This article is part 5 of a 5 part series on troubleshooting by Senior Refrigeration and HVAC tech Jeremy Smith

This might be the most challenging part of troubleshooting. We’ve got a “Most Likely candidate” for the trouble, but we don’t know for certain that’s what is wrong.

So, we have to combine our customer skills, our experience, and our troubleshooting skills.
Let’s correct that “Most likely” problem that we’ve identified. Clean a dirty evaporator or
condenser coil, replace the plugged filter drier, repair the leak and recharge the unit to
specifications…

You’re done, right?

Not so fast…

This is where things can get interesting. Looking at our flowchart, we’ve got a decision loop
here. Make the repair or correction to system operation, then reevaluate system performance. In
reality, this puts us back to the gathering data phase of the process, but we don’t have to
Necessarily gather the same data twice. If we replaced an air filter or a belt or we cleaned a
coil or replaced a capacitor, we can ignore that on our second (and maybe
subsequent) evaluations.

We’re now looking at system performance. Most manufacturers publish methods to evaluate
their systems. If those fail, we can always resort back to the ‘rules of thumb’ and check to see if
our system operations data now falls into line with accepted industry norms.
If the unit doesn’t match up with manufacturers specifications or industry standards after making
the initial repair, continue the data gathering, data evaluation and repairing the next most likely
problem the data points to.

Be very careful here not to focus on a single aspect of the system. Let’s say you had a high-pressure
trip due to a dirty condenser. So, you clean that coil and reset the pressure switch.
Don’t key in exclusively on the high side readings and miss a low superheat issue. Monitor
ALL of the system conditions and only when everything is within industry norms (or the
customer refuses the work, of course) do you move to the final part of the flowchart and
terminate the troubleshooting process.

Now go out and fix some stuff right the first time.

— Jeremy