75-Ton Carrier Low Superheat Alarm: Factory Mistake!

This video is brought to you in part by True Tech Tools. Quality tools, essential support. [music] Okay, guys. So, here's what we got going on. We have a newer unit here that we installed 6 months ago, something like that. And it's got variable speed compressor on circuit A. What we've got going on is it's getting too warm. This is a variable air volume unit, meaning it puts out about 55° on average. It was getting kind of warm in the building. So we come over here to our alarms. We are getting current alarms. We have a low SSH suction superheat or saturated superheat. Whichever, either or. Either way, not good. That's your current alarms. Now, a little bit ago, if you go into your alarm history, we've got that low superheat thing on a circuit. We've had it on had got a configuration issue. Compressor stuck on alarm. We've had another compressor stuck on alarm. That's happened multiple times on A2. A2. We've had a circuit failure to pressurize alert on circuit A. Some more SSH. So, we've had two or three problems here which are kind of crazy on a typical new system. This uh control panel is pretty pretty slick. It's fairly new design. It's even more advanced in the new view and all that kind of stuff. and even some of the some of the chillers pretty much don't need your gauges or anything else because you can read everything that's going on and depending on you know you've got menus here so you've got your inputs pressure and this is really a simplified dumb down version so I've went through and we've already looked at all the different pressures uh they all are there so what I'm figuring low super heat you could be messing a temperature transducer a pressure transducer you could actually be low on refrigerant could have a sticking TXV V or EXV. Um, you know, there's all kinds of false pigeons there to kind of make you believe that it's truly whatever it's trying to tell you. So, still kind of going through trying to figure out what's going on cuz like I said, right now it's not giving me the compressor failure that it was giving me earlier. And this this display, one of the things that really sucks about it is it is not friendly. As you can see, the glare sucks. And I'm seeing that same glare that the camera's seeing. So, and then of course you got to have the sun right there in your eyes. But hey, it's a very secured facility to say the least. So, we won't be able to show anything on the inside, which honestly there's nothing to even show on the inside because all the controls are up here. There's nothing controlled from down below. Everything is based off of static pressure and temperatures and what you've set it for. So, I did wire up the shut down here for the smoke detector, which got some older wire and stuff there. checked all my fuses, breakers, all those have power. We're at the high end. We're like 490, sometimes 500. So, I mean, we're at the very tiptoe top there. And whenever we get done, we got to go over to another federal agency of sorts that has a problem with their mini split, but we won't be able to do much. Won't be able to show much in that. Okay. So, we're going in here into some of the deep levels of the forbidden no [music] zones. See here, cooling set points. occupied 70, unoccupied 80, low cool saturated 60, high cool 55. I mean, everything. And that's what's crazy is it's it's actually showing me that, you know, the current alarm is no longer a failed compressor, which, you know, we can go into we we got full-blown access here to do what we want. So, we're all good on all that. We're just kind of poking around to see where is the malfunction. What's your major malfunction here, son? 4 in the morning till 1900 hours, which would be what? 7 8 9. Yeah, 7 o'clock. Monday through Friday and holidays. Inputs. Let's go to temperatures. Let's see if we can see refrigerant temps, cuz that's what you would need for your calculation. Okay, here we go. Suction gas temperature 61 on the other and 57 on the other. They share it because they're uh together on one circuit. Air temps, see if they're out of whack. Supply, we're at 57.9. Outside 70.9. This has reheat. It's got exhaust. It's got a buff and wax for your shoes. You name it. So, it's got a little everything. Nothing is standing out. That's the thing. It sucks. It's like, well, then what's your malfunction, son? This is a new system to me. This controller is the only one I've seen like this. It's It's very similar to some of the new carrier chiller units. Yeah. Here we go. Speed. Compressor A1 speed 160 hertz. A2 speed 60. So yeah, the compressor A1 is your variable two is your is your uh contactor style and same thing with B1 and B2. The circuits B2 and all that are off. Now the reason why is we're finally at set point. So we've got a book here and I'm not