THEY SAID HURRY EVERY AC IS DOWN

this video is brought to you by sportlin quality integrity and tradition customers calling saying they got several acs down but i'm starting on this one this is one of their bar ac's okay so the first thing i did was i don't ever power the unit down because this older unit has a compressor lockout it kind of has like mechanical logic okay so if a pressure switch was to open high pressure low pressure or freeze stat or if the compressor doesn't run after a certain period of time that switch that compressor lockout board locks the system out mechanically via a holding relay okay so first thing we're doing we walk up to the unit i've got 25 volts from common to r okay next thing i want to do is i want to test to see if we are in compressor lockout so i go from common to x and i get nothing okay so that tells me that we are not in compressor lockout okay um we can proceed further so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna put my thermostat i mean my meter on common and we're gonna go to y1 do we have a call for cooling is what i'm testing okay the thermostat downstairs first off you've got 24 volts coming from this transformer it runs through some logic in the unit then it goes downstairs via the thermostat wire and then comes back up the thermostat think of it as a light switch when the temperature gets where it's supposed to get the light switch turns on and it tells the unit to turn on in this situation from common to y1 which is my call for cooling i have a call for cooling 25 volts so that means that the thermostat is telling this unit to turn on but for some reason it's not okay i don't think we're off on low pressure because we would be off on compressor lockout now what you don't know is that after this system had been operating for many years we came in and we put in jade economizer systems on this unit okay so we have um i believe right here on maybe this wire right here this thermostat wire it's coming from the honeywell jade economizer assembly so we're going to go over and have a look at that this unit is economizing right now so it's occupied y1 is on it's going through uh y1 out is off it doesn't have a y2 we're just letting it scroll through its logic mixed air temperature is 67 degrees that's inside the blower assembly outside air is 67 degrees and it's economizing right now so it is kind of cool outside so let's verify that those sensors are accurate that's gonna be my next step so i'm gonna throw a thermometer out here so it's early morning it's gonna get to almost 100 today but it does look like it's pretty accurate 69 degrees but honestly the uh outside air temperature should be a lot lower than 67 degrees before it bypasses because typically you want to maintain about a 72 degree building and you need temperature differential you don't want it just saying well it's 72 outside let's bring in no you need you know at least a 10 degree temperature differential between the outside air and the inside air and we don't really because then when you bring in body heat it's going to take forever for it to cool the building down so the outside air temperature the set point needs to be a lot lower than 67 degrees so let's look into that in our settings it says that the dry bulb outdoor air temperature is set to 70 degrees i'm gonna go ahead and change that because that's too high we need that to set down to like 60 degrees now the customer didn't give me very much direction they said they have an ac number but they said the entire building was hot so more than likely they've lost one or two acs and this has several small ac so that affects the whole building it looks like this unit's working uh the economizer wouldn't have been the problem it just happens to be cool outside right now so i lowered the economizer set point but my supply air temperature is 48 degrees uh we know that the return air temperature was about 70 because that's what we were reading so i don't think we have a problem with this unit so it's more like a triage situation we're going to put this one together and move on to the next one i'm not going to go any further because i'm looking for obvious things now once i get obvious things fixed if i wanted to dive further into these ac's i could i also have someone working on another i have another person up on the building so we're kind of tag teaming these ac's going through them together all right this one right here um is also running i just put my thermometer in it we've already got a 50 degree supply air temperature and it's dropping even more again it's about 70 degrees in the building so i don't think there's a problem with this so that takes care of their bar now we're gonna start over here at that unit and then work our way around and make it over to this unit too this unit i'm i'm remembering something this guy has a refr uh is not running if i remember right and i believe there was a refrigerant leak on the compressor that we found like during the winter and they didn't want to address it they wanted to wait till the summer time so i know we're going to have to change a compressor on this one but we're going to keep going over to these guys right here this guy is not working so first thing i do is i prove that the transformer has given us 24 volts from r to c we're good to go okay then i'm going to go from c to x to see