How to Check AC Freon Level

hey guys Jay here with word of advice TV I have a lot of videos showing you how to fix your air conditioner but none of those videos do I show you how to check freon pressures so I just thought in this video I'll go ahead and show you how you can check your freon pressures to see if they're right on or if they're low or high or whatnot so to begin with of course you will need a set of gauges the temp probe you don't really need for checking if you want to know if what the problem is you're gonna need a temp probe but anyways this is what a standard gauge looks like there's different kinds of gauges that read different kinds of refrigerant scales would that have different kinds of refrigerant scales I should say for example mine has r22 right there in green and r410a and 404 a which is seldom used but 410 a and r22 are the most popular so if you're thinking of getting a refrigerant gauge make sure you check what kind of refrigerant you have on your nameplate on your AC unit for example mine right here says HCFC 22 that's the same thing as r22 that's just the long chemical name for it it's like hydrochloric carbide something-something but short name for it is r22 it says I have 5 pounds 12 ounces factory charge that means this thing came with the factory charge of 5 pounds 12 ounces that does not include any freon inside of the pipes so the actual charge inside this unit may be over five pounds 12 ounces to compensate for that line set so probably like six pounds six and a half pounds seven pounds I would guess but anyways let's take a closer look at those gauge a little more here's I got two gauges right here I'll take my gloves off for now let's take the glass covers off of this one so you can see the numbers better and I'll also get a flat head screwdriver okay so the outer scale the outer scale is always going to be your psi so it goes by increments of five every single little dash is increments of five then 50 100 150 so on this is the blue one is always going to be your low side or the suction pressure and then the red one is going to be your high side head pressure or also known as high side pressure and if your arrow is ever off let's say for some reason it starts at like five or ten psi there's an adjusting screw right here mine is just slightly over to zero if I want to adjust it I just put my flat head in there and you can adjust it just slightly below you can adjust the arrow or calibrate it that way also as you can see these hoses attached to the manifold gauge set but here's one without any hoses these top ones right here are the ones that actually go into the valves the ones in the back are dummy ports as you can see they have no holes it's just a dead end here so you got your manifold right here there's a hanger you can hang your gauge set with the wrench you can unscrew this and take it off if you don't want it also these handles the valves themselves you can completely take them off you can take the gauge sets off right here with the wrench as well as you can see there's some teflon tape when I screwed them in sometimes they do go bad they go inaccurate and you do have to replace them but this thing can be all torn down all the way up to just the body right here but anyways I'm going a little off track as I was saying the outer scale is your psi the green scale it says right here in green r22 that's going to be our r22 temperature and then there's r410a which is the pink scale right here that will be the temperature of your r410a refrigerant so now that we went over to basics let's just hook up my gauges and show you how I would do that notice how I'm putting on gloves freon comes out when it hits air it comes out at negative 40 so it's really cold and if your finger stays on it a little too long you will get frostbite I've had I've gotten minor frostbite a couple times it's not very pleasant it's like getting a burn you know you're walking around it's always that throbbing burning feeling so butter not to get burned by that stuff your ports will be usually at the entrance of the AC your freon pipes come out right here and they go into the air conditioner as you can see my ports are right here this is the valve port the valve port is usually gonna be bigger you don't want that one unless you have a big king valve I won't go into that right now most of them are gonna be Schrader valves with a small cap like this but anyways these excess valves will usually be on the outside of the AC once in a while they go inside and you have to take the cover door off to access it so you'll need a wrench usually or sometimes they're just finger tight nuts that you can take off they're plastic mine are DS metal ones that I have to take off with the wrench so you put your adjustable wrench on it crank it open to access the Schrader valve and this Schrader valve is really the simple Schrader well it's almost like the car tire stuff so on your hoses you got the Schrader depressor so once you're putting your fitting on this thing will depress that and oil pressure to go into your hose so let's put that back on for now also there's three kind of fittings that are most commonly used you got the regular fitting you got the ball valve fitting where you can turn it off so the freon will stop right here not going to the hose that's very useful to have my regular set up on my gauges is a low loss fitting and two ball valve fittings the low loss fitting I like to put on the high side because that's usually the higher pressure and what the low loss fitting looks like is like this see how it's twice as big and it literally does exactly what it sounds like low loss so when you're taking it off barely any refrigerant escapes it's just like a little squirt whereas when you're taking one of these off it kind of fumes a little more as you're taking the hose off but anyways you take off both nuts from your Schrader valves and then you take the other nut off remember how I mentioned that your blue side is your suction side so blue is suction or low side red is high side or discharge head pressure the discharge or the high side is always going to be your thin line the suction or the low side is always going to be your thick line so the blue blue gauge will go to your thick line and before you put your hoses on make sure that your valves are fully closed so for example this one was open right now close that up otherwise it will allow refrigerant to go in here and go into the other two hoses as well so make sure this side is closed off that means the refrigerant will come in and just stop right here it won't go any further and make sure you close this valve off as well so those two are closed I like to just turn my ball valve off while I'm putting this on and just try to do this quickly because a little bit of refrigerant will come out in my case that was it was so minimal that you didn't even see it but sometimes it'll kind of bust like that anyways now that I got that on I can open up the ball valve and if you take a look at my pressure when I do that boom it goes up to 100 psi and next we want to put on our high side which is the red hose I can turn that off as well for now sometimes that's not a very easy spot to put these on but most of the time they're pretty accessible [Music] okay so as you can see when you're putting these on sometimes