HVAC GUY Q and A!

Hey guys. Hey, we are live. I don't know if my guest is going to show up today. I think she might be busy. I have invited Jennifer from HVAC Chicks to come talk with us. She might show up a little bit later. We will see. But until then, y'all are stuck with me. Y'all let me know if y'all can hear me and everything's doing okay. I'll be looking for your comments. Lately around Around here, things have been a little bit crazy with the weather. It has been... A lot of rain, and it's been a lot of the rain that has been making the news across the country. We've had localized a little bit of flooding, like flash flooding, yards flooding, nothing major. I'm glad to hear you can hear me, Chris and Tim. Who else is in here? The Mad Titan. I think I saw the Fat HVAC guy. I need to find out if he has any videos or something for me to look at because he's commented a lot on things. Eric McCurdy and Eric Lehman. Is this, please tell me that's the same Eric. No, that can't be the same Eric that I know. You have a similar name. There's a, there's an Eric that manages a, um, Baker Distributing here. And he has a very similar name. Hey Tony. Um, yeah, I invited. Jennifer from HVAC Chicks to come on. I think something's come up in her schedule. She hadn't been able to make it. Maybe we can reschedule and try to get her on another time. I was excited about being able to talk to her because she seems to have a lot of book knowledge about HVAC and I wanted to ask her about her background and what was going on. So if she comes on, maybe we can do Or we may reschedule her for another time. El Caballo. Thanks for letting me know you can hear me. The Fat HVAC Guy. Do you have a YouTube channel? I need to look it up to see if you do. Can't be a bad guy with a name like HVAC Guy. Oh, okay, Eric. You're friends with Jake. There is an Eric here that manages our Baker Distributing, and if he doesn't have the same last name, it is very close. Well, guys, I hope none of this crazy weather has been affecting any of y'all out there as far as flooding or there's like all kinds of fires and hazy smoke in the news. I'm sure the smoke has affected some of y'all. I hope the flooding has not. So down here, we don't see any effects from the smoke. The only thing Georgia's been in the news for is for some kind of shooting. Um, you know, I'm not real sure if somebody asked how options trader Dan, I don't know what happened to John Israel. I, um, I don't know. I thought I knew, I thought he was going through some hard times, but, um, I don't, I don't know. I don't know what's going on with him. I have no idea. I'd like to know myself. Um, he kind of helped inspire me to start my channel. Well, seat in HVAC. Let me see if I can show that. I don't know how you did that. I have had several systems that say they can do downflow and then I have problem with water actually falling off the coil, like the blower is sucking it off the coil instead of it going down into the drain pan. That happens to be a common problem with systems that have been converted to downflow when they're usually upflow or horizontal. And it's something that has to be treated over and over again. And I don't know what y'all use to treat coils. We call it, if water's not flowing down the coil correctly, we call that a wettability issue. And I just use plain Windex. I just soak the coil with Windex and it works. It might work for a couple years, two, three years. And you have to come back and treat it again. What do y'all use? I know some people concoct their own soapy solution, but Windex works for me. Ohio, boring as always. One of my few college degrees comes from Ohio University. You can see it in the background right there. I actually have never been to Ohio. I got it through distance learning, and I think that's the way I got it, but they are sort of my alma mater. Well guys, like the video I had today, I used one of those Turbo 200X capacitors to get somebody through. I needed a 70 and 10, but man, those capacitors are expensive. I left it on there, and I charged him the going price for one of those, and he was more than happy to pay it, but man, that's expensive when you have to pay like $100 for a capacitor. The charge on the other end is steep. Let's see, I'm trying to see all your comments. Hogs from South Carolina. Should I publish this name? I've got to. No, that's California. South California. If y'all know what that name means, keep it to yourself. Garrett Vlogs AC. Well, maybe go check out his channel. Let me see. What's the max revenue a one-man-in-a-van company can do without slaving seven days a week? I don't want to reveal too much. But a one-man-in-a-van can make a very good living by himself. You might need to get help sometimes, maybe doing installs or something. But you can probably make more money than most of the people that got a four-year degree in college. I think I will do a little bit more of a Easily. message. . Easily. . Yes. . . Yeah, you can make good money. . . . . I like to say I fix the things that engineers design, and . . . . . . . . yeah, I make more than most engineers that I've met. . . . . . Why didn't I go pick the correct capacitor . . . . size? Well, there's