RE: AC Question - Dodge Dakota Forum

Subject: RE: AC Question
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I like the term "Beer can method" never heard it refered to as that!!!! Thats a good one.

No, never hot shot a car a/c.

Your right, I work with an "old school" mechanic, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. He refuses to even weigh in a charge (even though the proper weight amount is posted on the tag), with him its always by pressure.

Superheat and subcooling are the best way, I prefer a scale. My partner and I do alot of "side work" installing residential A/C. And we do check superheat when we have to add more than 15 feet of tubing. The units we use are precharged to 15 ft of tubing.

Were u work at Graphite? I work for the VA in Coatesville Pa. I operate our main chiller plant (2 1000 ton Trane centravac chillers) along with all the other stuff. (Refigs, ice machines, a/c, pneumatic controls, steam generated heat ect.) We have a very large complex, about 25 buildings total. I'm more a jack of all trades and master of none. My boss and I started a "side buseness" about 15 years ago. Getting older now so I'm on the down side of working my a$$ off.

GraphiteDak
GenIII

4/23/2005
17:31:44

RE: AC Question
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Must be nice.

I work in the ARIZONA valley where they try ot KILL us.
I do residential and light commercial. Do some big units like 50+ tons, but we leave the chillers alone because we'd pretty much have to be set up for just heavy commercial if we even bothered.

Ice machines, walk ins, etc at McDonalds, Harkins Theaters, and other places.

the biggest Ice Machine I ever did was one up North. A 10 ton Vogt (spelled?) tube ice. It was huge and held over 200 Lbs of R22. Had a 6 cyclinder semi herm with oil seperator, water coolded condenser with cooling tower, etc.
That sucker made some ice though!!!

20 minutes could fill a typical resteraunt ice bin! The guy sold bagged ice around northern AZ. That was when I worked for a smaller mechanical company up north before i moved to the valley where we are expected to work 12+ hrs a day all summer long with no choice.

New homes don't get inspected for sh*t here either. So those jobs can SUCK with all the air handlers int he attics. No catwalks on most :(

Big Ed
Dodge Dakota
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4/23/2005
22:58:14

RE: AC Question
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Wow, I bet its really hot in Arizona. I've never been that far west. Only to Kansas once for my nephews wedding. It gets to be in the 90's for about 3 months here and very very humid during the summer. As for Ice machines, we have mostly stand alone Folletts and a couple of Hoshazaki's. Their like 200 lbs flake machines, one on each ward. and a 500 lbs cuber in the main kitchen.

As for working, we only do 8 hrs a day with some "emergency" call back overtime. Their always bitchin about budget cuts so they don't want to pay overtime, but you wouldnt believe the money wasted in the government. They do some really really dumb things. Our VA was built in the 1930's and our A/C and Heating systems are now 25 years old and slowly falling apart. They've downsized our shop from 12 mechanics 15 years ago to 4 now. We just put bandaides on things and try to keep things going the best we can. We have a PM schedule but with no help, it don't get done.

Working in the attics of residences suck for sure. My partner and I no longer do any installations in the summer if it in the attic. We just finished an addition last Feb. Its not bad up there when its only 20 deg. outside!!!

Hey, I see you have a GPS nav set up. Did you get it with your truck? I have a hand held Garmin aviation GPS. (I'm a private pilot too) I've been interested in getting one for my truck.

Big Ed
Dodge Dakota
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4/23/2005
23:08:04

RE: AC Question
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Just surfed on Graphits web page, pretty neat stuff.

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