Rainy Day Chat With The HVAC GUY! #hvacguy #airconditioning

All right, it says we're live. Let's see if any of this actually works. Hey guys, it's a rainy day. Let's see if anybody logs on. Please let me know if you're here. Hey guys, it is me, Curtis. Please let me know if y'all are out there. All right, it looks like I do have a few people here. Y'all let me know if you can hear me okay. It happens to be a rainy day and there wasn't a whole lot to do and I was stuck at home. Sittin' it out between thunderstorms, it's been heavy downpours. I think this is the same system that flooded out West Virginia, I think it was yesterday. Sometimes y'all ask, is he Riley? You don't see Riley? That's Riley, that's my boy. He's a little rambunctious. He's not but about two years old, but he thinks he runs this house. Thank you, man. That was Mike. Thank you for letting me know the volume's okay. I had some. There was a video I put out recently where I had some really good interaction from people and I was a little hesitant to put it out about asking people to stay out of trouble and stay off of drugs and stuff like that. One of the reasons I did that is because I'm speaking from personal experience. Just don't do it. Don't hang around with those guys. You don't have to learn from other people's mistakes. I mean, you don't have to learn from your own mistakes. Learn from somebody else's. Just stay away from that stuff. Thank you, Nelson. It's like we got Chris from North Carolina. Our weather for like the last two weeks has just been thunderstorms and thunderstorms over and over. So it's made it very humid. When it's, it don't have to be but 80 degrees. If you got 100% humidity, it's miserable, miserable. Chris DeHart, 407C, good drop in for R22. Technically, no, but I know a lot of people do it. I do know one contractor here in town that is, he uses it as if it were R-22 and he doesn't have a lot of trouble with it, but I have, so I don't do that. Yeah, please do not follow those rowdy guys after work. I mean, it's okay to shoot crap while you're at work, but if they're involved with problems after work, don't, please don't follow them into that. It just leads to bad places. Oh, we got a Tony from Connecticut. Guys, it just happens to be one of those days when there's not a lot to do. I was asked, we go, fine, we're getting some, not NHPC, but thanks to your channel, I got my 608 universal and replaced my own AC. You replaced your own AC? That's impressive. Impressive. Not a lot of people can do that. Well, thank you. Let's see, we have a Vaga 9. About to get my S license. Brandon, what state is that? And what does that mean? Because we don't have that here. Is that like a contractor's license? Here we have a conditioned air contractor's license and you have to pass a state exam for it and have like five years experience working for somebody else. I do not know what it's like in other states. Yes, that is a contractor license. Okay, well, good. Best of luck. Here in Georgia, it's a very in-depth test, but it's basically a code book test. You can bring your code books with you. And the test, more or less, is how good you are at looking up stuff in the code books. It's like an open book test. It really doesn't test you much on your knowledge about HVAC. It wants to make sure that you can follow codes, at least be able to look them up. And that's what the test really is in Georgia. It's a very in-depth test, a stack of books that might cost you $1,500, but it is well worth it. Well, hello William from San Diego, California, Oregon, Kenan, what, forgive me, I almost cussed, what is that? I guess y'all are still working out there in California, we just passed 5 o'clock here and because it's raining, I haven't worked since like 1 o'clock today, I've been lazy, it's just one of those days. I don't know much about the Econet communicating thermostats. If it's communicating, it needs to be matching the system that you put in or else it's not going to communicate. I'm just not familiar with the Econet. 2 p.m. in California. Well, here it's 5. I've already eaten a little bit, so we're probably going to have supper later. Sweden. Wow. Hello, Ingmar. There's some parts of being on YouTube that are very nice. interaction from people all over, and that's pretty cool. I like that. So, hello from South Georgia. No, I'm not talking about the country Georgia. I'm talking about the state. Sometimes you have to be specific for people who don't live in the U.S. I thought, as I did yesterday, I might share a little bit about starting the business and the processes you have to do here Here in Georgia, it's. In this industry, you have to have a conditional contractor's license. You can either have a restricted or a non-restricted, but you've got to have one of those first. The restricted just means you can do five tons and under. The unrestricted means there's no limit. I have the unrestricted. Honestly, I wasn't sure I could get it when I was taking the test, and I had somebody advise me, just take the unrestricted test. You'll be glad you did one day. And I took it, and it was... I forget how many questions it was, but there weren't very many unrestricted questions. The unrestricted questions were like about boilers and stuff like that. And I don't really work on boilers, but I had the textbook with me and I knew how to look up stuff. So