if we have any open limit switches and we do not so then i'm going to go from c to y one and i'm going to prove that the thermostat is calling it it is okay so the next step is it's getting lost after this right so we've got power here it goes into the economizer then it comes out of the economizer and goes through the logic and pressure controls and everything so let's go over here to the economizer assembly and i've already got it opened up over here so it might get kind of loud outdoor air sensor error so our outdoor air sensor is bad on this one and it's not allowing the compressor to turn on uh it's it a minute ago it was reading negative 37 so it said okay to economize so very common on these things for the outdoor air sensors to fail if you open this up and this up it goes right down in here and that's the outdoor air sensor right there and they just get very susceptible to uh outside ambient issues so we're gonna go ahead and change that sensor let's go see if i have one in my van and i bet you once we change that it'll start reading the accurate outside air temperature and then the unit will run all right i do not have the sensor for this i'm actually going to go pick it up i just got all the information on this compressor i'm going to pick this up at the same time i just looked at my local supply houses now what's in here is an old carlisle compressor and they were actually notorious for this happening it's leaking out of one of the welds on the side um i don't know if that's a soft plug or a weld on the carlyle but it's on the back side so this guy will go ahead and pick up a new compressor we'll change it to 407c we'll put in a new dryer and hope that the condenser is not restricted i don't know we'll have to see we'll make sure we get a new one of those and i'm just checking to see if the td is good on this one before i leave 49 degrees yeah so um now again that's not like a 100 this unit's doing everything it's supposed to be doing but i'm triaging these units right because i didn't know what was going on so this guy's going to be fine uh fyi if you have a sensor that has failed if you disconnect it the unit will turn on but if the sensor is connected sometimes it can read so this unit was like turning on and off so between this unit and this unit not working that's gonna affect their entire dining room now i haven't seen for sure if this one works i'm gonna let my other technician check this unit out uh when he's done working on the kitchen ac and i'm gonna go get all the parts that i need so i'm gonna pick up a compressor and the outdoor air sensor for this one i got the new zone sensor installed now we're reading 78 degrees outside air so this ac is done i'm going to put it back together button it up get the work order signed for this one we're still working on the kitchen ac i've got someone doing that and then we're going to i got the compressor for this one so we'll jump on that here in a minute too all right now i haven't shown you anything on this ac i have someone else working on it but we have a a fuse that has blown on here now this fuse has blown before i've had another technician long time ago come out here and change the fuses on it couldn't find a reason so i busted out the the insulation tester the mega ohm meter okay we tested this guy it was good to go okay we test this guy and it's testing bad okay so we're gonna hit insulation test and look we're testing with 526 volts we have 32 mega ohms 61 mega ohms we have an intermittent insulation issue inside this guy the compressor was just running it was running and the unit actually satisfied but intermittently this compressor is shorting to ground now insulation tests can be a little tricky because they can also sense high moisture content in the system so you you want to be cautious about trusting just because the the meter says bad compressor what is it actually doing okay you want to be sure you test that don't just let that be your only thing okay we're gonna go ahead and uh talk to the customer about replacing this compressor i know that there is no moisture in the system we're the only people that are working on it we don't have high moisture content um there's definitely something going on within this compressor lots of bouncing around today um so the kitchen ac we turned it back on for now it's an intermittent short we're definitely gonna change the compressor but um we're gonna let it keep running while we're here we're getting started on this guy now this guy said again is leaking on one of these i think it's a soft plug on the back uh so we're going to go ahead and replace that compressor we're also going to split this condenser so i pulled the top off the unit depending on how difficult the compressor changes if we have to do a lot of re-piping we might pull the whole condenser out if not i'll just get the compressor out put in a new dryer then put this back in so this guy should be completely void of refrigerant by now i believe it just had a slow leak let's see if it's even got refrigerant left in it nope nothing i'm pushing it right now so no refrigerant left in it so we'll get this compressor pulled out we'll get the new one brought up to the roof and then maybe we can clean up some of this oil mess on the bottom if you come over here um there's a lot of oil over here from when it just leaked out slowly the