HVAC Pro Tips: Choosing the Best Refrigerant Leak Detector Tools

[Music] hey welcome back to Mechanical Pros I'm here with Brian and we are talking about the tools you need to do a proper Leak search Brian tell me what we got going on here yeah okay first we'll kind of worked through a few different tools and different ways to do leaked searches I'm currently going to start at the the bottom end and talk about some things that we don't really use that much here but they're out there so I just want to kind of get them out there and talk about them you come up on a system and it's completely out of refrigerant and and we're just going to take for granted that we know it has a refrigerant leak you know so it's out of gas we got to get up there and figure it out one thing um that doesn't get used as much as it used to and again it's not my preferred method of leak searching but it is a way that's out there is introducing a fluorescent dye into the refrigerant piping of the system and then using a black light so as that nitrogen you add your nitrogen first then you'd put your die in there under pressure and as you've got a leak as it's leaking out you can use a black light and it will pinpoint that leak fluorescently but there's a lot of downsides to it obviously if it's a daylight you're never going to see it so it would have to be above ceiling where it's dark you know it has to be really dark for that to work and then there's also a lot of equipment most equipment does not recommend using this because there's a potential for stopping up strainers and screens and metering devices and things like that so I would say I mean this would be like my absolute Last Resort if there was no other way but can't stress enough check manufacture recommendations before you ever add any foreign materials into your refrigerant piping system because again vrf systems daikins they'll void warranties if you put this in there yeah so uh residential maybe the Dumber units yeah no uh really electronic expansion valves and such maybe you've got a 30 year old beater and the customer is just like we just want the cheapest possible fix we can and you're just trying to help them out maybe try it there just want to get out there it is something that's on the market been out for a long time and people have had success with finding leaks with it but there can be downsides to using that so we'll just talk about that too much dying that's another thing it can be and there's a cleanup that goes with it after the fact too to get it back out of there you're supposed to blow it out with nitrogen and things and sometimes that doesn't happen and so not a great way to do it just wanted to bring it up because it's out there because we're talking about doing League searches and the tools to use next thing still sticking with the scenario that the system is completely out of refrigerant when we walk up on it so we would connect our refrigerant gauges to that system we would then take dry nitrogen pressurize the system up the product I like using is probably my favorite spray-on leak detector is this cow blue I kept saying you know soapy Solutions and things like that and we wouldn't truly want to mix Dawn dish soap and water and try to use that the great thing about this cow blue and other products on the market for liquid leak detection is they really adhere to the pipe or whatever component you're spraying it on and it won't run right off so it sticks to it really good and it'll stay there for a while so as if it's a really small leak and it takes it a while to Bubble Up This will stay on the pipe a lot longer makes a good bubble it makes a really good bubble we know the system has a refrigerant leak but it still has a refrigerant in it maybe someone's had to come before us and put gas in it now it's low on charging in but it still has gas in it that's when we'll start using electronic Leak Detectors to find that and basically the way an electronic leak detector works it's got a little air pump in it it's sampling the air and it will pick up different type of refrigerants and ring out first one we have here this is a really old school one they still make these style these wand style Leak Detectors and they're they're fine to use usually if you're on a budget this might be the one you'd buy maybe you're just starting out in the field and you don't have a lot of money to spend on tools it's a fine leak detector I would say one thing is just read the manuals do your research before you buy one because tools are expensive it's a lot of Maintenance in them it's not the top quality but it'll get you by in some scenarios residential split systems some commercial units of two it's fine pick up big leaks there's lots of different brands out there a lot of these are rechargeable or they'll take replaceable double a batteries flexible wand you know which is nice and handy it's hands-free walk me through this so I'll turn it on and then this is my sniffer right that's right so I'm taking this along the refrigerant circuit yes starting maybe on the evaporator coil working all your way down to the compressor and then working your way back up maybe on the highest high pressure side yep that's exactly would you start an evaporator or the or the uh if I were to throw uh a number out there I'd say 60 of the refrigerant leaks are usually in the evaporator coral on a u-band or a tube sheet so yeah that's that's usually where I'm going to go right away is just start there you can do something as simple as when you get to your indoor unit um stab it and if you can take your drain line