The Truth About HVAC Sealants for Techs to Stop Leaks and Save Compressors – Matthew Cowley Part 1
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All right, guys. So as David Ram states, you listened to David in the last couple of podcasts, it's not your grandpa's heat pump. Well, in this episode, in this introduction, I'm going to tell you it's not your grandpa's sealant. Back in the day, and not too long ago, 15 years ago or so, polymer-based sealants were something that a lot of technicians used and a lot of technicians found that there was some ill results, some

some results that didn't favor. Now, the way they work is through chemical reaction. They hit air moisture, they harden. Things have changed. Things have been updated. Things have been modernized. Oil-based sealants do not react to air and moisture.

They have no chemical reaction. They seal mechanically, so it's a mechanical action, basically coating the inner walls of the pipe with an oil film to prevent leakage from happening. No dead compressors, no clogged valves, it's just not happening with oil-based stuff. So I have Matthew Cowley from Spectronic Corporation, and we're going to talk about internal sealants and how the misconception of the way they work has changed.

And any literature that is based on the way they used to work needs to be updated. It's just something that has to happen. So let's get to this, guys. This is going to be another two-parter. Okay, we got Matthew Calley from Spectronics Corporation. This is the HVAC Know It All podcast. I'm your host, Gary McCready.

This podcast is sponsored by Cintas, and if you're looking for blue collar uniforms or anything that's an accessory to a blue collar uniform, check out cintas.com forward slash HVAC know-it-all for your blue collar uniform needs. Welcome to the HVAC know-it-all podcast, recorded from a basement somewhere in Toronto, Canada. Your host and HVAC tech, Gary McCready, will take you on a deep dive into the industry, discussing all things HVAC.

From storytelling to technical discussion. Enjoy the show. Matt, thanks for joining, man. So the ever-heated debate of sealants and dyes continues.

Now, let me tell you a story. This is actually what I was trying to think of before I hit record. Now, now it's in my head. So one of the first times I ever used sealant, this may be the second or third time I used it in my life. And we're going back years ago. This one particular unit, it was like a high static unit in an, in an attic space of this old century home that was basically an office at this point. And it had a, it had a leak, right?

And back then, and it was in like the evaporator, it was like slow. And, but every nine to 10 months, it seemed like it was just, just shy of a full charge. Right. So anyway, back then the leak sealers came in like a can, like a sealed can. And it had like this hose that came off and the instructions were to evacuate that hose and close the valve and

And then attach it to the system. Now, the reason they were in a can back then is because they were polymer based. As soon as you spray that stuff out into the air or onto like, let's say a piece of cardboard or something like that, it's going to start to harden and solidify. Right. And that's one of the reasons they had you pull a vacuum on that hose too, is because they didn't want air and moisture hitting that, that particular substance as it came out, because the

it had a chemical reaction with the air and the moisture. Now, today, sealants like yours and some others on the market, they're not like that. They're in plastic tubes that don't need to be fully sealed in a can because they're oil-based. They don't

have a chemical reaction. They don't react to air and water. And I have a term for it, and we can talk about this after, but it's called mechanical action, not chemical reaction. So let's just talk about polymer-based sealants that were on the market years and years and years ago. Maybe still are. I'm not really sure because I haven't dealt or worked with them.

But that's where I think the real bad name came from sealants is because of the polymer and the way they reacted and the way they chemically reacted to air and moisture. So talk about the difference between polymer and oil-based, if you don't mind. The easiest way to explain the two different types of sealants, and I think I've used this analogy before on your podcast, is the polymerizing sealants seal like blood dust. You get that scab.

So once the blood reaches the oxygen and moisture in the air, you immediately get a gradual, hard type of scab. And you're just picturing that now. The problem is, again, if you're not vacuuming this equipment completely, you're going to have that moisture in the system. So now that product is reacting to that oxygen and moisture, maybe in places that

It shouldn't, you know, whether it's in your hose on your manifold now, you know. So, again, like you said, that chemical reaction. So back when you use the example of the can, when you sprayed that onto that cardboard, that's your reaction right off the bat. And whereas the oil soluble type of.

products that are out there or your non-polymerizing sealants, you know, our engineering team likes to say that it's fully miscible with most oils. And the problem with most oils is they don't want to just say that the oil, you know, it's oil soluble for all oils because that's just a very broad statement. So, you know, again, you're fully miscible on your non-polymerizing sealants is because again, they're not having that chemical reaction on the actual leak site.

It is more of a mechanical, like you kind of just explained. Going back to that job, and I'm going to be 100% honest, about a week later, the compressor was dead on that unit. Now, I don't know why, because it was never cut open. I can't assume why it's dead. It could have been because it had run low charge. It could have been lack of oil return, no lubrication or lack of lubrication. It could have run hot.

or it was running hot because anytime a system is low on refrigerant, the compressor runs hotter than it does if it had a full dose of refrigerant coming back to cool it because that suction gas actually cools the compressor motor internally. So it could have died because of those two things. It could have died because the polymer-based sealant was in it. Who knows? I don't know. I don't want to guess, right? But there's all kinds of things that could have happened to that unit. Now,

So experimenting over the last eight years with oil-based sealants, I've put it in water, shaken it up, left it for a couple of weeks. It just separates like oil and water. Nothing hardens whatsoever. I put it in, I actually have an article that I wrote and it goes through the steps of what you should do before you use a sealant.

