It's The 250th Anniversary of July 4th! Talking About The Heat With The HVAC GUY

Hey guys, this is Xavier. I follow him on the Instagram. I'm going to put up a ticker here in just a second. I keep trying to get this thing to go live on Instagram. You got to get it started here for just a second. Xavier, I follow you. He's also in Georgia. We both do work in Georgia. Oh finally, I can go live on the Instagram. There we go. I was going to try to do this on TikTok too, so y'all forgive me. I haven't quite figured out how to do it. I'm going to keep it just like this. Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook right now. That is plenty. Let me start off the show by saying thank you to everybody for coming out. It is the 5th of July, and this weekend was the 250th anniversary of someone had to point out to me that the official... Declaration of Independence wasn't signed on July 4th, but it was put together and signed by John Hancock on July 4th, so the 250th anniversary, so it's a special edition. Xavier, we were talking just a second ago, you live kind of in North Georgia, is that right? Yeah, I was a lot closer to Atlanta, but I just moved up to Winder, so that Monroe, Winder area. Okay, for those that don't know, how close is Winder, say, to Tennessee or something? How far north Georgia are you? From my house, it's probably like an hour to Tennessee. Okay. If that. But, you know. Well, for me, I'm kind of like an hour and a half to Florida. Where are you at? You're in Savannah? No, no. Oh, oh. I am right in the middle of nowhere, Albany, Georgia. Oh, wow. Okay, yeah. I was way off. Yeah, Albany is like the southwest corner. Oh, yeah. Really, the only notable city nearby is like Valdosta or Columbus, and they are both 90 minutes away from me. Another 30 minutes, two-hour drive, I can be in Tallahassee. How'd you end up over there? Because you're originally from where? Actually, I'm from South Carolina. I don't know. My family, everybody's from South Carolina. My wife got a good job down here, and at the time, she was making a lot more money than I did. I mean, and so this is where we came, and it's where we ended up opening the business, so this is where we are staying. You've been home ever since. Yeah, I've kind of, it has become home. You know what I mean? It has become home. You know how we develop a connection with where we were raised or whatever? I kind of feel like South Georgia is home now. I've been here so long. 30 years? Long time. Now, something I was going to mention in particular, a complaint I had, something that's been happening to me as a business. We all complain about having to deal with chucks in a truck. Taking legitimate companies, business and stuff like that, or in outbidding us because they don't have to pay any insurance and stuff like that. I've talked about that many times, many times. But recently, I've been having to deal with something else. It's not very common for somebody to just openly try to scam me or steal services. That is not very common. But that happened recently. I went to a customer's house. Gave him a quote on replacing one of those CoreMAC fittings on a Carrier package unit. If you know what I'm talking about, those weird, it's not a Schrader fitting, but it works the same way, kind of. Gave him a quote, he gave me approval, I went out there and did the job, and then he paid me with a check. All that seemed normal until the check comes back, not bounced, because it was written from a closed checking account. the account no longer existed. So to me, in Georgia, theft of services is illegal. It's a crime. And I felt like he never intended to pay me, not one single time. And so I called the police. After hanging on to that return check for like a month and a half, I figured, you know what? That was like $1,500. I hung on to it, and finally I just said, you know what, I'm going to call the police. I called the police, reported it, and the police officer was like, you know what, if you run up a tab at a restaurant and you just walk out, that's the same crime. That's theft of services, and you go to jail. So I figured something's going to happen, but the police officer called the guy. And the guy said, gave him this sob story like he just got out of the hospital, he didn't know, and he was going to pay me. So the police officer just wrote up a report and said, hey, call him, he's going to pay you. And he didn't. Never got your money. Never. And the police officer, I contacted the police officer via text. And I said, hey, can I contact you? Can we follow up with this? Because the guy never paid me. He lied to you. He lied to me. And he was like, no, I didn't do it. I filled out a report. You can go pick it up and follow up with small claims court. I don't know if you know what that means, but that means I would have to go downtown, go to the courthouse, pay a hundred bucks so that they would deliver like a subpoena to him to respond or to, or to just answer in some kind of way. And if he does not pay, then I can get a judge to issue an order for him to pay. Which means we're talking months down the road here, and still nothing's going to happen if he doesn't have any intention to pay. So I was