Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 366. Electrical Troubleshooting and Resources You Can Use in the Field

Transcript

Episode 366. Electrical Troubleshooting and Resources You Can Use in the Field · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker: What's up everyone? Welcome to the Refrigeration Mentor Podcast. I hope you're doing well. So I was going through some trainings over the last couple weeks and once again it keeps coming up like electrical troubleshooting. And I was doing a course last week with a bunch of newer apprentice, a few years into the refrigeration industry.
• 0:01
  They figured it out. It was it keep right unit. They're local here to me, not far from me, and was a newer a two l unit right now. A lot of people are like. Well, what's, what's the big deal? Is it changing? Is it not changing? To me it, it really doesn't matter. It's all refrigeration. We just need to make sure that we're being safe, we're installing systems correctly, but it.
• 0:02
  So as we were going through this, I, I realized that. I'm very resourceful and getting better and better at being resourceful. First, I wanna talk about what we were talking about on the electrical side before I get into how I actually found the software to size a charge for a keep right unit. The first thing was we were diving into one of Keep right's electrical troubleshooting guides.
• 0:03
  You recommend, like I've been telling a lot of people in the community, get it the night before, get it the week before. If you're knowing that you're going up and working on a new piece of equipment that you never worked on before, or it's a piece of equipment you worked on a lot, but you never, ever read the manual, get the manual and review it and look through it to see you might installed 50 of them or a hundred of them and never read the manual before.
• 0:04
  So this is actually an evaporator one from keep. The first step is kind of looking at the voltage rate here. Okay, so they have L one, L two, and kind of, this is the ground similar rate here. That is step one. So we need that amount of voltage coming in. This, the, the next step is, okay, like what is protecting this system?
• 0:05
  The, the manufacturer spends a lot of time, a lot of money, decades of knowledge on what they should have in their equipment. Do they get it wrong Sometimes? Some manufacturers potentially, but one of the things they are here, north America, it's all through ul, CSA, like all these different. Standards that they have to follow.
• 0:06
  This is why understanding the notes is really important as well. I talk about this a lot. Read the notes. I know this stuff is difficult. I know when I first started out, I didn't want to hear any of this stuff. I was like, okay, yeah, cool. It looked good over quickly. But honestly, I didn't spend enough time on electrical wire diagram.
• 0:07
  What should you see at these different points on this wiring diagram? When this is energized, because right now this is a de-energized position. Every electrical wiring diagram is de-energized. We're coming from L one and we go, go all the way down here, L one. After we wire this, this comes down to X on the terminal board, and then L two as it comes down here, comes down here.
• 0:08
  I've seen many videos as of late where a technician's out in the field. I've seen a few, a lot of them on the HVAC side, on the air handling unit or rooftop unit, or whatever you want to call it. Where the disconnect's off, but then they go te check it before the, the, they put their hands on it and they're still getting power.
• 0:09
  Okay, where does the other one go? And you go one, two. Just remember this, what I used to do when I was electrically trouble. I used to go, okay to ground a lot, okay? L one to ground, ground l. Now I go all the points. Do not do that. Go. You gotta go across the switch and you gotta go across the loads.
• 0:10
  So this is this power. So if I go from X right here, and I go over to this number eight on this fan relay, which is the same wire, what should we have? We should have zero because we're not going across anything. If we were going across a switch and it was closed, it still would be zero. 'cause there is. No potential.
• 0:11
  Because we've got L one on to X and then L two on N we, we should have two 30 volts. 'cause this is a two 30 volt, single phase, 60 hertz. So if it was 1, 1 20, if it was four, it would be three phase 4, 7, 5. When you go across two and check any compressors on three phase, you should have L one, L two, L two L three.
• 0:12
  Let me just, so those that are listening to this, we got a line. From L two over to what we call H two. So there's a wire there, so that'll be L two over here. And then L one. How do we get power to L one? We'll go like this and I'll show you power to L one. So right here, this power goes, comes right here.
• 0:13
  So we got LL one here, L two there. So if I'm going to test my power. From L three to L two, when this is closed, we will be taking in the voltage of the heater. Helmet. So we should have power because we gotta load there. Okay.
• 0:14
  We open this and then we check from three to here. We can we, if we check that, we can check that that heater limit switch is open. So this is this, this is how you do it by going across all the different things. But where did that lead lead us? Okay. The question, the, the next thing was is like they, they mentioned to me that they.
• 0:15
  And then I didn't know which one it was, so it did, didn't really matter. It kind of shows you that, they need the, there's a safety shutoff and there's a safety check valve for refrigeration A two L systems. Okay. So it's a, but I scrolled down a little bit. This is just the first link off their website.
• 0:16
  Okay? Depending on how big the walk-in boxes of eight, by eight, by 10, you can only have so much. A 12 refrigerant in that type of space. You need to follow these guidelines. This is Ashray, these are B 52 codes here in Canada. But as I was going through it and I was just looking at it, checking it out, there was a section where it says, refrigerant charging, let back off a little bit here.
• 0:17
  So what I did is I highlighted this, I copied that, and I just threw it in to another. Section, so it's https four slash four slash load calc c.k-rp.com/cc. So system charge calculator. So you gotta find the brand I just went to keep, right, I just picked an A two L refrigerant 4 55 A. Then it says select the model.
• 0:18
  On coal climate, select an evaporator. So right there it says 11 pounds. Just for, for that condensing unit. I didn't know the, the exact, model number of the evaporator eater, but I just went, okay, medium temp. So it's a medium temp system. We go with electric defrost heater and I picked two 40 2 0 8.
• 0:19
  So I didn't know anything about discharge calculator. I, and I may not even done this a hundred percent correctly but it's. Pretty straightforward and I think I'm, I'm probably pretty close if, if that was the bright size equipment. 'cause I don't know why I say, I don't know if it's correct 'cause I don't know if that model of evaporator matches that condensing unit.
• 0:20
  But all the time as I'm talking to the technicians that you gotta get those qualifications, you gotta actually be able to work. So it takes time. Like I'm a Red Seal refrigeration mechanic in Canada, so I can work anywhere in Canada, no problem. And I have my, my licenses to prove it. So working on this stuff, you do want, you might maybe starting out as apprentice and you're working for a company, you're working under their licenses.
• 0:21
  It's so important to do that stuff because at the end of the day, you wanna be safe going home to your family. And not getting hurt because you can't get paid if you get hurt. And I know that has happened to me in the past. I don't want it to happen to you. We're here to help teach you, help you grow, help you learn, but you gotta be safe out there and be safe for the people around it.
• 0:22
  But at the end of the day, if you want to keep learning, you gotta be safe out there. Hope you enjoyed this. For those of you listening on the podcast, you can head to the YouTube channel and kind of check out the, the drawing that I was using there. Thanks to the keep Right manual there and just keep.
• 0:23
  Write it down at somebody in the community. Last week they were like, oh, I'm running into issue in this. It's like a, a neutral is lost, 'cause they go, they get power to the coil. But they don't got power across the coil. That may, that makes a big difference. You got power to the coil or do you got power across the coil and so what do like that? So they went from the coil to ground. Oh, I got 24 or one 20 volts there. I went to the other side. Oh, I got one 20 volts there. But it's not pulling into contactor. When that happens, that means something downstream of that coil is open and it's usually a safety. Okay, hope you enjoyed this. Love to hear your questions or comments.