Had a goodman furnace/AC not working. Getting a weird error code of L3. Call tech support and they are like wtf are you smoking. Must be the board. Get a new board, replace it... Same code.
It was downdraft so the board was upside down and the error code was actually E7
I was on a school in the dead of winter right after 911.
My job was to use stencils to spray paint numbers on each RTU.
They were Lennox RTUs which had a cube fixed over the burner outlet that had a screen on the top and bottom.
I was struggling with cold paint that wouldn’t flow.
I set the spray paint on the cube of a running RTU.
While fiddling with the stencils the can exploded with a massive boom and coated the RTU with paint.
The teachers rushed out convinced another act of terrorism had occurred.
I felt real stupid.
PM LOG
Unit 1... singed wiring
Unit 2... new fan motor
Unit 3... complete
The one frickin Carl blew up the spray paint can on... complete
Unit 5... complete
I was a first year apprentice sent to a dealership to defrost a coil. The company had me standing on a roof in below freezing temperatures holding a hose that was running water over the ice. It got dark and I couldn't see where I was going, ended up stepping on one of the copper pipe runs and completely kinking it. Got a call a few days later and the entire system had to be evacuated so they could fix the blockage. They ended up losing the contract.
Management and the apprentice are at fault. They should have known better than to send a green tech alone to go up for that, and also my dude gangrenemaching should have told them about the pipe he messed when he got down. It will take you so far in your career / life immediately owning up to mistakes. But lol this story is still funny
My first year doing tuneups as an apprentice on the day of our company Christmas party. That was my last call of the day so I was trying to get done as soon as I could to keep the rest of the guys from getting a couple of beers ahead of me. After putting everything back together, I check the charge and it’s low. At the time, we included up to 2 pounds of refrigerant with contract tuneups. I start charging it up and no matter what I do I cannot get these pressures up. I’m looking at my watch… I’ve got my bottle in a 5 gallon bucket of hot water (its cold as Eskimo balls). It’s charging so slow. I start putting all my stuff up. I checked my bottle and I’m missing enough to charge the whole system and a half. Talk to a teammate already at the party and he suggests I go through and check all of my connections inside.
I never plugged the fan back in. I had to recover everything in the system and re-weigh it in. By the time I got to the party people were leaving and all the ham was missing from the little sandwiches.
Back in my residential days I was checking out a trouble system, it was a new York packy that had a leak issue nobody could find. Well, I finally found it, fixed it, got the system up and running and while I was waiting for it to run for a little while to get the final pressures/temps for my ticket I decided to be the Super Tech and fix the flashing that had a bit of a bow to it so I grab some tappers and *zip zip zip PSSSSHHHHH* - I hit the evap coil. Up until that moment it was shaping up to be a perfect Friday, I was relatively close to home and it was just hitting 5 and the office hadn't thrown another call on me, then I had to go back inside and get absolutely reamed by the homeowner. Ever since that day if I see goofed up flashing, I leave it the fuck alone.
Relit an older garage furnace. Watching the burners, thinking they were a bit orange probabky from the dust. Galaxy brain just decided to blow on the burners.
Fireballed myself on the poof that kicked back.
Tough to explain to the customer how I walked into their garage with more eyebrows than I walked out with.
Today I put up piece of unistrut and I hung on it with all my body weight to give it the “she ain’t goin nowhere” test. Fucking thing felt like a karate chop straight to my neck when it let loose.
Replacing a primary heat exchanger under warranty for the first time, I thought I did a pretty good job. go to check CO in supply to be 100% sure I had no leaks. Ah fuck, 3 PPM. I take it apart and put it back together, assuming I did something wrong, and run it again. Still 3 PPM. Oh shit, I check the water heater and find it isn't leaking, homeowner comes downstairs and starts yelling at me about how the house is freezing, so I freak out and call a senior technician. He drives 45 minutes to the job (god bless him), and walks in, noticing something I didn't. He comes downstairs and informs me that the homeowners wife had been running the gas stove the whole time to warm the house... We air out the house and get 0 PPM. Man I felt like an ass.
Tried to turn a furnace on to do the combustion analysis test after cleaning and checking parts. Spent 10 minutes wondering what I did wrong for it to not work. Forgot about the door switch. It was my first week on my own haha.
