Articles Tagged with ''air conditioning troubleshooting''

Bob and Tim have had a big day at work — it’s 3:30 in the afternoon, and they are done for the day. They’re having coffee at a local restaurant, talking about their careers when Tim asked a question, “What is a ton of refrigeration, and why is it called a ton?”

Whether the commercial refrigeration equipment you’re working on is a small under-counter refrigerator, a keg refrigerator, a large walk-in freezer, or a transportation refrigeration system, many of the technical concerns will be the same.

Bob and Tim were checking a customer's air conditioner and initially thought the unit must be out of refrigerant or very low on refrigerant. But after adding some refrigerant, the suction pressure did not rise at all. Bob then determined they should look for restrictions in the liquid line or the suction line.

A customer was explaining what was going on with his air conditioning system. His old system had stopped working and he was told that it needed to be replaced. Money was tight and a cousin had a system removed from a rental property. So they replaced the original 3-ton package unit with a 4-ton package unit.

Bob and Tim had just arrived at a service call, the first one for the day. The complaint was that the homeowner’s air conditioning had stopped sometime in the night and the residence was hot. After their initial checks, they suspected a low charge.

While making the decision to replace a condensing unit instead of repairing it may be a difficult one, some contractors have guidelines in place to help homeowners make such a decision a little less difficult.

Dozens of regulations affecting HVACR equipment manufacturers, along with refrigerant regulations and technological innovations in variable-speed technology, have resulted in a bevy of change for condenser unit manufacturers.

Bob and Tim were at the house of a customer who said that her air conditioning unit did not cool well in the hot weather three days ago. She said the unit actually froze up and had ice on the outdoor portion of the unit on the big line. She shut the unit off and called for service.

Diagnosing an air conditioning system isn’t easy. A service technician must be a trained professional to diagnose a system efficiently and correctly — no longer can a tech rely on rules of thumb for coil temperatures or pressures.