a freon will squirt like that with a little cloud that's why you wear gloves because negative 40 will give you a frostbite really quick sometimes your gloves will even turn white but anyways we've got that hose on we turn it up as well turn it on as well I should say and our high side pressure is a little bit higher my AC was just running so that's why it's a little higher but basically when your system is off your pressures will equalize which means your low side and your high side pressures will eventually get to the same point where they're the same pressure that's when the unit is off and then when it turns on your high side pressure will go higher and your low side pressure will go lower and they like to reference my freon charges by temperatures and what I mean by that is the green scale for r22 and this pink scale for the r410a but basically your normal operating pressures unlike semi hot day let's say it's 80 85 degrees will be on the low side it'll be anywhere from 40 to 45 degrees so if you watch this green scale it'll be the arrow will be right here between 40 and 45 that's normal pressures on the low side and then the high side is typically 110 115 degrees which will be about right there for an AR 22 and as you can see the pink scale is a little different so 40 45 on r22 is right here well r410a is higher pressure so 40 45 4 it is over here so the pressures will be different between the two refrigerants that's why you have to know which three on your system uses so now what we're gonna do is actually turn the AC on and you're gonna see the pressures drop so this one will go down and this one will go up so let's get it started [Music] so I've let my unit run for a while you usually want to let it run for like five to ten minutes for the pressures to stabilize right now in Minnesota that's where I live the outside temperatures are not too hot it's probably like 70 degrees maybe 65 that's why my high side pressure is lower than it should be usually it's over 200 psi but right now it's a little lower and that's okay usually the biggest focus should be the low side the low side should be between 40 and 50 typically and mine right now is at about 42 degrees the r22 scale that's the kind of refrigerant I have which is 75 psi and most air conditioners when they're working properly you're gonna see that suction line start to sweat like mine is right there and after you're done checking your pressures sometimes they'll be too high if both pressures are too high that means your condenser coil is dirty you want to wash it off if they're very low that may mean you have low evaporator air flow or maybe your charge is actually low you got a leak somewhere but anyways I'll save that for another video once you're done checking your pressures the way I like to take the hoses off is the high side first so I'll close my ball valve off if you don't have a ball valve just take it off quick some refrigerant will squirt out but most of it will stay inside that's why you wear gloves so you go quick take it out like that and just so you know this is rare but sometimes that trader valve will get stuck and by the way those are replaceable there's a tool a Schrader valve replacement tool that you can use to replace those Schrader valves but sometimes that Schrader valve gets stucked and a little bit of refrigerant will keep squirting out after you're done panicking you can take us flat-head screwdriver and just what gloves on of course try to hit that trailer valve to make it stop leaking I got my red side or the high side off I put it on my gauge set here two manifold and one other thing I should mention is the biggest enemy of an air conditioner unit the freon system is moisture you do not want to get water inside of your unit so if it's raining you're better off not checking while it's raining so now I got my high side back on the gauge set and what I like to do is turn off my yellow auxilary hose here open up my red like that if there's any air air is bad for the AC freon system as well is there any air or water droplets or whatever I like to just purge my hose out just a little bit by opening it up you'll see some refrigerant come out like that and as you can see I still have over a hundred psi refrigerant in here which is like an ounce or two of freon and I don't really like wasting it if you take off your hoses and leave that refrigerant stays in here so I purge out the air and whatever I have in here I actually sucked back into my suction side so first you want to purge this as well just in case there's any kind of little air bubble because non-condensibles are bad so you open up that with the hose off of course I already took it off and you open up the low side slowly and it just throttled the refrigerant that you sucked out back into here as you can see my arrow is kind of bouncing around there we're gonna go now you suck most of the refrigerant out of the high side hose back into the unit and now I take off the low side as well [Music] and put it back on my manifold and then you can just release the pressures in your hoses a little bit so it's not a bunch of pressure inside of your hoses like that and like that and there you go don't forget to put your caps back on on both your low side and your high side tighten them down with a wrench that you don't have to go to beast mode on it there you go and you have successfully checked your freon charge and guys if you noticed when I was putting on my high side hose the red one and taking it off you see how a little bit of freon escape there that's where these low loss fittings come in nice and I usually do have a low loss fitting on my red side here but mine started to leak through like whenever you would put it on there would still be a little bit of refrigerant just constantly leaking out there's a little repair kit for that I just haven't gotten around to fixing it that's why I'm just using a standard ball valve but like I said earlier my normal setup is a low loss fitting on the high side and then two ball valves on the low side and auxilary and I just want to say that people that do not have any kind of HVAC background or education probably should not be messing with freon because you could do more damage than good and potentially hurt yourself doing it so if you don't have any background and you're not sure what you're doing I wouldn't recommend messing with this but basically what I showed you is how you would check your freon charge I hope you found this video helpful if I missed anything or if you want to add something please do so in the comments below thank you so much for watching don't forget to mash that like button on your way out and we'll see you next time you you [Music] you

Channel: Word of Advice TV

Views: 1,323,030

Rating: 4.8294907 out of 5

Keywords: how to check pressure, checking system pressure, how to check freon pressure on central ac, how to check freon, how to check freon level, how to check freon in ac, how to check freon in air conditioner, how to check R22, how to check R22 level, how to check R22 pressure, how to check 410a, how to check refrigerant pressure, freon pressure how to check, word of advice tv, how to check refrigerant level, hvac, hvac training, hvac training videos, hvac installation

Id: dExFtP-nXTw

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2018