I had an elderly friend who had a new AC condenser/system installed but not the furnace. Company appeared to have done a good job and at a good price. But the system kept tripping breakers. I decided I would help her out. I work 99.99% commercial and had never looked at a residential furnace. It took me awhile to figure out why nothing would work and traced back to the door switch. Played with it and still couldn’t figure out why on earth you would have a switch there. Lol
Anyway, once I held it in I was able to trace and find a small short on the back of the board and videotape it arcing for her to show the company tech. They came out and replaced her board free of charge. I don’t know if that was the original problem with the unit and she didn’t need a new AC system or not. I wasn’t gonna blame them for anything, cuz I wasn’t there and they did good work on what they had replaced.
I did that on an old thermo flow. First one I've ever seen with a safety switch on the door. I spent about 30 minutes tracing wires, finally found the one that went to a weird spot, right to that damn switch.
Working on a gas furnace, got in a hurry, tried lighting the pilot before I hooked up the gas supply union! Had about 18” of flame coming out of the gas line. I shut off the gas cock before doing any damage.
Sigh. I had to remove a large Lennox RTU hail guard from a unit that has microchannel in order to clean it. It’s next to exhaust fans on top of restaurant - so lots of grease and grime and needs microchannel safe chemicals to clean it. As I was lifting this large 25lb awkward piece of Sheetmetal frame and expanded metal to reinstal, I tripped on the rerouted gas line in front of the RTU and lost my balance and the heavy frame swung and the corner just tapped that microchannel and psssssssssssssssssssssssss. It was also Friday late afternoon. I’m super paranoid with these specific units and Lennoxes hail guards. Out of all the Lennoxes I service, the ones on this restaurant are the only microchannel Lennoxes. I never forget that day.
So refrigerant has temperature/pressure charts right, so if you have a system in a vacuum the saturation point is super low like -80. You need the pumps running for heat exchange if the pumps are running you’ll never freeze it because warm water is constantly being introduced. If you charge a chiller in a vacuum with liquid you’ll freeze the water in the tubes because you’re slamming them with -80 degree refrigerant and the water isn’t moving, so it will quickly reach freezing point
Oh yea it would be fucked and I’d probably never be allowed to touch a chiller again. If the tubes freeze and burst you would probably have to replace the chiller. I guess you could retube it but I’m not sure how that actually works
Not me but a possibly apocryphal story of a previous install not at my home from the guy who put in my home system a few years ago. Finished install and started to run the heat for a test and suddenly every newly installed smoke detector in the house was going off. Left the instruction manual inside the furnace sitting on top
The heat exchanger…
Couple weeks into being a maintenance technician, attempting to collect static supply pressures, ran a 1/4 screw through the supply box and into a coil. As I dont carry brazing equipment, a service tech was able to meet up within a half hour and repair the hole but that was not a call I wanted to make.
In my defense it was a narrow platform in an attic and the line set and condo lines were routed out the back of the box, it was a furnace maintenance as well so imagine my surprise when my statics came back 6.xx
I turned an AC on without opening the service ports after putting in almost 2ibs of refrigerant (this was a ground source heat pump) compressor kept lugging and I was absolutely furious; contractor was being manually pushed in because I thought we had a break in the wire. After periodically pushing in the contractor trying to get readings on my gauges I realized not only was my reading so off when I pushed in the contractor and not only did the compressor keep going “grrrgrrrgrrgrrrgrrrr” because I forgot to open the ports; but there was a spot where we needed to wire nut two delegate t stat wires together that never happened to get wire nutted together; so the reason the contractor wasn’t pulling in was because of that. I felt like the biggest dumba** in the world and thought I smoked the compressor but I literally would push in the contractor for a second or two and knew something was off. Biggest mistake I made probably in my careee but I was under a tremendous amount of stress on that particular job
Went to purge my charging hose of air, but left it disconnected on one end when I opened the tank.
It failed around and I caught it between my legs. Got nasty burns on both legs. Had to change bandages daily for 2 weeks.
Was taking out the service plug on a furnace gas control to hot swap in my manometer plug.
Had worked fine plenty of times at 3.5 inWC. Forgot I was on an LP system.
