Troubleshooting the high side of a refrigeration system will often give service technicians valuable information. That’s because what happens in the condenser is a direct reflection of what is happening in the rest of the refrigeration system.
The weird thing about compressor problems is that — well, it’s usually not the compressor.
It’s probably something else. Can the technician on the job today figure out what that something else is? That could determine whether it’s a successful call and a happy customer or a visit that appears successful until the new compressor fails (after several additional costs and a lot of frustration).
In HVAC, we rarely need to have a deep understanding of electrical design. But there are a few cases where a little understanding can go a long way in identifying issues before they cause trouble, and that is the intent of this short article.
At the AHR Expo, RectorSeal LLC highlighted several new products designed to combat leaks and corrosion, both on the inside of the unit and from salty sea breezes on the coast.
The giant clock on top of the Parker Hannifin Corp. — Sporlan Division’s ZoomLock® Roadshow truck counted down during the 2019 AHR Expo, keeping track of the time left until the next live demo. Every 40 minutes, Sporlan would bring attendees up to physically make the connection themselves.
Once only found in mild climates, the technology now stretches across the U.S., thanks to advances in inverter technology and zone controls. On the other hand, the level of sophistication in these systems sometimes makes them difficult to troubleshoot when something goes wrong.
A grocery store owner in Georgia does a daily inspection of all refrigerated and frozen case temperatures using a laptop computer with specialized commercial software.
In this troubleshooting situation we have a customer who reports that when they turned on their nine-year-old electric furnace at the beginning of the heating season, they considered that the run cycles may have been excessive.
When servicing a refrigeration system, it is important to accurately determine the true cause of the failure. Misdiagnosing the problem can often create additional system issues for you and the customer.