The drift with the probes is due to elevation changes and the barometric pressure, usually.... The acceleration time on that VFD was pretty fast in my opinion. I personally like a minimum of 30 seconds acceleration and 45 seconds deceleration. I mostly set them for 45 and 60 ( for a blower ). I've had to drill the liquid line many times....it works great. I recommend using the Phase 3 acid test kits to check your oil for contamination. I really like the fact you prepared for the future with the iso valves on the drier. You see that a lot with larger equipment. You take things much further than most companies who work on RTU's. I respect the fact you don't take the quicker route and take the correct course of action.
The fieldpiece probes have a real issue with drift and it's bigger than an elevation change. Ive got probes that dont drift at all no matter the elevation change
Chris is fortunate that he has customers that allow him to bill for that extra RTU work, because most third-party customers want the very bare minimum……and that’s all they’re going to pay for.
@@arthouston7361 Yeah, customers often are not able to calculate properly. Maintenance work goes unnoticed when everything is functioning as expected. People only tend to notice maintenance when something goes wrong. This can lead to the perception that they are paying for something they're not actively using or benefiting from. This mindset comes also often when you are part of a chain/franchise. Maintainance has to be payed by the franchisee while equipment swapouts payed by corp.
Building a town in an environment barely liveable - like a desert, what could possibly go wrong... I think this is a case for "the biggest picture ever". Since abandoning this town is no possible solution at the moment, all the equipment must be made ready for this environment: - ALL contents of the cabinets in a closed space in the basement or at least far away from any dusty/sandy air so only the bare minimum of equipment needed on the roof stays there. - Installing cyclone sparators for the make up air and the air for the condenser so the filters have a lot less to do. Having only mimimum sand in the equation helps a lot. - Perhaps rooftop units are not suitable in this environment. Sure, space in the basement is for storage, space on the ground floor and possibly first floor is for customers, but in the end the 20-50m² used for all this equipment would be a benefit in the long run.
@@adamdnewman This is where regulations are most useful. Make it a requirement for anything new. Either they close up, find ways to not need active cooling, or install the parts needed.
I would recommend the control panels use "purge air". This is the principle used in gas stations: filtered, clean air is forced (by fans) into the control panel spaces to pressurize them. This allows for sophisticated electronics (like those entertaining screens with the trivia) in paces where the gasoline fumes would otherwise cause fire hazard. In a desert, it would keep dust out.
@@quietone610 no offense but think again: these customers already don’t change filters every so often for the air they breathe. Do you think they will change them on a electronic compartment ? Better sand airflow than nothing…
He's definitely getting a call from the local desert asking back for the sand, but jokes asside, its impressive how even after that it still had 2/3 of the compressors ok
With the volume of sand in that environment, it'd almost be beneficial to use a vortex sand seperator to isolate the sand from the filters! So even sandstorms cannot clog the filters, only the finest of dust.
When you first had it open and were moving that sand around with your hand I was just thinking of commenting about what we used to call “glamis fever” or sea fever. Anyone who’s ever gone out motorcycle riding in the dunes that hasn’t been there before almost always gets super sick after being in glamis or ocotillo wells, and it’s from the nasty dirt that blows around not just from the salton sea but from all the geothermal activity out there that pumps sulfur, c02 etc out especially like the mud pots, then the wind blows the dirt around and you breathe all that mess in. Glad to see you mask up before blowing the junk off that AC.
The Load of Knowledge in ur Head 2 du this kind of job has 2 b ASTRONOMICAL !! LOL'S It's very Impressive how u make the jobs look so easy even with the Help, Apprentices ? Anyhooo, luv the Channel . 🇨🇦
21:48 I love how you can see the refrigerant boiling out of the oil To clean out those units, you might need a good shop vac. (and then the wind will still bring plenty more) well, Alright ;)
I don't think you'd be able to see the difference, at least without using a microscope to compare the porosity of the cores. they'd be formed out of smaller diameter material and have smaller pores.
I think we need to design a pre-filter system, similar to, say, a centrifugal flow system in some large manufacturing facilities, to drop out some of that fine sand before the regular filters. I think it could be done somewhat inexpensively. Probably would have to be inexpensive as I think there would be a small number of use cases...