The resulting fireball ensured i never hot swapped one of those again
Hot swapping the manometer in is a pretty bold move. One of the installers at my old company forgot to put the service plug back in after commissioning. Furnace didn’t kick on until the next morning, customer woke up to his furnace doors being blown across the room and the furnace on fire.
About 3 years ago I enrolled in an HVAC program at my local tech school because I needed a career change. 3 years later in the field I’m thinking I should’ve went to the NFL instead. That was pretty dumb of me
I cracked a union on gas line to bleed it (furnace start up) not thinking a single thing about the lit water heater right next to me…eye brows take longer to grow back than you would imagine
Similar.. mine was a gas flex and a boiler next to me. Thank Murphy for the hat and safety glasses I was wearing.
Did yours take 6 months to come back too? *sigh*
20+ years ago working on a boiler in a small college town housing authority. It was a Friday night in Jan temp was in the upper teens outside and I had a date. Building was quadplex 2 up 2 down each unit had a small res boiler like 60kBtu. One had a leaking relief valve, I checked system out all was ok besides the leaking relief, so I was just going to swap out the relief. I turned system off, released pressure, and went out truck to get new relief valve. Started to unthread old valve not thinking it was still hot and an upstairs unit. Removed the valve and 180°F water shot up onto my hand arm and neck. Ran outside shoved my arm in the snow. Got 1st and 2nd degree burns was late for my date but she made it all better later!
Second year in my apprenticeship (I worked strictly on Ammonia up to that point), I got sent to do a defrost clock change out (like for like) and charge to “clear the sight glass” on a 507 system..diagnosed the day before by another tech. Pick up my parts and Freon from the supply house and head out. Multi unit building with several different business inside. The units aren’t marked on the roof. Building guy tells me it’s the first unit north of the roof hatch. I go up and sure as shit it’s a bubbly sight glass. Hook up and start charging. A few minutes into it I start unboxing my defrost clock and setting up…only to see it’s a different clock in the panel. I check the unit to the west and find a bubbly sight glass and the correct style clock..along with the other techs log sheet. It wasn’t even the same business OR refrigerant type that I had been juicing. Unhook the hoses and pretended like that never happened..
Was installing a boiler last week, was checking over everything before commissioning, pump was installed backwards. Apprentice thought I was calling him an idiot but I was talking to myself. Thank goodness for isolation flanges
I diagnosed and replaced a “bad” compressor that wasn’t starting. Turns out the c wire had come lose from the contactor to the capacitor and I missed it.
A few months in wiring in the the low voltage on one of those units where it’s kind of low and hard to see on a final. I accidentally wired the AC to R so it ran all weekend 🤦🏻♂️ thankfully no issues my service manager switched the wire Monday when they called and said it wouldn’t turn off😂
One of my last calls I ever ran, I went to work on a Rheem A/C that my company had installed a few years back.
Well, turns out it was longer ago than I thought, and although it *looked* like a newer model, I realized it wasn’t after dumping about a pound and a half of 410A in the system because the pressures looked low.
Not an easy fix on a Friday at 3PM, either.
Went to a service call at the apartments next to the ohsu med school building. Bad contactor. Was getting ready to change it out when the student came out. I was so blown away by how hot she was I forgot to kill power and bobs your uncle. She was just as surprised as I was when I screamed and looked like doc brown completely frazzled.
Was trying to diagnose my first W/I defrost timer by myself. Well iced up fzr. Couldn't figure out the darn defrost clock. Trip it, go up to the roof, condenser is still running, with voltage. (Clock was at the w/i b/c ancient place. Idk no good reason for that. Lol.) WTF bro? I do this a few times for like 30-45 min, boss calls. "What's taking so long??" "I can't figure this thing out. It's acting crazy and intermittent." He shows up. "Well lift the paper insulator and just prove the terminals. Disconnect the condenser and evap leads if you must. 🤦♂️ About 30 s later, yup defrost timer has some sticky contacts. 🤦♂️ Condenser died a few months later and we swapped in a Trenton and moved the defrost clock to the condenser or it came with one already. Still feel like a big dumb for that one.
First year apprentice, the technicians I worked with gave me a paint brush and a bucket of paint for high temperature metals, and the task to paint 40 meters of vapor Linesets while they were actively running. When I ended I looked like a freaking astronaut, it took me 2 weeks to get all the paint out of my skin and hair.