upset with my police department. Let's put it that way. Oh, boy. The Albany Police Department, it actually was not the city of Albany. It was the Dorothy County Police. You need to post that story on there and tag them. Let them know. Now, when this is over, if I can find a way to tag them, I will. I'm going to tag the police department and say, hey, do your job. I mean, first of all, I got ripped off. If I have no recourse to regain my money by doing what I'm supposed to do and request them to do what they're supposed to do, what's to keep somebody else from doing it? The cycle just repeats itself. I know, I know. Even if I get a judge to order him to pay me, once again, that's like another bill being made for him, and it falls on the police department to enforce it, which it looks like they don't want to. Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds like they're just dragging their feet on that. It is maddening. It is absolutely maddening, because when somebody writes me a check from an account that they know is closed, I know from the start that they never intended to pay me. Never. I see one man HVAC in the chat. Who's that? One man HVAC. What's up, buddy? That's our buddy Rolando, isn't it? No, I'm not telling you. Rolando is saying in case y'all are listening to this in a podcast. So basically, you're telling us not to accept checks. No. Most of the time, I don't have trouble with checks. I mean, the vast majority of the time. But this was a new customer. And I should have been leery. I should have paid attention. And I think he got over on me on this one. But because I feel like his intention was to scam me from the very start, I'm going to follow up with it. I'm going to keep going after it just to make a point of it. And, you know, and anymore, there's if you if you say, OK, you got to pay me with cash or a credit card. Even with credit cards, sometimes there's a problem. I had a hotel one time that I used to work for that would pay with a credit card. Not only are they taking 3% right off the top, I get a notice from the credit card company or from QuickBooks that they refunded the money on this credit card that I had accepted from a hotel because they reported it as fraudulent. They said these were fraudulent charges in the... The credit card company refunded their money. So I had an emergency call them. Hey, what is this? This was not a fraudulent charge. I have the invoices and I had a video of me doing the service. So they arranged some other kind of payment. So even a credit card is not sure that you're going to get the money. So it's kind of messed up. But anyway, that was my rant, and that's how it is. That was my rant, the thing I wanted to complain about. Have you been particularly busy these last couple of days? I think I know the answer to that, but tell me how's it been up there in North Georgia? Absolutely, man. It's been awesome. It's like 100 degrees for the past couple of weeks. Oh, you like that? I love it. I mean, the attics are getting hotter. I'm starting to show my age a little bit. Your age a little bit, man. You look young. I don't know what you're talking about age. I don't see a gray hair on your head. Oh, you see, well, speaking of, I'm bald now, so. Oh, you're bald now. But yeah, I mean, the weather's been, finally got hot, you know. It took long enough, didn't. For those of you who are not from Georgia, like May and a couple of weeks into June. It was raining, raining, raining every single day. It was, and it suppressed the temperatures around here. Yeah, that was rough. And finally it got hot, and it seems like it got hot right before the 4th of July. And everybody who hadn't called in the last two months all called in a period of like three days. Every one of them. I was getting calls 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. My AC's not working. I'm like, hmm, it's going to be an extra fee, though, to run that, but yeah. Dude, why are you, are you, I got a story to tell about the 4th of July. I'm like, I was about to ask you, why are you answering the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning? But I understand, when I was a young tech, I finally got a job with a big company in the service department. They let me work in service for like two months. And then I get my first on-call duty. Guess what week it was? It was the weekend of the 4th of July. Now, this is a company that had like eight technicians. And I was supposed to have a backup technician. And I got swamped. I got completely swamped. Back then, we had a pager. And the on-call service would page me, and I had 30 minutes to answer, to call them back to say, hey, I got the page. And I was getting so many calls, I couldn't go to work. I couldn't get to a job for having to pull over on the side of the road to call them back. And I called my supervisor, and I'm like, man, I need help. I need my backup, please. And guess what? He won't answer the phone. His pager's turned off. And my boss goes by his house. No, no, no. It's okay. Now, this guy still works in this area. My boss went by his house, and his truck's missing. What are you saying? So I was up the creek, man. I was doing calls from like 7 o'clock in the morning