Did You Know You Can Replace Your Own Air Conditioner? -SAVE THOUSANDS-

hey guys and welcome back to the DIY HVAC guy YouTube channel in today's video we're going to be showing you how to install this beautiful rude 2 and 1 half ton air conditioner so we're going to be replacing the condensing unit as well as the indoor evaporator coil so this should be a pretty basic install this is an old R22 system I think it's a train uh condenser and coil and we're going to be replacing it with a 16 sear rude condenser and a coil with a built-in TXV so what we're going to do to start with is we're going to pump all the refrigerant into this condenser being as the compressor is still working in this system so we'll walk you through how easy that is to do so what we're going to do first is take these caps off so this bottom one and this one up here on the top okay so this is a train system so it's a little bit different the suction line has a thing where you can just put a crescent wrench on but for the high side you'll notice that it has an all key so we're going to take our Allen key and we're going to completely close off the high side or the 3/8 smaller line so we're just going to crank this down until it seats all right so just give that a little tighten and then that should be good and then this one's going to be really easy all we're going to do is once we have our system pumped down we're just going to take a crescent wrench and this should just turn a quarter turn and that will completely close off this one now as far as pumping this down there's two methods we can hold the contactor in manually and pump this system down but what we're going to do is we're going to pull the disconnect here we're going to turn the thermostat on so it's calling for cooling and then when we're ready to pump the system down we'll put in our disconnect and then once we have this refrigerant locked into the system we'll go ahead and pull that disconnect back back out all right so next we're going to hook our gauges up so these are the low loss fittings that I recommend um I have these on our Amazon store all right so we're going to turn our manifold on and we'll see our pressures here what we're going to pay attention to is the low side pressure so we're going to go ahead and turn the thermostat on put our disconnect in and we'll watch this pressure drop all right so the system is on at the thermostat we're calling for cooling so we can see our pressures are already dropping once these get to about zero we are going to crank this one 90° and close it off going to let it go a little bit past zero just so we don't have any residual stuff in the line all right go ahead and close it all right so that's perfectly perpendicular we're going to pull the disconnect out [Music] now and hopefully if it's closed this will not rise so I think we're good all right perfect so we can disconnect our gauges and then uh throw these caps back on and we're good to cut the lines so now that our power is off and our refrigerant is contained to this unit we're just going to verify that we don't have any power so we're just going to check both sides of our contactor 0 volts and Z volts so we're good to go ahead and disconnect our main electrical we'll um turn the thermostat off and then we can disconnect our thermostat wiring here and then this unit will be completely free here's our air conditioner and furnace the coil is behind this so we're going to have Terry remove this and the coil we're good to go ahead and cut this we'll put our filter dryer in here and all of this is going to be replaced so we're going to take off all this installation this bulb and we'll cut our line there all right so our coil has been removed here we've marked the new or measured the new coil so it's 20 in high we're going to cut it a little bit higher we're going to cut this to make it to where our transition won't actually need to be like custom built so that's going to save some time so once we get this cut out we'll show you what we got so here's our new coil this is a multi-position coil so if you wanted to you could actually mount it this way or this way as you can see there's a pan on the side and there's also a pan down there at the bottom so all of the rude coils have a built-in TXV which I love and all you have to do is make your connections and then connect your bulb and that's it another feature is the metal plates on the bottom some people say you're not supposed to put this directly above the furnace but that's not true at all um these are designed to where they can take the heat in the summer uh winter months and uh no problems will arise from that so we'll show you once we got this set in place how it looks all right so our disc connect is completely wired in so these are our two line wires that come in from the building and then these are our two load wires that go to the disconnect that will connect to the unit and of course we have our two ground wires so being as this is completely done I can go ahead and pop this guy in just like that beautiful I got everything caulked around here so it's nice and sealed up so next what we're going to do is push our unit up and we'll make our refrigerant connections all right so we got got our lines fitted here everything looks really good we're going to be using staybrite 8 on this job um if you're curious where you can find this you can go to our Amazon store in the video description just click my favorite HVAC tools and you'll find this combo there now a couple of things that make this awesome is that one you don't have to have a nitrogen flow going through the lines because this does not get nearly as hot as brazing and it doesn't create any soot in the lines and second as we don't have a bunch of heat we don't even have to wrap these you can if you want to but I've done tons of jobs without wrapping them and you're in and out so fast that it's um not really necessary and the other beauty is that you don't have to have um oxy ettling torches you can use map gas and this will work just fine you can pick these up at Home Depot or you can find this combo in our Amazon store as