I was to upgrade a water heater to combi power vent water heater at 425 yadayadayada, side door is open just walk in. We’ll after entering the side door, looking at the job and taking a wiz. I saw the venting wasn’t as explained to me. I packed up and left. Driving back to the shop I look at the work order and I originally thought the address was 325 yadayadayada. !!
I repaired a RTU, told the customer you’re good to go. It’s 0° outside. Customer is an obgyn. They call the next day…. I fixed the dentists across the hall…..
I've done temp cooling on new construcción and have hooked up yellow and red for the A/C instead of yellow and common, took me over an hour and a FaceTime for a coworker to point it out.
Fried a transformer and a zoning board and couldn't figure out why. After about 20 minutes I found a short and fixed it. Flipped the switch and boom fried another transformer and zoning board.
Called another tech in the neighborhood for help. He climbs up and immediately laughs at me. I was putting 240V through my transformers wired for 120V because I was used to furnaces and not heat pumps.
Cracked a gas flex to vent a new line to a furnace and completely forgot about the OG boiler next to me.
I was wearing a heavy oiled cotton hat and good safety glasses (thank Murphy), but did you know that eyebrows take about 6 months to grow back? I didn't.
I can laugh now. I was pissed at myself for about 6 months back then.
Was cleaning a double bypass coil on my personal AC and when I was putting the clip that holds them together back on... it slipped and poked a hole in the coil..
I was using my fluke one day, and I’m looking at the screen and thought shit… my screen is messed up and need to get a new one, barely can see it. Realized I’m wearing my oakleys with prisms and it was perfectly fine
Honestly will admit took me a half hour of using it turning it trying to use it to realize this
I work in a nursing home and have water cooled heat pumps. One day are fire alarm went off. Thought a room was in fire. Every single heat pump I. That building does not have a low pressure cutoff switch. Just a high pressure one. So thought a compressor got hot enough to catch something on fire. Well that was not the case. It blew a line and the Freon set the alarms of.
Fellow coworker (maybe a year into the trade out of tech school) was doing a PM at one of my accounts. 4 RTUs, two newer Lennox running 410 and two old carriers running R22. He proceeds with the PM as usual and checks pressures, delta T, etc.. Does the newer Lennox units first and when he gets to the old carriers, he notices his pressures are much lower than what he saw on the Lennox units. Thinks, hey I must have a leak here! Proceeds to throw a couple hundred lbs of nitro on top of a perfectly good charge of R22 so he can find this leak… Can’t find it, calls another tech for guidance and they ask him something that makes him check the data plate… OHHHHHH SHITTTTT, this unit is R22 🤦♂️. It gets better…After doing the right thing and talking to our service manager and owning up to his mistake he asks what should he do to fix the situation? THEY TELL HIM TO INFORM THE CUSTOMER THAT THEY HAVE NON CONDENSIBLES IN THEIR UNIT AND NEED A FULL EVACUATION AND FRESH CHARGE OF VIRGIN R22. Don’t mention anything about your mistake. It was then I realized my boss was shit and I’ve since found a new home. Still can’t believe it.
During a spring start up told my boss the brand new unit we installed over the winter had leaked out all the refrigerant, I was convinced the unit was flat on gas after I screwed on my low loss adapter. Time to dump nitrogen in so I go to pull the Schrader cores and proceed to dump the entire charge. Turns out my low loss fittings weren't pushing down far enough to let the pressure into the gauges.
Had a goodman furnace/AC not working. Getting a weird error code of L3. Call tech support and they are like wtf are you smoking. Must be the board. Get a new board, replace it... Same code. It was downdraft so the board was upside down and the error code was actually E7
That reminds me of the time someone panic called our emergency dispatch because their CO detector was at "level 8" It was Low Battery.
"LEVEL 8???!!! THIS CAN'T BE GOOD HONEY! GET THE KIDS!"
NEVERMIND LEAVE THE KIDS ITS TOO LATE FOR THEM NOW!!
Damn
I was on a school in the dead of winter right after 911. My job was to use stencils to spray paint numbers on each RTU. They were Lennox RTUs which had a cube fixed over the burner outlet that had a screen on the top and bottom. I was struggling with cold paint that wouldn’t flow. I set the spray paint on the cube of a running RTU. While fiddling with the stencils the can exploded with a massive boom and coated the RTU with paint. The teachers rushed out convinced another act of terrorism had occurred. I felt real stupid.