to like 9 o'clock at night. And eventually my boss... It was like, if they're not on our service agreement plan, they're just going to have to wait. And even still, even still, we covered it because I'm in South Georgia. There's not Southwest Georgia. There's not many big cities around us. There's not any. And we cover a huge area. I mean, I was getting calls from businesses that were an hour's drive from each other. And how am I supposed to answer? Thirteen calls in one day when I'm having to drive an hour from one call to the next. I mean, it was crazy. That was my initiation to being on call. It was terrible. It was terrible. Yeah, it sounds very familiar. I'm familiar. Right. I do. And then it's like the word got around to all the other technicians what kind of weekend I was having before Monday morning got around. So when I come in to work Monday morning, they're all laughing at me, saying, Hey, you had a good weekend, didn't you? Yeah, work me to death. They will. They will. So are you always on call? Not really, no. I pretty much volunteer every now and then, take a phone call. You're hungry, man. You're You're hungry for work. Is that it? Oh, yeah, always. Always. Yeah. I see my phone text messages like, hey, anything come in? That's just how I am. I mean, it's I like to help people. I have been there. Now, when I started when I started my own business, I offered 24-7 emergency services. It was in the Yellow Pages, 24-7 emergency service. Not that anybody ever looks at the Yellow Pages, but it was there. And before I canceled my Yellow Pages, Subscription, I had it changed to by appointment only. I'm not going out at 2 o'clock in the morning anymore, 10 o'clock at night, 2 o'clock at night. That's just not going to happen. Not anymore. I can't do it. I mean, I'll be honest, Saturday I was working. There's some jobs that I didn't publish that it was so hot. That it drained me. Like when I got, I got by like one or two o'clock, I was exhausted and I don't know how people do that all day long, every day into the night. I don't know how you do it, man, because I'm 55 years old now and I still try to work like I'm in my twenties or thirties, but it catches up with me. I got to be careful. Yeah. Hydration is like real important, especially now. I don't know if you heard or saw those uh, little trends on social media like they're making their own like mocktail and stuff Really, I forgot Yeah, I saw something I forgot his name Um, but he's like on the rooftop here and he's like the HVAC mocktail or whatever And it's like I don't know fruit punch electrolytes and all this other stuff. Apparently, it's really good If you guys know, yeah, you might want to post his name or whatever, but I saw it on Instagram I don't believe it. I have not seen that. In fact, I just posted a, I'm going to try to show this to you. I just did an Instagram post. Let me see if y'all can see this. Oh yeah, I saw that. All right. I had to change that. I mean, I don't do a lot with AI, but I couldn't resist that. I had to put my little logo thing on that flag. No, everyone's been doing that ever since they climbed that and put that little flag out. Like everyone's making their own. No, I know some of it's funny, too. This is from Victor. He says, yeah, I don't do those calls anymore either. And in fact, I did just a regular a customer requested some float switches be put in his house. He had no drain safeties other than an emergency drain pan that had a drain on it. That was it. So he requested some float switches, and it was so hot in a period of, I mean, it took me like 30 minutes. I put one in the pan, in the emergency pan, one in the secondary, on the main drain. And, man, I felt like I was about to pass out by the time I was done. And I was measuring temperature, and what, like 130 degrees? It was hot. Yeah, it's the sauna. This is a brutal industry, but it pays so well. Yeah. Speaking of pay, there's some other people in the Atlanta area I have talked to and they complain about, yeah, the pay is good, but the cost of living is high. Are you far enough outside of Atlanta to get away from some of that really high cost of living? Unfortunately, no, I'm not. No? That cost of living has crept its way that far north now. I don't want to get into details, but yeah, it's expensive regardless. God bless. I mean, even down here, a suburb of Albany is Leesburg, and it's another city in another town. It's just like 12 to 15 miles north of Albany, and I was working in a house there, and it's like a two-room house, tin roof, not a very good neighborhood, and they were paying $1,100 rent. Wow. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I mean, that's a house payment. I just, I could not believe what they were paying in rent. And part of the reason for that is because in Lee County, they have a really good school. And people want to live in Lee County so their kids can go to that school. But still, that was really high for that house. And I was just shocked. Rent's high. Rent's high. Hold on, let me, Victor's in Miami and he said for $1,100, you can't even rent an efficiency apartment. I might get you a couple of nights in a beachside resort. Mike Trader, where is, Mike's saying $1,100 is nothing around here. House rent start up 2.5. Yeah, it's pretty much where I'm at. No joke. Thank you. So that's why you're answering the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning, right? Weekends and everything, man. I don't know. Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, yeah. I got a beautiful family and wife and kids, so wife stays at home, I hustle. Hustle. Hey, that's part of why we're here, right? Take care of the woman, right? Mm-hmm. You know, I'll... I'll tell you this. I've told other people, and it took me kind of a while to figure it out. All the hustling and everything we stress about and all the TikTok and the YouTube and the job, whether or not we're going to lose our job or trying to be everything we stress about paying the bills. None of it really matters. None of it. Not a single bit of it. The only thing that really matters is spending time with and taking care of the people that we care about. Absolutely. Absolutely. I have learned that kind of the hard way. And when I say that now, I understand you need to take care of yourself too. And it's hard to take care of others if you're not taking care of yourself. So that's really what I have found to be important. The rest of it is just kind of like icing on the cake, you know? Yeah. No, you're absolutely right on that. Man, speaking of, like... I know you didn't ask me this, but you're actually one of the people that got me into recording my work, like, for HVAC. Really? Yeah. So, I've been recording for, like, years, but not during HVAC, like, motorcycle content and stuff like that. And then I was like... Once I got into HVAC, I was like trying to see who was posting videos or what was the industry about on YouTube. And your videos were like the first, you were one of the top three people that I saw posting. And I was like, well, if he's doing it, I'm going to do it. You did? Good, good, good. You know, that's kind of how I got started. There was this fellow on YouTube who basically isn't really on YouTube anymore. And I'm from Louisiana who was posting videos. I found them mildly entertaining, and I got to thinking, I can do that, and in all honesty, I was experiencing a little bit of burnout working, because I do it for so long, over and over, I mean, how many times can you clean a drain, you know what I mean, you do kind of get a little bit of burnout, and filming the videos kind of helped me, you know, just Enjoy my job a little bit more, and I have learned to do it in a way that doesn't take up time. I mean, I can film and do the jobs, knock them out, and not really spend any extra time doing the filming. If you hear that, that is Riley. We have a pear tree in the yard, and the pears apparently are ripe. He keeps going out in the yard picking pears and comes running in like he's got some special treat. He's eating one right now. Like, look what I got. We have, what's that now? How old is he? He's about three years old. Three years, okay. Yeah, we have pear trees, we got crab apple, we got tangerine, we got oranges, we got plums, we got persimmons, we used to have blueberries, we get scuppernungs, wild grapes. We got a yard full of food. And he'll go out there and pick grapes. They tend to grow underneath the leaves, and the leaves make like a little covered path because they grow on a fence. And he'll go walk under the fence and pick grapes out from underneath it whenever they ripen. He enjoys his yard. He's got this one place where I let him dig a hole. That's his spot. He's living in heaven over there, man. That sounds good. He's always happy. I've seen him in your videos. He's always, like, excited to see you and everything. He's great, man. I don't have any children, so I don't know the joys that you may have with your children. So my boy, Riley, I treat him like he's my son. I do. What type of dog is Riley? That's a good question. All right, Riley is a Weimaraner, which is a German hunting dog. Around here, people use Weimaraners for bird hunting, and they use them for hog hunting. They were originally bred to hunt large game in Germany, but they're good at doing small game like birds as well. Around here in South Georgia, if y'all don't know this, quail hunting is big business. There are plantations that just do quail hunting, and executive and world leaders from all over the place come to South Georgia, to go quail hunting at some of these plantations down here and one of the biggest quail hunting dogs is a German Short Hair Pointer and if y'all don't know what that is we've had one it's another German hunting dog but they make fantastic pets they are wonderful they're really good with people but by the way um JK Marshall yes he's a Weimaraner um some people call them Weimaraners Or a gray ghost. I see you looking at the comments. Something got you out of there? Oh, yeah. I'm just reading them all. Um... We got Mike Tray there. He asked a question about the probes versus the manual. How do you discipline a kid? Have them sweat copper in a 120 degree and they'll learn to discipline and value. Oh, man. Any more? I can't. Let me find that one on the probes. We missed a few. Forgive me. I kind of like the probes. I have the field