Articles Tagged with ''troubleshooting and HVACR''

While residents and business owners in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida struggle to rebuild their lives following the path of destruction left by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, local HVAC contractors and manufacturers have an opportunity to step in and do what they do best — provide comfort.

All technicians at some point will need to call and speak with a manufacturer’s technical support adviser. I have made many calls to these advisers throughout my career and learned how to best get the information I needed from them.

While the equipment tonnage is often quoted on proposals, how can you be sure the equipment’s potential is really being achieved? Is it possible your installation practices are contributing to lost cooling efficiency? Let’s look at what causes lost tonnage and how you can ensure it’s not happening because of your company.

Over and over again, I have heard HVACR technicians and electricians quote rules of thumb regarding wiring sizing, and I have witnessed and participated in many heated debates on the topic.

I created this service call to help technicians understand flooded unit repair. Dedicated to technicians after Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma — I hope it helps. Good luck.

Refrigeration service technicians often run service calls in which they find a compressor with a higher-than-normal suction pressure along with a lower-than-normal head pressure. Many times, the refrigeration equipment is still running, but the product temperature is too warm, which causes product quality and safety to suffer.

An iced evaporator is a common problem encountered by technicians servicing medium-temperature refrigeration systems. A visual inspection of the coil will show this obvious problem. Most technicians will install their low-side service gauge, find the running pressure to be lower than normal, and conclude the system has a low refrigerant charge. However, an iced evaporator can be caused by a totally different system issue.

An iced evaporator is a common problem encountered by technicians servicing medium-temperature refrigeration systems. A visual inspection of the coil will show this obvious problem. Most technicians will install their low-side service gauge, find the running pressure to be lower than normal, and conclude the system has a low refrigerant charge. However, an iced evaporator can be caused by a totally different system issue.

This month’s troubleshooting situation centers around a standard natural gas, induced draft, hot surface ignition system furnace. This is a new installation that has been accomplished in anticipation of the upcoming heating season, and the problem is that during the initial start-up, the unit did not perform properly.

Let’s examine the top five factors that commonly contribute to individual room comfort problems and how you can discover them.