Okay, I don't remember all the steps that I wrote, but I will try to get that link and attach it to the podcast here, whether it's on YouTube or whether it's on one of the podcast websites. So I don't know, in that first, I would say, couple of years of testing oil-based sealant, it went into different applications, rooftop, refrigeration, server room.

Stuff that was all old stuff that all had leaking evaporators. Okay. I can report nothing negative happening to a system. No, no dead compressors, no clogged valves, nothing like that. Did it work in every single scenario? No, because some leaks are just too big for it. It's a hundred percent. It's just an honest statement.

The reason that I put it into different types in scenarios is because I need to test and know where and when it works and where it works. The best is when you have those tiny, tiny microscopic leaks on an evaporator, like formicary corrosion, right there. They're very, very hard to find. You almost will never find it with soap, almost never find it with soap bubbles. You need a good electronic leak detector to find it. And if your electronic goes off and you don't see any bubbles there,

and you have a good electronic, well, it's telling you there's something there. It's just not big enough for that foaming action of the bubbles to happen. And if it is foaming at the site, you might need a microscope to actually see those bubbles foam because it's such a tiny leak. Now, let me read the statement to you. This is literature that apparently is 10 years old. When a sealant is added to a system, it will seep out of any small holes or cracks and

and will solidify and seal the hole on contact with air. Because a sealant will continue to work on subsequent small holes and cracks, it may conceal deterioration of a component of a system and lead to larger leaks in the future. So the problem with that statement is that's based on a polymer-based sealant because it's not going to react to air and moisture. We talked about this on the phone the other day.

The way the oil-based sealants works, and I'll let you explain the way that the oil-based works, right? You tell me how it works. Yep. So you're not getting that chemical reaction. The big thing with the oil-soluble or the fully miscible sealants that are out there, you need a couple things that are at that leak site. You do need the temperature and pressure droplet where you're getting that pull out into the environment from the leak site.

The other big thing is, like you mentioned, the corrosion issue on the coil. You're getting a lot of jagged edges for them to grab onto. So again, the sealant for us, it's a very pliable type sealant that kind of coats the inner layer of the equipment. Your oil is there for lubrication, and you're just adding a little bit of an oil-soluble additive into that lubricant.

for any of those pesky leak sites. When you're not having that chemical reaction, it is only really working where it can actually hold onto. So it will never bridge that gap like you mentioned on those larger leak sites where you actually have a big hole. Again, going back to the corrosion issues, I usually say our cool seal or glow seal products work best

with that, that issue that we're seeing because of, um, you know how they're manufactured now, you know, you're, you're getting an aluminum coil, whereas they're just not as well run as the other ones that were, you know, your copper or anything like that in the past. If you're looking for HVAC parts, supplyhouse.com is a shortcut for part shopping. They have thousands of HVAC parts from all the leading brands and the orders get shipped and

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Oil has been used as a bit of a way to seal things in mechanical devices for a very long time in between two pieces of metal, putting a little bit of oil on it is used to help create that seal. I mean, this is not new news. This is old school knowledge. So the way the oil-based sealant works is it's constantly running through the system and it's creating that thin layer, that thin coating that

across the leak site. It's not actually coming out and hardening and covering deterioration on the outside. It's doing it from the inside. And I think that's one of the misconceptions here is there's no chemical reaction, whatever. It's mechanical action and it's coating the inner walls of the pipe and it's sealing it that way with a thin layer of lubricant.

Obviously, it's a little bit different than just straight oil. Obviously, it's manufactured to create a bit of a film or a seal around that. But coming back to the usage. Now, the article I wrote, it's the last step. Now, sometimes I use it.

as the first step. And I'm not recommending people do this. I use it as the first step in, in means of testing. That's, that's it. Not in means of I'm, my repair is done. I'm washing my hands of it and walking away. It's testing. I'm going to put this in and I'm going to see what happens next. And I'm going to monitor this machine for a month, two months, three months and see what happens. So I can learn from it and report back people that I work with

my audience and get the truth out there because people are under the misconception that if you put dye or sealant into a system, it's immediately going to clog or kill something. But my testing over eight years has honestly shown the complete opposite of that. I've used a D-Tech Stratus and a Testo 316-3 within a week or two after putting an oil-based sealant in in the right application and

And it's shown that the leak site has gotten smaller on a PPM level, because the DTEK Stratus has the parts per million in the cloud hunting.

