HVAC-Talk: Heating, Air & Refrigeration Discussion banner

Low Subcooling and low superheat, not low on charge though. What’s going on?

7.2K views 20 replies 8 participants last post by  Seracha  
#1 ·
What would cause an AC unit to have low superheat and low Subcooling? It was an 80F day and my low pressure was 90 and my head pressure was 263. Now I did added refrigerant but that just made my low pressure go lower and my superheat to go lower. My suction temp was 32 and my evap was 30. System is a 2 ton with a txv and air flow is adjusted for a 2 ton my static pressure is 0.49 across the furnace. I just changed the txv today because it seemed like a txv issue. The new txv helped a little bit but am still having a similar issue. With the new txv installed my low pressure is 105 and my suction temp is up to 52. My head pressure is 310 and my Subcooling is 16 ( I intentionally left it a little overcharged so the unit doesn’t freeze ) but my evaporator also came up to 34F from is previous 30F. My previous temp drop was 13 and the coil was freezing up, today however my temp drop was 17. I’m not sure what is going on, changed the filter dryer as well and also recovered and added new refrigerant. What’s going on?
 
#3 ·
Didn’t grab a wet bulb just didn’t think about it but thermostat was sensing 75F. Humid day out today dry bulb would roughly be around 64. Dry bulb is 82.6
 
#4 ·
Airflow, or low return temp.
Where did you check your static.
Model numbers?
 
Save
#9 ·
And a 14in wide n coil at that.


Personally, I don’t think your moving 2 tons.
I’ve never seen a .49 static at full capacity.

That’s basically the static of the filter and the coil, with no ductwork attached.
 
Save
#10 ·
Need to measure static after the filter and before the coil

If it's a N coil, make sure the sheetmetal block off plate is covering the top of slant coil on the right.

Low subcooling is the result of the low superheat. The txv is wide open causing the low superheat. The low sc is because all the refrigerant is in the coil and the txv is open so you don't have back pressure to cause the subcooling to stack up and rise


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#11 ·
Can’t have a overfeeding txv with low suction pressure, without having an airflow problem.


More like he has low airflow, and the txv has closed as much as it can’t to bring up superheat, but it hit max closed.
There’s no subcool, because there is no heat to remove, because nothing has been gained by the evaporator.
 
Save
#13 ·
I have had n coils with just the small hard to clean part of coil dirty and misdiagnosed them as bad txv. After I installed new one and nothing changed I did a more through check and found extra n part dirty cleaned it and unit worked fine. I didn’t think that small part would make that big of a difference. But it’s a third of coil surface area and is first part to get dirty. I learned a useful lesson on N coils that day
 
#14 ·
Probably had a partially frozen coil at first. The final numbers say that your airflow is a bit low, but you're overcharged and that will drive suction pressure down on the typical TXV system, up to a point. Drop your subcooling back to 10°.
 
#17 ·
with the new TXV in place my superheat and subcooling look decent, not exactly where i want them but alot better than the previous txv. System subcooling will go above 9 now and my superheat is at around 16. Alot better than my previous of 0. It was the same temperature out the day i switch the Txv out as well. my low pressure is 105 compared to the previous 90, high side went up 20 psi as well cant remember the exact number.
 
#20 ·
And looks fine until you get the call 5 days later.
They tend to do fine on startup, and it slowly catches up.
 
Save
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.