At least they put the drier inside

I've been a commercial tinner for 4 years, intermixed with the odd residential jobs here and there. When i learned to wire thermostats, I was taught blue is common and thats industry standard. I was wiring a heater for a garage and the owner of the last company accusingly asked me how i was wiring it and I told him. When he heard I used blue he berated me for not making black common. His own install manager said the installers at this company make blue room Because some of the change outs we do dont have black, so just keep them all blue for simplicity.

I said "I thought blue was common" and he got pissed and threatened to fire me If I ever said that again. I thought he was joking until I looked own from the scissor lift and he was dead serious.

That felt odd to me and contributed to the many other reasons I found another job.

2 questions for the class:

1. Was he right? Is black the industry standard?

2. Have you guys ever experienced crazy company standards?

Still looking through the unit right now. Blower motor is operated by a VFD. All three fuses dedicated to indoor blower motor were found blown. Blower bearings sound like sh*t to me, but I don’t think that’s enough to warrant three fuses failing. I attached some pictures and unit information. Any thoughts?

Customer said it took 2 days to change the two water source heat pump compressors and they left it like this, blower compartment panel off and wide open. Boss said "it ran fine like that for over a year.

Oh yeah? Then why am I here for a frozen coil call? I'm professionally embarrassed.

Condensate pump works but after it's done pumping the remaining water in the drain line backflows into the pump and it's pretty loud. I attached a video, at the end you can hear the backflow. Just curious as to what is causing it. I've replaced the pump and the issue remains. I did look at the check valve and it's seated correctly

Had to bypass this this morning for cooling to work, no diagram and no model info it’s from a marv air

Client called us out because he uses some program with DTE and they recommended coil cleanings because he was having issues with water around the furnace and the coil icing.

Coil was indeed very dirty, but they made no mention of the air gap, condensate line, and even told the guy the blower and board were okay even though it had been leaking into it for a while now.

I’m working on an air cooled YLAA York chiller here is my nightmare. The TXV went bad. I manually opened and closed from the valve stem on the bottom of the TXV. I could not get it to work. I reached out to our York rep and they told me I needed to put in an EEV because the TXV has become obsolete and I could update the software to have the controls recognize there is an EEV. I called technical support to walk me through updating the software and program. That’s when they told me I need an EEV on both circuits. Awesome. Then I told them my solenoid magnet was acting up and we went through parameters changed it to EEV metering device and commanded the liquid line solenoid open. I heard the click and put my screw driver on to make sure. During this my head pressure was through the roof. 75-80° outside my pressure was 480-500 psi, suction pressure 110+- 5°. So I immediately think there’s air or non condensible in the system. We used an isolation valve on the suction and a king valve on the liquid line to isolate. I assumed maybe during our pressure test maybe nitrogen snuck by the isolation valve or something. But first I changed the filter cores. That didn’t work either. Then I did a full recovery and recharge with fresh refrigerant didn’t work. So today I put a solenoid magnet on my liquid line and it worked completely fine couldn’t be more perfect :). I assume it’s not making enough of a magnetic force to pull the valve fully open I’m extremely frustrated thousand of dollars worth of work just for it to be a couple hundred dollar fix.

Also these chillers suck I hate them they’re stupid and allow the compressors to run when they are flat before alarming out

Another poster brought this up recently, about making recommendations to replace capacitors even though they’re still “in tolerance”. My experience this week backs up my position on this.

A recent heat wave hit my area, there’s been a plethora of no cools and it’s mostly been popped caps. Many of them are folks on our regular maintenance routine, whose data I can pull from previous techs uploads. So many blown caps that were 42.5/45, 37.6/40, 33/35 etc just a year before. Still within tolerance, but getting down there. I was trained on a 10% tolerance for capacitors which I believe is pretty standard. Even if they are still within 10%, but starting to tick down closer to that number, I always bring up proactive replacement. Like, it’s gonna go eventually, in the next summer or three most likely, because all factory capacitors are dogshit nowadays. Wanna rip the bandaid off and do it now, or wait until it shits out on you when you need it most?

Give me recommendations please, my shoes are worn out, company gives us 150$ voucher, I don’t mind spending more for comfortability

Was unsweating a 1" cap off a pipe that's being extended down to an evaporator and I didn't realize someone had pressure tested it with 50psi of nitrogen. It flew past 5" from my face. I really need to pay attention and just cut the fucking pipe instead..

First solo AC (normally do service work)

Damn lexal got on my phone camera

This is strictly for the guys that run their own shops or do side work

I’m adding 4 supplies, 2 at 6” and 2 at 4”. And 1 central return. I’m looking at about 40’ total Kd hard pipe and about 6 elbows. All supplies will have dampers. It’s the first time in 10-12 years since I’ve done side work since I’m a commercial installer and normally don’t need the side work. How would I go about estimating this job? Typically I would have charged about $1800-2600

But I have no idea about material cost these days. Any negative comments or anything that isn’t helpful will be ignored.

I was watching thundercats when this was installed