much hung for reading, but if you look at it, startup instructions, install, ain't crap in here really about service, anything like that. Air filters are all clean. Air filters are all clean. You know, the compressor failure thing, it's not doing it. Okay, there's your blowers, so there's no belts slipping. Oh, look at that. It's actually made in the USA. I wonder how long that'll last till it rusts. This was not a cheap unit to say the least. This is why I don't like doing residential anymore. Once you get really good at it, it won't really matter. But to me, it's just how many of you get to work on stuff like this? This is the only one we got around here like this. Oh, we don't have skyscrapers or no crap. I mean, that building over there, these are the tallest buildings we got. I mean, that's that's it. And check suction transducers. See how those are. You've got one right here. It's not the one I need. Well, yeah, it is actually circuit B. That one's circuit B, which we're both doing it. Here we go. Yep. We just got to take this 600 screws out and we can get into there. Now, we can get kind of in here to this on both of these. Oh, you can see we got some reheat gizmo gadgets in here. You see up there, we got one reheat three-way valve there. And there's another one on right here. I can kind of see that a little better. This one right here is B. [sighs and snorts] There we go. Start this back up. We're at 165. Let's go to refrigerant type 454. That's 63.9°. It's 68 out. It's within 5°. That ain't too hard far off. See what the old turn to the experts here says. Come on expert, tell me what your reading is. Okay. Refrigerant pressure is 169. Circuit B 166.6. So 789. I mean it's 3 3 PSI. That's assuming mine's not off and theirs not off. There's 70 170 almost. I mean that's pretty dog on close there. I'd want to go grab a couple other gauges to make certain, you know, who's who's right. So 169. Uh the other one on A is 168. Go over here. See if that how that is before it switches before it switches on. Okay. 169 as well. So that one's almost that's within one PSI. 169.8 versus 168. So it's a 2 PSI off on that one there. So I mean nothing is really crazy off there on that. I mean not enough to like I mean unless we were like stupid low. Okay. We're looking at saturated temperature. So the saturated in field piece is 65. Saturated on carrier here is 64.4 and 69 63.9. So we're within a very minute amount. Here is your super heat temps which were like zeros because we're just at the temperature that it's actually reading. All right. Well, see that we're not given enough time which I seen that's an option. Let's go in here. Let's go to reset alarms. Reset. Go to yes. Boom. Boom. Hit set. Boom. That turned that red to no more. Current alarms gone. Vensor fans are on. I guess if anything, we'll just watch this super heat here. Go into inputs again. Inputs is a nice little shortcut I feel. That way it kind of gives you everything that's coming into the to the controller. So, let's go to temperatures cuz that already figured it out for us. So now we'll be able to watch super heat on A and B both at the same time, which makes All right, there she goes. Oh, we got another storm coming. Great. And there goes the condenser down. Super heat right now on B appears to be the one that's running. It's at 7 8. See how long it takes for it to come out of that. Let's hit start on the stopwatch. So currently we're at 9 and 10° on the the B circuit. We're set for 13 and go to outputs. Let's see what's actually calling to run one. B1 is on. A2 is off. So B1 is definitely on. So back to the inputs. It's good to pressures for giggles. 158. I got 158 right there. 158 right there. That's on A. On B. I'm sorry. That's not suction. B 13. Oh, wait a minute. Suction pressure on Oh, I'm on A though now. Yeah, we need to switch that back. But so far everything looking good. Let's go back to super heat cuz by the time I get to it, it's not going to tell me a whole lot. Let's go back to temperatures, pressure, and temps. 11 and 12° superheat. I mean, good grief, man. Can't ask for much more than that. I mean, you got half a degree between the two. I don't know how it's doing that when they're only one circuit. That's not too impressive. We may have to talk to the our uh carrier rep and see they've had an issue with this and kind of maybe go from there. We've got the probe switched over. So B, we're saturated B, that's 51°, 51°, 133 on our pressure. We've got 132, 1339. I mean, good grief. Come on. One ding pound, 2 lb. So we're holding good at a lower, you know, reading. So I don't like that display, man. You get grease, oil, whatever. So I mean, I don't think that's an issue. We may just have temperamental device here. There's no real controls on this. just basically controlling itself. Look at our sight glass. Now