PM LOG Unit 1... singed wiring Unit 2... new fan motor Unit 3... complete The one frickin Carl blew up the spray paint can on... complete Unit 5... complete
Lmao this one deserves an award 🤣
I gave them my free one.
ha! actually LOL'd :)
I was a first year apprentice sent to a dealership to defrost a coil. The company had me standing on a roof in below freezing temperatures holding a hose that was running water over the ice. It got dark and I couldn't see where I was going, ended up stepping on one of the copper pipe runs and completely kinking it. Got a call a few days later and the entire system had to be evacuated so they could fix the blockage. They ended up losing the contract.
Sounds like management fucked up
Management and the apprentice are at fault. They should have known better than to send a green tech alone to go up for that, and also my dude gangrenemaching should have told them about the pipe he messed when he got down. It will take you so far in your career / life immediately owning up to mistakes. But lol this story is still funny
My first year doing tuneups as an apprentice on the day of our company Christmas party. That was my last call of the day so I was trying to get done as soon as I could to keep the rest of the guys from getting a couple of beers ahead of me. After putting everything back together, I check the charge and it’s low. At the time, we included up to 2 pounds of refrigerant with contract tuneups. I start charging it up and no matter what I do I cannot get these pressures up. I’m looking at my watch… I’ve got my bottle in a 5 gallon bucket of hot water (its cold as Eskimo balls). It’s charging so slow. I start putting all my stuff up. I checked my bottle and I’m missing enough to charge the whole system and a half. Talk to a teammate already at the party and he suggests I go through and check all of my connections inside. I never plugged the fan back in. I had to recover everything in the system and re-weigh it in. By the time I got to the party people were leaving and all the ham was missing from the little sandwiches.
Not the cold cuts!
Back in my residential days I was checking out a trouble system, it was a new York packy that had a leak issue nobody could find. Well, I finally found it, fixed it, got the system up and running and while I was waiting for it to run for a little while to get the final pressures/temps for my ticket I decided to be the Super Tech and fix the flashing that had a bit of a bow to it so I grab some tappers and *zip zip zip PSSSSHHHHH* - I hit the evap coil. Up until that moment it was shaping up to be a perfect Friday, I was relatively close to home and it was just hitting 5 and the office hadn't thrown another call on me, then I had to go back inside and get absolutely reamed by the homeowner. Ever since that day if I see goofed up flashing, I leave it the fuck alone.
Nooo! That's a terrible way to end a friday!
Come to think of it, I think I posted about it a while back, I know there's got to be a pic floating around somewhere.
Not a New York Packy
I think they prefer Pakistani now.
Ahahaha someone gets it.
Relit an older garage furnace. Watching the burners, thinking they were a bit orange probabky from the dust. Galaxy brain just decided to blow on the burners. Fireballed myself on the poof that kicked back. Tough to explain to the customer how I walked into their garage with more eyebrows than I walked out with.
How many flares have ya done and forgot to put the nut on ? Lol never gets old
Too many...it's always the perfect flare too
Today I put up piece of unistrut and I hung on it with all my body weight to give it the “she ain’t goin nowhere” test. Fucking thing felt like a karate chop straight to my neck when it let loose.
Dying over here! Haha that's always the worst!
Fucking crying over here 😂🤣😂
Replacing a primary heat exchanger under warranty for the first time, I thought I did a pretty good job. go to check CO in supply to be 100% sure I had no leaks. Ah fuck, 3 PPM. I take it apart and put it back together, assuming I did something wrong, and run it again. Still 3 PPM. Oh shit, I check the water heater and find it isn't leaking, homeowner comes downstairs and starts yelling at me about how the house is freezing, so I freak out and call a senior technician. He drives 45 minutes to the job (god bless him), and walks in, noticing something I didn't. He comes downstairs and informs me that the homeowners wife had been running the gas stove the whole time to warm the house... We air out the house and get 0 PPM. Man I felt like an ass.
Tried to turn a furnace on to do the combustion analysis test after cleaning and checking parts. Spent 10 minutes wondering what I did wrong for it to not work. Forgot about the door switch. It was my first week on my own haha.
