Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 368. Electrical Troubleshooting Essentials for Refrigeration Technicians

Transcript

Episode 368. Electrical Troubleshooting Essentials for Refrigeration Technicians · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker: What's up everyone? Trevor Matthews here from Refrigeration Mentor. I'm gonna dive into some basic troubleshooting, electrical troubleshooting. I think this here is something that is really, really important, and if you can get the foundation down when you start out, I think that is gonna help you.
• 0:01
  It took me a long time. I struggled with electrical and it's one of the things I wasn't. Putting in the work that I really should have been, as well as I didn't have any coaches, mentors and people teaching me on electrical and maybe I wasn't at the time able to absorb that. 'cause I do remember have running into electrical issues and come, people come and helping me out.
• 0:02
  For this session, so it's not very long, so I'm gonna hit some key points. But when I was building this presentation I learned a lot and I did a, a dry run with the community, the refrigeration mentor community. So if you're not in the community yet, it's refrigeration mentor.com/hub to get some feedback.
• 0:03
  Stalling it in the A two L refrigeration condensing unit from Keep Wright. And they didn't know how to select the charge. So I went into their manual and I figured out a way they got a software. It was pretty, it was pretty simple, but I had to spend some time to, find that software. It took about maybe 10 or 15 minutes and then the size it, it was pretty quick.
• 0:04
  And this is what I. See in our training programs is when the technicians or the students that come into the program, they start to understand the logic, not where the wires going. It's easy to trace out wires, well, I shouldn't say that. 'cause sometimes it's not easy. Okay. I, I, I should take that back because Andrews sent me a post.
• 0:05
  So the logic behind it, not where the wires go, the logic. And while I was building this presentation. And, and building this talk. I'm like, holy smokes. Follow this repeatable process that I'm gonna talk to you right now. What I used to do is I used to jump around all over the place, jump from here to there, to there, to there, check in the line side, check in the load side, check in the, the, from the power side over to the control side and all over the place that is not had electrical troubleshoot.
• 0:06
  The multiple heater elements are loads. Okay. The fans motors are loads. The the, what else was there? The Om OMB has a little load, and it's only small, but it's a load. You know what I mean? So understanding every component that actually takes or use voltage, okay. That, that it needs voltage. Then I was, I was like, okay, well this is a condensed.
• 0:07
  So where is that? So that cranky heater is coming from the same power source from the co from the transformer. So it's 120 volt. This example was 124 transformer. So your first step is going to check if you have voltage coming outta your transformer, your secondary side, your primary side, you, you could check, but your secondary side.
• 0:08
  So it's back to really a neutral, but they got it as a C for a common, and so you, you check up across it, all of a sudden it's, it's 1 1 20. Okay, well how come that heater is still not running? So the next step is isolate to the component. So there's actually only one component was the heater element. You go across that one again.
• 0:09
  And this here is, if you don't do that, you're gonna be a ridge. You'll put something, oh, it works. Okay, we just changed that part. You have to prove that that is the exact component that failed. And that's where you start to learn. And this is what I'm excited about this session here, is to dive into that.
• 0:10
  And the one example that I have that I'm gonna be talking about, and I said it on the podcast before, is. Okay. I gotta, I have a contactor. Okay. That contactor has something downstream of it. Okay. It could be a low ambient switch, it could be a relay. There's, there could be some sort of, something downstream of that contactor.
• 0:11
  But when I go to ground, I go on 20 on both sides. It must be a failed co coil. Must be a failed coil. No, that, that just means there's no potential across the load. We're not using the voltage because our neutral is not there. Or our common is not there because it is open by a switch. Or you got a broken neutral or a bru, a neutral that is not.
• 0:12
  I got tons of them coming up over the next few months at different events around the world. So I'm mixed. Excited about that. If you're going to be at a HR Expo then this one coming up in another week. So Expo 26 a HR Expo 26 is gonna be there. Come and say hi. We got the podcast pavilion.
• 0:13
  Plan it out. It's not to, honestly, it's not to go and party every night. It's, it's to go introduce yourself, meet people, talk to the manufacturer, talk to the experts. That's what it's actually about. That's what I, I, I go when I do there and then the technicians I see there like, gee Robertson, I've seen him there last year.
• 0:14
  So start at the source, isolate where, where the, the, the power stops, or it's being blocked or it's missing, and then prove it. It's a six step, i, I call it a six step process, but it's just making sure, do I have power? Did I check across the different components? Where is a stop blocker missing?
• 0:15
  Do not ever touch the electrical without putting a meter to make sure there's no voltage on there. I've had people in the community reach out that they say their tech was out there and they had the disconnect off, and it was a one 20 circuit and they got hit with two 30 volts. That's it. That that exhaust should even had two 30 volts, but you get hit with it.