you remember no receiver. We're flashing like crazy because we're only running one compressor. Same thing over here. Only one compressor. What are you supposed to do? Why don't it calculate for that? Why doesn't it shut down some of the condenser when you're not using all of it so that you can keep a solid column of liquid and you don't have to fight the EXV? I mean, if you don't need the whole coil, why not shut it down like you do a uh refrigeration system on a grocery store? So, you know, that's a little wacky. Not the first time I've seen that. Hey, right here, 75 ton unit. That's what we're working on. And reduce charge if you're above or below the suction saturated temperatures there. That's hilarious. That's how you determine whether the charge is right. Okay. I still say it's ridiculous. Whatever. Well, I'm going to go grab my uh big ass field pre piece clamp and check the suction saturated. We're going to check the temperature. I don't know where they're uh getting the temperatures at though. See if they got anything on here cuz I do not see any clamps or any type of uh temperature sensors. Uh these schematics suck ass. And then look how how thick the print is. You can tell it's probably red, but man, it is so hard to read. They just There you go. I know you spent thousands of dollars on it, but why should we give you a good easy to read print? It's just ridiculous. Where's this turd made at? There we go. Everything you need to know. Design in the United States of China, assembled in Mexico. Everybody's leaving Mexico because this is a better place to come and they sneak in here, but yet we go and have them build it because they're better at it. Or is it because they're cheaper labor? Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Lots of sense. That ain't nothing against Mexican people. I love them. They're great. My daughter just married one. So, it's one of them things where it's just bull crap that we then they didn't give us a discount on this. There's no discount on this. Still the same price. Price didn't go down, but you made it cheaper, which means you made more money. No patriotism at all. I just left a message from my guy. Here we are again. We've got the compressor A2 failure warning and we have compressor A pressure trip alert. So, those are the new alarms we've got. Now, this that's what I'm saying. We've got How are we having all these problems? You know what I'm saying? I've already went through and double checked all the tightnesses and all that on the wiring and it's just I feel like we're getting a lot of wacko false alerts. Just uh loving it. Update. So, sounds like software is an issue. We're like 2.8. There's supposedly a 3.3 that we probably would want to try. Sounds like they've had multiple updates. And of course, my ladder fell and then all my screws went. So, cuz it's windy up here. So, we're going to get in there and we're going to look at the evaporators, which chances are there's not a lot I can do. Um, we're going to make sure that our evaporator sensors are all in the right spot. It sounds like from what I'm reading on the temperature sensors that we have a EXV for each each evaporator and a sensor for each one. So, there's a good chance that, you know, maybe one's [snorts] one's off. What if they got the them mismatched? I could see that causing [snorts] a problem. All right, so we finally found our way into the evaporators. There are two evapor there are two EXVs for each evaporator as you can see over there. And there is two suction temperature probes on that one and stuff there as well. The thing is, like he's saying, it sounds like it's a software issue. Kind of interesting. They've got this screen thing here. I think that's to keep the water from coming off the coil. What I was looking at here that I don't like is the copper here. Look at this copper that has gouges in it where they made that bend. So instead of soldering it, they made the bend. And you can see every one of those have got crinkle marks and crinkling like that just makes me think it's going to leak. I don't know. Whatever. Then you got your little 20 cent freaking sensor there and there, which the volume of air coming through here. This thing would have to be like blowing right on it to go off. Um, kind of interesting. Yeah. And that's rifled, too. You can see the rifling on the outside of it. It's a little difficult. I'm sure we probably can get into it. And then there's a reheat coil right there. What I was hoping to do is maybe unhook um sensors and stuff and see if they change temp, make sure it's on the right one. It just seems awfully odd because it shut down. This ain't going to run the way we got it. So, need to check with somebody in charge, see if they want me to doodle dink with that or not, cuz that's kind of like potentially like digging in a