a couple reasons. . . Once you put on the capacitor, in my opinion, it's used. I don't want to use it again, and it's got a good warranty on those capacitors, and it's American-made, so I'll leave it on there, and I'll just go get another one. If I was going to go pick up a new one, I would just go get the right size and I'll just get a replacement next time I go to the parts house. Sorry about the audio if it's out of sync. Tony says he's a one-man show, but he uses a second guy for installs. I have found that I kind of have to do something like that because spending six, seven, eight hours in one spot. Means I can't be catching calls that are coming in throughout the day or so. Yeah, I need help with installs. So that keeps me from limiting myself. So I do use help for installs. I do the same thing. Okay, fat HVAC guy. I was never a paramedic. I was a basic EMT. That was part of some of what I was doing when I was trying to find what kind of career I wanted to get into. But those guys don't make any money. No, no. And everybody who worked in that field told me that that was not a career that I wanted. I actually worked as an EMT. I volunteered. I couldn't get a job. I lived on the border of South Carolina and Georgia, and I was not certified in Georgia. I was certified in South Carolina, and everybody wanted me to be certified in both. And I just didn't pursue it very, very far. Let me highlight this one real quick. Yeah, I would like to. Offer the Gree inverter package unit. It's about time somebody came out with an inverter package unit. So yeah, I'm glad to see it. And I may be offering some of that. All right, Garrett, I'm going to respond to this. Train is a good product. Yeah, but it's nothing special. Not in my opinion. It's no better than Carrier or Rheem. Or they do have really good marketing. I'll give them that. I don't think they're particularly any better than the other good brands. You know, when I volunteered as an EMT, there were a couple of times that we had to wait for the police to secure the scene before we could do anything. It's like we show up and you don't know if somebody in there's got a gun or what, but we would have to wait. Let me see. Was that during? No, that was after the pandemic. I appreciate it, Don. I'm starting Are you involved with HVAC at all? Oh, you do. Here it is. HVAC controls. One of the big companies that I used to work for, it was one of the biggest companies here to in town. speak They used to have a controls division, and then those guys left and started their own company. now. So I wanted to get into controls while I was there because I understood them. I just didn't get to work on them very much. But that never happened. The closest thing to controls I see is if I do a commercial call and it's got some kind of fancy control board on it, sometimes Johnson Control boards on them or something like that with a ribby relay or something like that. That's about as deep as I get into it. Pokey Dad. You know, the guys who work for police deserve just as much of a thanks as our military does because I honestly believe those guys are in more danger than our military is overseas sometimes. especially around here. I live across a river from a rough neighborhood and we hear automatic gunfire and sounds like a war zone over there sometimes and it's rough. All right pink guy I hope you don't dress like that if you intend to work. But yeah you can use a beater truck but please try to make it temporary. If you show up in a beater truck people aren't going to expect Great things and they're not going to expect a big price tag. If you show up in a nice looking vehicle, they expect professionalism and they expect to be charged accordingly. So get rid of the beater as soon as you can. I started my business out of an Xterra and as soon as I could, I went and got a loan for a van. Well, Chris, 407C does require an oil change. So MO99 is my go-to. In fact, it does very well. It does better than the 422Bs. So I use the MO-99. Larry, I worked in HVAC until I felt very confident in my troubleshooting. And so it's really up to you and your state laws as to when you feel like you're ready for something like that. Well, El Caballo, I have not tried to retrofit into R32. Are you speaking about stuff that is R454 and retrofitted for R32? Or are you talking about retrofitting existing? R22 systems to R32. Thank you, Timmy. Okay, pink guy, the air conditioner that I installed that I bought and put on my other house is a Gree. The one I have here was given to me by Bosch, and it is not my favorite. The Gree is, but I have a Bosch on my house here. All right, Javier. Yeah. Early in my life, I had the opportunity to work with lots of Hispanics in construction. I say that in a very nice way. I had the opportunity and I just immersed myself into the culture and I studied and I learned. I was reading dictionaries on end for hours and I just put in a lot of work and studying and I became fluent quickly. That's just how I did it and I try to keep it current. Sometimes I think I've lost more Spanish than most people learn because I don't practice enough. All right, retrofitting R22 to R32. I don't know if you're