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Rooftop Unit Turned Evaporative Condenser

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#21 ·
To keep the chill in the chow on a W/I clr or frz on a Saturday night a newbie buisness owner will look at you with the deer in the headlights syndrome.

But a experienced buisness owner will go out and buy a garden hose while you wait. Ask him to get you a 2 X 4 to cut up and make a temporary stand.:p

You just made a long term customer.
 
#22 ·
the mojo said:
To keep the chill in the chow on a W/I clr or frz on a Saturday night a newbie buisness owner will look at you with the deer in the headlights syndrome.

But a experienced buisness owner will go out and buy a garden hose while you wait. Ask him to get you a 2 X 4 to cut up and make a temporary stand.:p

You just made a long term customer.
Click to expand...
That's what happened here, we have a long time customer with money tight in the pocket, not willing to share.
The chiller was cooling down hot air straight out of the absorption dryer, who vented a production area [ 21deg. C 28 % RV].
They make plates who are used for Medical Xray, there are just two production facilities in the world, but they didnt care about there only chiller, and didnt want to invest, because a GOOD DUDE fixed it for the price of a garden hose !

Helping out, can backfire, good intentions are not always rewarded.
 
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#24 ·
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#25 ·
I rigged up a water cooled condenser once for a customer that closed his restaurant every july to visit family in Italy on a WI cooler condensing unit in his basement, Reason was he wasn't willing to run the AC the whole month.
Set it up in series after the air cooled coil in the liquid line to the head under I think 260 or something on R-22, it's been a few years but the customer was thrilled since he didn't have to empty the box since it would always either trip off on high press. Continually until the compressor died.

I think it worked fine. Alot better idea than spraying water :rolleyes:
 
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#27 ·
I have thought about this a couple of times when it is 112 degrees on the roof and a couple of my units will not stay on line. Any one think a condensate pump hooked up to the unit and pumping condensate water onto the coil would be any better?:D
 
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#28 ·
I think all the access water would cause a resadue problem on the coil, thus resulting a freez-up issue.
Good thought though. Maybe if you could get enough pressure on a nozzle at the end of the hose. You could spray enough water on the cond. coil to do something, but it pretty much comes out in spurts. (that sounds, UH, HAHA, Retarded) but true.
Load the cond. with cool media and that could help things on a hot day. Keep Pressures down. Figure it out, and you might be the nexy apprentace ( TV joke??).
 
#29 ·
seen a company here do that to a unit for a hotel when they couldn't tell the difference from a 460 and a 240 OD motor! they told the maintenance guy to put a sprinkler on it. after 3 weeks he called us, and lucky me.
 
#32 ·
Looks like a carrier unit.....Yet another one of those units that need the condenser coils to be separated when you clean them.....Pain in the butt to do it, but all the air and water pressure in the world wont get rid of the dirt stuck between the coils.
 
#33 ·
Can't separate the coils on my Intellipacks but they fall on their face at 112 degrees. I have to "water" them. I use a sprinkler timer so that the water only runs during the hottest part of the day.
 
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#34 ·
FlatTire said:
So a small amount of scale can build up on it over the course of a 24hrs, but wouldnt that be equal to the same about of scale that would result from a a few weeks worth of rain? That is the way i looked at it when i decided to do it to a walk-in. That 24hrs of spray is not different then 4 days of rain. Or is local public water harder then local rain:eek:?

But next time I will try watering the liquid line coming in and or going out of the condenser to see which one can get me decent sub-cooling.

The one thing i do hate about it is that it constantly runs even at night.
Click to expand...
It won't if you install a irrigation zone valve to control the water and wire it parallel with the Y1 call. The zone valve runs off of 24V ac. That way it only uses water when it needs to, not all of the time. I have a thing like that I rigged together for weekend calls when I didn't have the right motor. It works great. I can post a pic of it if someone wants a look at it. I agree that it is only considered a temporary fix, not for permanent installation.
 
#35 ·
There's a dorm here at a local university that had it's own maint. dept. They decided to cancel service calls to Trane because of the expense. One of the 200 ton recip. chillers started having high head press. problems on both circuits. After months of complaints they rigged up a system with 1.25" pvc pipe with .125" holes drilled in it. It ran around the top of the condenser and they ran it all through the summer. I know they had to descale the fins regularly as we have 8 grains hardness and higher. I didn't ask the details as they were quite proud of it. It was in service 5 years the last time I was there. I never thought it would last that long. I am pretty sure the water bill would have been more than a service call would have cost:eek:
 
#36 ·
reepersteve said:
Nickle Safe or some other ice macine cleaner would disolve the lime without hurting coil any worse than it is?
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Is that possible? Would ice machine cleaner do a better job than pink death?

Here's what I've got... A restaurant I take care of had a walk in cooler condenser fan go down on a Sunday night & I limped them through until the next day with a water hose on mist & a cinder block. Now I keep catching them putting a similar set up on their AC units ( a couple 10 ton splits ) on hot days. Nothing is wrong with the AC, but they seemed to be convinced that this is just a good thing to do. I've told them to stop, but I can't break throught their selective English.:mad:

The coils are turning green.:eek:

Not algae, but like oxidized copper. I'll be happy to sell them new units, but one of the reasons I hang on to this place is to keep fresh in the trade & keep learning until I have the good sense to return (soon).

SO....can you clean hard water deposits from a condenser coil with ice machine cleaner, or would all of the aluminum fins slide right off the copper tubing?:eek:
 
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#37 ·
To be honest with you, I was just making a statment. But, you give me til' tomorrow and I can give some answers. Gives me something to play with.
The reason i say this is, I ran into a Ice-O-Matic. An older one. It needed to be cleaned, so I took a Nickle Safe cleaner and proceeded to do some cleaning. Looked down for a second then back up, BAMM, the coil was now a bright new copper color. Took the stainless right off.
Have some old coils ready to go to the scrap yard, I'll play with them tomorrow.
 
#39 ·
Slammed from 8 to 5 today, no time at the the shop available. I am though on call and the van is at the shop. If by chance I do get a call, I will through some on for the allowed time and see what happens.:)
 
#40 ·
Has anyone seen the large AAON Package units with evaporative cooling towers on DX condensors? The DX coils are turned horizontally over a sump and water is trickled down over them as fans pull air up through. I have 4 of them in my area that are about 220 tons a piece. I'm giving them 5 - 10 years.
 
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emighty
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