How to Add Freon/Refrigerant to a Refrigerator with a Piercing Valve - Easy DIY Repair!

hey guys today I'm going to be adding this refrigerant also known colloquially as Freon into this mini fridge this mini fridge is in pretty good shape overall it sat in storage for 10 years and it lost some of the freon so I'm gonna be adding some more in it's really easy and I'll show you how so let's get started now comes the star of the show The subco Bullet tapping valve this costs about five dollars of a link to buy one in the description and it comes with everything you need to tap into your refrigerator so it comes with the valve itself a hex key for tightening and then two of these inserts we're going to be using the smallest of the inserts which is for quarter inch tubing that's because this mini fridge is built using quarter inch tubing if you have a bigger mini fridge it may have 3 8 inch or 5 16 inch tubing or an actual refrigerator not a mini one so the first step is to just using the included Allen key or hex wrench whatever you want to caught take apart the valve you're going to remove these three screws save them you don't want to lose these and then once the valve is apart it separates into two halves this side as you can see is a gasket and a small hole you're going to set that aside this piece is the one we care about you're going to take the properly sized insert just snap it right in there and now we have to find a place to put this I've decided that I'm going to be putting my valve right here there is a straight section you don't want to install this like here because it's curved or anywhere where the tubing is flat and if there's a braised joint like this joint make sure it's not clamped on the braised section about here should be just right now you're going to take the other half of the valve and put it on top and then tighten down all three screws evenly tighten them all together so the two halves can be pulled together which is what I'm doing first it's a bit annoying because of the tight space here but you can see once you get the screw started it should screw in pretty easily at first these will go in relatively effortlessly as you can see here so that's normal just get them all somewhat screwed in and then we have to tighten them more evenly starting with one get it a little snug then move over to this one get that snugged up then get the final one snugged up these should not be tight just snug because you do not want to over tighten them just yet because they must be tightened evenly [Music] now before you tighten them down any further make sure this is exactly the position you want the valve to be in my case it is so I can continue tightening each screw you want to keep tightening the all three screws alternating between them and you want to do this until both halves of the clamping valve I mean the piercing valve have clamped down onto the copper evenly there should be no gap between the top half and the bottom half the two halves must be touching now that you have the piercing valve installed you can use the same hex key and tighten down the middle screw until it is fully seated if it takes more torque than expected you can use the long end again but just get this thing tightened down until it bottoms out once it bottoms out don't go any further because you do not want to over tighten it this will pierce a small hole in the refrigerant line so make sure that the cap here is on or else you may have a refrigerant leak which is not good just get this tightened down until it does not go any further just like that now when you want to open the valve you can open this up to one full turn don't go more than one full turn or else you may loosen it too much and then refrigerant will leak around the screw area well now that this has been tightened down we are ready to add more refrigerant now it's time for the refrigerant this is some R134a I got for 15 at AutoZone you're also going to need this dispensing tool this one has a pressure gauge which is very important as well as an EPA certified resealable tap don't use one that has a piercing tap it won't work if the newer refrigerant cans this one has an R134a quick connect on it but you can get some that screwed directly onto the valve this came with an adapter which I just screwed on hand tight now the first step is to connect this cylinder to the the dispensing tool just by screwing it on hand tight don't use any tools and now we're going to slightly open this valve until you hear a hiss you do this by tightening it down and you're going to hear a slight hiss once this opens the valve that's actually built into the refrigerant bottle and that's a bit much but you're going to want to get a slight hiss and that will be purging any air out of their refrigerant just out of their refrigerant hose and now you can just push this on if you have a quick connect make sure it's secure then you can turn this off just turn it counterclockwise it's pretty counter-intuitive because usually turn things clockwise to shut them off and you can see here that the pressure is pretty high because there's some pressure in the hose we can ignore that and just open the valve here and pressure will drop to about zero because this one is running a little low now keeping the refrigerant cylinder upright you're going to want to add a little bit of refrigerant so I can just turn this clockwise until I get about 10 psi or one kilogram per square centimeter you basically tighten it until you see refrigerant pressure rising and then loosen it again just tighten and loosen tighten and loosen you want to fill this between 5 and 10 psi ignore the sections on this gauge that is for automotive air conditioning and not for regular Refrigeration foreign you can see the pressure Rose slightly I'm just putting some pressure in by turning this until I hear a hiss and see the pressure rise and then after doing that for a few seconds I backed this off that lets the refrigerant slowly enter the system wait a little while like 30 seconds or so then let a little more in and then back it off eventually you're going to see it rise and once you have between 5 and 10 psi stop and shut this valve off so once you've confirmed that wireless compressor is running you have between 5 and 10 psi in the system you can turn everything off and wait for about five minutes now with the compressor and refrigerator unplugged you can open this valve slightly and check your pressure here it says that it is full it's right in the higher end of the full range but it's still considered full which is good if you accidentally get into the alert or danger zones then something's wrong and you're going to have to vent out the excess pressure but it seems like everything is all good so I can close this valve all the way just make sure you turn it until it bottoms out don't go any further you may damage something take that off unscrew this and then cap this off using the included cap this has an o-ring in it so there's no need to over tighten it just screw it on by hand now you can take this and unscrew it a refrigerant container I recommend putting something over that so dirt doesn't get into the valve you can use any kind of plastic cap like this one and now you're done if this develops leaks later you may have a much bigger problem and you should probably just get a new refrigerator but if you find it you have to add freon maybe once a year you probably have a slow leak somewhere and it's not that big of a deal but if you do have a slow leak it's pretty easy to fix you can use stop leak I've never tried it but I heard that it works or if it's saying cheap just replace it but for now I think for thirty dollars worth of supplies I've extracted few more years out of this mini fridge so I hope you guys liked this video don't forget to like And subscribe if you did and see you all next time

Channel: DragonBuilds

Views: 281,100

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Id: P2tdP-ph2sI

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2023