Welcome to Did You Know, the ESCO HVAC podcast,
the show where we explore the cool, the hot,
and the everything in between of the HVACR industry.
Each week, we dig into the innovations, the insights,
and the inspiring stories that power our trade,
from the classroom to the job site and beyond.
This episode is brought to you by this week's
amazing sponsors. Daikin Comfort Technology,
perfecting the air since 1924. ServiceLogic,
people first. Always. Hudson Technologies. One
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Training. Supporting HVAC and refrigeration instructors.
As well as the United Association of Journeymen
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Industry of the United States and Canada. Built
on excellence since 1889. Whether you're just
getting started or you've been turning wrenches
for decades like myself, there's always something
new for us to learn. I'm Clifton Beck, and this
is Did You Know? The ESCO HVAC Podcast. Let's
dive in. Jamie Kitchen, how are you doing today,
sir? I am doing fine, thank you for asking. It's
great to be on here. I always love talking about
refrigeration and air conditioning components
and equipment, so that's probably why I work
in that industry. It's funny. Yeah, no kidding.
And, you know, the one we're going to talk about
today is... One of the probably most misunderstood
and definitely misdiagnosed components within
our industry. And what could that be? I couldn't
tell you how many posts I've seen for, it must
be the expansion valve. It's like a meme now,
right? I know. You know, the dumpster's on fire
outside in the parking lot. Oh, it must be the
TXV. Yeah. You know, I've spent over 20 years
in the field, most of that in commercial refrigeration.
And changing expansion valves is really almost
as elusive as a reversing valve, of which I've
placed two in my entire career. Expansion valves,
yeah, I've probably replaced a hundred of them
or so, but how many have I not replaced? Tens
of thousands. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the
install base, I mean, it's getting better. You
know, whether this is too early to talk about
this in the podcast, but... When SEER 13 came
in back in the mid -2000s and everybody went
to TXVs, the industry, Dan Foss included, woefully
underestimated the amount of education and training
required to get people to understand this. We
just assumed it was a simple component that people
knew. There was an entire generation of techs
out there that had worked with nothing but pistons.
Combine that with the valve that's not adjustable
superheat -wise, and it just blew up in flames,
right? So it was unbelievable. Well, then maybe
we should step all the way back to the fundamentals,
right? Okay. Like, how does a TXV work? Oh. Okay,
so... remember back in science class balance
of forces right you know and that's really what
we have if you look at the flat saucer part soft
flying saucer part on the txv inside of that
he took the head off inside of that's a diaphragm
a piece of tool steel metal tempered and on top
of that you have one opening force and that's
your sensing ball pressure now counteracting
that on the bottom are two closing forces the
superheat spring pressure, this is what you adjust
when you're adjusting superheat, as well as the
evaporator pressure. So between those two and
the bulb pressure, sensing bulb pressure pushing
on top, those are the forces fighting for control
of the TXV. If they're equal, nothing happens.
But if one becomes greater than the other, it's
going to cause a deflection in that diaphragm.
If the diaphragm deflects down, it's going to
push on a pin. which is going to push the valve
stem or the valve seat away from the orifice
opening, allowing more refrigerant to flow. Okay.
All right. So that would be your sensing bulb
heating up. The gases in the sensing bulb, liquid
change in state to vapor, takes up more volume,
pressure increases, drives the valve open. Let's
say you're running your cooler or your air conditioning
and you remove the heat out of the space. You
don't need as much load anymore. The TXV is going,
hold on a second here, man. The refrigerant's
leaving the evaporator cooler now. So my sensing
bulb is becoming cooler. Then the evaporator
and superheat spring then start to close the
valve and reduce the amount of flow into the
evaporator. So this will be called an adaptive
control. It adapts to changes in load. And I
think one of the misunderstood components of
that is that sensing bulb. A lot of technicians
have never been explained that that sensing bulb
actually has our refrigerant in it. It has a
charge of refrigerant, and that's the correlation
with the pressure. When we look at the temperature
-pressure relationship of refrigerants, we know
that as temperature increases, so does our pressure.
As temperature decreases, so does our pressure.