little deep. So, I guess if I was thinking, I would have went at this from the other side. This is a little little bit tight, but we're getting there. Some shoddy looking work right there in there. I ain't tight. Look at those. Those are going to rattle until they leak. That's nice. There's a Is that a sight glass on that thing? That is It's inspection glass. Look at that. That's cool. Just like on the big boy ones. Yeah, that'll never leak. Can't tell they got that hotter and all get out when they put it on, huh? And they melted all that in. Didn't even take it off before they did it. I'm loving it. And then your sensor is taped on right here. That says B, I think, down there. So that might be the one that we're wondering, but you know, A ended up doing it, too. So the thought process is, okay, it did work last year. I asked our our dude in charge what he thinks if we should do it or not. He said, "Go for it." So I think much as I don't want to, I might be better off to go to the other side, even put some wire ties on some of those w on some of those capillary tubes because those are going to rattle and eventually leak. You know, some manufacturers actually put plastic on that so they don't rub into each other like that. That looks like they just literally just taped it on. Problem is, I got the unit shut off so it's not going to um read anything with the way I've got it right now. Okay, that's a little bit easier to get to. Don't know if I need to take both of them apart or not. I figure if one does and one don't like change temperature then obviously we got the right one figured out you know we'll just put that back on and wire tie over top the outside of it. Take that dingly dang off. That's B2 A2. So what the crap B2 A2 Did they Did they do that? What the crap? B2 A2. How how how could that not be? Wait a minute here. Let's think about this. Okay. Are we going to the same suctions? No, they're going to two different suctions. Okay. So, yeah, that's what they did. They they interlaced them. This was a problem they had uh forget how many years ago, but they would run A on top, B on bottom, or vice versa. And when they did that, you'd have all the coil sweating on one side, not the other. So now they interlink them so that they don't have as many issues. This was built July of 2025 according to that right there. So A1 B1. So they do have it, you know, working together. And this is a A1 going to the top. And this should be A1 on top. And this one's kind of the top here on this. Yeah. Kind of on the top to this. So I would say A1 and B1 would be Oh, look at that. Look at that. You got a little bit of twist in that sensor. You see that? That's not good. that what our problem is. Sometimes they get hot or cold like that and they expand differently and everything goes to crap. Well, unfortunately, we'll have to run this thing for a moment. I'll go ahead and just put the door on temporarily. We got that secured. The two bolts at the top or screws. Let's go ahead and run it. Let's watch our temps and see if they go wacky. Don't really matter which one cuz obviously we're hot now in the building. Oh, we got to wait for this for 20 minutes. Okay, so soon as it starts, we'll check it and we'll see what the super heat does. So, we got it started up. Don't know which one's calling just yet. I mean, you see Super Heat 2 is dropping. See if we can go outputs first. See what the outputs are doing. Compressor B1 is on and A1 safe stop is on. That's nice. B1 is on. So, let's go to B1. Let's go to B1. 14°. So, it think either way, whether it takes a crap or not. Suction gas temperature. Here we go. Suction gas on B1. 66° 63 on the other. So, obviously those should be a lot lower. Uh, I would say B1 since it's at 66 and the other one's at 63. The other one's not running and they're pretty much exactly the same. They're getting ambient temperature. So, I'd say that one's accurate. Uh, A2 and A1. A2. A1 is a little lower than A2. It It appears that it's probably right. It should lock out here in a second. And either way, I think I'm going to yank the door off. I'll warm it up with my hand, make sure it's on the right one. Uh, what sucks is you don't even know if the uh, EXV is on the right one. Let's see if we can go to a stop. There we go. Let's go to stop. Remote shut down. And now we can go in there and we can tinker with the temperatures and see if uh, if they change correctly when we mess with them. All right, so there's our temperature. So, all we got to do is go grab a hold of it and make it warm and we'll know that it's the right temperature probe to at least that part of it. Then we can do a test with the EXV and make sure that it opens and closes correct. A1 is what we're messing with right now. This is that one. Like I said, it has a little twisty twist going on. We can just kind of rub