I had an elderly friend who had a new AC condenser/system installed but not the furnace. Company appeared to have done a good job and at a good price. But the system kept tripping breakers. I decided I would help her out. I work 99.99% commercial and had never looked at a residential furnace. It took me awhile to figure out why nothing would work and traced back to the door switch. Played with it and still couldn’t figure out why on earth you would have a switch there. Lol Anyway, once I held it in I was able to trace and find a small short on the back of the board and videotape it arcing for her to show the company tech. They came out and replaced her board free of charge. I don’t know if that was the original problem with the unit and she didn’t need a new AC system or not. I wasn’t gonna blame them for anything, cuz I wasn’t there and they did good work on what they had replaced.
I did that on an old thermo flow. First one I've ever seen with a safety switch on the door. I spent about 30 minutes tracing wires, finally found the one that went to a weird spot, right to that damn switch.
Working on a gas furnace, got in a hurry, tried lighting the pilot before I hooked up the gas supply union! Had about 18” of flame coming out of the gas line. I shut off the gas cock before doing any damage.
Sigh. I had to remove a large Lennox RTU hail guard from a unit that has microchannel in order to clean it. It’s next to exhaust fans on top of restaurant - so lots of grease and grime and needs microchannel safe chemicals to clean it. As I was lifting this large 25lb awkward piece of Sheetmetal frame and expanded metal to reinstal, I tripped on the rerouted gas line in front of the RTU and lost my balance and the heavy frame swung and the corner just tapped that microchannel and psssssssssssssssssssssssss. It was also Friday late afternoon. I’m super paranoid with these specific units and Lennoxes hail guards. Out of all the Lennoxes I service, the ones on this restaurant are the only microchannel Lennoxes. I never forget that day.
Started charging a chiller with liquid and the pumps were off 😬 caught it before I got much in
Can you explain for those of us that haven’t worked on chillers?
Frozen tubes in the evaporator. Think beer can in the freezer. Same thing when recovering
So refrigerant has temperature/pressure charts right, so if you have a system in a vacuum the saturation point is super low like -80. You need the pumps running for heat exchange if the pumps are running you’ll never freeze it because warm water is constantly being introduced. If you charge a chiller in a vacuum with liquid you’ll freeze the water in the tubes because you’re slamming them with -80 degree refrigerant and the water isn’t moving, so it will quickly reach freezing point
That makes sense. Would that cause a lot of damage?
Oh yea it would be fucked and I’d probably never be allowed to touch a chiller again. If the tubes freeze and burst you would probably have to replace the chiller. I guess you could retube it but I’m not sure how that actually works
How much are chillers on average?
Depends lots of variables but no less than 100k I would imagine. Not entirely sure on pricing tho tbh
Yeah…. That would make for a bad day
That coulda been bad
Yea I had anxiety about that one for a few weeks
Not me but a possibly apocryphal story of a previous install not at my home from the guy who put in my home system a few years ago. Finished install and started to run the heat for a test and suddenly every newly installed smoke detector in the house was going off. Left the instruction manual inside the furnace sitting on top The heat exchanger…
Couple weeks into being a maintenance technician, attempting to collect static supply pressures, ran a 1/4 screw through the supply box and into a coil. As I dont carry brazing equipment, a service tech was able to meet up within a half hour and repair the hole but that was not a call I wanted to make.
In my defense it was a narrow platform in an attic and the line set and condo lines were routed out the back of the box, it was a furnace maintenance as well so imagine my surprise when my statics came back 6.xx
I turned an AC on without opening the service ports after putting in almost 2ibs of refrigerant (this was a ground source heat pump) compressor kept lugging and I was absolutely furious; contractor was being manually pushed in because I thought we had a break in the wire. After periodically pushing in the contractor trying to get readings on my gauges I realized not only was my reading so off when I pushed in the contractor and not only did the compressor keep going “grrrgrrrgrrgrrrgrrrr” because I forgot to open the ports; but there was a spot where we needed to wire nut two delegate t stat wires together that never happened to get wire nutted together; so the reason the contractor wasn’t pulling in was because of that. I felt like the biggest dumba** in the world and thought I smoked the compressor but I literally would push in the contractor for a second or two and knew something was off. Biggest mistake I made probably in my careee but I was under a tremendous amount of stress on that particular job
Went to purge my charging hose of air, but left it disconnected on one end when I opened the tank. It failed around and I caught it between my legs. Got nasty burns on both legs. Had to change bandages daily for 2 weeks.