apart and of course if it's dry and there's no water in it you can stick that in the drain line and a lot of time the refrigerant leak will migrate down there you won't pinpoint it but if it goes off when you stick it in that drain line you know okay the leaks in my evaporator coil somewhere quick way to narrow it down and not waste a lot of time really small leaks probably won't work that well for you but if it's a decent leak that's leaking out it's in that indoor unit you'll probably start wringing out in the drain pan so that's a good way to do it and then so this LED display will uh what happens to it when it finds yeah on that particular brand it's got a little LED like bar graph that'll go up and down as it starts ringing out and picking up leaks and the beep will get more rapid as it gets closer so as you if you pinpoint the leak you'd see that bar graph go all the way up and it'd really be ringing out and as you started backing off it would start just dropping down and go away maintenance on these like anything else you gotta keep your probe clean on the end there's little filters that come with it need periodic changing so you know just like every other expensive tool you got to take care of it and maintain them price point for something like this price point 250 something like that there's some a little cheaper some a little more probably average price 200 250. they're not bad they do a good job they're not the top of the mark but they'll they'll get you by if you're just starting out or maybe you're you know just in a pinch and you don't have the money for the for the bigger stuff all right tell me what we got here so this is the one we prefer using um here we've had a lot of luck with especially when we saw the transition into refrigerant r410a when we'd use these they'll still pick it up but it just we chase our Tails a lot on small leaks trying to find them when we started using this Bacharach h10 version I physically compared the two beside the same leak and walked up to it close and this thing was ringing out you know way before I ever got it on this one so that's why we've really started using this brand so would you say that you know this one it might be better for 22 or other refrigerants definitely good for 22. it'll still pick up 410 it just doesn't have the the sensitivity in my opinion of that of that back rack brand okay that one's really good and it's very Universal it's a good point though John before you buy one read the directions because there'll be some refrigerants that that particular monitor may not pick up so really need to know what refrigerants you're going to be looking for and then make sure what you buy is capable of picking that up walk me through this background version here so this guy is a rechargeable battery I'm getting plugged in right now because I'm charging it up but that's it can be hands-free or if say something happened to the rechargeable battery the cool thing is about it you can plug it in and still use it this guy's not so much the case it just takes Double A's a lot of these will have rechargeable batteries you do the same thing with again it's got a little air pump just like this one does as you turn it on it's pumping and it's sampling air across this tube all the time and it's looking to pick up refrigerant another maintenance item on this one is it is calibration you got to make sure it's calibrated correctly before you get started there's several ranges on this refrigerant leak detector small medium large depending on what size leak you got okay I like to always start off with my leak size setting on large and then that'll get me close to the area of the leak it'll ring out quite a bit but it won't pinpoint it so once I'm ringing out and I'm close to it I'll switch it to medium and that'll help get me a little bit closer but I won't be able to pinpoint it exactly but if my leak detector is still ringing out I know I'm really close at that time I will switch it to small leak setting and that should get me right over top of where that leak is after I've feel confident I know the leaks right in this general area I'm usually going back to this guy because that's going to bubble and when that bubble shows up that's exactly where your leak is this is going to always get you I mean really close and sometimes if it's a big look you can visually see it when you get on it you'll know it but if all else fails a little hairline crack once you get in the area you know it is spray it with the soap this guy has a little calibration bottle that comes with it every time you buy one of these initially you have to set it up and make sure it's calibrated right for sensitivity so it has a little test bottle in there with a little hole that a little silver disc sticker that you put back on after and the way you're supposed to do it is you turn this guy on should start out on the low setting I don't know if you guys can hear about every second little click or so as I get closer to that I should start ringing out here in a second if I were on a hva system that had a refrigerant leak and I got on the leak that's what I'd expect to hear if I just open this thing up and it wasn't ringing out like that for me I would know it's out of calibration and there is a little heater adjustment here by increasing or decreasing that heater increases or decreases the sensitivity of this and this little bottle is going to be like here on a refrigerant leak so if it's not ringing out like you want you're going to have to have it on there a small screwdriver to get down in there and start dialing that