Fixed the Rheem heat pump leak AGAIN

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]stick.

[00:00:01]>> Yeah, it does.

[00:00:05]We're uh God. Same spot, man.

[00:00:19]All right, so you saw that.

[00:00:22]Here we go again, you might say.

[00:00:26]Um, and I was just explaining to the customer that the thing I feel like is a bad design here is this small tubing being used so close to the compressor.

[00:00:42]Um, so it's getting a lot of vibration and you know high frequency type vibration too. So when you bend a piece of tubing, you compress these molecules and you stretch those molecules of the material.

[00:01:01]And you would think this gets weakened more than that. And so, you know, regardless of that, it's it's it's not that the pipe was ruined by getting bent.

[00:01:13]Um, it's just, you know, like I say, the long-term vibration. In my opinion, this is just a bad design. And this this should be somewhere else.

[00:01:25]Um, it should be to where we could thread it off with a shraider. And I don't know if that one does. This one looks like it threads off right here.

[00:01:35]And that boss right there stays. And this just threads off. This one is not the same. This is uh I've seen this part new and it brazes on right there at that joint.

[00:01:48]But you can see, you know, right there is where it connects. But anyway, you know, I hate to say, you know, a bad design by highly qualified engineers that are certainly smarter than me or should be, but at some point they got to put things in the field to find out some of the results.

[00:02:16]And a couple of the REM uh guys, you know, dealers, whatever on the comments have have said that was a little bit of a fairly common failure or that they had seen it before. Anyway, um I think I should just cut that off and move that switch elsewhere or just add an auxiliary one, a different one. Um and just get rid of the small tube and pinch that off and weld it shut. That's what I think I should do. But you know, I'm always here at a Saturday, Sunday, whatever. So, I got to get these people back in service. It's going to be warm today. It's a beautiful South Carolina day.

[00:03:01]Pretty comfortable right now, but in another few hours, it's going to be high 80s.

[00:03:07]So, let's take our third strike at it. And I guess if it fails again, I'll get rid of that small tubing and move the switch or add a different one, whatever.

[00:03:20]I know some of you may disagree and uh you know, we're not all the same and if you're a better tech than me, congratulations. But this is what I'm going to do today.

[00:03:38]So, I don't have a tripod.

[00:03:41]So, I'm going to let you recognize that now.

[00:03:48]And I will get a shot of it after I braze it up again.

[00:04:08]All right, I went up the pipe and all around where I'd already been twice.

[00:04:18]That's the last time I'm going to try that.

[00:04:22]Let's get some pressure on it.

[00:04:37]If that doesn't do it, I just don't know what to do.

[00:05:33]All right.

[00:05:49]Got the old bullet going.

[00:06:02]I guess we may as well go finish our uh Chick-fil-A lunch here and let that run a little bit.

[00:06:17]It's going to take a few minutes, I'd say.

[00:06:25]So, let's just hope this does it this time.

[00:06:34]Okay, we're about 14 minutes in and it's dropping slower and slower.

[00:06:53]pretty fresh oil, but anytime you're pulling through the entire system, you know, it's not going to be near as fast as a coil and a line set.

[00:07:06]There's oil laying everywhere and all kind of places in the machine here that's uh probably got some refrigerant that's, you know, getting pulled out of it.

[00:07:21]Up and down. Going up and down.

[00:07:32]Slow to go down.

[00:07:37]Give this another 10 minutes and come back and see where we're at.

[00:07:41]So, I was walking down through the yard here and I noticed something on the neighbor's house right up there in the gable. I'll tell you what, that's a better idea than it looks like. Looks a little ratty, but I bet you it is effective for sure.

[00:08:07]Looks like something I would have done in my young days.

[00:08:11]All right, let's fill her up.

[00:08:16]And no, I did not get the scale out.

[00:08:21]So, I just dumped liquid in it and got it equalized at about 175 176.

[00:08:31]I'm quite sure it's going to take a good bit more.

[00:08:36]And uh I'm just going to use subcooling and I'm going to charge it that way.

[00:08:42]I know I could have weighed in the factory charge and then tried to just add some for the line.

[00:08:50]Um, it's not a real long line set on this. I'd say it's probably just a hair over 20 ft counting all the bends and curves and everything. The air handler is not real far on the other side here.

[00:09:05]Um, so yeah, I could have got the scale out, but didn't want to. And once again, for all of you service techs that are better than me, please just allow me to congratulate you for that.

[00:09:22]But this is going to work fine.

[00:09:25]Just waiting on the uh time delay from the thermostat right now.

[00:09:33]So, it looks like 155 ounces if I would have chosen to weigh in the factory charge, which obviously I did not do.

[00:09:50]So, let's get her fired up.

[00:09:55]The waiting is the hardest part.

[00:09:59]at the risk of quoting Tom Petty.

[00:10:02]That's a true statement.

[00:10:06]Tell you one thing I do like about Re's uh board is they give you that right there on the board. I think that's pretty smart cuz stickers get, you know, weathered and maybe torn off or lost or the doors get swapped around, whatever.

[00:10:33]So, I do like the fact that it's printed right on the defrost board for all the, you know, all the uh fault codes. That's pretty cool.

[00:10:47]These machines aren't so bad.

[00:10:52]I tell you what, nothing these days is made as tough as it was 30 years ago.

[00:10:58]And that's a shame.

[00:11:01]All right, any minute now. Let's go.

[00:11:07]There she goes.

[00:11:19]So, it is not hot yet, but it is warm.

[00:11:24]So, I'm only going to only going to add a bit just to get it where it's in the neighborhood, as they say, close.

[00:11:36]Then I'm going to let it run about 10 minutes to get an accurate subcooling reading at that point. But we will put some in it cuz we know it's low.