and gub. Rub and grub. A1 should be really freaking warm or a lot warmer than the other ones. Should be up at least 70. A1. Okay. A1's up to 84. So that's accurate. Good. [sighs and gasps] So we know that's at least marked for the right one. Here's the other one right here. This one here should be B2. Go ahead and give it the old rubbing rub. So B2 B2 should be warm now. Uh B1, look at this B1 is 81°. B1. Well, didn't we say B2? B1 is warm. Am I Am I losing my mind? B1 is warm. Uh yeah, B2. So it's not accurate. So these idiots got it freaking wrong. And the only reason why it probably worked last year, we had such a load on it, whereas today it's not much of a load. That's all I can come up with. It was hot and they got away with it. Holy dog crap. Are you flipping serious? That's assuming they got it on the right one. I mean, shouldn't they both be ones and twos? So, like this one here is a one and that's a one. It's a two. And this is a two. So, you got your twos and twos together. So, this is really B1. So, that really needs to be down here. That that would completely throw that off. So now you got to unhook the freaking wire ties and corre well that or just switch the freaking things and what a flipping joke. You got them plugged in the wrong spot back at the board somewhere. Yeah. So we got to find out where the freaking temperatures are at. They could be very easily swapped. I just warmed up B1 which comes as B2 to make sure they are right cuz technically you could have A and B switched around and they are correct there. Now, if we can figure out this schematic crap if uh that you can't hardly read. Finally found which one it was. See this little harness here with 50 freaking different ones in it. So, when you unplug that, it gets them all out of whack. And that finally took them out. You kind of figured it out eventually. If you stare and stare and stare, you eventually find A1, A2, and there's another resistor symbol thing there. But these are hooked together. You're better off probably just swapping them back at the unit because there's no way all said and done, you'd have to swap them inside that freaking thing right there. Okay, we loosened it up and was able to get it to reach. Of course, the one I actually needed was still pretty tight. We just need to make sure it works. If it does, great. At this point, [snorts] it's only so much you can do with it. We got the We got the wire ties on there. Got to get this last last one up here on top. get everything wireted back together. You cannot do this on a regular TXV bulb. This is only being done on a thermister cuz thermister makes the contact with it. Not a huge uh difference there uh when it comes to those and that's how they had it before and they know everything. So, you know, it's okay. But that's what we're doing there. And then we'll be testing it. Okay, it's all back together. Let's see if this thing runs. I did not check the EXVs. You know, where do you stop at? It's starting to rain. Ain't that wonderful? Great. This thing's dragging its ass on getting started. It says it's starting. Okay, so checking refrigerant temps here. Super heat 9.7 12.9 11.1 12.8 seem fairly normal. Suction temperatures 62 66 63 64. Alarms currently none. Go into status to see what's exactly going on right now. 49% capacity. So, so far we're doing pretty good, but oh, there went another stage of happiness starting. Okay, super heat so far. Little on the lower side on the A1 7.9. It's come on back up a little bit. There's 8 8.2. There you go. Close it down a little bit. You're going to have a change when you start dumping into the other circuit. You know, I can only assume that they shut this EXV down. Probably could go to outputs to see what that's going on with. Uh, compressor A1 command 79% A2 100% B1 100% B2 is off. EXVS 52 and 69 on a circuit and 59 and 60 on the other. So, what's funny is even though it's not running, they're feeding through one of the evaporators with the refrigerant from the compressor cuz in reality that's probably why it's starving. I mean, you got one compressor pumping, but both EXVs are open. Why would you do that? I guess you got to go somewhere with it, maybe. I don't know. Whatever. You'd think they'd shut it down. But yeah, now since we're under a heavy load right now cuz the building was hot, it's probably going to work a little crazier. Return 75, 56% humidity. Supply air temperature 57. So, we're getting dog on close. Fool capacity 76. Indoor fan speed, 1 in to 1.2. to uh static. So, let it roll. See what happens here. All right, guys. So, this thing is still running without any problems. We're going to probably come back on Monday and double check the uh firmware. See if we can get that updated unless something exciting happens. So, we'll just catch you guys on the next one. Thanks for watching later.