Editor’s note: The following remarks were made regarding the “Charge Assurance: To ‘Affinity’ and Beyond!” article, written by Herb Woerpel, published May 8, 2017, in The NEWS.

AFFINITY AND BEYOND

In reference to your article about the “Charge Assurance” feature on the new Affinity condensing units, the advantage is perceived as the technicians not having to connect to the service ports. While it is certainly nice that York is providing the pressure/superheat/subcool information, there is a lack of educated/trained/caring techs that can interpret this information, any better than they do now, using conventional tools. Being a high SEER unit, I am relatively certain that a TXV is being used, meaning that a trained technician would probably be looking for 10-13 degrees of superheat and 9-12 degrees of subcooling, but there are also those techs that never use, nor have been trained to use, that information to diagnose/evaluate system operation.

There are certainly techs who won’t be able to convert pressure to a temperature without the [refrigerant temperature pressure chart] on the gauge in front of them, or be able to interpret improper airflow, restrictions, etc. There will still be the ones that see a low pressure and automatically add refrigerant. Without the proper initial training and continuing education, it does not matter what the manufacturers put on their units, as problems, misinformation, and improper service will still be performed.

Charge Assurance? I sincerely doubt it.

Publication date: 6/12/2017

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