piece probes because... I prefer the field piece because of the shape of the probe. It fits down in the screwdriver slot in my Veto bag. That's why I like the field piece. There's another thing, too. I used the Testos for a short while, and the way the button is on those things, they would just accidentally turn on all the time because the button sticks out. And on the field piece, it doesn't. The button is kind of inset in the tool. In my Testos, the batteries were failing all the time. The battery cover was falling off. The field pieces are just much better made, in my opinion. There's some things that they have made that I don't really like, but those probes, I do like them. I really do. And y'all see me using their manifolds. I have the S-man. Um, I prefer to charge with a manifold. Um, I've started doing sometimes with just a hose and a charging tee with my probes. Do you do the same thing? Yeah. So I got both. I have the field piece probes and their manifold. Um, but I pretty much use the probes for testing or diagnostics, like seeing if the system's charged properly or overcharged. Mm-hmm. And then from there I'll whip out the actual full manifold gauges and all that. Yeah. I just like to take the probes with me because they're just so convenient. Yeah, they fit right in your bag. Okay, it looks like we are live on Instagram. You know, I can click over there. I hope I don't lose y'all real quick. Nope, you're in the corner. I can see some of the comments. Thank you. Cleanmaster Latino, that's my buddy Francisco. Jeff's HVAC Adventures is over there. Capital Coast. So, yeah, we're doing okay over there on the Instagram. I need to figure out how to save that when the live goes away. Every time I've been on Instagram doing the lives, it disappears after the live ends. All right, he just got another pair. If he keeps eating those things, he's going to have stomach troubles. Boy, he's so proud of himself. Y'all hold on a second. I'm going to show y'all, I'm going to show y'all Riley, see if I can get him up here. Okay. Nope. He's running from me. He knows I'm going to take that pear away from him. He's got a whole tree of them out there, and literally the branches are just hanging down because they're so full of pears. Oh, here's one. Have you used Measure Quick? I don't think I used it yet. Okay. I do not like MeasureQuick. The question is, by a fellow named Michael Wade, what do y'all think about MeasureQuick? And MeasureQuick is an application that uses your smart probes to measure temperatures and pressures and temp drop. And the more information you put into it, the more it tries to diagnose for you. And that's why I don't like it. MeasureQuick, to me, seems like it's trying to do too much. I prefer to have the raw numbers that you see On the Fieldpiece Job Link app. That's what I like. I like to be able to see my super heat and sub cool. I like to be able to see my temp drop, relative humidity. I like to be able to see the real temperatures instead of having this little red flag saying, ooh, there's something wrong here. These pressures are, I want to, I don't want this app to tell me something's wrong. I want to read it and diagnose it myself. That's why I don't like MeasureQuick. Sounds like they're trying to... Simplify or dumb it down, in a sense, I guess, based on what you told me. They want you to put in all this information, and then it's there to help people diagnose. But it's too much. It's trying to do too much. And there are so many things that if you've worked as a technician, That MeasureQuick cannot do. It doesn't know what it's like actually on the job. For example, you walk over an air conditioner and just feel the air coming off the top of it. And you can almost immediately tell whether something's wrong. I mean, there's just, you feel with your fingers, the liquid line, if it's hot to the touch, you know there's something wrong. I mean, Measure Quick, it just seems like it's trying to do way too much and it doesn't do a good job of it. I have used it where I've used on every probe in my bag. No, it was trying to tell me at the time that it was low on refrigerant. When it wasn't, it had a restriction. And at that time, I'm like, man, this is doing too much. I feel like you're trying to, it was, I don't like it. I just don't. Yeah, it's like those guys that use AI for their diagnostics. They could make your job harder and just lead you in the wrong way if you don't know what you're doing. Wait a minute, they're using AI? Yeah, there's a lot of people that do that. Yeah. There's a lot of people that do that. All right, Jeff, I think I just saw you over on the Instagram, and we're talking about MeasureQuick here. Jeff says it helps put all the data in one place. You can use multiple different brand probes. You can. The diagnostic portion does leave a lot to be desired. Yes, I can agree with that. I particularly do not like the diagnostic portion. And here's a little something we prepared before the show. You can follow Xavier on the Instagram. I think he did tell me he is on TikTok too. Hello. Hello. How long have you been doing videos now? Hello. Hello. A couple of years now, haven't you? Hello. Hello. Yeah, a few years. I'm