well so the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to apply our flux so we're just going to pull each fitting out we're just going to flux the male end slide it back in wipe the excess off and then we can start brazing and these have already been Scotch brighted as you can see they're nice and clean but you definitely want to do that before you attach these as well all right so we're ready to solder so we'll get our torch lit and a couple things here is with this you want to unspool it and you want to put a hook on it and you want to use about the diameter of what this Bend is so if we Loop this all the way around that's about how much solder we want to use for this joint and it also makes it easier to start with the bottom and then do the top now you'll notice that as I do the bottom I'm going to be heating the top where I want that solder to go so I'm going to go like this and then we'll heat the bottom and we'll work on the top and have the reverse effect that's literally all you need as you can see we used just the amount that we had rationed out now for the 38 obviously we're not going to use all of this just the 38 does not take much at all all right so as you can see our joints look nice and good so for this one we ended up doing an RLS less fitting these have come in handy a lot of times when I don't have certain fittings on my truck I always have various things that I can use so um but as long as you have couplers you can do the stay bright 8 method through the whole system no problem so we're going to get this uh suction side insulated with our nice white insulation get our electrical hooked up and this will be completely done out here all right so everything is insulated our box is done conduit and thermostat wiring is done probably put one more zip tie there just so it looks real nice we're just going to tuck these inside here and we're good to go on our cover here and the rest of this video will be inside until we're ready for our pressure test so in here we've got our coil set in place um we're basically just going to leave this and we're going to tape it um I don't see any issues with this we're going to put some S Clip here build this piece we're going to bend an inch and slide it into the s here and get this all sealed up and then we can do our refrigerant lines all right so here's where we're at on our coil so we got our transition done up everything is sealed completely top and bottom we have our drain set up it's just a hose that runs down to our condensate pump and we can work on our refrigeration lines and then once we have those we'll just reattach our exhaust do our pressure test and vacuum and we'll be ready to let the refrigerant in so we're just going to uh build a piece from here with an elbow there and then for a liquid line will come up and we'll have our filter dryer right here per all right so we ended up using some RLS fittings on this job um and then we just stay right at the bottom here so this is ready for the pressure test Terry here is going to put our bulb on right here and then uh we're going to insulate the suction line all the way up and by that time our pressure test should be good and we'll be ready to pull vacuum all right so while tear are is working in there we're going to go ahead and do our pressure test so to start with we're going to install our shraer core removal tool on our low side so we're just going to take this part of it off we're going to take the valve core out right here and we're just going to set this on top of the unit then we're going to thread on on our core removal tool just like that going to hook up our low side hose to the tool make sure that's open our nitrogen is open got plenty of pressure first we're going to go to about 50 and we're just going to make sure that there's no major leaks so we're at about 60 PSI we're going to give that about 5 minutes make sure it doesn't drop and then we'll go up to our 350 PSI all right so our pressure is holding so we're just going to go ahead and bump it up to 350 so we're going to let our pressure stabilize typically when you cut the nitrogen off at the manifold um your pressures will drop maybe a couple PSI um and then after they've stabilized because heat and pressure are related we're going to do our tightness test uh right here and this Auto figures if your pressures are good you can't just depend on the pressure itself if the temperature is rising and lowering and fluctuating the pressure will also be affected so you can't just go off of this so that's the purpose of the tightness test so the way that it works is you take your suction side where you're feeding in the nitrogen and we're going to take a measurement and it uses that temperature to determine if your tightness test has passed or failed so we're going to clamp this on right here at the suction line and then we'll do our tightness test in a couple minutes all right so our pressures have stabilized at 349.50 we're going to hold the tightness test button and then we're going to press enter this will start our timer and we'll give it 10 minutes and see what our pressure differential is hopefully our pressure differential will stay at zero or above if it's in the negative then obviously we might have a little bit of a leak all right so we got our seal put on here our bulb is attached it's not uh moving or anything it's got a good connection there we got our insulation all done up here so we're going to zip tie this make sure it's all good and we are under our pressure test right now so as soon as that passes we'll do our vacuum and we'll be good to go all right so we've been at 18 minutes we're at zero pressure differential so we're golden we're going to go ahead and let our pressure out now what I've like to do is uh making it a habit of closing off this uh tool now what we're actually going to do instead of opening this slowly we're going to open this full blast and it's going to purge any contaminants out of this line so let's go ahead and do that all right so we can proceed with our vacuum uh um procedure so what we're going to do we can take this off we're going to hook