it was really a good idea to take the unrestricted license test. I'm not familiar with how they do it in other states. I do know... States like Florida reciprocate with a lot of other states. Georgia only reciprocates with South Carolina and Texas. So I could probably very easily get a license in South Carolina, but I'm so far away from it. There's no reason. Put on a rain jacket and get it done. Yeah, I kind of did that for one call today and it was miserable. I broke out my umbrella. Just, I was diagnosing a dead compressor that they already knew was a dead compressor, but I had to go through all the steps anyway. And yeah, it rained on me a couple of times and it's kind of like off and on rain, which means it's a hundred percent humidity all day long. It was just, oh, you've had an X13 blower motor fail three times. And you might want to look at other things like, um, make sure you got good airflow. That sounds rough. 300 days of sunshine? Where do you live? I'd like to go there. Where are you living? You don't get rain. I know different parts of the country are drastically different. Yes, I've heard some bad things about the R454B as well. Like if it sits for a long time, the two refrigerants might separate, and that is possibly what's causing some of the... New system burnouts, a buddy of mine, Jake, posted a video of one of those, and I'm just going by hearsay on that because I don't know. That's not something I know about. There's a fellow on YouTube, Ty Brannaman, who knows a lot more about that than I do. I don't want to speculate, but I've still been installing the R454 systems just because I've been faithful to that one supplier that I have, my root dealer. Man, I got to think about doing something else. I hate to do that because they've been so good to me over the years, but you know, you have to, I think I have to start offering options. Like the lady with the shorter compressor today, it's an 11 year old system out of warranty. It's a straight cool system on a furnace. So what I did was I told her if we replace the condenser I might have to make alterations inside but the new refrigerant may not be as stable as what she has. She has R410 so we talked about the options and recommended that she stick with R410 and let me replace the compressor and she agreed with that. So that's what I gave her an estimate for and I do not know if I'm going to get the work. I'll be honest, the 454 is a little concerning for me, and I think it is for everybody. Moving away from Bosch, my opinion of Bosch is not very good. I have one on my house, so I'm speaking from experience. Yes, R32 is not a blend, so the potential danger you're having with the fractionating doesn't exist with R32. Well, Varga. I showed Riley a little while ago on this. After I get done, you're just going to have to look at the beginning. He came in here and played with his toy. Dogs. Is it football season yet? No, no. How long do we have to wait? You have an M20 on your horn. I'm not sure I know what that is. Well, I had an employee put on a rescue motor one time. It has rescue written on the box, and I have found that those motors are actually very dependable. But you got different color wires and he hooked up the black wire and the blue wire, which are two different speeds, and that thing ran for about two months and I could not believe it. In fact, I rewired it after it stopped and it started running again. I'm sorry, those are just solid motors. Forgive me guys, I'm reading the comments. Trade school cannot hurt. I'm speaking to Ontario AG guy. Look, the criteria I laid out in the other video, high school diploma, good driver's license, and off drugs, just be persistent. I'll be honest, if an applicant tells me, look, I'm drug-free, you can test me, that will pique my interest because there's just so many who aren't. So keep trying. maybe enroll in trade school. If they see that you're enrolled in trade school, that might give them more initiative to go ahead and hire you. Honestly, I enrolled in trade school while I was already working. And when I was learning in trade school, I was immediately able to put into practice. So I think it's a good idea to work and go to trade school at the same At the same time, if you can. All right, I'm responding to Seton HVAC. What trade school you go to does matter. Actually, the trade school we have here in Albany don't really care about what you learn. They will graduate people that don't know how to put their gauges on. Just as long as you show up for class, you can get a diploma. That's unfortunate, but that is, I have learned that if you really want to learn. They have an assistant teacher there who will teach you. The knowledge is there. It's in the book, but you got to want it. You got to go to school and want it and try to learn everything you can because they care whether you want it or not. So go in there with an attitude to learn everything. Forgive me, Seton. I haven't seen a Mikey Pikes video in about two years, so I don't know what he put out. Honestly, if trying to stick with 410A, I think the cat's out the bag. I think I think the best thing we can do if we want to go to R32 instead of R454 is just vote with our dollars and they will eventually figure it out. You know, companies need to be like Gree. Gree has an option. They have 454 systems and they have R32 systems. I think every