condenser fan motor was running so contactors they look like they're fairly new but i don't know how good they are inside so we'll give those a look too all right we're getting this guy on sweat we got the new compressor up here for the most part it looks like it's going to match up this is a copeland i went with a copeland compressor i did use the cross reference and the copla mobile app to find the right compressor because i can't get these carlisles anymore i believe even carrier changes them over to copeland if i remember right um something i wanted to point out there was the slightest bit of vapor still in here and if you look see if it comes across on the camera or not look in the shadow right here of that see it's not going to show itself there goes you see that tiny little ripple right there that's the shadow of the the sun reflecting off the gas that's still venting out of this guy the point i'm trying to make is this guy never pulled atmosphere into the system it was ever so slightly it just went when i pulled the schrader out so that's a good sign that means that this oil isn't technically contaminated with moisture which should make this change out a lot easier so this is very good because the entire system still has vapor coming out of it i don't know if you guys can see the shadow right there of the vapor coming out of that so what we're doing is we're doing the dryer because we've got the compressor out makes it easier right so this one this dryer is a little bit bigger so when i go to fit it if i put it right there it sticks up too high or if i put it right there where it's going to go you see this is down too low right here okay so what i'm going to do is just cut with the tubing cutter right at the top of this solder right here just cut that off that much off and then that'll make that dryer fit in there perfect all right we're trying to make it a little bit easier on ourselves we've raised the bottom side of the dryer out of the system i'm doing this right here and then we're going to jump onto the top and the rest of the filter dryer we're doing this without the compressor in place that way it's easier the tip that i'm using is a little bit big so i'm kind of trying to be quick i've got a rosebud tip for the big stuff i'm a cheapskate so i patch my solder sticks back together i don't have my viper wet rag heat blocking compound so i'm just using a towel it's not the end of the world if the dryer gets a little burnt it's okay the torch settings are a little bit off here adding a liquid line service port so we can get an accurate sub cooling too so so so we're getting the compressor brazed in at the moment we ended up having to put a t right here i mean a coupling right here and we slightly tweaked this line down but we've got some nitrogen flowing through so we're looking good so i always like to do the most difficult braids first which is this back corner so we do that do that and then we'll do the easy ones down here all right we are all braised in so this one this one we put a coupling right here to make up for what we needed because basically this guy we needed this out of our way to get the compressor out so we cut it here put a sportlink catch all 16 cubic inch drier in there we're all braised up we've got nitrogen flowing through we're going to get our vacuum pump set up running we're going to take a lunch while it's doing an evacuation and then we'll clean the condenser and put the top on and charge it up and cross our fingers and hope that that uh the fixed surface metering devices on the liquid header aren't plugged up there's not much i can do if they are we had the nitrogen and the gauges up here so we're going to go and do a standing pressure test while we're going to get all of our evacuation equipment so i always put it in on the high side let it go the natural flow make sure it comes up on the low side then i'll open the low side but you just want to make sure that it's actually not completely restricted and it's not so we're going to pressurize this guy up do a tightness test and then like i said we'll be back with the evacuation stuff we are set up we had to improvise and put the vacuum pump on a bucket because the hose was a little too short so i'm gonna start out with the suction line closed see how fast it pulls down on the micron gauge which would completely isolate this hose from the system so let's go ahead and turn it on see what happens we'll go ahead and open up the gas ballast and then we're going to let it run and hopefully pull slightly down on this guy then i don't know we'll decide whether or not we need to open the other side up got some of the blue brightener cleaner from viper using their gun and this stuff is going to do good at stripping all the oil out of the bottom of the unit and cleaning the condenser too so i'm going to go ahead and apply it we'll let it sit then we'll give it a rinse i'm trying to do this carefully without ruining all my stuff so just trying to be as efficient as possible we also got that dryer strapped up with a zip tie so all right so we're giving it a good little rinse been sitting on there for about three four minutes i don't want to let it sit too much longer we're gonna rinse it from all sides i've kind of got the condenser split apart a little bit too right now so you can clearly see the stuff coming out is gunk i