our micron gauge up to the high side and then we're going to hook our true blue hose up to the half inch Port of this straight to our shraer core tool with no Shader core so we'll be able to do this really fast Okay so we've got everything hooked up here we're going to power on our micron gauge and we're going to power this guy on and this is a fully charged uh 8 8 Amp Hour battery as you can see this has a slow start very quiet unit and this will run for 60 Minutes on One battery and we can typically pump a system down in 10 minutes so this can be used for six different systems so this is opened up already as you can see it's 321 when we're starting this test and we'll see how quickly this will get down to where our micron gauge will start [Applause] reading all right so it's been less than a minute and our microphon gauge is reading we are dropping rapidly so we'll come back in about 5 minutes and show you where we're [Applause] at so we used our trailer for a unit replacement today and it has been so amazing I have absolutely loved it so we have our cooler we've got our batteries inverter and as you can see we're at 13.2 we're getting uh we've been getting full sunlight pretty much all day here with our solar panel and uh we've been able to charge our batteries every one of these batteries is fully charged and uh it's been super duper awesome all right so as you can see it's 333 we're at 480 right now there was some moisture in the line so we're not as low as we'd like just yet we're going to let this keep pumping down then we're going to isolate and do our Decay test all we have to do to do that is is right here and we're going to let it sit for 5 minutes and as long as we don't rise above 500 microns we're good to go all right so we're at 440 this is also a great way to verify your pressure test if you had a leak anywhere this would not get 500 microns and pass your Decay test so you could basically replace the pressure test with this alone and as long as you're below 500 microns and you pass that that dek test you should be good to go so we're going to go ahead and shut this down turn off our pump and we're going to give this uh 5 minutes as long as we don't rise above 500 we can go ahead and let our refrigerant in now I went ahead and removed these two caps and all we're going to do to let the refrigerant in is we're going to open up these Allen head uh valves in here all the way and that what that's going to do is allow all of this refrigerant to go from the condenser through these lines into the evaporator coil and just so all of you know every new condenser whether it's a mini split or a unitary split system like this it's going to be pre-charged with refrigerant so the only time you'll need to add refrigerant is if your line set is longer than 15 ft in which case we'll we'll just add in refrigerant through the low side until we get the proper superheat or subcooling now this is a TXV on the the evaporator coil so we'll be checking sub cooling once we get the system up and running and we can verify our charge that way all right so it's been 5 minutes we're still at 440 on our micron gauge so what we're going to do is isolate our gauge with our ball valve here and we're just going to open up the suction side all the way that was tight okay now we'll go over to the high side same thing and we're going to let these pressures and the refrigerant stabilize for about five more minutes maybe 10 and then we'll hook our gauges up check our pressures and uh if we need to we'll add refrigerant so the last thing we're going to do is put our shraer core back in so we're just going to slide it in right here and then we're going to slide this piece tighten it down and as soon as we open this we'll see that pop meaning that there's pressure on it now and now what we're going to do is take one hand and we're going to hold it in and with the other we're going to thread it and you'll see this Gap closing here and we'll feel that resistance once this uh Shader core has seated right there so now what we're going to do is we're going to pull this off of the shraer core we're going to close our valve and we're going to remove this slowly let that pressure off and now what we're going to do is slowly open this to verify that our straighter core is working beautiful so now we can take this off we can hook our gauges up and start the system up all right so we are wrapped up up here we just turned on the air conditioner so we're going to go out to the condenser and turn that on in a minute we got our exhaust put back on all of this is insulated all the way up so everything is golden in here so we're just going to check our pressures and then this job will be done all right so the thermostat is calling for cooling I'm going to go ahead and put our disconnect in all right we're going to put our probes on and check our super heat and sub cooling we're going to let this system run for about about 10 minutes and then we're going to check our super heat and sub cooling all right so our subcooling is uh fluctuating from 9 to about 11° of sub cooling so it's exactly where we want it so this system is up and running great um we've got a 20° uh temperature differential that we'll show you inside so it's 78° in here 68 58 and we're putting out 55° air so we're doing awesome on our temperature split and everything is working perfectly well guys I hope you found this video informative whether you are a DIY or you're someone in the trades I hope you learned something from this video if you're interested in seeing another AC installation video check out this one right here and I'm sure you'll enjoy that one as well until next time you guys be safe later

Channel: The DIY HVAC Guy

Views: 473,746

Keywords: air condtioner replacement, heating and air conditioning, air conditioner, diy, do it yourself, diy hvac, diy hvac guy, how to home, everyday home repairs, ruud, trane, ac repair, dyi, ac, ac not working, ac not blowing cold, hvac, heat pump, soldering, brazing, hvac tool, hvac training, hvac school, ac service tech

Id: FSrxRnYEt8E

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023