Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 334. 10-Point Rack Preventative Maintenance Checklist

Transcript

Episode 334. 10-Point Rack Preventative Maintenance Checklist · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker: Well, what's up everyone? Welcome to the Refrigeration Metro Podcast. So glad you're here. So over the last few weeks have been diving into different CO2 scenarios, maintenance supermarket scenarios, just trying to dive in deeper. Tons of people in the hub asking great questions in the refrigeration mentor community hub, which is so awesome to see as we continue to grow the community.
• 0:01
  I know I did this in the past until I started writing stuff down and having a, a, my own checklist. And the checklist. Every time I do a training, like I ask people their checklist and they, they, they give me their. The checklist on the top of our head, but there is so many other checks that they do. When I dive in a little bit deeper, well, I do that check.
• 0:02
  And I, I kind of wanna think, why is it the disaster? Because it's not always the technician. It could be the the contractor themselves. Maybe it's the end user, maybe it is the store employee. So there's so many different factors that come into play when we're talking about maintenance and preventative maintenance.
• 0:03
  The biggest thing is it doesn't matter what company you work for, where you work, it's your name on the line. Okay? So every time you go in. That's your brand. That is you. It doesn't matter to the company you work for or the chain that you work for. It's you. That's the brand. So having your preventative checklist, that maintenance list, that's really going to help that system run for a long period of time.
• 0:04
  Like the first one as always, like anything is that visual inspection. When you're going into a store, you gotta keep your eyes open. No blinders on, eyes wide open. Everything is should be written down. Like if you see a ball out or a light out because of a ball's gun, you gotta write that down. If you see trim that is ripped off or a case that's damaged, write all that stuff down.
• 0:05
  Spinning. That's how much vibration is just happening on that, and that is something that you need to understand. Why is it vibrating so much? And something that needs to be noted down because if it gets worse over time, that could be due to, maybe it's a, something wrong with a compressor. Maybe it's something going on with a drive.
• 0:06
  When you own a store and you're looking at it, that is like a huge thing that, that you want to take a look at. Those cush clamps could start to wear. They might need to be replaced. They need to be insulated over because I've seen huge balls of ice in cer, certain cush clamps before. So, and also like visual inspection, all the electrical, like any of the harnesses, anything damaged looking inside the, the controller.
• 0:07
  I said that, man, that that stuff needs to be written down. I've, I go today, I go every time I go into a supermarket and I'm buying groceries, I'm, I, my eyes are peeled seeing what's going on in the stores. And countless times I'll see the, like the little snakes or the socks there all around a case. And I'm just like, like that.
• 0:08
  Finding that root problem, having socks around cases is not. Store owners don't want that. The good ones will make sure someone comes in and figures out those issues. A lot of times it's plugged up drains most of the time, and they fill up with water and it, Dr. Drains over. But there's sometimes there's cracks in the, in the piping or someone hits something or maybe it freezes.
• 0:09
  ? So 20 bar, and it's like, okay. But that doesn't mean compressor. Four, when it's running is running at those pressures. That is just your transducers on your headers, your suction header and your discharge header, which could be reading off. Did you actually put a gauge on there and actually measured it and verified its reading accurately.
• 0:10
  Easy. Easy, quick, easy. Have a flashlight with you. The flashlight there. 'cause sometimes real dark in some of these mechanical rooms. And check out the oil level. As well as another quick one on the compressor would be just verifying those crank case heaters are operating when the compressors are off.
• 0:11
  So it's interesting, I got the technicians reaching out to the manufacturer, asking 'em the questions. Some of the reasonings why they have the cranky here running 24 7, even when the compressor's running. Another one for this checklist would be that the electrical components, so this is, this is key. It's pretty straightforward, but just taking a look at the contactors, the relays, the breakers, anything, and getting your meter out and going from line to load.
• 0:12
  'cause once again, sometimes in these planos it's dark. But take a quick look at it. Tighten any electrical connections definitely that are that look like they're discolor, at least check them, you know, safely check them. That's, ? You gotta make sure that you, there's no power to 'em, depending on the voltage you're using the proper.