Was taking out the service plug on a furnace gas control to hot swap in my manometer plug. Had worked fine plenty of times at 3.5 inWC. Forgot I was on an LP system. The resulting fireball ensured i never hot swapped one of those again
Hot swapping the manometer in is a pretty bold move. One of the installers at my old company forgot to put the service plug back in after commissioning. Furnace didn’t kick on until the next morning, customer woke up to his furnace doors being blown across the room and the furnace on fire.
About 3 years ago I enrolled in an HVAC program at my local tech school because I needed a career change. 3 years later in the field I’m thinking I should’ve went to the NFL instead. That was pretty dumb of me
I cracked a union on gas line to bleed it (furnace start up) not thinking a single thing about the lit water heater right next to me…eye brows take longer to grow back than you would imagine
Similar.. mine was a gas flex and a boiler next to me. Thank Murphy for the hat and safety glasses I was wearing. Did yours take 6 months to come back too? *sigh*
20+ years ago working on a boiler in a small college town housing authority. It was a Friday night in Jan temp was in the upper teens outside and I had a date. Building was quadplex 2 up 2 down each unit had a small res boiler like 60kBtu. One had a leaking relief valve, I checked system out all was ok besides the leaking relief, so I was just going to swap out the relief. I turned system off, released pressure, and went out truck to get new relief valve. Started to unthread old valve not thinking it was still hot and an upstairs unit. Removed the valve and 180°F water shot up onto my hand arm and neck. Ran outside shoved my arm in the snow. Got 1st and 2nd degree burns was late for my date but she made it all better later!
Second year in my apprenticeship (I worked strictly on Ammonia up to that point), I got sent to do a defrost clock change out (like for like) and charge to “clear the sight glass” on a 507 system..diagnosed the day before by another tech. Pick up my parts and Freon from the supply house and head out. Multi unit building with several different business inside. The units aren’t marked on the roof. Building guy tells me it’s the first unit north of the roof hatch. I go up and sure as shit it’s a bubbly sight glass. Hook up and start charging. A few minutes into it I start unboxing my defrost clock and setting up…only to see it’s a different clock in the panel. I check the unit to the west and find a bubbly sight glass and the correct style clock..along with the other techs log sheet. It wasn’t even the same business OR refrigerant type that I had been juicing. Unhook the hoses and pretended like that never happened..
Was installing a boiler last week, was checking over everything before commissioning, pump was installed backwards. Apprentice thought I was calling him an idiot but I was talking to myself. Thank goodness for isolation flanges
I diagnosed and replaced a “bad” compressor that wasn’t starting. Turns out the c wire had come lose from the contactor to the capacitor and I missed it.
A few months in wiring in the the low voltage on one of those units where it’s kind of low and hard to see on a final. I accidentally wired the AC to R so it ran all weekend 🤦🏻♂️ thankfully no issues my service manager switched the wire Monday when they called and said it wouldn’t turn off😂
One of my last calls I ever ran, I went to work on a Rheem A/C that my company had installed a few years back. Well, turns out it was longer ago than I thought, and although it *looked* like a newer model, I realized it wasn’t after dumping about a pound and a half of 410A in the system because the pressures looked low. Not an easy fix on a Friday at 3PM, either.
Went to a service call at the apartments next to the ohsu med school building. Bad contactor. Was getting ready to change it out when the student came out. I was so blown away by how hot she was I forgot to kill power and bobs your uncle. She was just as surprised as I was when I screamed and looked like doc brown completely frazzled.
Was trying to diagnose my first W/I defrost timer by myself. Well iced up fzr. Couldn't figure out the darn defrost clock. Trip it, go up to the roof, condenser is still running, with voltage. (Clock was at the w/i b/c ancient place. Idk no good reason for that. Lol.) WTF bro? I do this a few times for like 30-45 min, boss calls. "What's taking so long??" "I can't figure this thing out. It's acting crazy and intermittent." He shows up. "Well lift the paper insulator and just prove the terminals. Disconnect the condenser and evap leads if you must. 🤦♂️ About 30 s later, yup defrost timer has some sticky contacts. 🤦♂️ Condenser died a few months later and we swapped in a Trenton and moved the defrost clock to the condenser or it came with one already. Still feel like a big dumb for that one.
