HVAC: How To Check a DUAL CAPACITOR With A Multimeter (HVAC Training - Dual Run Capacitor) SAFELY

hello everyone and welcome to jumperman tech where we specialize in hvac we'll do everything diy and today we're going to go over how to safely and properly check a dual capacitor for any air conditioning or refrigeration system thank you to everyone tuning in to jumper man tech today we're going to go over the capacitors and if you find this video interesting or helpful please drop a like comment and subscribe as i come out with new videos every week and let's get straight into it before we can begin by testing our dual capacitor safety is always first so the first thing you want to do is turn the power off to your unit either through a pull switch a fuse box or a breaker panel whichever way you can and if you could lock out tag out once we turn the power off to our system i highly recommend that you take out your voltage meter and confirm that you no longer have power coming into the unit some people hot wire things and some components just don't work properly so safety is always first double check you have no incoming power after you turn the power off once we have turned off our power and confirmed there is no more power coming into the system next we can move on to opening up our control panel and getting to our dual capacitor sometimes capacitors hold a charge and what you're going to want to do is discharge that capacitor before you get anywhere near this thing there are tools available on the market to safely discharge a capacitor this is the subco captus this is a capacitor discharge pen and this is for discharging capacitor safely without the risk of electrical shock unfortunately most people do not carry a capacitor discharger in their van as i highly recommend them as safety is always first typically what you would see a technician do is take a insulated screwdriver and short out the terminals just like this so you would hold on to the insulated part of your screwdriver make sure you don't touch the metal and basically short out your terminals like this you will be discharging your capacitor now that we have turned off the power to our system confirm there is no incoming power and destructor capacitor our next step is to isolate our capacitor and the way we're going to do that is by taking off the wires that are connected before pulling off our wires i recommend that you take a photograph or take a notepad and write down exactly where each wire goes so you don't forget i recommend using a pair of needle nose pliers to remove your wires so you don't hurt your fingers and you also don't rip the wire off of its solderless connector here is the top view of our capacitor and as you can see we have three terminals one two and three this is what makes it a dual capacitor typical capacitors either a starter run you will only see two terminals if we look closely at this terminal it is actually labeled it says herm this stands for hermetic compressor and this is where your compressor will get connected to if we look at this terminal it is labeled as fan and this is the terminal where your fan will get connected to if we look closely on this terminal we read c and this stands for common one thing i notice many technicians get confused with is the c and the harm terminal c does not stand for compressor it stands for common herm is a terminal you would connect your compressor to here's a real-life scenario that has happened to me many times sometimes you're going to encounter a dual capacitor and it's so severely rusted you can't actually read the terminals of what they actually are so one thing that i did notice is that this common terminal you're going to notice has the most points of connection you actually have one two three four points or you can connect the wire the one with the most points of connection is always going to be your common then as you can see your herm terminal only has three points of connection compared to your fan terminal which only has one that is how you're going to differentiate the herm terminal and the fan terminal now that we have gotten all that out of the way now what are we actually testing for you need to know the ratings of your capacitor before you can actually determine if it is good or bad so if we look closely this capacitor it says 25 plus five microfarads plus or minus five percent what this is telling me is that one capacitor is 25 microfarads and the other capacitor is five microfabrics as this is a dual capacitor it is two in one the higher mfd or microfarad rating is always going to be for your compressor and the smaller is going to be for your fan motor so 25 microfarads is for your compressor and the 5 microfarads is for your fan motor the multimeter that i'm using today is the fluke 902fc hvac clamp meter and we're going to spin our dial to this symbol here which stands for capacitance and we're going to be reading microfarads if we look closely we can see a uf symbol and this also stands for microfarads now we can begin by testing our capacitor we have two leads coming from our multimeter and the idea here is to put one lead on common and then check between common and fan or common and herm so between common and fan we should be reading five microfarads and we have 4.9 microfarads next we can check the next capacitor we're going to put one lead on common and the other on herm we have 24.6 microfarads we should be reading between common and herm 25 microfarads plus or minus five percent and then between common and fan we should be reading five microfarads plus or minus five percent in a perfect world between common and herm we should be reading exactly 25 microfarads and between common and fan we would be reading five microfarads there is no such thing as perfect and that's where the plus or minus five percent comes from typically rule of thumb in the industry we use the plus or minus 10 rule but regardless this is how you check it and be conscious of that percentage difference it's important to note to never just go by the rule of thumb it is important to go by the manufacturer's ratings here we can clearly see plus or minus five percent if anybody found this video interesting or helpful please drop a like comment and subscribe and i'll catch you all next time [Music] you

Channel: Jumper man Tech

Views: 385,598

Keywords: motor capacitor, run capacitor, dual run capacitor, capacitor testing, dual capacitor, air conditioner, dual run capacitor for air conditioner, dual run capacitor terminals, capacitor test, dual run capacitor wiring, replacing a capacitor, air conditioner capacitor, capacitor replacement, capacitor testing using multimeter, capacitor testing using digital multimeter, capacitor testing digital multimeter, how to check a dual capacitor, how to check a dual run capacitor, hvac, diy

Id: m2wHS4uJUfU

Length: 7min 35sec (455 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021