This was a pretty typical walk in cooler service call, luckily I was able to get called before it got worse
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00:00 SPONSOR CARD
00:07 VIDEO START
00:32 WTF MOMENT
02:19 VIPER FOR THE WIN
03:47 COIL CLEANING TIPS
05:37 SYSTEM VITALS
06:02 TEMP CONTROL TIPS
09:01 CLOSING WORDS

This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. All right, we have a call on a walk-in cooler. Maintaining like 45 degrees, so come in here got a thermometer in here right now saying about 45. We come up here, it's not iced up, so we need to uh, have a look on the roof and see what's going on up there.

It's definitely blowing cold air. So we'll have to see, but one thing i will tell you: is they keep leaving the door open these dang doors man on top of the door issue? Is these boxes see? These boxes are blocking the airflow, because when i moved these two boxes right now, a significant amount of airflow started coming around here and they have them like partially blocking this. So it's already hard enough, because this walk-ins, like 28 feet long and getting the air to the other side, is difficult as it is, and then you block off the fans and it makes it even worse. So, even though it's not iced up on the back side, i can still see some frost in here and it's interesting.

If i look inside here, you can see some weird frost in these coils. I don't know if it'll come up on camera right now or not, but it's it's ever so slight inside, like right over in here yeah see it's not going to show on camera, but there's like a little bit of ice inside the coil. And then you come over here and there's definitely some frost over here too um. It's not very.

Even so. That's interesting! You know we could have a plugged up strainer on that txv, but it's hard to say we're going to uh um go ahead and probe up on this guy and uh check the superheat and see what's going on. We need to get that frost to disappear. A little bit too, but it could just be that they're leaving the door open.

So the thing just runs and runs and runs all day long and then starts to frost out. You know so we pulled the top off the condensed unit and we're going to go ahead and rinse this guy off. It's not filthy, but this equipment definitely needs to be cleaned. I was recently working on this one and i noticed they kind of looked a little dirty, so we're going to clean them all, but we're going to jump on this one right now, because i have the temperature controller turned off downstairs to defrost that little bit of Frost on that coil uh, so we'll rinse, this guy off real quick, got some of the viper um blue venom pack on here that coil, nice and clean try to hold it more straight because you're not getting the coil cleaner.

There you go now, you'll get it there, you are. You should be seeing that foam. You probably need to put a little bit more, but i think you can make it work spray it on there. It's not that bad.

So we'll see how this does worst case. We got to pull the fan motors out, but i don't think we're going to need to do that, but look at that stuff coming out right now, all right so uh! This is pretty good. I can actually see light through the condenser, so we're gon na rinse. It got ta, be careful but yeah coming through nice and dirty they don't do normal routine maintenance.
So whenever we get the opportunity at these locations, we want to clean this equipment to eliminate potential service calls and we are using hot water right now too, which is really nice, because it's really breaking that stuff down and it's going through, like i said that you Guys can't, but i can see right through that, actually you can. You can see right through it too. So i'm gon na give everything else. A rinse real, quick, very carefully without ruining anything clean.

The inside out just get a little water in there. It's pretty beat up there's a lot of bird crap too, so we'll give all that a rinse and then we'll do this guy too, when you're rinsing these roots or these condensers off. If you use the blue coil clean, i mean any coil cleaners. You really should be rinsing it off the roof too.

It's not the greatest thing in the world for it to sit and dwell on it, um at a minimum dilute it down, but i always like to rinse the dirt out of here too. So that way, it doesn't pull back up on the new clean coil. You know what i'm saying and then i'm also getting rid of this pigeon crap there's a bunch of that. I mean it'll just be back because the pigeons will come back, but just trying to get rid of some of it clean the roof off just a little bit, so we don't have to work in this nastiness just a little all right.

I went ahead and probed up on the condensing unit, so we've got the high side. We have liquid line temperature. That doesn't really mean a whole lot, because this unit does have a receiver and this is an older unit. So it's not really going to have very much measurable, sub cooling at all, maybe a degree or two.

The cool thing, though, because i'm using the field piece joblink probes, is they have that crazy wireless range? Now you also need to have good bluetooth, have an updated phone um. You know best case bluetooth. What is it 4.0, the newest one, i think, or something you want to have the best bluetooth possible, but i'm inside the walk-in box, getting suction line pressure, uh and suction line temperature and air temperature. So it's currently 46 degrees in that box.

Right now and i'm able to connect up here so i'll be able to go back down there now keep in mind. When you go inside the walk-in box, it will get a little spotty because you're you're going through a lot of layers right, but line of sight. You should be able to get like a thousand feet permitting that you have the best bluetooth on your phone. You know and no uh interference and stuff, but um.

Okay, we're gon na go ahead and turn this guy back on we'll leave the cover off and go downstairs. It should be all uh defrosted. There was just a little bit of frost and we'll check out the system, operation uh, so yeah. We still got great connection to the roof way to go field piece: um, high side, pressure, temperature, uh, yeah, that's great okay, so we got to turn this guy back on.
All the frost is gone, so i'm just gon na go to this temp control. I put a dot where it was set at so that way we can play with it there too, and we heard the solenoid valve kick in. We've got suction pressure. It's on and running.

You always want to make sure that you always mark those controls. You never want to just go twisting on them, because you could inadvertently solve the problem without even knowing it so always mark where they were and then play with them and then always be cautious. I usually don't even like adjusting those very much, but in this situation i had to so we're just going to watch it run for a few minutes, make sure the sight glass is clear and then watch it come down and temp. Hopefully, it's only been running for a few minutes, we're still really high in temp 45 degrees, but super heat's not too bad.