• 0:13
  So there's like the, the electrical protected ones that, you know. You're tightening in some of these 24 volts or one 20 volt wires and connectors. You make sure that you're, you're doing it properly. You also want to take a look and test if you can the safety controls. You know, I think that's such a, such an important thing in a maintenance.
• 0:14
  So one day a leak check could take a whole day. ? It could take multiple days doing a proper leak check, depending on how big the store is. So what you want to do is if you plan out your strategy on your checklist, it goes so much faster, you know, and you're not dilly daddling, you're not, you know, strolling out to the wholesaler and there's.
• 0:15
  Depending on what it is. Not only refrigeration, they may have hvac, they may have the hot side as well. So it all depends. But you want to make sure that you plan out that strategy. So testing those electrical components is another key, key thing to the maintenance is because if you have some pitted contacts or if you have some relays that are sticking, that is gonna lead to a, a call down the road that could potentially be prevented.
• 0:16
  You can actually check the superheat a quick way, just right at the rack. So what is my superheat back at the rack? We know it's gonna be a little bit higher. From that run because just say it's a 200 or 300 foot run, that's the, the super eat is gonna pick up some super eat on its way, on its way back, even with decent insulation.
• 0:17
  So, and then you want to go in and check your alarm set points and your notifications on there. 'cause someone could have just said, okay, let's, let's just take this alarm set point out and you're just running warm. And they haven't. The, the customer hasn't gone around and checked the temperature. 'cause that's what they're supposed to do by, depending on where you're at in the world, they're supposed to be going down and recording all these temperatures for food safety.
• 0:18
  Head pressure's a lot higher. In the winter, you should have more refrigerant in that receiver because it's lower, lower condensing, lower load, more capacity from the refrigerant, which is something important. Important. So checking those refrigerant circuits would be real good. And then you want to check the condenser.
• 0:19
  You may need to go to the controller and force 'em all manually, turn them on and check them out. That takes a little bit longer. You can always bump test. The condenser fans. Make sure that you know what you're doing when you do that and you safely do it. So you can test and verify all the, the fan cycling controls and just make sure there's no noise or vibration, anything that's vibrating, you know, they're, what's wise?
• 0:20
  So just just make sure that, that it's clear of debris so it doesn't, things don't block that condenser especially in the, this, anytime, especially in the summertime. Yeah, I'll always want to check. Another one would be the all the evaporator operation. So a quick check would be walking around with your making sure the lights are on.
• 0:21
  I know my good friend Andrew Freeberg, he was at a maintenance and he sent me 14 pictures. This was the first time he was at the store and he was just walking through doing a quick inspection and he looked in and he, out of the, I think there, I don't remember how many cases was it, but I know there was 14 pictures he sent me where.
• 0:22
  So going into the trend graphs like. 100%. The controller is your friend when you're doing a maintenance to look at some of those things that are key. So quickly go into some of the trend graphs. Microthermal is great for this, just jumping into trend graphs and taking a look. Okay. Over the last two weeks, how was that case running over the last month?
• 0:23
  Right. Getting all that data. So that is so, so important. Because you can actually even see if there's defrost or being missed or defrost or not. It's not defrosting. Why is it not defrosting? That's not something that you need to write down the look and make sure or investigate. And so this is another thing that you write down in this maintenance, a report for the customer.
• 0:24
  Sensors, like the CRE ones, or sometimes it could be HB sensor or Tech lab. There's so many different ones that that can be put on there, hb. And the big thing is, is to make sure that you mark that stuff down. And this is why going in with the plan when you're doing a maintenance is so, so important.
• 0:25
  I talked about this one already is like, a defrost. So if it's on time clocks on the older racks. There's still a bunch of them out there. I've, I've used to work on one them, but if they got electron electric defrost controllers, make sure that it's all running, verified and draw with inspects. So are you gonna test everyone?
• 0:26
  What kind of gas are in your oil, is there not? Is is is there moisture in the oil? So many different things that need to be checked. The, the other thing should be verifying the, the what, and I probably should have started this with this, but is verifying what does the. Baseline or the beginning settings were like, for example, the suction pressure.