manufacturer needs to start developing options for both because the 454, In my opinion. It's questionable. I'm hearing about problems and I think it would be wise for them to have at least both options. James, there is not much union activity down here. Not much at all. There are some... commercial union jobs and even some of the people that work at those jobs like at Georgia Train, even some of those aren't unions so there's not a lot of that down here and as far as what are the different terms for the people in unions. Apprenticeship, I have forgotten but there's several of them and there's different steps you go through but we don't really deal with that down here If I were forced to choose between a Gree or a Bosch, oh, that's easy. It would be a Gree all day long because of one reason. The Gree that I have seen, I have not seen this with Bosch. They have like a hot gas injection when it's running in heat and it gets down into low temperatures, which allows it to produce hot air, even though it's very cold outside. And now they're doing it instead of... They used to do it through a liquid receiver and just take liquid coming back from the air handler would be like room temperature. And they would put it into a liquid receiver and take the vapor off the top of that and inject it into the suction to increase the temperature of the output. But now what they're doing is they're taking that line and they're running it through. the inverter heat sink so not only is it helping to cool off the heat sink it is heating up the refrigerant so that they can directly inject it into the um return going to the return going to the compressor and to me i thought that was a smart idea because i've all i questioned and i didn't know if it was real or not if you're taking temperature away from the liquid line are we in And anyway... Messing with the efficiency, but the way they're doing it now, they're not doing that. So I really like the way Gree is doing that. And I don't think Bosch has that option as far as reheating the suction in cold temperatures so that you don't need heat strips. I have a house that we may be selling. I put a Gree on that one. No heat strips needed. Never had a problem. Not one single time. But the Bosch in my house, I had to install heat strips. It's an easy one for me. I would go with a Gree anytime. Yes, people, if people join the trades thinking it's going to be easy money or they see somebody like myself who's been working in it for 20-something years and think, I want part of that, but they're not willing to put in the work, they're going to be disappointed. It takes a long, long time. Okay, Seton. Hold on a second. I'm trying to. The Bosch Medea ductless systems are complete. I didn't know Bosch had a ductless system, but Midea and Gree are two of the biggest air conditioner makers in the world, largely because places outside the United States, they make mini splits, and they make them under a whole bunch of other different names. It's kind of like ICP making air conditioners for a lot of people. They do the same thing. I have never installed an ACIQ inverter heat pump. I do not know anything about it. Okay, the seat and HVAC, you're talking about having your heat strips disconnected. Can you give a roundabout area where you live? Because I live in South Georgia, and with the Gree, I don't need heat strips. But with the Bosch, it gets below freezing. I do need the heat strips. Oh, I'm in Georgia. Gracias, Jose. A mi me gusta hacer los videos. But I'm going to continue speaking in Spanish. Maybe we could do a live on, excuse me, English. Maybe we could do a live on my Spanish channel. You get into the negative temperatures, yeah, we don't see anything like that. The coldest, I may have seen it around here, is about 17 degrees, and the whole state freaks out if it gets that cold. I have never installed the Daikin Fit inverter systems. I'm a big fan of the inverter systems. I think that's where everything's going. It's kind of like the ECM motors. You better learn to work on them, because that's where a lot of stuff is going. Are you working under your General's license? I don't, I'm not real sure what you mean by that. Any advice on studying specific content? I'm working under my license. You don't have 220? Well, they do make 120 volt mini splits. Just look into it. Yes, I am rained out today. It's been thunderstorm, lots of sun, high humidity, and then another thunderstorm, lots of sun, high humidity. So it's just been... A very sweaty day. I didn't get a lot done. No, I do not have to have a general contractor's license. Everything for our license is covered under my conditioned air contractor's license. And in Georgia, that also means we can do some electric work. Basically everything from the distribution panel to the air conditioner, we can do. There was a big to do about it because electricians were changing motors and air air conditioning contractors were running their own wires so it's like the lobbying groups for the for those two industries got laws passed that said we can run our own wire to the air conditioner and kind of forbade them from changing condenser fan motors and stuff it's kind of like the same thing like when a plumber sees a clogged drain in Add it, they don't touch it. Come on down to Georgia. It's not a bad place. Some of the people are half crazy, but it's not a bad