As far as the range i've seen it go up to 13 come down to 10, so it's throttling where it should um. I called my technician on the roof. We do have a solid column of liquid in the sight glass, so it's clear so we're just going to let it run for a little bit and see what happens again. I just caught him leaving that door open again like it's broken, it needs to be replaced, but they got to keep it closed and tell them and i'm trying to get them to.

Let me put curtain strips, but that's like pulling teeth at this place. I really don't see much wrong with this unit other than they're just leaving that damn door open. I stood outside the door for 15 minutes and closed it four times myself, as the people walked in and out they're, just not getting it and we're looking fine in here i mean you got a little bit of frost, but it's just because it's uh cold. You know and there's a lot of condensation and humidity in here, so i don't see a refrigeration problem, we're still maintaining a decent superheat 13 degrees.

Again we're still running a clear sight: glass on the roof, i'm taking my probes off here. The last thing i'm going to do is check the liquid level on the receiver, just to make sure that it's got enough refrigerant for the head pressure control valve and i'm also telling them i'm not coming back out here unless it's to install curtain strips because i'm I i anticipate a service call this weekend because it's 45 degrees in here and i'm not gon na, do it. This is just silly because they're leaving a door open, you know. So i don't have my thermal imaging camera today, but the liquid levels right below the three-quarter mark right above the halfway mark, i'm going to call that good.

The three-quarter mark is just a fail-safe. That's the maximum amount of refrigerant you can put in the system. But if you follow the head pressure, control valve charging chart, uh spoiling is 90-30-1 and calculated or if you talk to russell, who makes this condensed unit they'll tell you that you clear the sight, glass above a certain temperature and then add so much extra refrigerant, and I know that this system's right around like a third or a halfway, so i think we're good um yeah we're gon na wrap this one up. I'm really pressuring them to.
Let me put some curtain strips on there until we can get a new door for this guy. This guy does have a defrost clock and it's accurate. It says about 2 p.m. Um, and i think that's about what time it is right now: 2.

13 p.m. So yeah we're good on that does long defrost in the middle of the night and then a couple defrosts throughout the day. We're actually going to increase that because of them leaving the door open a couple more 15 minutes throughout the day and then two really long ones in the middle of the night. So we're gon na tell him to keep an eye on it.

And then i'm really pressuring him to let me put curtain strips on there until we can get a replacement door ordered for this guy. I come up on a lot of walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers that are iced up in this situation. This wasn't wasn't quite iced up yet, but it was on its way the customer called saying the box wasn't maintaining temperature okay, i saw the door being propped open, but you don't just stop there. Don't assume! That's the only problem you're! You need to be thorough and go through everything because it can bite you in the butt and you can find out that there's another issue too.

Okay. Yes, it's obvious: they need to keep the door shut, but maybe there's something else going on right. So do your due diligence go through the equipment in this situation, i went through everything i went ahead and found that the condenser was dirty cleaned the condenser. Now that could have caused some issues, but don't think that was the issue.

I think the main issue was that that door was being propped open now, since the filming of this video, this video was actually filmed back in november of 2021. Okay, um we've already replaced the entire door. Okay, we put a bolt on door, it's a one-way door. It's not a high-traffic door or i called those dairy doors, the ones that open on the inside and the outside.

I don't know why. I call them dairy doors, it's just a phrase we've always used, but um. Essentially, i think the technical phrase is high traffic door, but because they can go in and out of it, but the new door that we installed is just a standard, walk-in cooler door that only opens from the outside. It only opens one way, has self-closing hinges and all that stuff, and it actually has insulation in the door uh they they.

You know let a lot less heat infiltrate into the box, but anyways. Don't just assume that it's a door issue go through everything, and once i went through everything i started to notice hey this equipment is doing everything it can right and i didn't mean to sound rude or anything. When i said i wasn't gon na go back out to the customer, even though i was frustrated the point that i was trying to make was, i did tell the customer look, you guys need to keep this door shut and, if you don't, this equipment is gon Na it's gon na get hot in this box again and i'm i that is what i was saying. I'm not gon na come back out tomorrow, because you're saying the box is hot again when there's nothing wrong.
I'm not gon na waste. My time to drive back out there to say shut the door right. So that was the point i was trying to make, because it was like pulling teeth to try to get the customer to approve me to put curtain strips on that as a temporary basis. They wouldn't let me so i gave them options, they didn't take them.

I was not willing to go back out there again to tell them hey, there's nothing wrong, there's nothing else. I can do so. That's why i kind of gave them an ultimatum. It may be bad business, but that's just the way i went about it right they have since, like i said, let me change the door, but again the point i can't stress enough is be thorough.

Don't just assume the first symptom you see is the problem right. Um, if you have an iced up coil, that's a symptom of a problem: okay, you de-ice it and yeah. It starts working, but what caused it to ice up? Okay, is the door being left open. Is the temperature controller? Bad? Is the defrost clock bad so we're there to find the root cause? The problem? We're not there to just solve a symptom? Okay, we need to be thorough technicians.

We need to understand sequence of operation and go through things methodically. So that way we can figure out and be confident in our diagnosis right at least that's the way. I approach things. I really appreciate you guys making it to the end of the video.

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5 thoughts on “Why wont the walk in cooler get below 45 ?”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jason Johnson says:

    This is one of those……incompetence on your part…..doesn't constitute an emergency on my part……sometimes you have to politely put the customer in their place through education. Its not your fault that the kitchen staff can't take 2 seconds to close a door.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars chad dalziel says:

    No fin comb Service area Orleans??

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Aoshimaro says:

    We're at Bluetooth 5.3 now.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Free Candy says:

    2nd

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Electroimpex says:

    1st

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