Your Customers obviously Appreciate your Consistent and Strong 💪 Efforts if they are willing to Pay you for two (2) hours of Travel Time in both Directions. 🤔👍🙏
I sneezed every time sand blew out. I started in the hvac-r trade and transition to steam engineer. Thank you for your videos. Sometimes I miss being on the rooftops troubleshooting units.
You could weigh the old and new compressors to get an idea of any oil loss round the system. (assuming no internal design changes have been made to the compressor) Edit: Wow that oil looks nasty!
@@philltafolla yeah, for sure don't go by the weight, unless they're manufactured within a short time frame of a few weeks. even then a change of material could alter the weight.
This was certainly a different video! The main video had a ton of great info in it and the bloopers were a bit of fun as well. It's good to see your lighter side. I have a moustache as well and I get where you're coming from with that with those hairs occasionally irritating like crazy. It was a bit of a surprise with the compressor oil with you using metric units for once when you said 'one point six litres' instead of your usual imperial units... I was wondering if you were feeling alright when you said that! You seem to have a thing against metric units.
Only way to stop filters plugging up would be to eliminate OSA and fresh air. Need to invent a sand detection sensor and shut down air intakes. They have the same sand issue on the Navajo reservation
I was thinking a different direction, i would think using like the Dyson vacuum or propane forklift intake separator, and scaled for the volume, would be the way to go. Maybe a general 'storm incoming, turn off' wouldn't be bad also
Pluged filters with very good compressors are more probably to inflict a fault than with older ones just because the system performs closer to the limit.
Chris, have the customer get the electrician to replace that breaker. Resetting it multiple times into a short has burned the contacts and it WILL fail soon. Seen it happen too many times in my career.
It sounds like the Restaurant Manager needs to go up and check all the A/C Filters weekly and call for new ones every 3-4 weeks (or as needed) based on how much sand is in them...
I think the second stage needs to be looked at again, that compressor jumped at start up and has lost a least 2 of the hold down bolts and another is about to get tossed too.
I had the same thing in MQ when i was looking at a single compressor on a goodman 20 ton. I put it in as a 10 ton so it calculated for 4k cfm even though i had 8k, so the BTU estimation was all out of wack
I’ve done mechanical work my whole life, but I did have a part-time job for 19 years as a broadcaster, including being a rock DJ at the foremost rock station in Philadelphia….so I’m going to suggest that this video needed a Music bed of “Enter Sandman.” 😅
They should have manual (or automatic) switches to shut all units down during a sand storm. That being said and people not taking responsibility, they might not care enough to trigger it. And there needs to be ventilation when the building is occupied and so on... I'll keep quiet and continue watching. Thanks for sharing!
At 1:25 ---When visiting the Coachella Valley, keep an eye out for the Lennox rooftop air conditioner - it's a Landmark where you'll find Chris! People in the marketing department actually got paid to choose the name "Landmark" for the model name - a word that has absolutely nothing to do with anything related to air conditioners.
I was an electrician for over 40 years. The way they wired the mains in that compartment pisses me off. I know copper is expensive but they could have shaped the mains a lot better. It would not have been that much more money to dress those wires professionally!
Yes I could have but this location is very far from my shop so I prefer not to chance it with a flare, I will discuss this live on RU-vid this evening 11/13/23 @ 5:PM (pacific) come on over and check it out ru-vid.comnmRWMlwKUMo
Anyone that says you shouldn't have a trap needs to go look at line sets with long vertical runs… Depending on the engineering, there will be traps every 15 to 25 feet! As you stated, it causes velocity to increase and eventually that increase carries the accumulated oil back to the compressor…
Hello man. 🤘How are you? Great videos BTW! I have a question, why don't they make dryers with connectors that can be screwed on and not soldered? cost cutting?🙃
Wire burned off due to loose connection. The contactor stuck because of constant locked rotor amps on remaining contacts. The compressor winding was destroyed by continued single phasing due to stuck contactor. At least that's my scenario.
Those air filters, look like they are filled with fine silt, by looking at the video. (Would see near a dry lake or in this case, possibly Salton Sea shore line / earth.
hi i thought you would have also changes the contactor for the first compressor because 1 of the contacts looks different just to make sure it does not fail and ruin another compressor 24:13 they might have gotten sand in them
About 5:50 you can see the red wire seems to be gone from the contactor, the question is more, was this before the compressor shorted, or after? And I just don't get why you guys in the US dont have sealed electrical cabinets. Everything would just life that much longer.
is there a filter that is better able to handle the fine sand. I'm thinking along the lines of an oil bath filter used on off road vehicles? Or maybe a differential pressure switch to alert the owner to blocked filters.
