Hey this is Brian, with the HVAC school podcast and HVAC our school comm. I'm making this video about the ref tank app and the ref tech app is made by Blue Mountain, consulting in conjunction with dick words. Dick has been on the podcast many times. It's a really great refrigeration trainer, one of my favorite people in the industry, and he made this app just as a very simple way of helping you diagnose refrigeration equipment, especially for those of you who are maybe in air-conditioning technicians, and you want a little bit of Assistance and the diagnosis of refrigeration equipment, so the screen you can see right now: I've just typed in ref tech, I've already downloaded it it's Apple or Android.

So you open up the ref tech app. The first thing: you're gon na notice, is with an Android device. You get a 10 day free trial with an iPhone you do not, but after that 10 days you are going to need to subscribe and it's only $ 10 a year. Currently last I checked, and so that's pretty simple.

You just click down here at the bottom, where it says subscribe, you can see, I'm already subscribed, and now each one of these fields you adjust very easily just by clicking it you can select up or down the refrigerant is actually a slider that you can just Light up, I'm rolling light them across it right now to change the refrigerant, so we're gon na start with our 404. A I'm just gon na do a quick scenario here to show you how easy this is to use. So, let's take a scenario. Let's say you have a walk-in freezer and say it was running at minus 10 degrees, box temperature, but now it's up to plus 10 degrees Fahrenheit just before defrost, so the evaporator is evenly covered with frost.

After about 15 minutes of defrost, the entire evaporator is clear, Frost and appears clean. All the fans are working. It has four defrost today, with a 45 minute failsafe, no ice on the fan guards drain pan or sealing the condenser appears clean, no temperature drop across the filter dryer. So I went through all that just so you understand like any app like this is not a replacement for doing that full inspection.

First, you always have to do that. Full inspection, so we're gon na select the system type we're going to select a walk-in metering device. We have a TeV instead of fixed metering. You see up in the top right, so TV is thermostatic expansion valve instead of fixed metering, condenser efficiency, we're gon na, say it's a high efficiency like a micro Channel condense or something like that and we're gon na choose 404 a which again, you just scroll up And down through that, let's see our low side pressure, we're going to change that to 22 pounds per square inch gauge.

Let's see section line temperature we're gon na give that a 10 degree section line temperature high side pressure, we're gon na say we have 217 psi high side pressure with a liquid line temperature of 92 degrees, so we're just using two using like a real life scenario. Here and a air entering evap, they said that 10 degrees Fahrenheit and we're gon na say that our outdoor temperature is 90 all right. So there we go so now it's adjusted and given a start, condenser split, it's giving us ur, condenser, sub cooling, evaporator super heat in our evaporator TD of 22 degrees, Fahrenheit evaporator TD, like we've, talked about a lot of the podcast, is the difference between the air And the box and the temperature of the evaporator itself so now all we do is we just go down and hit diagnosis, likely fault low charge, which is you know for those of you who are experienced? Refrigeration, techs. You know that.

That's that's we're looking at there. If you click repairs and then it's going to give you a more in-depth look at low charge, so key is high. Superheat over 20 degrees with low sub cooling, add a refrigerant and check for leaks. I talked a little bit about a flooded flooded, condenser with a head pressure regulating valve, so there you go down.

The bottom II had done very, very simple. To use some people have. You know mentioned that you know it looks a little bit more like a like. An older app from from years past, but what I all say about it is that who cares it's a very simple app? It doesn't need to be anything more complicated than that and it has a lot of really good logic in it.

So, let's do one more scenario before we finish off here, so we have a walk-in freezer. It was running at minus 10, but now is at 25, so plus 25 degrees. Evaporator looks clear, clean from the back where the air enters. All fans are working at as 40 frost a day with a 45 minute failsafe, no waste on the fan guards during drain pan or ceiling.

The high-efficiency condenser appears clean, so it's high-efficiency condenser with no filter through up across the filter driver. So again, all all standard things that you should be checking all right. So now let's go we'll set this, so you know again walk in a reach-in top left we're going to do stay with walk-in TV set a fixed metering for a for a refrigerant. Again and now let's say we have a low side: pressure of 33 psi with a section line: temperature of 10 degrees, a high side, pressure of 237, a liquid line, temperature of 90 and air entering the evaporator of 25 and an air entering the condenser of 90.

So now you can see that I've done here now. You can see our condenser splits 10 and then sir sub cools 10 evaporator key D is 24 and rebab. Superheat is 9 and C. The diagnosis here like Leefolt dirty or iced evaporator or low airflow.

So we've got low, evaporator, airflow and you'll notice that it says that the evaporator looks clean from the back, but that isn't the full confirmation that you have. No. You have no issues there, so we can be pretty confident that we've got low airflow. Then you go to repairs, dirty or iced, evaporator or low airflow.

He is low, condensing temperature, normal sub cooling, low, evaporator, temperature, soda and so forth. So it just goes through and you know addresses all of those different situations. Anyway, it's a good app, something that you should look into, especially for you, technicians out there and do a little bit of refrigeration, but not enough to always know what to look for. It will save you a lot of time and at ten dollars a year.

It's definitely a bargain. I trust dick, it's a really good guy and I think you should check out the ref tech app. Alright, thanks have a great one talk Tegan soon on the HVAC school podcast and HVAC our school com.