sprayed the bottom of the unit all that good stuff so the wand really helps us to be able to get down in here and we'll get all different angles push it out from this side so nice and slow make sure it's properly cleaned looking at about 600 microns on the micron gauge so we're just going to let that keep running just trying to rinse it all down since i had the top off the unit i went ahead and rinsed out the drain pan made sure it was nice and clear blew out the trap a bunch of all that dirt right there was in there so that's all rinsed out so we're good on that i'd love to redo that trap but it's a problem for another day we're looking pretty good about 700 microns 750 right now so we're going to let it keep running i'm probably going to take a lunch and then just let that keep pulling down all right i just took the big vacuum hoses off i'm currently in decay i'm pulling an initial vacuum on these but it's not pulling on the gauges yet on the system so those are still closed because we're indicated about 793 microns and slowly rising so i'm pulling an evacuation on these hoses because i don't want them to have any atmosphere in them that way when uh when um i go to charge we don't introduce anything we're not supposed to into the system right so clearly i've got something loose right now oh yeah these guys this is why we don't open the system until we're 100 sure and then we pull the gauges down into a vacuum again they're isolated at the core removal tools um and let it pull down so we're 2500 microns we'll let it pull down i'm gonna go get some refrigerant we're going to introduce refrigerant to the system do a leak check on it put the top on we're just kind of you know trying to multi-tusk as much as possible then we'll open everything up and start the system up all right we are going with 407c i currently and we're currently putting the top on the unit we're gonna go ahead and start charging this guy so i put a couple 407c stickers we'll get some paint markers out here in a minute too um scale is zeroed out we're looking already purged everything all the way up to here so we're gonna go ahead and open this and open this and uh we're looking for 12.5 pounds of r22 so we're probably gonna go to about 11.5 pounds and then dial it in via super heat when we're done with that so go ahead and put it in on the high side letting it dump in there let me get that to actually show you guys one pound so we're just going to let it dump what it can uh we'll get the leak detector out here in a minute all right we're still charging we're gonna do a leak check real quick using the field piece dr 82 gonna hit all my joints back here nothing nothing nothing nothing come up here to the compressor nothing nothing so no leaks we're putting a crankcase heater on and then we're gonna drop the condenser fan motor in and hopefully get ready to start it up all right i've got the system running uh switched everything over to my my joblink probes and we're charging right now so i stopped right under eight pounds just a little like it's like seven pounds and some change so we're just going to keep adding gas and we're going to watch the superheat because we're looking for a target superheat on this guy because it's a fixed orifice metering device all right we are running really good so this is our system right here and we're calling for about five degrees of evaporator superheat because of the target okay it's target super because it's a fixed orifice metering device um it's kind of ranging a little bit right now i might have overshot it just a little bit but we'll let it kind of stabilize out we've got about 12 degrees sub cooling that's true sub cooling because i added a liquid line port um about just under 100 degrees outside got a decent approach temperature supply and return we have a 23 degree temperature split air flow is about where it should be i'm looking pretty darn good this is a six ton unit we're delivering right at that this guy's looking great so we got lucky that the fixed orifice metering device there's our superheat it's about 5.7 degrees we got lucky the fixed norfolk metering device was not plugged up on this guy um all right this is good stuff 407c like i said we marked it we're right about the factory charge just about give or take a couple ounces so pretty darn good all right so we're going to go ahead and start cleaning all of our stuff up um we're definitely going to be changing the uh walk or the compressor on the kitchen ac later but not right now we got a giant mess up here so we're gonna start cleaning our stuff up making sure everything's working and the customer's gonna be super happy because their dining room is gonna be kicking now well um i went ahead and brought the compressor back to the shop or back to my house actually and uh brazed on some stubs real quick nothing fancy and i came back here to where i remember when i condemned this thing which was like a year and a half two years ago but uh it's leaking right here on this uh spot right here now i don't know if that's a soft plug or if that's like a a weld regardless these carlisle compressors on the carriers always leaked right there back in the day we don't see a lot of the carlisles anymore um but yeah they would always do that so so when you get these calls where there's like you know hurry everything's down don't panic first off right