Air Conditioning - Control issue for refrigeration

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roadking007
06-24-09, 10:19 PM
Our Family recently purchased part ownership in a hunting/fishing lodge that has a full commercial type kitchen in it for guests. We are refurbishing all of the equipment including the cooler/freezer. We purchased a package unit, pre-charged condenser/evap unit for the freezer. I've removed the old one. but it was not very well installed & the wiring was not marked in any way. I'm an electrician by trade. I need any advice available to wire in the Condenser & evap controls (the documentation from the factory is not very good). It's Electric defrost with a built-in time clock. I know the terminals in the evap are for the heaters/fans/ect. It's the wiring in the condenser at the time clock that is throwing me. I already have 208v at the condenser along with 5 or 6 other wires (blue & red, no yellow though, I've rung them out & marked them) Also have the same wires at the evap, along with a pair for the evap fans that I've wired to a switch (for service purposes)

Thanks in advance for any direction you might be able to give me on matching the control wiring at the cond/time clock to the evap:wall:


daddyjohn
06-25-09, 05:48 AM
First of all, take out that switch for the evaporator fans. Replace it with a switch that is operated by the door. Reason being, someone goes in the box and "oh. it's cold in here", they shut off the fans and forget to turn them back on. With a door switch, they walk in, fans go off, they leave, fans turn back on. Tell me about the timeclock. Brand, model number, what terminals does it have? With a typical setup, both hot legs go to the timeclock to run the timer motor, Then one of the hot legs [we'll call it L2] runs directly to the evap, it picks up one side of the fan motors and one side of the heaters. L1 back at the timeclock will go thru a SPDT switch [internally, the switch is the same as a 3 way light swtich], it will be made from common to one side during refrigeration [NC] and common to the other side during defrost [NO]. Usually the SPDT switch terminals are 1, 4, and 3 on the front of the clock with 1 as common, 4 as NC and 3 as NO. If you can give me a visual or list the terminals on the clock, I'll be able to tell you better what is what. Some clocks have a double set of SPDT switches on which you break both hot legs to the heaters, but we'll deal with later that if that is what you have. Still with me? OK So we run a wire from NC to the evap to pick up the fans and the box thermostat [fans and thermostat wire in parallel, not series]. Next wire goes from NO to the evap to pick up the heaters. Next wire comes back to the condensing unit from the thermostat. It has to tie into the controls for the unit. So, the thermostat is simply a switch loop. If you have a X terminal, you need another wire for that. X is a defrost termination circuit. In the evaporator you should see a control that is Defrost Termination Fan Delay although sometimes it 2 separate controls. A DTFD is a SPDT switch that makes one side on a fall in temperature and the other side on a rise in temperature. It has it's sensing bulb in the evap coil and has 2 functions. On a fall in temp, it starts the fans. Typical setting is 25*. Translation- the evap coil has to get down to 25* before the fans will come on. This keeps from overloading the compressor and from circulating warm air in the box. When the unit is in defrost, the evap warms up. When the evap temp reaches the rise in temp setting of the DTFD, typically 55*, it make a circuit to X on thimeclock. On the back of the timeclock is a little trip solenoid which trips the contacts back to refrigeration. There should be an X terminal in the evap coil on the terminal board. So you just go X to X. Have we covered all the bases? Nope. We need to think about the drain line heater. We have 2 choices, cycle the drain line heater with the deforst cycle in which case the drain line heater wires in parallel with the defrost heaters. I prefer choice #2 which is to have the drain line heater on all the time. This means you have to run a non switched L1 to the evap coil then wire L1 and L2 to the drain line heater. Drain line heaters come with a self regulating temp control built in. I'm sure you'll have more ??, but this should get you started.