The Spring & Summer HVAC Maintenance Guide for Technicians to Prevent System Failures Fast
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All right, boys and girls, so we're heading into the summer season. It's the spring. A lot of you are in full cooling mode already, depending on where you live, right? Now, for myself, one day, because I'm in Toronto, I'm sure that the northern states feel this as well. One day you're hot, the next day you're cold, or the morning's cool, the afternoon's hot. So it's that swing temperature, that shoulder season still that some of us are in. But

Let's go through some maintenance tips for cooling because I think it's really important to...

capture some maintenance tips that can be utilized, whether you're in residential or commercial. And they're just sort of universal tips that can be put to the test or put to work every time you're in front of a piece of equipment. So these monthly HVAC tips are brought to you by Jobber. Jobber is the sponsor of the series. And Jobber is the CRM that I use to run my business, McCready HVAC and refrigeration. I do all my quoting with it.

it. I invoice with it. I can schedule with it. I can go in and check on my funds, see who owes me, see who doesn't. And it just keeps me organized and paperless. So if you guys want to check out Jobber, there's a free two-week trial. It is getjobber.com forward slash HVAC know-it-all and I'll leave the link in the podcast show notes. So number one, guys, if you're on a call or a maintenance and it's

the initial sort of startup, my AC is not working or it's the initial maintenance to check it, always go to the fan section. I don't care if it's a rooftop. I don't care if it's a little air handler for a heat pump or if it's a furnace that is tied into an AC, it doesn't matter. Go to the air handling portion of the machine. Make sure the filter is clean, right? That's super important. How many technicians have diagnosed maybe like shorter refrigerant when it's a dirty filter?

So make sure that the fan is operating. It's going in the right direction. So check those blower fins to make sure there's nothing caught in those blower fins because that can cause some vibration. You're going to want to check a belt or pulley or belts. If it's commercial and you have belts or pulleys, you want to make sure that that's all good and pristine and there's no cracks in the belt. There's no wear and tear on the pulleys. You're going to want to check bearings. So the filter, uh,

and the fan, making sure that it works and the airflow is moving in the right direction. Like we're not going backwards because that can happen too. And it can throw you for a loop. You think the fan's running and everything's good, but it's actually going in reverse direction. I've seen it before many times. So always, always, always check your airflow component first before you check anything else. All right. Now, if you're going to start up a machine, it's always best if you can to start it up

straight from where it's controlled, if you can, because that is the whole sequence of operation for that machine because that's where it starts up for a homeowner or a building owner or a facilities person is where it gets controlled. Is it a thermostat? Is it building automation? If it's a thermostat, you can walk right up to it. You can go tap it.

set it to cool, make sure it works. By doing that, you're ensuring from the thermostat, the wiring down to wherever it goes or up to wherever it goes and then out to the outdoor unit. If it is a system that is split, everything's intact and everything is working. Now,

A lot of homeowners are doing it from their phones these days. You can ask them, hey, can you turn that on for me? Sure. The other thing, if it's commercial and it's a building automation system, you may need to sit down at a computer. Maybe you can log in with your phone. Maybe the customer can do that and start it up there. It's just a good idea because you never know, right? So some other things you can do is just take notice of what's in the home. If it's straight heating, cooling, and that's all they got,

Do they have any form of humidification? Do they have any form of dehumidification or ventilation at all? These are things that are in the pillars of indoor air quality, right? Humidification control or humidity control. We're talking about ventilation. We're also talking about filtration as well. So,

Do they have these things in place? Do they have the right filter? Is it a one inch airflow death or do they have a nice deep pleated filter? Check and see what it is because it's always an ethical upgrade to show them what it can do for a system when we upgrade a filter. It's also worth talking to them about ventilation and humidity control if they don't have those things in their home. But these are also things that we should be checking as well. Maybe not humidification in the summer, but

But dehumidification, do they have something that controls it? Maybe check it out or ask them if you can. Even if it's a standalone unit, get it going for them. It looks good on you. Even if they just bought it at a hardware store and plugged it in, turn it on for them and check it and tell them the advantages of setting it to the correct RH and making sure it potentially drains into a drain. Because a lot of them have that feature now where you can pull out a bucket and drain it.

or you can have it constantly draining. Constantly draining is my suggestion. Then you don't have to keep going to drain it and you maintain that humidity level in the home with it. So these are things to look at as well because these can be ethical add-ons to your maintenance or if there's problems with them, these are ethical things that you can go ahead and try to fix for them as well. A visual inspection always does wonders, especially when you're opening up an electrical panel of a unit that's outside because it's

you don't know what's been going on there. There could be animals, there could be spiders, there could be moisture penetration into the panels through, through a harsh winter. And the contactor could be worn. It could have suffered a little bit of carbon tracking back to the panel, or there could be a chance of carbon tracking back to the panel. If there's a

good buildup of dust on the top of it. So you got to watch for that too, because with that dust and moisture, especially in high moisture areas like Florida, if you have some dust or carbon sitting on top of a contactor and basically what can happen is the moisture embeds itself from that line one, that line one connection, that current will travel through the line one connection. It will travel through

through that dust or carbon that is moisture saturated because moisture is conductive and it'll go right back to the panel and can pop a breaker. And then when you get there on a dry day, everything's working, you're like, I don't know what happened. This happens quite a lot. So really, really well inspect those contactors, inspect them good. And if you see any signs of that,

I mean, they're cheap, recommend replacing them. Obviously check your capacitors and stuff too. Make sure there's no cracks in the fan blades. Make sure the fans are spinning in the right direction. The amp draws good. Compressor amp draws good. I don't necessarily like gauging up. I mean, if you have to, yes, but I'd much prefer you use probes and then you don't fill up a hose with refrigerant every time, or you don't have a chance of putting refrigerant from another system that could be contaminated into the system you're working on.

It just prevents that cross-contamination of different units that are out there. So go to that condensing unit or outdoor unit, rooftop, whatever it is, and visually inspect all of the electrical. Okay. Because it will save you aggravation down the road if you catch some things with your eye, especially on the contactors and get them changed. And that way they're safe and they're happy through the summer.

A bunch of obvious things too, like coils. Are the coils clean? Are the condensate lines clean? Are the pans clean? Because keeping the system clean is half the battle, probably a little bit more than half the battle because there's a lot of calls that come in

during a summer where someone hasn't cleaned a coil and it's overheating, someone hasn't cleaned the drain and it's clogged and it's backing up, it's caused damage on an ECM blower, for example. So make sure everything is clean. If it's not, all you can do is recommend it unless it's part of your service to do so when you come out there to do it. But if it's not,

and it's not part of your service say hey that needs to be clean i can do it while i'm here type thing right i mean let's go back to the air handling portion for a minute if it's the first time you've been to this site it's always a good idea to check your total external static pressure and then record it because if you know what it is the first time you go there and it's correct and all that then you can use it as something that can be used as a reference point down the road

And to be honest with you, I don't like equipment graffiti. I don't like it when people write all over equipment. But if you just took a nice little corner of the air handler panel or something like that, and you wrote the total external static pressure with a Sharpie nice and neat at the top corner, bottom corner, I think that would be pretty cool for the next guy. I just don't like it when people go, yeah, compressor changed, whatever.

2001, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they write it right on, on top of the panel. I think that's silly. Okay. But on the inside of a panel, nice and neat, something like day one, external static pressure from your first visit. I think that would be very valuable for yourself and the next tech that's coming through to check. So that's kind of sort of the last bit of a tip that I'll give you on this one. Just want to make it short and sweet guys, IPA tracking.