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July 17, 2025 50 mins

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In this episode, we dive into the emergence of AI in refrigeration training and troubleshooting. We cover how AI can streamline learning and problem-solving in the field, leveraging AI for quick access to information, proper usage of prompts, and ensuring sourced information reliability. We’ll also share practical examples and specific AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others. 

In this episode, we discuss:

-Importance of AI in refrigeration

-Common concerns about AI

-Using ai to enhance technical skills

-Quick access to information with AI

-AI prompts 

-Examples of AI in action

-Sourcing reliable information with AI

-Troubleshooting with AI

-Exploring different AI platforms

-Using AI for email and troubleshooting

-Creating training materials with AI

-Future of AI in HVACR

-Practical AI applications in refrigeration

Helpful Links & Resources:

https://chatgpt.com/

https://www.perplexity.ai/ 

Free Electrical Troubleshooting Webinar 

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Trevor (00:00):
Welcome to this AI training. Super excited that you're here. We're gonna be diving into sharing how to use AI as a tool. I think this is super important. Something that I've been using for well over almost two years now, learning about AI growing. With AI and just the big thing is, is that investing the time in this tool can really help transform your learning.

(00:01):
Well, talking to another technician could give you the wrong answer. Talking to a professor, an instructor, or a service manager or a boss could get the wrong answer as well. This does happen. People make mistakes. So do tools. This is a tool and I wanna show you over the next. 30 to 40 minutes and how I use it, how I use prompts, what the things that I use it for to really help develop your skills.
We've been using Google, well, I've been using Google for 15 years now, maybe even more. I, I used it when it originally came out, but it really started to get better over the last I say seven or eight years. Like Google has just been smashing it out. So now with AI taking all this information that billions of people put information in.
And I see a lot of people like still pushing back really heavy saying that you can't use it in the trades. It's not very helpful. It'll give you wrong answers. And over the last year and a half I've been using it. I, I've seen a massive shift in change in the knowledge for the technical trades.
Well, that's true. You do need to know something about certain topics. Because it may give you information that may not be really what you're looking for, but that's when it comes back to your prompts. What prompts are you using? How do you actually evaluate those prompts and that information?
Getting into that details that you really need. Honestly, those details are what will make you better at troubleshooting or learning with ai. And we're gonna do some examples here. There, there's a bunch of different platforms out there that you can use. Like the biggest one that a lot of people know is chat, GPT.
But as you. Prompted properly be specific. It, it, it'll, it'll fine tune the answers you're looking for. Like on the AI platform that I'm working on and I'm building and I'm creating, it's, I, I'm looking for something just like what refrigeration meant. Do we, we lift up the industry through training, education, and mentorship, and this is what we're building.
So having something to bounce ideas off makes it so much easier to really learn quicker and. There's, there is so much knowledge that's on the internet today that really can help you. That's where everybody goes. If you're going to look for, for answers today, you're not going to well, you, some people are, I go to the library and, and do some research, but technicians in the field, they're going on Google, YouTube, social media to find answers.
Oh, it should be 10 degrees sued, or 5K, but there's more to it than that. Are you doing it from the evaporator? Are you doing it from the compressor? Is it the system sued or the evaporator? Suid? Is it the discharge? Sued? No, I guess the discharge super eat wouldn't really make sense. This is something that is not very specific, and we're gonna throw this in as an example to see what it pops up.
Really going to come up as a prompt. So I'm just gonna throw this in here and, and chat. GPT. So this is the non-paid version. I recommend getting paid versions for whatever ai, at least try it out for a month to see the difference. 'cause it is a massive difference because they can start to learn and you can build prompts around them and how they work.
So these are the things that, this is a basic answer, but how can we make it better? That's the question. How can we make it better? You can, you can add things to make it, try to fine tune it. So this is a chiller from a good friend that pro refrigeration. And would . The super heat, they recommend out their manuals.
Where did they find it? They still didn't official pro show start manuals. Let's see. Manual. So it's coming from there, but I don't know. Let's see. Check out the sources.
And right here, my chiller.com manuals, here's where you go in and find their manuals. Let's see if we can find a chill star right here and how you search the, or maybe you gotta click on one of these chill star. It doesn't even, it doesn't pop
recommend the super system or compressor. Super deep. Must be,
And here's another way to test it. If you have liquid coming back, Bitzer right here diving and recommend 20 k 20 suction. Super. Well, let's take a quicker look at that can overload down to 10 K. So let's just dive in to see where it says this. So we click on this, this is oil management now. So it talks about the discharge sub low suction sube, avoid below being 10 k, recommended suction gas, 20 K if necessary.
be? So it's still not a lot of, not a lot of information. So let's see what it comes up with. Key warning, if you're repeating, adding oil, they need to remove it later. Oil circulation and it's not circulating correctly or pooling returns suddenly. So it says check return super.
So that's, that's, that information is good information. So here's some time the check it oil trapping in the pipes are, if you're using long refrigeration, improper line slope evaporator is mounted on high condenser oil may pull in low spots 100%. So this, this information is pretty good information. We haven't dove into the source or where they're pulling from.
There's another one like the talking about the viscosity. If that discharge temperature's really hot, it thins that oil and you just can't even separate it, and it's just gonna be traveling through the system too fast. So like this information, it is pretty good information that's coming through, but if you didn't know that, , if you weren't in refrigeration already or learning this stuff, you would have to figure out where you're sourcing this information.
And it's gonna get really thick and it's gonna start to log. And that's oil logging. So and what . Ultra low temps, ultra low loads. Oil may sit in the lines tri temporarily increase in loads. That doesn't really make sense in increasing loads. I guess turn on defrost real. If you're adding and moving over oil over time, chances sit somewheres in the return.
And that is one of the worst things you can do. There's no slope. And it was going up and down, kind of like a roller coaster. So every one of those was trapped and that's where all the oil was starting to sit. And then diving into it, . Let's find out a little bit more like, where did you source this information?
So this is the value of using AI showed out to my good friends at the HVAC school. What else? So re refrigeration charge affects oil 100%. So let's check four different, I don't know who the O HVAC specialist infos are. reddit.com. Reddit. Reddit scrub. So let's check what this one is here. Let's check it out.
Let's do check one more. Where else is source? HVAC school, again, some Reddit technicians, so you'd have to go in and read those system balance on it, so, so there's some decent sources there. Right click on the sources should go This one from LinkedIn. Diego, I don't know who Diego is, but let's, yeah. That, that looks, this is right 100%.

