#1 Reason Why DUCTLESS Units Fail | How I Fix It...

what's going on welcome back to the channel today's video i've got a ductless system that is out on refrigerant so i got to finally get it fixed and get it started up let's do some work [Music] all right so it looks like we only have about 50 psi so i'm gonna grab some nitrogen and get it pressurized [Music] [Music] so as you can see the pressure is dropping so i'm going to go ahead and use some bubbles and test the flare fittings here because that's typically what leaks first on these systems so go ahead oh there we go wow go ahead to this bottom one too so what i'm going to do now is just go ahead and turn the nitrogen off get the system emptied out and i'm going to inspect i'm going to inspect that flare the flare looks pretty good i think there's a little bit of a piece of shard of copper that was hanging off the edge maybe that had something to do with it or maybe just wasn't torqued down to spec it looks really good i don't think i need to re-flare that i think i'm gonna just uh torque it down with some nylog and then uh re-pressure test see what's going on all right so i'm gonna grab the 17 millimeter head and the nylog so i've got a little cheat sheet here inside of my torque wrench set and on quarter inch copper the torque foot pounds is 10 to 13. and because i'm using nylog i want to make sure that i'm on that lower side so i'm going to use 10 foot-pounds on on this liquid line so i'm going to go ahead and get that set all right got that set go ahead and make sure everything's clean looks good now what i like to do is take the nylog and put just a little bit on the back side of the actual flare itself that's going to help with nut sliding really nicely and also put just a little bit on the threads itself now you don't need a whole lot of this stuff just a dab is what you need it looks like it's seated on there very nicely too nice and square so that's good go ahead and get this thing finger tight and then we'll torque it down use a backup wrench [Music] there you go doesn't take much on a quarter inch line all right so now that i've got it tightened up i feel pretty good about that i'm going to go ahead and pressure test one more time just to make sure that we don't have any other leaks and that that flare is leak free as well and then we'll get this thing on a vacuum so i've got about psi now i'm gonna go ahead and re-test it with the bubbles just to make sure we're looking good i'll go ahead and test the bottom one as well and the cap just to make sure everything is leak-free but so far i think we're in good shape so everything is looking pretty good i'm going to go ahead and start a pressure test so we're going to do on this field piece s-man built into the gauge you could do test the tightness so you hold that down press enter and it starts timing it down and checks the pressure difference so we'll let that run for about 10 or 10 minutes and make sure that we don't have a significant drop in pressure so that's basically the process that i take when i look for leaks on these ductless mini splits i'll bump the pressure up really high and that helps me find it a lot easier now today obviously it was a big enough leak and it was right in front of me to where it was easy to find but they're not always that way so bump up the pressure with nitrogen that's going to make your job a whole lot easier all right so after 15 minutes we've only dropped 0.3 of a psi so i'm feeling really good about that so now i just need to release all the nitrogen out of it and then i can go ahead and pull a vacuum get this thing recharged and get started up [Music] so normally what i would do is take this core removal tool and put it directly on to the service port there and i would remove the core that way there's no restriction but because this is so close to the ground and uh the tool itself would wouldn't allow that to happen so what i'm going to do is i've had this little 45 degree angle fitting so i'm just going to put that on there i'm going to leave the core intact and then just go ahead and put on the actual tool so that way i can pull the vacuum through this port and then have my micron gauge hooked up to this port that way i can measure my microns all right so the vacuum setup that i have with the hose this is a true blue hose it's a three quarter inch inner diameter and the way i have it set up on the ends um i have half inch here which connects to the biggest port on the pump and then you got quarter inch that connects to the unit as you can see these little knobs here i can easily remove these ends to put on different sizes so it's very modular out in the field which is super nice and then when you couple it with a 8 cfm pump like this and this high flow hose you're going to be pulling vacuums really fast and you're not going to be having to wait around and uh you know just take a bunch of time on your vacuum so again normally i will remove the core down here at the service port but on this system i can't really do that but it's not a big deal because this mini split short line set very small lines it's not going to take long anyway but just generally speaking for other systems out there that are much larger go with a three-quarter inch inner diameter hose remove the cores and get you a nice pump you'll be good to go all right so now i can go ahead and install the micron gauge and get this vacuum running make sure everything is good and tight should be ready to go so the pump that i'm using today is the field piece the vp87 so it's an 8 cfm dual stage vacuum pump what's really nice about this thing it has a removable power cord so you don't have to worry about getting snagged up on anything it even has a little bracket to kind of hold the plug in place so it won't get pulled out little things like that go a long way it's the details that matter for me so it does have a gas ballast here that you want to open up when you're first starting your vacuum that way if there's a lot of moisture or anything in the lines it won't run through the oil so you leave that open until it gets down to let's say 1200 1500 microns and then you can close it to run and finish off your vacuum so we're going to leave it open as we start it up as you can tell this thing is super quiet love these pumps so one thing that i really love about these pumps has they run quick oil change system there what that means is you can change the oil while it's running in literally under 10 seconds so as you can see there's two canisters here this one's empty that one's full so this is going to be your backup so all you'd have to do is turn that valve there and then the oil will drain in here you take that out you fill it in and you're done it literally takes less than 10 seconds and i absolutely love it that way you can change your oil basically after every use and it's super easy to do so it's gonna it's gonna make you wanna do it more often because it is so easy and so convenient so that's why i love these these pumps so much because of that feature right there having that sight glass is really nice too because you can actually see the oil and you know what it looks like even though you don't really want to go off of that but at least you've got a visual and if you're ever running a vacuum indoors and you need to run the exhaust outside for whatever reason this is basically a connection like a garden hose that you can connect there and run outside for your exhaust that's pretty awesome [Music] all right so i've turned the pump off and ran a decay test for about 10 minutes and we're still at right at 500 microns so we are good to go i'm going to go ahead disconnect everything get the refrigerant over here weigh in the 30 ounces that the system calls for and start this sucker up so now that i've got everything weighed in and we are ready to start this thing up i'm going to go ahead and just take everything off get my pressure probes hooked up and then get this thing started up [Music] [Music] all right i'm gonna call this one good i'm very happy with how everything turned out the system is now leak free well this is gonna complete today's video i really hope you guys got something out of it give it a thumbs up if you did subscribe to the channel if you haven't already until next time see you guys later [Music] you

Channel: Quality HVACR

Views: 612,248

Keywords: hvac, hvacr, hvac school, hvacr videos, hvac training videos, hvac technician, heat mode, furnace, thermostat, Honeywell, trane, carrier, goodman, veto propac, quality hvac, heat pump, ductless, mini split repairs

Id: QjTXu1pMlGA

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022