place. No, I don't think it's too late at 50. I kind of got into it. Well, I had done duct work, but like how long have I been? 20 years here working in HVAC? No, you can, as long as you're committed to learn and pick up stuff and you've probably got some life experiences that might help you in the trade. So it's not too late. Oh, that's cool. I'm looking at the seat and HVAC. I never thought about getting a general contractor's license. To me, that normally makes me think of people building houses or doing repairs and modifications and stuff like that. It's kind of out of my wheelhouse. So far, I've basically been installing Ruud products. Forgive me, my camera keeps going in and out of focus. I've been installing Ruud. If somebody wants a high-end unit, I offer Gree. I really like them. I've seen myself how they work but like I said because of the 454 I may be offering another option like something with R32. I know Gree has some R32 units or um I hate to say Goodman but it's a possibility. Let's see here. Okay Einstein got in the trade at 47 years old. Daikin Goodman is the way to go. We will see. I've had so many I mean decades. history with Goodman and those evaporator holes. I'm just, that makes me hesitant to try. I mean, it seems like you got to pick the lesser of the two evils when you're going to install a piece of equipment, especially Daikin. I have never installed a Daikin. I do have a Johnstone that will deliver to me. So maybe I should try. So Goodman has a side discharge heat pump. I didn't know that because I don't, I haven't really dealt with Goodman. I do like the side discharge, though. Yes, I do. That's another option. That's another good thing about the Grees. They got the side discharge. I like it because leaves aren't falling into the condenser. I just like that. I mean, even if it's just a regular old PSC compressor, I like the side discharge. Mix and match condensers and evaporators. If you've been around long enough to remember what we did when we came off of R22, We were. Replacing condensers and changing TXVs or maybe changing an evaporator, especially if it was on a furnace. We're about to have to do that again. Lots of conversion kits or like you might have to convert an evaporator coil to R454 or whatever you're installing outside. So, yeah, we're going to end up having to do a lot of that. And I did one the other day. Actually, it was a property owner who wanted to use an old condenser that he had. insisting on it and um it was an R22 condenser and i converted it to MO99 and put an R22 TXV on the evaporator coil I left the 14 TXV there but um it seemed like a crazy thing to do but that's what he wanted and i advised him against it it was still like a four thousand dollar job but he paid me right away okay you like the new ring coils with the pre-installed sensor on them You're going to like it until you get one that's leaking and it runs the boiler all the time and shuts the system off. You can't find a leak and you can't restore their air conditioning. You're going to know that the sensor is faulting. What if your pressures are still good and you can't find a leak? Is it the sensor or is it the coil? I've only run across one of those sensors so far and somebody had rigged it so it would not shut it off. Take out the 454 and fill it completely with 410. Now, I have heard that they used 410 to test this equipment, and I've heard from other contractors that that will work. I just, I have not done it on purpose. I might just, if somebody will allow me to do it, but I haven't done it yet. You're right. In a lot of instances right now, we have to pick the lesser of the two evils, the lesser The two evils in refrigerant, the lesser of the two evils in what brand to pick, it would be nice if we just had just solid options and people were making equipment to last more than 10 years. I mean, that would be great. No problem for the videos. I just, y'all bear with me if I'm doing sponsored stuff. I try to, I try to fit some of that stuff into the video and make it as natural as natural as possible, but sometimes that's difficult. I do intend to keep everything just as real as I can and not change my style of my videos because that's that's what got me here. You can still find tons of 410 stuff. For me, like I told you, I have been really loyal to my supplier and that is Engineering and Equipment here in Albany and because they've been so good to me, I've just Because of 454, I've got to rethink that, and that is really unfortunate, because that's a really good company, and they've got great customer service. WNC, I am hearing that same thing from a lot of people. Hello, Miguel. Almost thought it was dead. And I'm talking to that comment at 1975 original. I might happen to be a 1971 original. It does help a little bit, like the YouTube stuff. I make enough money to pay for all the tools that I want to buy. So, I mean, that's really cool. I like that. Y'all forgive me. I'm going to speak in Spanish for just a second. Miguel Española. En ese tiempo, viene a mí muy naturalmente. Es que he estado hablando español hace mucho tiempo. Okay, enough of that. Actually, forgive me, Mike. I think I kind of like Jake's video. Videos like the last one he put out. I thought that looked really good, but I was... I texted him and I said, that must take you a long time to do a video like that because you're