(00:22):
This is exactly right. You want to trap here and then that reducer on the, the vertical. So I would say this is a pretty, pretty good source. And using this or, or, what I mean? Just practicing with it is so, so important. That is how you're gonna get better at, at doing this. Here's another one that can suggest potential causes for issues.
Warn Evaco, YouTube. Let's see what else here. So these are pretty good sources right off the bat. Okay. Possible because excessive pressure isn't Oh, that makes
It's not always that it's wrong, it's just not. A hundred percent right? It is like someone saying to you like, okay, just go burn in the pipe and burn in the system and then pull an evacuation and charge it. Or saying, put your vac pump on, and then when it's in the, in the green on your gauge it's good.
So. It all depends. This is why you have to do the source. Then you have to do the research on top of that to make sure it's not, you gotta get into the books and then the reputable books when you're looking for this stuff. And then the reputable videos. Let's see what it shows for videos. Oh man, look at this.
So relief valves. There's 33, it says in there, let's see if it takes us right to the relief valves. So it talks about six 50 PSI relief, but it's not, it doesn't talk about what could cause it to relief, what I mean? I heard that the more we use it, the better it will get. Yeah. So that's a great, great thing.
And that's hopefully that they're doing that. And it's, IM important to, to check that, but when you buy the paid version, at least try, I would recommend trying for a month. 'cause everything that I type in there now, it knows me. It knows the, the things that I'm looking for. If I'm trying to write fine tune an email, , I'd write out the email and I say, can you fine tune this to this person or that type of person I'm emailing or this is the type of response that I'm looking for.
CO2 pvs. I I figured that one should have came up last time when we were talking about pvs, because they go, we go, went through that stuff in there. I'm super surprised how much perplexity is pulling up refrigeration mentor content. So. Understand this, identify the high pressure valve to be located on the outlet of the gas cooler.
try something. Let's go to, let's go here and try chat. GPT. Same question. Let's go back. Pull up the same question. Where is that question? How to set up
Set point. So floating pressure, COP. So this, you can't really, that's done in the controller. So if you go into the microthermal, the I pro, the Dan FoST is all done in there, but it gives you an like the initial set point. I wonder where it's sourcing all this information. So it might be using Danfoss.
so Copeland, well, it's called it Emerson. I, I don't even know it's gone there. This little. So co like if you get Kal and Danfoss for sure from those, the larger manufacturers, they have the information out there. They got a lot of people, they got tens of thousands of people working at these organizations.
COP yeah, you, you will have to set some of that up. Set P and IDs says ION P and IDs. Oh, it's, it gives you some examples. So, and it's coming from Manual plus and not coming straight from. Because now they're, it's not called Emerson ipro anymore. It's, it's Copeland. Everything's changed in Copeland. So you can see it's not given 100% and I don't like going from these manuals plus, but let's go here and click on the sources.
So what you can do is like can you create a five question, watches multiple, multiple choice questions. Five, multiple choice questions with answers on how to replace a compressor. Well let's do a more specific, a scroll compressor in a low temp condensing.
And that's the same as this. So here. For, for example, before re replace coordinate what must you do first? Open, high side, surface up, power off to continue lockte out, remove the compressor, capacitor, vent the refrigerator. Like that's a great one. And that's a great question that you could give to them, which is the following critical reason to install the new filter dryer, to regulate refrigerant, to enhance cooling, to remove moisture and acid from the SST to act as a muffin, like that bang on.
You got some technic issue toolbox talk, and you can do this to really help build up their com. These aren't super hard questions, but it's, it's something that new people don't, won't know about if they never done a compressive replacement before. Let's try it. After installing, replace compression and evacuating, what is the next step before energizing you those service valves be, valves and turn on power immediately. Confirm vacuum held. Add oil to system blindly. Check for frost and section B, confirm vacuum held, weigh in the correct refrigerant and monitor startup conditions for sure. So then, , and then you can do this a little bit more. Just say you're doing a job hazard assessment.
So right here. HVAC school, Nate, RSES, Dan Foss Bolin, like, great, great recommendations. What I mean? So there it is there. So this here is how you can fast track your team yourself, but it gets better. Like this is just, just the, just the start of it. Okay. And kind of went through that. See, so some of the things is that you can faster troubleshooting.
Does this take time? Yes. Is it hard? Yes. But those of you that put this work in, now, I know for sure it's gonna fast track you faster. Another technician out there, they're getting left behind, not using ai. A mentor in your pocket. Stay ahead of the trade. Oh, for sure. Staying ahead of the trade. CO2 EVs you can dive into where you can walk you through certain processes.
Power it down, lock out tego. Then you gotta take your meter and you gotta check it. This is it. You gotta take your meter and make sure there's no voltage there for safety. Now you can take off the electrical wiring diagram and step by step, I've seen it pump out stuff just like that. But you do need to know a little.
Those guys are super smart down there. They're, they're researching, they're doing stuff. So that is, and we've seen all the bigger manufacturer up there. Do they make mistakes sometimes for sure. But you got a better chance of getting the right answers from them than just a random blog or a random, post, , online. So that, that is so, so key. So I wanna show you guys something super cool and this is where I see the industry going and starting to, to skyrocket. And this is stuff that I'm working on, trying to figure out how I can use this more and how realistically, realistically, how. How I could get better.