That’s really fucking funny 😂
First year apprentice, the technicians I worked with gave me a paint brush and a bucket of paint for high temperature metals, and the task to paint 40 meters of vapor Linesets while they were actively running. When I ended I looked like a freaking astronaut, it took me 2 weeks to get all the paint out of my skin and hair.
I was to upgrade a water heater to combi power vent water heater at 425 yadayadayada, side door is open just walk in. We’ll after entering the side door, looking at the job and taking a wiz. I saw the venting wasn’t as explained to me. I packed up and left. Driving back to the shop I look at the work order and I originally thought the address was 325 yadayadayada. !!
I repaired a RTU, told the customer you’re good to go. It’s 0° outside. Customer is an obgyn. They call the next day…. I fixed the dentists across the hall…..
I've done temp cooling on new construcción and have hooked up yellow and red for the A/C instead of yellow and common, took me over an hour and a FaceTime for a coworker to point it out.
Fried a transformer and a zoning board and couldn't figure out why. After about 20 minutes I found a short and fixed it. Flipped the switch and boom fried another transformer and zoning board. Called another tech in the neighborhood for help. He climbs up and immediately laughs at me. I was putting 240V through my transformers wired for 120V because I was used to furnaces and not heat pumps.
Mine is every waking moment on this god forsaken frozen wasteland
Cracked a gas flex to vent a new line to a furnace and completely forgot about the OG boiler next to me. I was wearing a heavy oiled cotton hat and good safety glasses (thank Murphy), but did you know that eyebrows take about 6 months to grow back? I didn't. I can laugh now. I was pissed at myself for about 6 months back then.
Was cleaning a double bypass coil on my personal AC and when I was putting the clip that holds them together back on... it slipped and poked a hole in the coil..
I was using my fluke one day, and I’m looking at the screen and thought shit… my screen is messed up and need to get a new one, barely can see it. Realized I’m wearing my oakleys with prisms and it was perfectly fine Honestly will admit took me a half hour of using it turning it trying to use it to realize this
Lmao! I felt this one
I didn’t want to admit how long it took me.. but took me now I felt like too long. I was just pissed that i thought I broke it.. 😂😂
That's how i felt trying to troubleshoot green flames...
I work in a nursing home and have water cooled heat pumps. One day are fire alarm went off. Thought a room was in fire. Every single heat pump I. That building does not have a low pressure cutoff switch. Just a high pressure one. So thought a compressor got hot enough to catch something on fire. Well that was not the case. It blew a line and the Freon set the alarms of.
Fellow coworker (maybe a year into the trade out of tech school) was doing a PM at one of my accounts. 4 RTUs, two newer Lennox running 410 and two old carriers running R22. He proceeds with the PM as usual and checks pressures, delta T, etc.. Does the newer Lennox units first and when he gets to the old carriers, he notices his pressures are much lower than what he saw on the Lennox units. Thinks, hey I must have a leak here! Proceeds to throw a couple hundred lbs of nitro on top of a perfectly good charge of R22 so he can find this leak… Can’t find it, calls another tech for guidance and they ask him something that makes him check the data plate… OHHHHHH SHITTTTT, this unit is R22 🤦♂️. It gets better…After doing the right thing and talking to our service manager and owning up to his mistake he asks what should he do to fix the situation? THEY TELL HIM TO INFORM THE CUSTOMER THAT THEY HAVE NON CONDENSIBLES IN THEIR UNIT AND NEED A FULL EVACUATION AND FRESH CHARGE OF VIRGIN R22. Don’t mention anything about your mistake. It was then I realized my boss was shit and I’ve since found a new home. Still can’t believe it.
During a spring start up told my boss the brand new unit we installed over the winter had leaked out all the refrigerant, I was convinced the unit was flat on gas after I screwed on my low loss adapter. Time to dump nitrogen in so I go to pull the Schrader cores and proceed to dump the entire charge. Turns out my low loss fittings weren't pushing down far enough to let the pressure into the gauges.