5 WAYS to FIND a Refrigerant LEAK!

do you have a refrigerant leak in your heating and air system in this video we're going to talk about five of the best ways that a heating and air technician can find that leak but before we do please click that subscribe button thank you hey guys so here we are we're gonna talk about five of the best ways to find a refrigerant leak if you've got a technician at your house or you're calling one because you're pretty sure you have a refrigerant leak these are five of the best ways to find that leak and at griffin air we don't automatically go to that some of these techniques cost money and sometimes we give the customer the option of do they want to actually try to find the leak or repair the leak before going with maybe another option depending on the circumstances and so on but i can tell you especially if i have a system that's still under warranty it's not that old and it's been leaking refrigerant we need to find that leak and get that customer taken care of let's get started number one this is probably the easiest way if you have oil somewhere on the copper lines of the system typically that is a good place to start so in other words if i walk up to a system and it's been leaking refrigerant or it's low in refrigerant so i assume it's been leaking refrigerant and i go around and i kind of you know touch the copper line sets or maybe the txv or you know just somewhere in the loop of the copper lines and i find this oil residue a lot of times there's a good chance that that oil is there because the refrigerant is leaking out somewhere close to that sometimes i'll see drain pans with oil in them and that'll be a telltale sign or if i'm at the outdoor unit maybe i'll see oil somewhere out there just looking for oil and you as the homeowner could probably even do that so if you happen to see oil somewhere or you feel oil on the line sets then chances are you just found the refrigerant leak also number two there's something we call sniffers there are basically electronic devices tools that we can use that will sniff out the refrigerant leak and i'm not always in love with a sniffer i know there's guys in our trade that will swear up and down they can find any and all leaks with their sniffer i think that there is an art to it you gotta you know use it a lot the more you use it the better you are at it but ultimately i do think that there are some refrigerant leaks that you just simply can't find them with a sniffer and there's number of reasons for that but ultimately there are times when you just simply can't find it number three and number three and four kinda might be linked together a little bit but you know there is the old school way of bubbles that's what we call it uh it's basically a soapy liquid that if you were to spray it on the leak it would bubble up and you would see bubbles coming up from where the leak is usually if you can do that if you can spray those bubbles on there and they start bubbling you just found the refrigerant leak number four and this kind of goes in tandem with the bubbles but uh sometimes you don't need the bubbles necessarily but number four is nitrogen so sometimes we'll take a system that we know is leaking refrigerant will pump it up full of nitrogen high pressure and then sometimes you can i would say in a lot of cases you can hear it you know so if you still have good ears you can go around and listen in the indoor coil outside and so on and again you can use your bubbles in tandem with that and try to find that leak i probably use the nitrogen technique more than any other technique i would say 90 80 to 90 percent of the time if it's a you know pretty good leak we've had to add refrigerant to a system before then we can usually find that leak with nitrogen some way somehow and locate it but then the fifth and final one and this is a controversial one some guys hate this this way of doing it but it does work and that is die you can actually add dye to the system and in a lot of cases you just use a black light or some sort of light to shine in there and a lot of times if i've got a a leak that i you know i use nitrogen i can't find it and we've added dye to the system eventually it will rear its ugly head and so you know you might have a leak and say the evaporator coil that you know you just couldn't hear it you sprayed bubbles around you just couldn't find that leak and then you know you put your dye in there and a couple months later boom you find it you know they they're low on refrigerant again and you luckily you added die the last time you were there and you shine your light in there and boom you find it anyway that's the big five there are some other methods out there that we're not going to cover for one reason or another but that's the big five if you know of another way that you think is better then comment down below i know some guys that sometimes it's just a matter of their experience that they can locate that leak just because they're used to certain brands leaking in this location anyway i hope that helps thanks for watching hit that subscribe button we'll see you next time

Channel: HVAC Guide for Homeowners

Views: 10,866

Keywords: how to find refrigerant leaks, find refrigerant leaks, refrigerant leaks, refrigerant leak, refrigerant leak test, refrigerant leak repair, refrigerant leak detection, freon leak, how to discharge a capacitor, hvac technician, low on freon, hvac troubleshooting, hvac training videos, air conditioning, hvac installation, freon, hvac tools, hvac basics, air conditioning system, how to, heat pump, hvac school, leak detection, hvacr videos, 5 Ways to Find a Refrigerant Leak

Id: tqVKR6E6_J4

Length: 5min 10sec (310 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 17 2022