constantly moving the camera around, but it did turn out to be a good video. I was impressed. I thought it looked good. Oh, well, I'm glad you liked the EcoFlow video. I kind of thought it was shaky because I had to use my phone to do it. Next time I do a video like that, I'm going to have to use a tripod or something because that did not work. I didn't, I presented everything the way that it I thought it was appealing. It was just the camera work was kind of shaky, and I regret that. Bill Bloomberg. Dude, if you're going to be binging my videos, you're going to be there for a long time. I got like 1,700 of them. Yes, Luis. I have been speaking Spanish for a long time I have learned mostly from Mexicans, but I have learned from Hispanics from all over Central and South America, including the Cubans. Oye, coño. I can fake them all. I love the Spanish culture. I love the food. I don't know if you can hear it, I just don't. That's just a part of my life. I appreciate you sharing that. And I'm speaking to Miguel there. I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you. Stuff like that helps motivate me to keep doing it. QuickBooks. I do use QuickBooks. And I use the QuickBooks payment system. QuickBooks Merchant Center is just integrated right into QuickBooks. I take any kind of credit card checks, any kind of payment. I mean, even Venmo and stuff I can do through QuickBooks. One of these days, y'all are going to hear me do my funny Mexican voice that I do. And I like to do it when I go through drive-thrus because people flip out when they see me drive up. They're like, was there somebody in front of you? They can't believe it's me. I do have a CRM and I'm an ambassador for one of them. I don't use it. That's it. The CRM is Housecall Pro, and it's really, it's a good one, but it kind of messed up my accounting. Either you use it for everything or you don't. And I couldn't use it for everything, so it kind of messed up my accounting, so I don't use it much at all. I only use it, I don't really use it much at all. So, I use... a Google Calendar and I use QuickBooks. I work by myself so I don't really need a CRM. I'm already texting and calling my customers before I go to their house. I can already send them emails. There are a few things that I can't do without Housecall Pro but it's not, it doesn't really make a difference to me. Mikey Pikes, his brand is the best. ACIQ I believe. Oh, not long ago it was Bosch Um, Larry. You don't have to go to HVAC school and into a tech school to learn if you can get hired on with somebody. But even if you do, it's still, even if you do, it's, you get hired on with somebody, it's still beneficial to go to tech school. They will teach you things that you may not get from a week riding with a seasoned tech. So, and they may not give you much more than that. So, yeah, I do recommend going. I went to tech school at night for almost two years, and I can probably list the things that I learned on one hand because I was already working, but what I did learn was instrumental in helping me understand single-phase systems and capacitors and how to wire an entire system from scratch, so it was very beneficial, but that's when our tech school had a different instructor. He really wanted to teach. He was the best, and because he wouldn't pass somebody, I don't mean just to sound how it's going to sound, but he wouldn't pass a basketball player because he wouldn't come to class, and they made him retire because of it, so obviously, I wasn't happy about that. My last semester, I had to deal with this new guy, and the new guy didn't even know how to hook up a recovery machine, so it's a shame that that instructor had to leave. His name was Mike, He was a really good guy. Well guys, later on, si ustedes hablan espanol, I might be the same thing on my Spanish channel, so stay tuned for that. If you don't know what my Spanish channel is, it is Vato de Climatización. Sometimes I put a link at the end of my videos. Yes, tech schools, you're right, the underpinnings. And I'm going to tell you one of the main things that they taught me, and I say it over and over in my videos. And it puts me at conflict with some of the other technicians, but I know I'm right. A capacitor is always between start and run. One side is going to be start, and the other side will go back to run every single time. Even on start capacitors, run capacitors, that is always the case. Even on hard start kits, the capacitor is between start and run. Hard start kits. One side augments the start on the other, and the other side goes to run. I mean, it's just, once you under, before I learned that, if I had to put on a hard start kit, I had to trace my wires all the way back to the compressor, read the labels on it, and follow them all the way back to know which one was common and which one was run. But when you know that the capacitor is between start and run, you can follow that C wire on the capacitor back to the contactor, And know that that side is run and the other side is common. You ain't got to trace out no wires. The capacitor is always between start and run. Well, guys, I'm starting to get a little bit hungry and I may need to take Riley out. So it's been good talking to you. I am really glad y'all tuned in. And I'm glad this was successful. And I, let me see if I can find this. I'll catch you on the next one.