talking about changing a condenser in a TXV or something. If that's the case, no, I haven't done that. Thank you, Techstar. I'll be honest, tonight I'm probably going to keep it kind of short. I was hoping to have our guest with us because I had a ton of questions for her, and I'm going to have to reschedule it. Garrett, are you just getting started as an HVAC technician, or do you want to be one? If you're just getting started, best of luck. Work hard, learn everything you can. Okay, this is a pertinent question because in some of my videos lately, I have had let me move this over. In some of my videos lately, I have had Freon loss when I'm hooking up my gauges, and that's largely because of bad O-rings, and I've been changing my O-rings. The low-loss fittings, I choose not to use low-loss fittings when I can because they cause problems when you're pulling a vacuum. That's just another connection you've got to worry about when you're pulling a vacuum. I mean, I'm already having to worry about my... Core removal tools and then the connections on my hoses. If I'm pulling through my manifold, I got to worry about my manifold. And I don't want to have to worry about a low loss fitting too, because sometimes they do leak. I have heard that some drop-ins or some replacements for R410 are already on the market. I haven't seen any myself, but I'm hearing that they're already making them. Eric, I got to agree with you on that one because I'll be honest, even when I'm in those rough neighborhoods, like the one across the river, when I'm there, people know I'm there to help. People don't bother me. I feel safer there than I do even in Walmart. I mean, I just, you're always helping people and they know it. Yeah, I'm known for saying lovely when I see something. My granddad used to say, well, I'll be John Brown. That was his thing. I don't know. Can somebody answer that question? Is the second version of Craig's HVAC book worth it? The only book of his that I have was on the mini splits, went over some inverter technology, went over the electronic expansion valves, and there was a lot of that I knew, and there were some good things in there that I didn't know. So his books are very thorough. I don't think it's a bad buy if you do buy it, even if you have the first one. Okay, Jim, on that video, I I had to pull, I was having a lot of trouble pulling the vacuum partially because of my valve core removal tools and I had to use one of those adapters on the valve core removal tool that I did have. So I didn't show everything though but I did get it down into a good vacuum and I swapped over and got the other one down into a good vacuum. Sometimes I just wish they'd make it real easy to pull a vacuum. Make me a valve core removal tool like the Apion that has a quarter inch end on it so I don't have to use the adapter when I'm doing a mini split to pull a vacuum. And that's what I had. I had the Apion but it was leaking so I just I was having a rough time that day. Emerson home warranties can be something that can help you get started and fill in some of the blank spots. Be careful. I completely quit doing them. I used to. I used to do home warranties a lot. I quit doing them because I was too often not getting paid or I would agree on a certain price. And then when I go to bill out, I realize I can't bill out for that amount and I have to call in and spend another 45 minutes on the phone to get the right price. And then they make you feel like you're overcharging them or something's not covered and you're the bad messenger. Thank In fact, that's really the only way with home warranties to make money comparable to what you normally would make is if you have non-covered charges. And that's just, I felt like it makes you. you the bad guy. You've got to tell the customer it's not covered. A preventive maintenance, a drain is not going to be covered because it's a preventable problem by regular maintenance or something like that. And I just, I got tired of that and I got tired of not getting paid. I'll just say some people are more showmen than they are technicians. It looks like Rudy's in the house. I'm still halfway hoping that Jennifer can show up, but it don't look like she's going to make it. Guys, I've been waiting on a delivery to show up. Hopefully, it'll show up tomorrow, and it might make a difference on my video editing. So I was really hoping to get a hold of it. I actually ordered a really nice computer, and I was hoping to get a hold of it soon. And it may help me do some high quality editing. So I was looking forward to it. Maybe tomorrow. Well, guys, because we don't have a guest, I'm going to cut this one short and I'll try to reschedule. Jennifer, I do appreciate y'all hopping on and all the questions and I'll I'm going to try to come back next Wednesday. I'll try to come back next Wednesday to and maybe have another guest for you. And it's always easier to do one of these lives if you have a guest, someone to talk to instead of just reading comments and responding to y'all. But I do like doing that as well. It's a chance for me to interact with y'all. But y'all do do take care. I'm going to sign off. I'm going to catch y'all on the next one.