some evap green um. This will help prevent any future bacterial growth. So let's get started on that so now, after we're all done we're going to want to make sure that we pack everything up, make sure we install everything and make it nicer than when we got here and then the most important part of any thing you do To any system doesn't matter what you do, the most important thing you do afterwards is to make sure that the system is operational.

You can be doing something simple, like a drain cleaning, and you know forget that you had the thermostat turned off or the disconnect pulled or anything. So after we clean everything up, we're going to make sure and we're going to verify that the system is running and that should always be the last step to everything you do and if everybody did that they would avoid a lot of simple callbacks and a lot Of simple mistakes of just leaving the disconnect pulled or just not having the thermostat set correctly, so we're gon na make sure we do that, and then we should be all fine and uh we'll be out of here. All done completed the run test. Everything's.

Looking great i'm gon na head out and thank you guys so much and i'm glad i was able to teach you how to clean a common dream thanks again thanks for watching our video, if you enjoyed it and got something out of it, if you wouldn't mind Hitting the thumbs up button to like the video subscribe to the channel and click the notifications bell to be notified. When new videos come out, hvac school is far more than a youtube channel. You can find out more by going to hvacrschool.com, which is our website and hub for all of our content, including tech tips, videos, podcasts and so much more. You can also subscribe to the podcast on any podcast app of your choosing.

You can also join our facebook group if you want to weigh in on the conversation yourself thanks again for watching you.