How To Vacuum Down a Mini Split with Analog Manifold Gauges

hello all so i'm going to be vacuumed down this mini split so i thought i'd do a video on it and how you can do it with analog gauges i know a lot of people are using uh micron gauges or digital gauges these days which are pretty good but uh they cost a lot more and they're not really necessary analog gauge has been used for a long time the digital one's really only been around the last five ten years really so i'm going to go through the steps on how you can go about doing this and it's really easy to do basically we're just going to set the whole line set into a vacuum we've got to make sure it holds and as long as it holds there's no leaks so basically we're just going to be using this low pressure blue side we're not even going to be using this side over here and it's going to go through to the center to the vacuum pump and just vacuum it down that's pretty much it and we're going to watch this gauge right here as it goes from zero it'll go into a negative pressure and we're going to want to let it run for a while like 20 30 minutes and then we're going to want to see if it holds so i'm just going to take this back center one here and uh i'm going to hook it up to the vacuum pump these back here they're just to keep the dirt out of your lines they don't go to anything when they're hooked up in the back here so i'm just going to remove these and i'm going to hook it up right here to the vacuum pump so this is the metals yellow center one and this blue one here comes on out i'm going to take this off the back and all these mini splits they always need a little adapter to hook up i'll put a link down in the description for this what i'm using here but it's just a little adapter that goes from these mini splits uh to a standard gauge they're real cheap but they're it could be a pain if you don't have one and you don't realize you need one so like i said we're just using a little a little adapter okay just make sure everything's on there good and tight so basically i just got this this low pressure line is just hooked up straight to the unit so i'm going to be the only connection on a mini split and it's coming right up here to this blue gauge is what we're going to be using and we got to run it over to our vacuum pump so i'm going to go ahead and turn this vacuum pump on and we're going to go ahead and open up this side right here for the low pressure side and there it goes it's starting to him down as you can see it's going into the negative right now but we want to let that run we want to let this vacuum pump run for at least i don't know 20 minutes if not half an hour and make sure it pulls a really good deep vacuum is what we want to do so i'm gonna go and let this run for at least 20 minutes and i'll be right back okay so i'm back and it's been running for a good 25-30 minutes and it's as you can see it's way down inside the negative pressure start off at zero so it's way down it's negative 30 right now be sure to turn this blue all the way off so turn your your blue valve uh off i'm gonna go and turn this off and now i'm just gonna let it sit for uh for another good 20 minutes and i'm just going to make sure it holds the this negative pressure and you can't let this sit longer i mean you could even let it sit overnight or something if it starts to lose its pressure then we know we got a leak so i'll be right back okay so i'm back and it's been same for a good hour and as you can see it's in the same spot it's right there at that negative 30. and like i said if you wanted to you're going to let this sit overnight or for a day even and see if the negative pressure goes back up to zero um but but that basically i i just let it sit for an hour or so and if this doesn't move back up to zero or close uh lose any pressure then i go ahead and let the refrigerant in so in order to let the refrigerant in there's a certain steps you have to follow and the refrigerant is inside of the condensing unit and they'll be underneath these caps right here so i'm going to take these i already loosened them up with my crescent wrench here and we're just going to want to let the refrigerant in so before you do this make sure your lines are really good and they're they're uh they're they're in a vacuum there's no leaks that's the main goal is when you vacuum this down is to make sure that these this line set is in a vacuum and has no leaks so i'm going to let this refrigerant in just turn it all the way out and turn this one and just let it all the way out all right so they're all the way up and the next step is to go ahead and let this off as quick as you can a little bit of freon will come out a little bit of refrigerant will come out but that's okay we just don't want you know we had to let that loose so we don't break the vacuum so i'm just going to do this real fast okay so that's that's off and then i just want to put our caps back on and we're going to want to tighten them up a little bit just in case they leak later and that's basically it

Channel: HVAC Mechanic

Views: 249,753

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Id: SajCPoYmRaQ

Length: 6min 29sec (389 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021