Troubleshooting & Commissioning Q&A
HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs
Bryan Orr
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 August 2020
⏱️ 87 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this podcast episode, Kaleb, Joe, Eric, and Bryan answer some troubleshooting and commissioning questions from Facebook.
Whether we're talking about troubleshooting, commissioning, or any other HVAC/R task, the best training is on-the-job training. Meetings, educational videos, and quizzes also help to a lesser extent, but bypassing training altogether is a mistake. Senior techs can also become better diagnosticians when they teach others. "The Diagnostic Game" is an especially useful tool to help teach newbies how to troubleshoot a system.
However, training is something that is ultimately what you make of it. When you consider external training, you must consider the value of that training. (For example, NOVAR training would be useless for a residential tech but critical for a grocery refrigeration tech.) You also want to make sure your training makes you a valuable job candidate and that you stay motivated throughout training.
When it comes to diagnosis, you can't truly diagnose the equipment until you know how it operates under normal conditions. Until you become familiar with normal equipment operation, you're essentially relying on trial-and-error. Getting the answer correct is only part of the equation; you also need to know why the answer is what it is when troubleshooting.
Kaleb, Joe, Eric, and Bryan also discuss:
- Leaving subcooling just shy of the target value
- Balancing the charge during a hot pull down
- How much can we expect techs to do training on their own time?
- Just-in-time education
- The relationship between training and pay raises
- "Understand before you do"
- Replacing parts on a unit with a failed compressor
- Megohmmeters and multimeters
- The Kalos residential commissioning process
- Troubleshooting no-cool calls
- Inspecting customers' homes
- Communicating with customers
- Money-losers for residential companies
- Classroom training vs. field experience
- Fluid dynamics in ductwork
Learn more about Refrigeration Technologies HERE.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of the HVAC School Podcast is made possible by our sponsors and our sponsors are |
| 0:10.0 | Navac and Navac Global.com. |
| 0:12.4 | Be congratulations to Navac for winning several dealer design awards |
| 0:15.9 | from the ACR news. Find out more by going to Navac Global.com or by going to TrueTech Tools.com use the offer code get schooled for a great |
| 0:24.7 | discount at check out on all of the great Navac tools. Refrigeration |
| 0:29.4 | Technologies Refrigeration Technologies makes so many great chemicals, cleaners, products like Nylog |
| 0:37.1 | for assembling together threaded connections in refrigeration systems or any system that's |
| 0:42.4 | bearing refrigerant, air conditioning, or refrigeration systems or any system that's bearing refrigerant, air conditioning or |
| 0:44.0 | refrigeration. That is Nylog, that's what we use with flares, we use it with chat lift fittings, |
| 0:49.6 | with air equip connections, all of your connections that have threads. |
| 0:53.4 | Nylog works great because it's made from refrigerant oil so it's safe to use on a |
| 0:58.0 | air conditioning or refrigeration system. |
| 1:00.0 | Find out more by going to a Fridge Tech. dot com also Speed Clean. |
| 1:04.0 | Speed Clean is a great American company located up in Connected Kit. |
| 1:09.0 | I don't know if I was saying that right. |
| 1:11.0 | You know, I'm from Florida so we don't know how to say things right. |
| 1:13.0 | Connect to Kit is Speed Clean and they make a lot of really great things. |
| 1:17.1 | One of my favorites is the mini split Bib Kit for cleaning Duckless systems in place. Find out more by going to speed clean.com and then |
| 1:25.9 | blueon on energy.com blue on is the solutions company for refrigerant retrofits |
| 1:32.1 | R22 being one of the big ones, they have a great |
| 1:34.8 | R22 replacement refrigerant called TDX20. |
| 1:38.9 | Find out more at blueon energy.com. |
... |
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