Brazing Alternatives For The HVAC/R Tech - Requires No Nitrogen

hey what's up guys welcome back to the channel gary mccready from hvac known all so on this video we're going to talk about brazing alternatives now i will be the first to admit that brazing is a time tested traditional type method to join acr pipe and refrigeration pipe and make sure it's leak free for the life of that equipment so what are brazing alternatives well bruising alternatives are joining that same acr refrigeration pipe but not lighting a torch at all and using other methods to do so and there's a few of them out there that i'm going to talk about with you so before we get into brazing alternatives guys i wanted to give jabber a shout out as a crm tool that i am using to run mccree hvac and refrigeration services inc that i launched in may now it does everything from invoicing to scheduling to quoting and it's totally paperless the support on the back end which is a really really important factor to me the support on the back end is amazing because we're all busy right either on the phone but what's even better is the chat set up with one or two minutes they get back to you with a solution to your problem if the problem is much bigger than what a chat can do you can get on the phone and the wait time is not that much so if you're interested in a 14 day free trial and some savings check out the link in the summary of this video so this is a very polarizing topic meaning that there's opinions on both sides of the fence that are very very strong but i think we need to talk about why brazing alternatives are becoming a thing and why they will continue to do so now we also have to throw in their fire permits need to be secured and most buildings they're going to want to bypass that fire alarm panel so we're not setting it off and bringing the fire trucks in while you're bracing up that leak or that new system that you're putting in now why is there a lot of pushback from some in the community in the refrigeration and hvac trades to even try brazing alternatives well there's a fear there people have this very natural fear of stepping out of their comfort zone because when they do so they're not in their element and they're very unsure of the unknown so the only way to get past that is to test and to talk to people that have actually used the products and the positive outcomes they've had for even the negative ones so they can better their practices the next time we're not to get your advice and we're not to get your information is from the opinions of people that have never used the products whatsoever so there is another aspect of brazing that nobody really talks about and that is the health aspect of brazing think about it we are vaporizing metal rods onto copper those fumes are in the air those fumes are going to be eventually breathed in into our lungs there's a potential of burning insulation there's a potential of burning system oil that may be dripping out or vapor that's still boiling out of that compressor oil that is leaving that system all of that stuff can be ignited it can be burned and we can breathe that stuff in it's an aspect that's really important and needs to be talked about there's ways to mitigate some of this stuff but at the same time not lighting a torch is the best way to mitigate it 100 so let's talk about a few ways we can repair or install acr and refrigeration piping without brazing one thing we can't debate about is how quickly technology in the hvac and refrigeration trade is growing is changing now this is the pro fit by rector seal and no matter how you feel about a product like this every product like this has instructions it's got a way to install it if you don't follow those instructions they can fail all right so all i'm here to do is show you what this fitting is and just show you how to prep it and how to connect it up so once you got a cut piece of pipe you're going to want to ream it out reaming it out takes away the burrs and make sure when you're cutting when you're using a reamer tool that cuts you point the pipe down to get any filings out once you have it reamed out you're going to want to give it a clean now these scotch brite pads are equivalent work really really well now we just mark the depth right on the pipe itself and the fitting basically just pushes on till we hit that depth mark right there like that now that first one was the pro fit by rector seal now i've not used that personally in the field myself but the feedback i'm getting from people that have used it is pretty positive up to this point so let's talk about our second alternative to brazing right here this cap tube i don't know if you can hear that that cap tube rubbed through and caused the leak so we can fix that up and this is a server room guys so what we got to do here is fix that up in a way where it's not going to leak again and i do not like firing torches in a server room for many reasons because it's not ventilated it's a sealed room so any fumes in here you're going to continue to breathe in and so is the people working in here okay so we have this smart seal external here we're going to cut off what we need with a knife then when we cut what we need off we kind of knead it with our fingers until it becomes a uniform color as you can see it's two different colors then we wrap it around the pipe or the capillary line which i've already cleaned up and once we wrap it we pinch it on either side to create a seal but we got to let it cure okay pull a vacuum charge it up i've got the external wrapped around the pipe and pinched on either end pretty good to seal that up now that avoids me from lighting a torch in this room so that was ac smart seal external that video was old that the camera wasn't the greatest it's about three or four years old that video so a little bit of background that was a high pressure water reg valve that had a water cooled condenser coaxial coil and the cap line rubbed through and we used that smart seal external on that cap line and it held for about a year until that part was changed out we just replaced the entire part there was no brazing involved either we just basically take the unions off the water reg valve and attach the cap line back up to the system so that product in that application worked out really really well let's get into our third brazing alternative there's the steps there clean step one step two step three 20 seconds 290 psi 20 minutes 725 psi the product is advertised as sealing up a leak that is one mil up to one mil now the smallest drill bit i have is 1 16. so it's a little bit bigger so i'm actually going above and beyond what the product has specked now i've got the hole drilled and i just took some some sand cloth and i just cleaned up that spot a little bit more so we're going to apply this and see how this goes here okay so step one is basically a liquid that you brush on okay so we're gonna brush that on to this little hole here step two is a powdered accelerant so i've got step one here i'm gonna open it up and we're going to brush this over that that hole just like that step two is a powder that goes on kind of looking like that right now so that was fixed quick a two-part system that looks like to me in my opinion on a an evaporator that's older has suffered some formicary corrosion and if you take a torch to it you might cause more damage where you could just use that you could go in kind of non-invasive and you could make a small repair that way so let's go on to the fourth and final method this is a rapid locking system filter dryer and as you can see it's got male ends on both sides and when it comes to this stuff it's really about prepping like like anything when you do a job it's about prepping and making sure everything is correct so cleaning the pipe making sure it's deburred and right here we're using the tool to set the correct depth and we're going to mark it and once you've done all that the pressing literally takes a few seconds so here i'm roughing in a couple of fittings for the dryer and at the end of this little video you'll see the repair i made the dryer was actually plugged and we had to change it so i use the pipe bender to reduce on some fittings and we put in a rapid locking system dryer and we pressed it all in and trust me on this particular building i was at it was way quicker than getting a fire permit having a fire watch so rapid locking system what i would consider the king daddy of all brazing alternatives because they've got such a vast product line they've got valves they've got dryers they have sight glasses we can do small repairs we can do large scale installs i've seen some some images of installs that were done at amazon sites and these things are big scale jobs okay so we've talked about brazing alternatives the reasons why people go to a brazing alternative and think about it guys if we're using a brazing alternative and it can work and it fits our application there's no need for carrying around a nitrogen tank and making sure you're always purging nitrogen or flowing nitrogen through that system while you're braising it up so it can be less labor intensive in a way so i just wanted to run all these things by you guys because they are out there the industry is changing rapidly and we need to stay on top of things so i hope you enjoyed the video see on the next one happy hacking

Channel: HVAC Know It All

Views: 23,794

Keywords: Brazing Alternatives For The HVAC/R Tech - Requires No Nitrogen, brazing alternatives for hvac, ac smart seal external, rapid locking system hvac, rapid locking system tool, cool air products fixquick, brazing alternative, hvac leak repair, refrigerant leak repair, how to repair a refrigerant leak, ways to repair a refrigerant leak, methods of repairing a refrigerant leak, methods of joining acr pipe

Id: _oWpuxKWf50

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 30 2022