just go into triage mode and start looking for big things right so you know there may be it's possible that there was problems with those acs that were operating but i wanted to triage the situation go find the worst stuff right so i'm going through boom boom boom found one problem set the economizer's temperature at which it goes into full economize lower you know so boom solved that problem but and then just worked our way through the issues until we found major problems right so we had one economizer sensor that was bad that wasn't allowing the unit to come on we had a compressor bad on the kitchen ac which i actually sent um someone back to go replace that compressor i didn't do the job but that's already been taken care of too and then i took care of the compressor that i knew was going to be you know was was down um in a situation like this the way that the restaurants work the kitchen ac was operating so it wasn't an emergency so i prioritized the ac that was out in the dining room that wasn't working at all that's why i changed that compressor the day that you saw the vid or in the video and then i sent someone the next day to change the um kitchen ac compressor okay so but you just kind of take your time again don't panic i know it could be overwhelming because you go out and there's five ac's they say five acs aren't working okay just start working your way through them one at a time right focus on that ac go through it is it good okay move on to the next move on to the next move on to the next you know so just take it one ac at a time and like i said just going to like triage mode just looking for major issues there really wasn't anything too crazy about this i had already brought that compressor up to the customer previously it was winter time i think it was like a year ago though it's been a while but anyways it was winter time and they didn't want to fix it for whatever reason you know i don't know if it was a year ago because it might have been the end of last summer i think that's what it was i think it was the end of last summer and they were like eh we'll get through the winter that's what it was anyways but so i already kind of had an idea what it was and it was so notorious for the carlisles to leak in that exact same spot it happened all the time i've changed a lot of those carlyle compressors because of that exact issue there's no fixing that you're not going to braise that shut or anything just change the compressor and move on okay i went ahead and converted it to 407c i've been doing a lot of conversions to 407c lately as long as i'm doing oil changes and everything's been good i get a lot of questions about what alternative refrigerants i use i still use r22 too this day we actually just bought a crap ton of it and and just stockpiling it but we still use it on refrigeration systems on air conditioning systems if we come up to an air conditioner that's low on refrigerant we'll top off the charge with r22 come back fix the leaks either continue to use r22 or if it has polyester oil in it we'll go ahead and uh put 407c it just depends okay but i still use r22 uh the only alternative to r22 that i'm using at this moment is 407c now i know i get messages and emails from all these different people use this use this use this you don't need an oil change use this use this i like to follow the manufacturer's installation instructions 407c says it works best with polyester oil now i know that there's some people out there that say you can just add a little bit of polyester oil to the system that's not the right way to do it okay and i want to dispel some myths too because i recently watched a youtube video of someone and i know there's so much misinformation out there but there's a another youtuber i'm not going to name him but um he made a video showing how he converts system over to 407c and he adds 20 percent of the oil charge with polyester oil so he just literally dumps polyester oil on top of the existing mineral oil and he adds 20 that's not how that works okay now first off you can mix the oils it's not the end of the world okay but it's not supposed to be that way because you know different oils travel with different refrigerants okay so in a perfect world you only want one oil in that compressor the next thing is you don't want to add 20 percent more oil to a compressor you can have problems if you have too much oil in a compressor so don't listen to that myth where you just add extra oil that's not accurate okay the only way to do it right is to remove the oil put polyester in it or change the compressor sometimes that might even be cheaper just change the compressor the new one comes with polyester oil then charge it with 407c um you don't want to be mixing refrigerants ever that is not accurate you're not supposed to do that period i don't care if your best friend says that he did it and he's been doing it for 20 years and it works fine it doesn't mean it's right it's not right you are not a chemist you don't make your own refrigerants there's no pressure temperature chart to follow if you mix refrigerants it just doesn't make sense so don't do that okay so i don't use any other alternatives as of this point um just 407c and like i said i always just either change the oil or change the compressor okay so that's the way that i'm rolling that's the the the way that the