Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 399. 5 Electrical Troubleshooting Tips for Refrigeration Techs

Transcript

Episode 399. 5 Electrical Troubleshooting Tips for Refrigeration Techs · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 2: My name is Trevor Matthews, founder of RefrigerationMentor.com. Over the past decade, I've trained tens of thousands of refrigeration technicians and contractors on supermarket refrigeration, and I've seen the same problem across the industry. Technicians are under pressure, second-guessing, and getting stuck on jobs too long.
• 0:03
  So if it's an A9, you got a bulb, and it's, the pressure starts to build up, and all of a sudden it says, "Holy smokes, we need to energize that compressor." So how do we do it? So that, that thermostat closes, and it sends a signal out to the, the current out to the solenoid. And so what happens then? So we got, we got send that voltage or send that current out to the solenoid.
• 0:06
  And then you go across it as well for voltage drop, so this is important 'cause you can have voltage imbalance. That's what we're looking for, low voltage. Any voltage drop across those components, contactors, overloads, so, so important. And why I say, like, you don't wanna check the ground... I used to check the ground, and then it took me forever to troubleshoot, we can make a mistake by checking the 208, 230 volts to ground. What we wanna do, because there could be floating or ungrounded legs, okay? So y- you may be reading strange readings. So, like, you, you measure across L1 to L2. That's what, that's what you n- wanna be doing, L1 to L2, L2 to L3, L 1 to L3, 'cause this is different for 208 230 single phase and 208, 230 three phase, right?
• 0:09
  So this is really, really important to check. Very quick checks too. Doesn't take a long time to do this on fan contactors, compressor contactors, heater element contactors A big, another big one is trace the circuit one step at a time, okay? Avoid guesswork and jumping around all over circuit. I used to do this.
• 0:12
  The big thing is, is that that is caused, like, 80% of the time from flood back, overheat, dirty condenser, failing motors, air flow problems, slugging, whatever it is. They, they all go back into a mechanical issue that related to turned out to then have an electrical issue So when you understand and you troubleshoot the entire system, you have an understanding of where that electricity or that voltage or that current is supposed to go, then that's gonna really help the game change in electrical troubleshooting.
• 0:15
  They took pictures of it. "I was at a site. I took a picture of this. I didn't know what it was. I had to do research." And I spent 30 minutes researching. This is how you get better faster. And honestly, you can get really good at electrical troubleshooting, very good as a refrigeration technician, 'cause it's everywhere.