Hello, my name is Ares Orlanzzini, and I’m here with HVAC Technical Academy. Today, I’m going to teach you about the heat strip.

A heat strip has two main applications depending on the system. If it’s in a heat pump, it acts as secondary or auxiliary heat. If it’s in a straight cool system, it serves as the primary heat source. For this lesson, I’m going to focus on how it works in a heat pump so you can get a better understanding.

As you can see here, this is where the heat strip is located inside the unit. If you look at it installed, you get a better view. The heat strip works similarly to a toaster. The coils heat up and glow orange when energized. That’s how it produces heat.

To test the heat strip, you can check for continuity to see if power is passing through it. You would test from this terminal to this one. If you have continuity, that shows power is passing through the circuit.

If the heat strip gets too hot, the snap disc located here will open the circuit and shut it off. When that happens, power will no longer pass through the coils. This allows the coils to cool down before operating again.

If the heat strip hasn’t been used in a while, you might notice a slight smell when it first turns on. That’s normal. It’s usually just dust burning off the coils. The odor should go away after a few minutes. It does not mean the heat strip is broken.

Some common ways a heat strip can fail include normal wear and tear over time. It can also fail if there is restricted airflow. Poor airflow can cause it to overheat repeatedly, which can damage the coils.

To remove the heat strip, you would pull it out from this section here. If it needs to be replaced, you would install a new heat strip assembly. Once you receive the new part, slide it back into place, secure it with screws, and reconnect all the wiring exactly as it was on the original heat strip.

After that, you’re good to go.

And that’s how you service and replace a heat strip.

During his first introduction recording, Joshua had a quick reset moment — the kind every technician experiences when learning something new. Instead of treating it as a mistake, we used it the same way employers do: as a chance to pause, identify what went off track, and make the next attempt stronger.

By the second take, Joshua regrouped, communicated clearly, and delivered his introduction with confidence. This is exactly what we train for. Not perfection — awareness, adjustment, and improvement.

In the field, technicians who can recognize an issue, correct it quickly, and move forward are the ones who grow fastest. Showing this process helps future employers see that our students aren’t afraid of challenges — they know how to handle them.

Hi, my name is Adam. I’m here with HVAC Technical Academy. I’m here to explain the vacuum pump process.

First thing you want to do is hook up your low side and high side lines with your ball valves off, obviously, and then connect your vacuum hose to your vacuum pump. You turn the vacuum pump on, then you open up your manifold and your ball valves, and you open up the vacuum. Then you wait for the pressure in here to read 500 microns or below. Until then, you just wait.

It can take 10 minutes, it can take up to two hours from what I’ve heard. Once you reach the 500 point, 500 or below, you close everything up. Definitely close your ball valves before you take the hoses off the high side. Then you turn your machine off and you’re good to go.

Another thing about the machine: you need to open up this ballast here, otherwise it won’t do its job properly. That expels all the non-condensables that you don’t want, which is what you’re trying to do — pull out the refrigerant and get rid of all the non-condensables.

Thank you for watching.

Hello everybody. My name is Brayden, and I am at the HVAC Technical Academy in Sanford, Florida, and today I’m going to be telling you everything about condenser fan motors.

What a condenser fan motor does is pull air through the condenser coils to remove heat from your refrigerant. Ways to tell if it goes bad are: you’ll have system shutdowns, compressor overheating that can ultimately lead to compressor damage, and warmer air coming out of the vents.

Some ways to test: you can test with your capacitor, from your four-prong to your two-prong, and make sure you know what your minimum and maximum range is. Another good way to test is you want to flip this over after you remove all your screws, then you want to spin this and check for seized bearings. You’ll feel any resistance and you’ll hear it if you have seized bearings.

So let’s say it’s bad and now you want to replace it. You’ve got to remove your set screw, take off the fan blade, make sure your wires are disconnected, and flip this back over. Then you want to remove these four screws right here. That’s how you take it off. Then you put your new one back on, connect your wires, get everything back to how it was, and that’s about it.

Most common things that will go bad are age, wear, capacitor, and bearings.

Thanks for watching my video. I’m Brayden at HVAC Technical Academy, and have a good day.

Hi guys, today I am going to be talking about filter driers. First of all, my name is Deon from HVAC Technical Academy. I will tell you guys about filter driers and where they are located.

Right here is a bi-flow filter drier. Right here is my condenser. In a condenser you have a reversing valve. As you can see right here, this is my liquid line and I have a bi-flow filter drier. Now I’m going to explain why I have a bi-flow filter drier on the liquid line to my condenser.

Inside the condenser you will have a reversing valve. The reversing valve reverses the refrigerant flow of the system. So, in order to reverse the refrigerant flow on your liquid line, you would have to have a bi-flow filter drier.

The bi-flow filter drier can be thought of like a filter in a car, or a filter in your air handler, or any kind of filter. The filter drier catches non-condensables and any condensables that are left over from the system or from the vacuum process. That’s really about it for filter driers. They just catch non-condensables that are left over from the system.

They can usually be located on your liquid line to your condenser, and with a bi-flow drier it will work in both directions because of the reversing valve. The reversing valve reverses the flow, so you have to have the bi-flow filter drier connected to your liquid line.

To get these on, you can braze them on. You can braze the filter drier onto the liquid line on both ends. Make sure it’s brazed on properly.

When do you actually remove the filter drier? You remove it when you have a leak or a major component removed. So if you have a compressor burnout, or your compressor or another major component needs to be replaced, that is when you replace your filter drier, or when there’s a temperature difference.

That’s really it about filter driers. I hope you enjoyed watching. My name is Deon from HVAC Technical Academy and I hope to see you again.