manufacturers want you to do it okay um be very cautious trusting supply houses because supply houses oftentimes can give inaccurate information not all the time but sometimes they can i've been told several times by very reputable supply houses that oh yeah you can use this refrigerant it works fine well who says it works fine oh yeah the last technician he's not the person that i want to be listening to the only people that i want to listen to is the manufacturer copeland the manufacturer of the compressor carlisle tecumseh i don't think carlyle exists anymore but i mean you know lean on the manufacturer the compressor and see what their recommendations are don't listen to the manufacturer of the equipment listen to the person that's standing behind their compressor that's the person to listen to copeland doesn't approve very many additives for anything be very careful about trusting when you go into a supply house and i know i'm going off on a tangent right now but you go into a supply house and they have a leak sealant up on the wall right i'm pointing to the figurative wall right there they have a leak ceiling up on the wall and right on the leak ceiling that says oem approved that is such a stupid blanket statement what does oem approved mean how many manufacturers are there which manufacturer approved it was it a compressor manufacturer or was it a manufacturer of an expansion valve you know don't there's so much misleading marketing material and it drives me nuts the only person that should be telling you what to put in your systems is the manufacture of the compressor period okay because they're the people that are standing behind that compressor they're the people that are going to warranty it lean on them go i i challenge every one of you to go to copeland compressors find your local copeland rep an actual copeland rep not a supply house an actual copeland rep and ask them which leak sealant does copeland approve in their compressors i'd love to see from a copeland representative one of them say that they actually approve a leak sealant or a dye or a flush or whatever okay copeland doesn't approve very many things and on top of that some of the people the manufacturers copeland might approve one particular additive under a certain circumstance maybe in a chiller maybe under certain evaporator temperatures but it's not a blanket approval for everything so you have to be very careful about misleading marketing material okay now that i went off on a tangent and started talking about everything else but what was relevant to the video let's get back to the video so um nothing too crazy uh system's still running fine all those acs are back up and running the customer is happy all is well okay i recently said in a video i'm just going to keep saying it and stay tuned too but if you go to my website hvacrvideos.com we just resupplied the hats we've got a new uh basically we're running really low and we ran out for a few days but we're all back in restock so we're good to go on the hats if you're interested in checking out hats we have t-shirts soon to be not available yet but very soon to be stickers available on the website so i need to figure out how to get them on my website it's been a while since i've actually done that i have two different styles of stickers they probably won't be available for a couple more weeks but we have a translucent sticker that basically is clear if i can show you guys so that will be available soon so it is a clear sticker right so there's translucent and then this one has a white background so they'll be available soon but i don't think realistically it'll be for a couple more weeks but just stay tuned keep checking on the website hvacrvideos.com several other ways you can support the channel if you're interested in doing so the easiest way to support the channel is simply watch the videos from beginning to end without skipping through anything that's the simplest way uh you can also support the channel via paypal patreon youtube channel memberships there's links in the show notes of the video if you're interested in purchasing any tools you can go to truetechtools.com i have an offer code big picture that is one word if you use that offer code you get an eight percent discount i get a small commission from that uh that's if you like what true tech tools has to offer i've been purchasing from them for many many years they're a great company very very nice people run the company uh amazing people actually so really cool people i love their um their message that they're trying to spread and just in general they're just a good company so check out truetechtools.com if you're interested in purchasing any tools and that is it remember that um i typically go live on the hvac overtime youtube channel on friday evenings with my friends adam bill and joe about 605 pm pacific um we usually do a just like a hangout live stream it's like a bunch of guys just going to the bar uh then i also do work permitting live streams on my youtube channel uh monday evenings about 5 p.m pacific uh this last week actually yesterday i had my wife on my wife jill and we kind of talked about how we live the hvac our life so uh just stay tuned i really appreciate you all remember be kind to one another and we will catch you on the next one okay

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