and you can see the ppm shrinking i think the one i did in a server room unit it started at like 25 ppm cloud hunting and after a couple of weeks it was down to one or two parts per million so one or two weeks later it could have been zero but i i didn't go back to the site and test it at that point one of them was a liber unit another server room application where my my detector was hitting we experimented with die in that case because i'm like you know what this unit's old it's gonna get

hopefully replaced soon. The coil at minimum needs to be replaced. We're going to put some dye in it and pinpoint where that leak is to show the customer we did. And it was the tiniest little speck of dye. So tiny. Put the sealant in, oil-based sealant. A couple of weeks later, Tesla 316-3 in the exact same spot did not go off. No radar. So we're not, we're not masking a leak. We're, we are actually insulating or not insulating. We're, we're layering oil

oil-based sealant on the inner walls of the pipe and preventing the leak from actually leaking out of the pipe. And it continues to work through the life of the system unless there's a big leak that opens up or something like that.

No, I mean, like we've always talked about, the only industry that doesn't include this type of technology on the OEM side, which we kind of talked about on the phone the other day, is the HVAC market. You know, like putting the product in, you know, obviously the difference between the dye and sealant for us.

they're very system safe. So to think that one would cause system failure and the other one wouldn't, you know, again, our products are made to be able to be included in the equipment from the beginning. And again, like we've talked about on the automotive side, you know, the product is used in the beginning because of the ability for it to, again, like you just said, the longer it's in there, the more it coats that equipment, the more it's actually,

circulating and mixing with that host fluid, the better the product actually works. I know that we talked about a specific manufacturer and it's probably public information, but, and you let me know if we can name them or not, but there's a refrigerant manufacturer right now on the automotive side. They actually add your Gloseal product

to the refrigerant drum itself. So when you add refrigerant to the automotive, to the vehicle, you're already getting glow seal from the refrigerant inside of it. This is something that I boldly predicted is probably going to happen at some point in the HVAC market as well because of the fact that we are dealing constantly with warranty evaporator leaks that are diminishing a profit for a company. Because let's face it,

If there's a one-year labor warranty on a system that you put in, and the coil's 10 years, let's say, the coil might be free. But within that year, your labor is not. You have to pay. The company owner has to pay that tech to go change that coil out, right? So they're losing money because the manufactured coil cannot contain refrigerant for the first year. And this is a problem. And it's a business decision for some companies to

to add it from day one. And I know this is happening and it's actually helped them avoid warranty calls. And it's,

it hasn't done anything damage to the unit whatsoever. So that manufacturer, can you name them or no? Oh, let's not name the, like you said, it's pretty much public knowledge. If you knew the tracer product brands, you would know that that company would be something that we support. And it's not just that, that one brand, the, our automotive markets, you know, we're, we're the only ones that are working with all of the OEM manufacturers, you know, Ford to Tesla, you know, on the,

Whereas on the HVAC side, you know, your Dyken equipment and all that, those different manufacturers, they tend to, like you said in the beginning, shy away from the even conversation of including dye. You know, do I agree that it's,

changing and going to change over time great but on the automotive side you know we're the ones where the manufacturers are coming to us for you know our expertise on what actually is being included in the system so you know they're you're 100 correct the end goal is to eliminate the or find an easier way for installation of the system additive and you know whether it's

like the filter dryer that we have on the automotive side, or even when you're low on refrigerant, if you had the ability to add the dye and sealant while you're adding in a charge, again, you're using less tools, which will speed up the process. Now, do you know the reasoning behind them putting the Glow Seal directly into the refrigerant? Was there a reasoning behind that that you know of?

My understanding is, again, it's removing the injection systems. You're, you know, you know that the contractor is going to have to add some refrigerant. You know that when you're using a dye and sealant, you need the equipment to be operational. So, you know, you're kind of, you're, you're speeding up that process, you know, and I know that as a,

Company we've looked at in other markets, you know, coming up with, again, the leak detection method is accepted in the automotive market, you know, almost our own little, you know, quick connect refrigerant cans to actually, you know, be able to have the dye and sealant, you know, be able to install without using the injection methods.

As far as you mentioned Ford and Tesla, what other vehicle manufacturers are included in that? Across the board. You know, it couldn't be every, you know, the idea behind fluorescent leak detection is utilized almost in every single automobile in the world. You know, anyone that's listening to the podcast, it's

If they're against die or, you know, they should walk outside and find that car. And if it's after pretty much anything after 2000 is going to have some type of leak detection product included on the OEM side that, you know, you're not even aware of. Yeah. And obviously if it's been this long,

utilizing it inside of vehicles. And I mean, dealerships will try anything to, to, to void a warrant, like any manufacturer, they'll try it. Any, anything to void a warranty on something. So obviously if they're putting it in from the get go and it's their decision and it's not costing them money in the long run, like dead compressors under warranty and all that kind of stuff, then obviously it's, there's a benefit to it. So I think the conversation needs to be opened up and not closed and

Right. And, and anybody that has a closed mind towards it has just not done enough research and testing of their own to figure this stuff out. A hundred percent agree with that.