• 0:27
  Then, okay, okay, do it. But you gotta get back there and fix that or have someone else go back and follow up. Bypassing alarms is definitely a, a no-no, ? Just to get you through to get extra parts, something like that. But there's so many times I hear so many stories about people just shutting off alarms and then all of a sudden you having catastrophic failures, you know?
• 0:28
  That that is so, so important as well. And I think one of the. The last thing would be documenting all this stuff, you know, record all those pressures and temperatures, super eat sub coolants, you know, oil levels. That is so, so important. Getting out your amp clamp and logging the compressor amps and the voltages and the balance that I talked about already across the.
• 0:29
  This, this is for the follow up, and you should have, you should not have to rely on dispatch. The best technicians out there are not relying on dispatch. They have, they have countless days, weeks, and months of work. That's it. The good technician and maybe it, maybe it's trim may, maybe that, maybe that's on their list for follow up, but that is something when it's super slow, they can go and they can tie that fit, tie that off, and maybe it's a misting system.
• 0:30
  It has a little, it has a little drip happening. So you need to replace a gasket in there. You're not, you don't need to do that right away unless it's dropping rate on product. But if it's not dropping on product, well that's something that you can, you can save for later for a follow up. Okay. We need a new, a new end for the, the missing one, one piece of the missing system. Just things like that. And then when we get into like fish cases or get into ice cream cases or self-contained. There's so many different things that, depending on what you're doing, but we're, we're, we're talking about basically anything connected to the rack for maintenance, and there's so many more things.
• 0:31
  And that's, that's the big thing. Making sure the documents are there for the next technician, making sure you're logging this information and then having that baseline. I know I talked about this a few times before, but you get, you gotta get a baseline. So if this is a brand new store, you gotta do all this stuff.
• 0:32
  Really get an idea on how that system's running. And once again, there is so many more preventative checks that you need to do like for it. These are just a quick snapshot. So I want you to think about this, like what other checks would you do? You know, 'cause that's so, so important. It doesn't matter for the checks that I would do, but you're out, actually out in the field today and you're doing this stuff like, it's so awesome.
• 0:33
  You know, the product's still valuable, but it's not like having a hundred thousand dollars walk-in versus a thousand dollars a frozen peas section. ? Like there's a big difference there. So you gotta take a look at what you need to, what you're working with. That's, I guess that's what I'm saying.
• 0:34
  Like their wife would come and pick them up or someone would come pick them and they would leave their van and like, that is stealing. Don't do that stuff. Go in there and crush a day in, day out. That's what you want to do. You want to go in there and solve problems and really go above and beyond of what your company expects and go above and beyond what that end user expect.
• 0:35
  And that's where the confidence comes. And as the confidence grows, you get better. And you get faster and you solve harder problems. Things take a long time. Like there it is. Not like it, it, everything is, is gonna be fast because all of a sudden if you have a six cylinder compressor that needs to replace on top of the roof in the middle of the roof of a massive 200,000 square foot building, that shit's gonna take a while.
• 0:36
  Once again, I, I love seeing it. People, technicians from around the world just leveling up super fast where it took me years, years and years and years and years to get to the level that I see some of these technicians within a year. Like it's so, so amazing. That's why I love this industry and that's why I love working with technicians from all around the world and just leveling up so quick and just hearing the stories from their service managers or the owners are just like this technician just.
• 0:37
  They were out there. Don't get me a Modern refrigeration has been around forever. You know, but it, it's a big, thick book. And when you wanna find something, you can't just jump on and say, I want to, how do I check superheat? What is actually superheat? What's discharge superheat? How do I actually do a compressor efficiency test?
• 0:38
  Even if you have a checklist and you want to email, email it to me, trevor@refrigerationmentor.com. Email me the checklist that you do and I can share that or come into the community refrigeration it's refrigeration, mentor. Dot com slash hub. Come on into the community and share that with other people.
• 0:39
  Or, hey. Can you add this, this, and this, because I know this has really helped me. And then I can share it with other people. And this is what it is. It's a community of us around the world to help us get to the next level. And that's it. We're here growing, learning, and share. So happy you took the time here to hang out with me at Refrigeration, mentor, and, and don't forget, share what you've learned today with somebody else.