And so we're utilizing that function via our
sensing bulb. In fact, you can say all the magic
happens in the sensing bulb. 100 % is what determines
how that valve operates. Do you want to open
slow? Do you want to close fast? Do you want
to open quick on low temp? How do you want to
make that work, right? Because there's a mixture
of secret sauce in these bulbs. It's not just
refrigerant because remember, the pressure temperature
relationship is not stable. it is different at
low temperature compared to high temperature
so your drift would be massive between superheat
and opening if you just have refrigerant we put
a whole bunch of stuff in there and then we can
limit the amount of liquid to make it what we
would call a limited opening valve right so you
don't overload the compressor we can put a piece
of charcoal in there carbon so that it releases
slowly so that it doesn't sure there's all kinds
of things we can do it all depends on what you're
trying to achieve ice machines are a good example
ice machines have a very specific charge to adapt
to how the evaporator temperature changes in
an ice machine it starts high when you first
bring water in and then it drops rapidly right
at harvest time And you have to not underfeed
and you certainly can't overfeed. So we adapt
the bulb charges for that very specifically.
Sure. In fact, we have an ice machine charge
for the bulb charge. Okay. Very cool. Yeah. So
that it's not as fast and swift as a modulation.
Correct. Completely makes sense. All right. So,
you know, the reason we went from. fixed orifice
metering devices into these, you know, adjusting
was really kind of for performance and efficiency,
correct? Yeah, there's a couple of things. Performance
is definitely one of them and efficiency is another.
Now, let's back up here a little bit. If you
look at refrigeration compared to air conditioning,
they're kind of a different way in which how
the TXV fits into there and how they deal with
changes in load. So let's take your household
air conditioner, right? You have your thermostat
on the wall. It's reading dry bulb temperature,
so it's missing 50 % of the energy in the air,
but that doesn't matter. It's measuring dry bulb.
And it says, hey, right, I have a load in the
house. It brings the system on. So it's probably
energizing the coil of a low voltage relay coil,
right? And it brings that compressor on. And
then it runs happily and it says, hey, it's getting
cool enough in here. So then it de -energizes
that relay, the compressor turns off. That's
not how it works in refrigeration, usually. In
refrigeration, the thermostat controls a solenoid
valve in the liquid line and it closes that solenoid
valve. Everything is happily running because
it's downstream. It doesn't know that yet, but
suddenly the liquid stops flowing through the
TXV and it stops flowing into the evaporator
and the evaporator gets pumped down and your
low pressure control, not safety, low pressure
control, then cuts that compressor off now here's
where the difference between air conditioning
refrigeration is in air conditioning you want
that txv to stay closed because that's where
a big chunk of your energy efficiency comes from
is making sure that your high side stays high
and your low side stays low because you don't
want them to equalize because you have to spend
all this energy getting them back in air conditioning
keep in mind you have the evaporator pressure
underneath the sensing bulb pressure on top,
they're going to get pretty close to each other.
But you've got your superheat spring, which is
also an additional closing force. Those two,
evaporator, superheat spring, is going to close
that valve and keep it closed, right? And that
way, you maintain that high pressure differential.
Technically speaking, you could do the same thing
with a piston, which is just an orifice, and
put a solenoid valve in, all right? Right. And
shut it down. So really, Six and one half dozen,
but now you're adding something. You might as
well just put a TXV in, right? Because it's the
same idea. By the way, you know where the performance
difference also comes from with a TXV versus
a piston? I don't know. It's not as reliant on
the outside ambient conditions. So what people
don't realize is a piston and a TXV are backwards
to each other when it comes to superheat and
self -cooling. So if you look at a piston. If
it's hot outside, you've got lots of condensing
pressure. So it's just banging the refrigerant
into the evaporator. So your evaporator superheat
is very low on a hot day outside. That seems
weird, right? That's great. What happens if it's
raining outside and it's wet inside and it's
not that hot outside? Now you really don't have
any flow into your evaporator. So how are you
going to remove all of this humidity in the air?
right if you don't have that mass flow through
your evaporator the txv unless it's freezing
cold outside it's going to have enough high side
pressure it's going to open up because it sees
that latent heat that humidity it doesn't care
if it's humidity or sensible it's going to treat
it as load and it's going to open up and deal
with that and so you get much better dehumidification
with a txv than you would with a piston. Now,
your household air conditioning is not the best
way to deal with dehumidification unless it's
loaded all the time, like Florida or Texas or
someplace like that. But where I live, there's
always these off cycles and ASHRAE says, oh,
this ain't going to work very well. You need
a secondary dehumidifier. So that's why you put
that thing in your basement that runs and then
shuts off and you forget to empty it all the
time. Right. Unless you're like my son and you
just run it down to like 65 degrees. Yeah, if
you want to hang meat in the place, you can dehumidify
it really good. But your electricity bill is
probably going to be a little unconcerned. Yeah,
exactly. So tell me about a new generation, the
TR6 valve. Tell me a little bit about that. So
with Danfoss, we have really focused on manufacturers'
OEMs. And this is not a surprise to anybody.
