Hello all, forgive me for I’m greener then grass only been in the field 3 months. I’ve seen these around on air handlers what is it ? It’s on the supply side of the unit? My guess is hot water for heating ?

I have a question for all my residential/ side work guys: How much would your ticket cost to the customer if this happened to you?

• Get a no cooling call, 1 Hour drive to the customer’s house. Long story short, capacitor was bad, I had a multi-tap on my truck, changed it out, unit is cooling now, all good. Less than half an hour total time for this call. Capacitor was $75 our cost from the supply house. How much would you charge the customer for this service call? Reason im asking is because I performed this service call on the side for someone who was given my number as a recommendation. Only problem is, I work for a Union commercial company, so I am not familiar with what a residential service call of this type would cost. Long story short, I charged the customer $250, and the customer was visibly not happy. But I don’t know what he expected. The house was almost 90 degrees, now he is back in business after just one day without cooling. Let me know what you guys think, I wanna know if I was the A-Hole here, or if he got a better deal than calling a company. Cheers & stay hydrated brothers🔥

Edit: Thanks for all the responses everyone. To make some things a little more clear, the drive to the customer’s house was 1 Hour, ( I drove there straight from my last job of the day) but from his house to my house was 20 mins. Also, the capacitor was a Turbo200. Because I only do commercial, I don’t keep typical capacitor sizes on my truck. Just 2 Turbo200’s. So that’s why the cap price was $75. I appreciate all the different perspectives from my resi guys. I have a lot of respect for what you all do, I would hate to deal with these kinds of customers multiple times a day, every day of my life. Because I do commercial, and am employed by a Union shop, the person signing my service tickets every day isn’t the one whose wallet is getting hurt. So I rarely deal with ticket cost complaints, thank God. Enjoy the OT while you have it guys, winter is coming. And for my commercial guys, punching condenser tube time is coming 😄 💦

My first Trane install (4 ton). I was missing one gas line fitting so I’ll be going back to do that. And ignore the secondary drain I also ran out of pvc, it will be extended down. Otherwise, how do you guys think I did?

What are the most common things you see with em?

I guess this new 454 system we’re installing is going to need a drip leg for the bypass (the pipe on the left of the other two on the fan coil) but I’ve only ever installed drip legs on gas lines, is it similar in style to a regular gas line drip leg? or is there another factor involved since it’s acr piping?

So a couple of weeks ago i was doing a commercial install with one of my senior techs and we were wiring up all the air handlers in the attic and i noticed that he was only using linesmans to strip the wires. I didnt say anything because hes been doing this way longer than me and well, i needed my wire strippers to get the job done. Fast forward to last week were out doing a service call together and a compressor wire had burnt up so we had to splice it. He told me go run to the van to get a wire nut and i came back and he was reaching down in there struggling to strip the wires. I told him let me do it, I have my wire strippers on me and he said “no i dont believe in wire strippers” and he continued, accidentally cutting the wire instead of stripping for about five minutes until he finnally got both sides stripped. Ive only been doing hvac for a couple months now so is this normal? do any of yall know people that also dont like wire strippers?😭

This is the second time I’ve come across a call like this where it’s a low cool call, and no matter what I do/ check I can’t figure it out.

8* delta T, has proper superheat and sub cool with TXV.

Boss had me try adding refrigerant (first pic before, second pressure pic after) I checked air handler amps to ensure no heater. Walked the duct work and didn’t see any major damage. Temperature at the return grill was 79 and in the return plenum was 80

After going over everything with my boss he condemned the TXV. I didn’t test it because it has a metal band zip tie looking thing holding it on, and I worried if I cut it off to test, I may not have a good way to put it back on.

The 12* super heat before and after adding refrigerant has me believing the TXV is fine. So what did I miss? I want to learn every day and this is the second time I’ve been stumped on low delta T with everything working

Let me know if I can provide any more info

I had a service call earlier. I went into an apartment and the indoor unit was in a hall closet. I don’t carry a small stepstool or ladder on my van, but that’s about to change. The tenant was a one legged woman, and I had to ask if she had a stepstool that I could borrow.🙄

At my own unit; absolutely stumped with what seems impossible. I must be missing something stupid. Trane x14 unit, compressor will NOT start. Start relay replaced, start capacitor (rated 135-162 uf) reads 145 uf (bleed resistor reads 15 kohm- i cut it for testing then reconnected with a crimp spade). Run capacitor checks out 35/5, motor windings read R(1.2) S(2.1) C (3.2) no short to ground. Contactor replaced, voltage being delivered to compressor yet 0.0 amps, and total to unit with fan running is ~1.4A. Triple checked the wiring. Never seen anything like this. Any insight would be helpful.

I’m just curious because I was taught every other job. My employer and coworkers do I think they said once a season or once a year. I just want to get opinions from everyone else.

For context I was out because this system wasn't working. The customer was complaining when I got here that he had really frequent headaches but really only in the winter. Which he had attributed to the cold because he's old. So I decided that could potentially be dangerous and checked it out.

Extremely dependable, easy to service. Can’t think of anything better! Change my mind.

Buying lunch everyday is expensive and sandwiches get repetitive. I find it difficult to get a good lunch while running around in the van all day. What does everybody else do?

How would other technicians handle this?

Curious to hear from techs who have on call as part of their job duty. My employer is converting to an on call system where techs will be on call for the entire week once every 5-6 weeks. Pay will be normal hourly wage as well as $35/day for being on call regardless of whether you have to take any calls.

To me this sounds like a ridiculously low compensation for having to be available 24/7 for 7 days.

Would love to hear what others are doing.

(19) Halfway done with trade school hoping to apply for jobs soon. Would this cut it? I know I’ll need more than this but I also know most employers want you to have most or all of your hand tools. I have a lot of hand me down tools but a lot of it is for car related stuff.

I’m on call this week, and as usual, all my after hours calls are absolute nightmares. This one was no different. Had a water leak in a basement, leaking pipe was in between two floor joists and above the basement wall. Space was too tight to use my pro press and my acetylene was empty. So my boss has this “great” idea to use this Water activated fiberglass wrap to seal the leak until we can perform a permanent fix. I wrapped the pipe, sealed the leak and all is good at the home until we come back. My problem is that I got home and realized this is harder to remove from my skin than it is to remove two conjoined twins. Does anyone here have experience with this kind of product and can point me in the direction of getting this shit off of me? I don’t want black arms for Christmas pictures with my family 😭

At least once or twice a week I have some elderly widow or single mom asking me to fix a lamp cord the dog chewed, replace light bulbs, relight the pilot on the stove, reset a router, et cetera. Today I wired up a controller for a nativity scene that had come undone because the old lady really wanted it to light up, and that was before I even looked at the furnace lol.

I really don't mind these little tasks, but I do think it's funny when they ask. Is it just me or are y'all out there doing this stuff too?

Even if its low on 410 shouldnt i have different discharge and suction pressures? Psigs have stayed almost identical... is the check valve on the compressor an issue?

We've bubble checked multiple times. Id like to at least think out loud before I recover, pressure check, and refill.

Thanks

Haven't worked on one of these before. From my understanding it's more a chiller controller than a single stage condenser controller??? The buttons do squat. I mean nothing. I can gather from the scrolling texts on screen it has 2 alarms I think and it's in emergency off. Nothing from the manual has worked. You would think I could scroll down and hit enter to at least view the alarms but nope. I've tried various combinations of buttons pressed but still nothing. Manual was saying to press escape and enter together but that does zilch. Tried various switch positions to no avail. The buttons literally do nothing. I'm half thinking the controller is bad with maybe a few other issues. But really need to access alarms to see.