also on YouTube. Thank you. Thank you. But yeah, I've been doing it for a few years. I think two or three. I actually started like, it's been like five years that I have been on YouTube. I started just on YouTube, honestly. Do you know what he's talking about right here? I started on YouTube just to show others how to. Freeze Temp HVAC is saying thoughts on TrueFlow Grid. I don't think I know what you're talking about. That's a new one to me. I'm sorry. I just did a quick Google search. You got any ideas on what it is? Are there any other questions? Freeze Temp, please elaborate on TrueFlow Grid. Maybe some other people in the comments. I don't know what it is. Um, I I just like the JobLink app, so that's basically all I use. I like it. It's just raw data. It's not trying to diagnose anything. Yeah. It gives you all the information that you need. You can pretty much figure out what's going on based on the numbers. So, yeah. Okay. Talking about Ty Brenneman, I'm not sure who the Tim is you're talking about, Victor. Ty is? Um, Ty, Ty Brannum is always there. The only Ty I know. Krauss. The Energy Conservatory. Are you all still talking about the TruFlow grid? Once again, I'm lost. I don't know what they did. Okay, thank you. Jeff, it's a grid that goes into ductwork and gives you CFM and static readings. I'm going to read up on that. That sounds pretty cool. You know, you can do that. So you can get, like, side pressure and stuff. Yeah, you know you can do that with a pitot tube, right? You know what I'm talking about? You don't need to put a whole grid in your ductwork. You can just drill like a little 3/8ths hole and put a pitot tube in there and do the same thing. And you can do a cross-duct measurement. All right, let's go to the comments here for just a second. This is Jose. He's got a small company there in Florida, and he's owned for about three years. And I use MeasureQuick sometimes just to get my reading. Issues with the system just may be due to process of elimination. I just got the charging probes and just changed to the fill piece out. Like I said, I like the fill piece out. It works unless you don't have a signal and then maybe it don't work. Does that happen to you too? Yeah, I've been in that situation a few times. And someone had posted where you just turn off the Bluetooth or something like that. You put your phone in airplane mode for a second. Uh-huh. And then it just works after that. Really, so it's trying to connect, but if it realizes it can't, it'll just, I'll try that next time. Like I said, I am in the sticks down here in South Georgia, so I'm often with a very weak signal. We're talking about this grid that was mentioned earlier. It's a filter, according to Jake over at Hoodle & Krause. It's a filter-style diagnostic tool. It helps with airflow measurements. They have a manometer that measures in pascals, so deeper readings and more accurate readings. It sounds like I need a new tool. Just give me a reason. I mean, Jake, I love Jake to death. But one thing I noticed, he's got, he was getting all kinds of different Veto tool bags. And that was a reason for him to go get new tools to fill in, fill up these new tool bags. All right. Oh, my God. I don't know. I just finally ordered that Milwaukee vacuum M18. Yeah. So that should be here sometime this coming week. So I know you guys have had that for a while. Yeah, and that was before I had any kind of, like, affiliation with Milwaukee. I bought that one myself, and I like it. I've only had one issue with the Milwaukee vacuum pump. I started hearing, like, a little bit of a crunching sound sometimes, and I thought my pump was going to stop. I changed the oil. I actually ran it to blow the oil out for just a second, changed the oil, added new oil to it, and whatever it was went away. It has a little different sound. It has a little different sound to it when you crank it up. Oh, and speaking of which, I just started using the recovery machine. And the other day I did a two-ton system. I recovered a two-ton system in about 15 minutes, a little over 15, 20 minutes. I used half a battery, so it does its job. It works. I haven't tried to recover a five-ton system with a 50-foot line set yet, but it works. Oh, and I will tell you, there was an issue with the vacuum pump, the M18 vacuum pump. I have found that if I don't valve off the vacuum hose before I turn off the vacuum pump, and it may just be my setup, I don't know. If I don't do that... Half my oil ends up in the hose. Oh, wow. Okay. I cannot tell you why, but it does. So I have to valve it off. Remember, you know, you've already valved everything else off, but valve off that hose before you turn it off. If you don't, you'll be undoing this great big old half-inch hose, and it's going to leak oil all over you. The next time you go to use your vacuum pump, it's going to be low. That's good to know that. Let me see, Jeff here, anyone else have an issue with their Fieldpiece vacuum pump tripping GFCI's? Are you talking about the six or eight CFM pump, the yellow one with the four ports that you can pull a vacuum from? I forget the actual model number on that thing because I gave mine away, but I never had that. I never had