Kung Fu Maintenance demonstrates how to leak check and locate refrigerant leaks on air conditioners and refrigerators.
Refrigerant Leak Check Finding On Fridges Plus Air Conditioners Video
I have got my leak detector here so I am going to do a quick sweep of the coils. Maybe I will adjust the sensitivity on this by pushing the sensitivity button here. I will put it all the way up to max sensitivity. Then I will sweep the probe around. All the coils, I am trying to put it in the back and see if I hear anything. I think it is reacting to the probe when it touches the metal. That is not really a leak but the probe being setup as max sensitive. I am really not finding anything here. Looks like we have a few little bent fins at the top here; no big deal probably was just when the unit was being cleaned. We didn’t find any refrigerant leaks there; I will have to check the back also.
Today I have a refrigerator that is low on refrigerant. I have got the unit unplugged right now. So, to get this going I am going to take off the back of the fridge. We want to save this panel because this panel because this panel is actually engineered to help this system run properly. It lets a certain amount of air through the back here and it is good for the unit to have the cardboard there so you do not want to just throw these cardboard pieces away. We actually need them and want them there.
We can look at our coils and they look pretty clean. First check on check on some small stuff, I am also going to be looking for any leaks. This does looks kind of suspect, right here. It has a braised joint and I see some green. Let me grab a couple tools and shed some light on the subject. Here is some light so that you can see a little better.
With the unit off I have got my refrigerant sensor; leak sensor. We have to adjust the sensitivity to be a higher sensitivity. Probe around this part right here… I am not hearing anything there. Now I am going to plug the unit in and be very careful not to touch anything. There it goes; the compressor kicked on. It seems to be reacting there but I am going to adjust the sensitivity to lower it down to the minimum. You can see here I have the minimum of the sensitivity. I am just going to put the probe right here again.
Definitely seems to be reacting with it right there. I think that is where our refrigerant leak is; right there. We see the green around it. So now carefully what I am going to do is use soap bubbles instead by spraying soap bubbles on it. Again, very careful this has voltage going on there. I am going to peak in here. Looks like right there. Very minor refrigerant leak, look at that… right here, there is our leak, very, very minor. Again, just seeing very minor troubling right there. I think that is where our leak is, right here. Maybe just a bad solder job. For the lack of it I will check this side also on the high side.
Everything seems OK there. No bubbles there, on to the next mission.