and there's always been some frustration but
the reality is we're an engineering company and
we speak manufacturer's language and we talked
about sensitive we talk about compressors whatever
you know if the engineers at a manufacturer need
information they want to work with somebody we're
those people so we'll go in there and design
things and come up with products specific for
them that do a very good job where we need we
recognize we need to do better is servicing that
aftermarket because now the installed base is
massive millions of compressors we've sold and
millions of txvs it's insane how much market
share we have so now that product is starting
to age out where it's going to need replacement
and so this is where you get a little bit creative
and universality is a big big deal in the aftermarket
If you can have one code instead of five codes
on your truck or your shelf, you've effectively
taken that real estate space and increased the
value of it. It's real estate value that everybody
wants, whether it's on a truck or on a shelf.
How many turns am I going to get? How much money
am I going to make off of this compared to somebody
else's product? So you're being compared to your
competitor as far as that's concerned. So if
you can take a valve like the TR6 valve, which
is a... valve that we sell millions of a year
into the light commercial residential market.
And the OEMs want a very specific product because
it has to be tested for utmost efficiency. But
the aftermarket is a different game. The aftermarket
wants it to work. It wants it to work well enough
that people are going to be happy. But at the
same time, it wants flexibility. So if you come
out with a code and you can put the different
connectors for that, let's say you put the TXV
in the box. And you have different connectors.
You have chat lift and arrow quip or whatever.
And then you put the insulation tape and the
bulbs drop. That's pretty standard. But remember
how I said the sensing bulb charge is the secret
sauce? What we did was we came up with a bulb
charge so that the TXV will work with 410A, 454B,
and R32. Oh, okay. Now you're getting somewhere.
This just takes that universal aftermarket replacement
one step further. And you can do the same thing
with scroll compressors, right? Pistons are a
little bit easier, but scrolls have a fixed compression
ratio. So you can't just dump any refrigerant
in there because it's all going to get compressed
the same amount, right? It's not going to adapt.
So what we did was we have 410A and 454B universal
scrolls. You can't do R32 in there without a
lot of work because the pressures just aren't
going to work out for you. And so... This is
kind of where this whole game is played. So with
TXVs, the easiest way to do this, to get business,
is that here's what you have installed. You got
all these OEM code numbers. Here's what you need
to replace all of those. And you simplify it
as much as possible. As long as it's got to work,
it has to be happy because nobody wants to install
something and then regret it, right? This is
where you have that balance. It's a little bit
more like the Wild West. It's a little bit of,
we could never sell a product like this to a
manufacturer. They throw you at the door, right?
Yeah, they want very, very specific. Sometimes
ridiculously so, but it works for them. But in
the aftermarket, it's a whole other thing, you
know, because time is money. And so if you have
the product and you can service it right away,
that's a massive service you're doing to your
customer. And it's a massive cost saving as well.
Yeah. Well, I look at it from, you know, from
that universality. You know, I was a contractor.
I worked at a distributor for many years. You
know, if I can keep universal parts around that
can serve my customer very well in a variety
of different applications, that's what I want
to keep around. And that was one of the big concerns
as we started making this refrigerant transition.
You know, of course, the very first topic that
we started hearing, oh, the pressures are going
to be different again. Well. they're they're
close they're different but they're close and
then oh now we're going to have all these different
parts that we're going to have to keep around
and so when we start looking at a valve that
is designed to fit those two different generations
of refrigerants right our r410a as well as our
r32 and r454b i think it's gonna be critical
that we start looking at components like this
that are easy to stock easy to use solves a lot
of problems and it just simplifies the whole
transition we're all trying to help make this
transition smoother and this is one of the ways
well whoever comes up with the best solution
to me this if you want to call it capitalism
or whatever but whoever comes up with the best
solution that works they're the ones that are
going to win right so if you can provide the
service and the solution for people And let people,
I often joke that Dan Foss loves to make great
products and not tell anybody about them because
we are a very conservative company that way.