So was it flooding with liquid or high suction temperatures, can’t be both you have to pick one, but to save you the trouble the compressor failed due to single phase situation from loose connection on contactor someone replaced
question for the commercial guys... do you often have to set up a ladder or is there usually a built in ladder either in the building with a hatch somewhere or on the outside? Justa curious resi guy wanting to make the swap
if the drier gets clogged wouldn't that mean there are still contaminants in the system? in that case wouldn't you change both the drier and refrigerant?
Well it really depends, for the most part refrigerant can be cleaned... I will discuss this live on my Q and A livestream this evening 11/6/23 @ 5:PM (pacific) on RU-vid come on over and check it out ru-vid.comPTHaWVNvUjk
Is there a way to put on some cyclonic dust separator on these, or totally impractical? The separator would have the added benefit of keeping the filters cleaner for way longer, even without the sandstorms. It's insane how loaded those media filters got!
I was thinking exactly the same thing, but I have to wonder how large something like that would have to be to handle the air flow. It probably is just cheaper to replace the filters and deal with the occassional burned out compressor.
It is important to remember that a joke like this is a lot funnier if the viewer doesn`t know its coming. It may be better if you put the outtakes to open your video. still funny tho🤣
A simple ferrule, a 0.1 cent part, could have prevented this (at least the burned contactor) I still don't get it, why nobody uses these? Other things I don't understand: This AC has an 80A breaker (?) going in with 8 gauge wire (?) to a terminal block dividing it into 14 gauge. So in the event of an short or even just overload, the 14 gauge has to pass current to trip the 80A breaker. That would severely overload the 14 gauge wire, just as it did in this case. And the weakest link was the stranded wire screwed in without a ferrule (thinking about that: maybe without that weak point acting like a fuse, the whole wire would have burned up setting stuff on fire) Why there aren't any kind of motor protection switches that detects single phasing and over current on an per-compressor basis? Also protecting the small wire from passing 80A Such a thing costs like 50 bucks. Against the 500 for a new compressor, that's a no-brainer
Not an HVAC guy but used to work on pump controls here in the UK. It's strange to me to see motor contactors with no overload relays attached, am I missing something or do those compressors not have any individual overload or single phasing protection at all?
As Chris mentioned the hole unit had a phase relay. Individual phase monitors seems to happen mostly on bigger compressors. Why the overload protection is missing? My guess: price war and nuisance calls… if you have to drive multiple hours multiple times just to reset a overcurrent protection your customers will rapidly ask to remove them or set them accordingly…
@@brauchmernet I must have missed him saying it had a phase relay, but he said he thought single phasing had killed the compressor. An overload would pick up a failed contact or detached wire which a phase protection relay on the unit supply wouldn't. Maybe they are cheaper now but you used to get a lot of overloads for the price of one phase protection relay - although overloads won't pick up a swapped phase which is deadly to some things, I'd imagine HVAC compressors are one. With a unit like this one which can function to some extent without one compressor, individual overloads could avoid an emergency callout and might save a cooked compressor.
@@NiallWardrop Chris mentioned it in an comment to me: "If you look closely it actually had one but it was protecting the whole unit and not the individual compressors". About 7:19 on the right to the VFD - this might be the phase protection.
Those units are built down to a price. You can easily build or buy a small microcontroller board that measures differential pressure over the filters and sends a notification to change filters and kills the power when it's getting real bad. Also not having a low pressure switch is pretty idiotic. But chrises customers apparently love cheap one time purchases that cause more costs after the fact :)
Every service engineer everywhere in the world in every industry knows that one! One of the reasons I got out was too many customers who relied on emergency call outs and would never pay for permanent repairs, would not understand that the thing could only be rigged to sort of work so many times and that eventually I would not be able to get it working which would shut them down. Hard to relax at the weekend wondering which unit was about to finally let go.
@@HVACRVIDEOS I see. Individual protection seems to be only used on the bigger ones ( mostly with oil monitors ) directly on the terminals from factory…
