Hvac Training Refresher

If you are someone that wants to get into the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning field, and you happen to be on a tight budget, then this is a good place for you to start and get some general knowledge about HVAC training. But if you want to make a career out of this, you will need minimal schooling, or you will need to be HVAC certified unless you know someone personally that can get you hired.  I have covered some of the stuff that you need in past posts in this blog about HVAC training, well, mostly stuff about working on central air conditioning systems, which is my expertise, but in case you have you need a refresher……

Epa 608 certification, is what you will need to be able to handle refrigerants, if you are planning on working on automobile and/or aircraft air conditioning and heating systems you will need a Epa 609 certification. Now just because you get these types of certifications does not mean that you are going to know how to work on air conditioning systems. To be able to effectively troubleshoot and install air conditioning systems, especially the split ones that require soldering, you will have to have hands-on experience. Let me repeat that so no one gets this mistaken, you can not be an expert HVAC technician from reading some blog, going to some school or being a part of some type of HVAC forums with a bunch of experts.

The best HVAC training there is to offer is hands-on, meaning performing service calls. All HVAC schools and the certification can do for you is get your foot in the door, to have an opportunity to learn this trade, which takes years to perfect depending on how many fields it is that you want to expertise in. Since I live in Florida, I chose one that I service every single day, and that is split central air conditioning systems without the heat pump, which the furnace is inside of the air handler, and I only get to service heaters maybe one month out of the year as we have very few problems with cold weather here in southern Florida. If you’re interested in learning more about HVAC schools in your area, I suggest visiting HVAC Schools Near Me.

First of all let’s go over the basics of HVAC training, starting with the replacement and troubleshooting of an outside condensing system, such as leak testing and soldering the copper lines together. In other words, I am talking about a central air conditioning system that is split, it has a condensing unit and compressor on the outside and a blower coil, also known as an air handler on the inside, which is usually located in a closet with a grill or in an attic.

Charging an Air Conditioner With R-22

First off let me make sure that we are on the same page, as I am in central Florida and this is the only area that I have worked on air conditioning systems, so depending on where you are located the pressures and temperatures are sure to be different.

There are two copper lines that are going into the condensing unit, the suction line, which reads low pressure and is thicker than the high side lines. If you are in a temperature of around 80 degrees or more, then your low side gauge should be reading somewhere between 60-70, while the high side should be around 200-250.

But since every system is different and there are different conditions, such as outdoor/indoor temp and relative humidity, to get a perfect charge you will have to use superheat, and subcool for systems that have a txv valve. Not only that you will have to take the outside temperature, the inside temperature, as well as the relative humidity and use those readings on a superheat or subcool chart to get the perfect charge. The same rule applies when you are using 410a. You will need temperature clamps to get the outside temperature of the suction and discharge lines, as well as meter that will be able to give you all of your wet bulb and dry bulb temps, as well as measure the relative humidity in the air.

If the high side is low then that means there is an air restriction somewhere in the system. The restriction in most cases is a dirty filter or coils. Again, what I am talking about right now relates to central air conditioning systems that are using r22, there are so many factors when it comes to heating, ventilation and air conditioning that its too much for my small brain to click on in just one post. Not only that I just simply do not have the expertise to cover all of these forms of HVAC training, as I have only been doing this for 5 years, but I think that I am pretty damn good at what I do.

Another good thing that every HVAC technician should know when it comes to Freon, or refrigerant, is if the system was installed correctly, there should never be a Freon leak. You must also take into consideration, that just because your lowside read 67 psi one day and then read 60 a week later that does not necessarily mean that there is a leak in the hvac system. You must remember the temperature outside is going to effect the pressure of the Freon, since I service air conditioning systems in Florida there is only about an average of 15 psi difference, and it barely changes for us in the summer time. I will cover the correct way to calculate the exact pressure the Freon should be at in both the high and low sides in a future post, as I am not sure I have it all down to type it off of the head and I do not want to give out any misleading information. That is all I have for this post on HVAC training today as my head is starting to hurt from typing too much.