that on. Really? Victor's saying he's had the same problem. Are you using, Jeff, are you using a cheater cord that has a GFI on the cheater cord? Is that what you're doing? Because that's the setup that I used to have. That sounds like there's something wrong with the pump. It should not be tripping a GFI. So, yeah. So, for those of you that don't know what a GFI is, we're talking about a ground fault circuit interrupter type. Outlet that you might have in a bathroom that's supposed to sense if there's some water allowing electricity to go to ground. He's saying that his vacuum pump is tripping one of those. And yes, they are code to have those outside. If there's a chance that water is going to be present, you're supposed to have a GFI. I have not heard this about these vacuum pumps. Thank you very much. I honestly I don't like those Fieldpiece vacuum pumps because when you change the oil they have this unique feature you can change the oil while it's still running you don't have to shut it off to change the oil but here's the deal the only reason you can do that is because there's another reservoir that you cannot see That's using oil, and then when you change the oil, you're only changing about 60% of the oil. 40% of it is still dirty and still in the system, so when you change the oil, it just mixes, and it's not all clean oil again. You've got to change your oil like four times just to—that's why I don't like it. I know some people love those vacuum pumps, but I do not like them. What about you? Do you like those pumps? I haven't used those that much. Not that Fieldpiece. But I thought that was a, honestly, I thought it was like a cool feature that you could do that. It is until, I'm going to tell you what really broke me of it. I had a system that had been sitting open to actually running with no pressure switches, sucking in moisture. So I fixed the leak, put a dryer in it, and I started pulling the vacuum. And I don't know, I left to get a filter or something, just left my vacuum pump running. And when I came back, it was so full of moisture, it was white. Okay, this is where the problem started. When I changed the oil and it just mixed with more white vacuum pump oil. So I didn't have all clean oil after I changed the oil. And you know, if you got really a system with moisture in it like that, you gotta keep changing the oil. I changed the oil so many times in that thing. I literally had to go get another jug. come back and keep changing the oil so a vacuum process that maybe should have taken an hour hour and a half took me like three hours because i kept having to and every time i changed the oil i didn't have clean oil when i started up again it was frustrating i did not i do not i mean yes it is a unique feature i just don't like it when i change the oil and i crank the thing back up i want it to be clean That's my rant on those vacuum pumps. And yes, I gave that vacuum pump to my installers because I don't want to use it. So other people have had this problem with that vacuum pump tripping a GFI. That's the first I've heard of it, to tell you the truth. And Daniel here is talking, he's got a TradePro 7.2 CFM, will not run on a GFI breaker outlet. Yeah. Jeff, who started this thought, says he gets frustrated and had to hook up his backing pump with a Widowmaker to the unit's high voltage. What he's calling a Widowmaker, I've heard it referred to as a cheater. You just hook your jumper, a clip, to the high voltage. You disconnect your contactor. You turn the breaker back on, and you hook to high voltage on the bottom of the contactor to make 120 volts Because 90% of the time we're working on... Something that has 240, so you can rob one leg and get your 120 to ground, and I've done it many times, many, many times. I'm sure you have, too. Yeah, that's why now I'm like, all right, I'm just going to go with the battery technology, so I don't have to keep doing that stuff. I know, I know. I'm kind of iffy on that recovery machine for the Milwaukee one. Uh-huh. Because I'm hearing... Yeah, yeah, that, too, but I'm hearing that you can only get maybe... You just said you did a two-ton system? Mm-hmm. And I used half a battery doing it, about 15, 20 minutes. Yeah, because those Forge, I think it's the 12. Yep, yep. It comes with a 12-amp hour battery, yep. Yeah, they're like 250. They're expensive. They're proud of those things. Yeah. And all I want to say, if you've got a big system, you might want an extra one standing by, just in case. I got to tell you, my favorite vacuum pump, in fact, there's something wrong. I used to work for a company before I started on my own. I had to buy my own vacuum pump. I had to buy my own recovery machine because they wouldn't supply this stuff for me, and I couldn't do a good job without it. So I went to my boss because I was wanting to buy my own vacuum pump. I was like, hey, man, I can buy my own vacuum pump, but you got to give me a raise. He did. He gave me a raise, and that was my favorite vacuum pump for a long time, and that was like 20 years ago, and that was a JB 7CFM vacuum pump. That thing worked like a champ for a long, long time. I tried to use it to pull a vacuum on a recovery drone the other