Advertise, advertise. I guess, yeah, we probably
should advertise that we have this right kind
of thing. So as much as you joke, we are not
good at that side of the business, right? But
we need to get better. Well, I'll be happy to
help that because there's going to be a lot of
contractors, you know, as we move into these
generations of refrigerants that, you know, that's
a common part to keep around. So, I mean, as
a contractor, are there any things that I really
need to know about or, you know, have we kind
of really went through that? Yeah, I mean, you
have to understand that the refrigerants are
different from each other. I mean, in the sense
that it's kind of like you take a couple of refrigerants,
you mix them together. And then you kind of change
that ratio and add something else. That's really
all these are. These are not new creations. It's
kind of like you take some of this, some of this,
and some of this, and you mix it together. Well,
let me try mixing this together. And so that's
where the chemistry comes in. But inside the
system, they act differently. And we all have
tools now. Dan Foss, Emerson, Sporting. We have
tools now that will tell you, okay, if I switch
from this refrigerant to this refrigerant. You
can go through all the components. We have what's
called our cool selector, a cool selector software.
You can download it. It's free. There's no spyware
in it, trust me. So you can download this, and
it will tell you what's the capacity change in
that TXV, what's the capacity change in that
simple line component, like a solenoid valve.
Some of these are suddenly going to become oversized,
because think about it. That solenoid valve,
unless it's tiny, it's pilot -operated. And if
it's pilot operated, it needs a minimum pressure
drop across it in order to work. It's about a
half a pound. All right. So if you're suddenly
getting 25 percent more capacity and this stuff
happens with these new refrigerants through your
solenoid valve and your solenoid valve already
on the edge of being too big. Now it's going
to become erratic because it's going to have
too low of a pressure drop to assist that opening
and it's going to stick and it's going to cause
grief. right all across the board and so these
are the kinds of things where it's not difficult
you just need the information to look at it and
so we're all putting this material out there
the idea is where is it how do you find it the
wholesaler right really is the key to this the
wholesaler Because as a manufacturer, Dan Foss
does not have that relationship with the contractors.
That's the wholesaler. So working with the wholesalers,
educating them, providing them with the resources
so that they can in turn go out and support their
customers. That's how I'm going to win right
in the aftermarket is making sure that the wholesalers
have all the information and resources they need.
At the same time, you also have to help them
by creating pull. right and this is what we're
doing today helps out where people are aware
these products exist and they can say hey i heard
some dude from danfoss talking about a universal
tr6 valve right what do you know about it oh
we have them right over here right and so you
kind of close close that whole loop in this thing
you know from start to finish and that's how
you play the game in this one Yeah, no, absolutely.
And it's a great solution. I encourage everyone
to spend a little time, head over to DanFoss
.com, learn about the products, the TR6, and
check with your local distributor. If they're
not already handling it, say, hey, Dan Foss has
got a universal valve out here that I want you
to stock for in the future. And I'll about guarantee
they're going to be looking forward to that.
And we have a lot of smart guys who pretend to
be account managers, sales guys, and they're
actually engineers and technical people like
me. We're more than happy to work with the wholesaler,
come out and put training on. We have all kinds
of training. Most of it is how to reduce callbacks,
technical training, troubleshoot training, systematic
startup, things like that where you're saving
time and you don't have to drive back to the
job site to fix something when you're done. So
that's and that's, again, kind of where this
all comes down to. And we're more than happy
to share this with you and take your crew through
it. So there's a there's a cheap plug for me
on this one. No, it should be. I mean, that's
the reason that we're here. You know, it's about
solving problems, creating solutions and getting
you the contact to learn more to make sure that
we're all successful. Jamie Kitchen, I am sure
grateful for you and Dan Foss hanging out with
us. And I look forward to some deeper conversations
in the future. I hope so, because they're kind
of just scratching the surface there, and I have
to kind of hold back, because I could talk all
day about this. I love it. Part two. Like that?
I said part two, coming to a podcast. Yeah, exactly.
Oh, absolutely. Again, whatever you guys want
to hear out there, let us know, because we're
more than happy to discuss it. Love it. Actually,
I was talking about this is my show. I'm sorry.
No, you are. I mean, that's the whole point of
making a show. I have a podcast, too, taking
the temperature on HVAC. Tell me a little bit
about your podcast before we hop out of here.
Same thing. I bring guests on. A lot of them
are from within Danfoss, smart guys. I also reach
out to external people. who are on the tools,
who are on the design side, or even run their
own businesses and own podcasts and kind of deep
into the dive into that. And it's called Taking
the Temperature on HVACR. And really, we're just
looking at different things. And it's very, what's
the word I'm looking for? Easy going. it's like
a conversation like we're having today where
we dive through different topics. We have a couple
of laughs. We usually realize that we learned
more than we, than we thought we were going to,
or we know less than we thought we did. It's
all of these things can happen. So I hope you
can tune in and listen to us when you're driving
in traffic sometime with nowhere to go. Love
it. All right. Well, we thank you all for joining
us and we'll catch you all on the next episode.
Thank you very much.