in or out until you get exactly where you need to be off the ringtones it's in the manual that tells you how often you should see that or how frequent the ring should be going basically another thing with this thing is there's a little hard to see there but there's a little red ball that floats in the end of this so as you turn it on and the air pump comes on you're supposed to stick your finger across that on the bottom and you should see that little red ball suck up into this if that doesn't happen there's filters that come with this that have to be periodically changed that filter stopped up so big thing to always make sure because you can spend hours literally chasing your tail and the whole thing is you don't have your equipment set up right the leak could be right in front of you the whole time so always for sure before you get your leak detector out and start using it make sure it's functioning properly or you're just you know wasting your time you're wasting everybody's time so that's probably the most key thing with electronic Leak Detectors is every time before you use them we need to make sure the sensitivity is working properly they're calibrated properly our little filters are clean these guys will also have little filters in the end of them they come with Replacements when you buy them they're very cheap to order new ones when you run out of them that's a key component to this thing that gets missed a lot hey tell me about this calibration um so the spot will come out yep it comes out okay and so what is this is this uh it's not refrigerant no it's not refrigerant I I don't know if it's alcohol or yeah it picks it picks up it rings out just like a refrigerant would but it is not a refrigerant so you don't have to worry about anything with refrigerant laws on it you replace this every so I've heard the manual it says every six months you're supposed to replace it but I would say the main thing is if I was putting that on there and no matter what I did with my heater adjustment if it wasn't ringing out I would definitely think something's up with my little bottle one thing this little silver disc is a little sticker so what it says and I would recommend too is after you get done calibrating put that back on there because there's a little hole in that it'll just evaporate all that out of there so as long as you keep that little sticker on there tight that'll probably last a lot longer in six months but per the directions it says every six months you should change that gotcha and so this does a multitude of refrigerants yeah it's about everything we deal with uh 410 22 one third of a year 123 I haven't run across anything they're they're very well maybe something in there that it doesn't pick up but for what we do in commercial HF okay I've had no issues with it it's also got a little a balance so it's got an auto and manual button so what's cool about the auto mode is what it says it'll do is if you've got it calls it background refrigerant and all I could think is maybe you've got a system that's got a couple leaks on it you found this one already now you're looking for more it says if you set it in that auto mode kind of blocks out refrigerant that maybe Trace gas sort of in the atmosphere around you it'll keep it from you chasing your tail on nuisance stuff if you set it in manual kind of takes that away from you and then you manually have to set how sensitive it is I always just leaving Auto because I can calibrate it that way and rock and roll but if you know it's got a leak you know your tools set up right you just can't find it that's when you might want to go to manual motor and really dial that sensitivity in there for you there's a headphone jack right here yeah tell me you ever use that I've not used it on this machine I've used it on other ones but it is a very cool feature so in your noisy environments industrial mechanical rooms a lot of times you're just visually you know that's cool they flashes red every time it goes off so you got a visual but sometimes you're reaching around things and you can't see that and it's noisy that's where the headphones come in because you'll hear it ringing out on the headphones yeah so it's cool it comes with them it's a nice little feature and very very handy and noisy environments can this thing take heat and knocking around I've never had an issue keeping the truck all the time I just you know keep it check it every time you use it make sure you put it up the right way they're pretty solid they've been around in some form or fashion for years Johnson pan used to make this brand you talk to a 30-year Chiller man and he's had one probably still got one at his house they're really solid and they've just kept technology and they change it up a little bit but it's really the same exact machine same way you calibrated everything's the same all right there you go that's what you need to know to do a proper Leak search so Brian thanks so much for joining us it's always good to be with you hey hit that like hit that subscribe if you guys want to see something specific please hit it in the comment and we will try to give it to you [Music]

Channel: Mechanical Pros

Views: 16,512

Keywords: HVAC, Skilled Trades, ac gas leak check, ac lagwa di raja ji, ac leak detector, ac leakage checking, best leak detector for hvac, best refrigerant leak detector, commercial hvac training, daikin, freon leak detector, hvac service bag, hvac technician training, leak detector refrigerant, refrigerant leak detector

Id: x1M0_2voiO4

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023