day, and it wouldn't fire up, so I don't know what's wrong with it. He gave up. Man, the thing is old. It's old. It was a collector's vacuum pump. It was like some kind of special edition, a super speed seven or something like that. I think I need to send it to them and have them figure out. I don't know. Maybe there's something wrong with the motor. I had it rebuilt one time. I sent it back to them. Do you use a Fieldpiece leak detector? I do. I use the heated diode. Yeah. I know they got a new technology. Was it infrared or some type of... Infrared, yes. Okay, infrared. I haven't used that one, but I've been sticking with the heated diode for about, well, three years. Really? Tell us your experience with it, because mine has not been very good. What do you think? So, until recently, I've been very confident with it, but there are instances where it just goes off, and I know there's not one there. Like, I know it's a new coil or whatever. There's no oil or anything like that, but it still trips. Like, the red LED goes off. So that made me lose confidence in it. So what I'm going to do now is just change the filter sensor and all that. And then I'll do some testing again. But other than that, I mean, I've been finding leaks. Thanks. On those, you can change the sensor. You can open up the back of them and change the sensor if you think the sensor is going bad. I don't know how much it costs, but I know you can. My particular problem with those was that it would be okay for like three to ten hours of use. And then after that, you got to be dead on top of the leak for the thing to go off at all. I did not like that. Man, if I'm within... You know, like three or four inches of a leak. I want my leak detector to start letting me know I'm getting close. And with that Fieldpiece, it did not do that. I couldn't, I just didn't like it. I tried the infrared and it was even worse. It was like either nothing or it's going to 99. You know what I mean? Either 99 or nothing. There was no in between. That's interesting. What do you use now? Um, I used an old reliable. I used the JB Prowler 5000, and I know I get criticism for it. People make comments in the videos about that old piece of junk. The battery cover has fallen off because it's made of cheap plastic, and I wrap up the batteries with electric tape, but the thing works. It works consistently. Yes, I get false alarms. If you bump the tip, it's going to go off and stuff like that. But I can trust it. If I get a repeat over and over and over in the same spot, I get a leak. You know what I mean? And it starts going off sometimes before I get to the leak. And I just like that. I have tried all kinds of leak detectors. Don't get me started on the Inficons. Uh-oh. The Inficon, what is it? The Inficon Detect, it's like a $900 leak detector. I bought it thinking it was going to be the creme de la creme. And the thing kept giving me this red screen of death, like the sensor failed or the battery failed or just like the field pieces. It would work pretty good for a little while. And then after literally less than one battery charge, It would just barely pick up anything. I mean, I was literally cracking a Freon drum and testing, and it wouldn't pick it up. I'm like, are you kidding me? This is a $900-something leak detector. Somebody's mentioning here. Ultrasonic, yeah. Ultrasonic. Those are also expensive. The good ones are. They are. They are expensive. They are good at what they do and what they do is pick up that particular sound of gas escaping. They are programmed and the microphone is tuned just for that sound and if it's good conditions to use something like that, an ultrasonic does very well. It does. Sometimes it's not a good condition It might be windy outside or something. There might be background noise. There might be something going on in the background that interferes with the microphone. But if you can use one, they're very good at what they do. I'll be right back, guys. Go ahead. I'll use the restroom. I'll go back. We lost Xavier there for just a second. When he comes back, we're probably going to be saying goodbye. I did not realize it has already been an hour. Jeff says, I know you don't like your Inficon Stratus, but he says his has been solid. Yeah, that was the $900 leak detector I was talking about. I didn't just have one. I had basically one that was rebuilt multiple times, new sensors, new batteries. And then they sent me a whole nother one. I had lost my faith by that point. Xavier, we have been on almost an hour, and I think one of these platforms, I think it's Instagram, might cut me off at an hour. So it might be a real good time to go ahead and say goodbye. And thanks to everybody. And thank you for coming on, man. I've been watching your stuff, and I like watching HVAC videos where people are doing real work. real deal. There are some channels out there where it looks so super clean and set up and like, oh, what a nice place. A perfect attic where all the duct work looks perfect. You keep it real. That's why I like your channel, man. So thanks for coming on. I appreciate that. Thank you for having me. No problem. And to everybody who came out to the live, a happy belated 4th of July.