Guest (00:40):
So the 10 VA rating stands for 10 volt Ampers, which is a measure of the Transformer's power capacity. Essentially, it tells you how much load the transformer can handle on the secondary side, so it's kind of like it's capacity rating.
a lot of. Yeah, exactly. It's perfect for smaller applications where you just need a bit of control voltage. If you ever need more power, you'd go with a transformer with a higher VA rating. Let me know if you have any more questions about it.

Trevor (00:42):
So now what do you think of that? What I mean? Like, and this is, this is how we will continue to evolve with ai. I thought that that gave some good answers. It wasn't, it wasn't perfect. It was, wasn't perfect, but it gave answers that I think was really good. And literally very quickly it gave it gave answers.
They're learning faster than me 20 years. Like, they get so much access, they're solving harder problems. I was on a talk today with a bunch of awesome technicians from around North America, and we were talking about this like 20 years ago. We didn't learn as fast as the, the, the people coming into the industry today.
That's, that's reality. It's already already happening. But we gotta figure out how to work with them, that that's it. Because there's huge advantages of it in hazard locations. Having robots and already today, for decades, they'd have robots going into hazardous locations to service fix something.
Is it scary? For sure. Do we have to be cautious about lots of things? 100%. 100%. I listened to a podcast generative ai with e Emily Laird. You can check her out. She's on LinkedIn. But I listened to all her different podcasts and trying to keep me up to date 'cause she's an expert at AI and, and the transformation and what is happening and how we need to be safe and secure and how to use it.
I've used it, for sure, I would've definitely started using it long before that. I found out about it back in 2014 when I got off the tools and started working in an office. I couldn't write an email. , Now I can write great emails. I, I still need, I still need help sometimes, but it doesn't take me two hours to write an email anymore.
This one here, it's really to help support you. We got tons and tons of training at Refrigeration Mentor that we have communities. I really believe investing in yourself growing your knowledge, learning a bit more is key to your success. For sure. Is it gonna be a key to your success? It does take time though to learn refrigeration.
, We're dealing with 600 volts, four 80 volts, 360 volts, two 30 volts, one 10 volt, whatever it is, wherever you're at in the world. So it's so, so important to definitely. Do it safely, like, but get into this electrical troubleshooting webinar, dive in and learn, get a little bit better, and all the things that you're that's difficult for you.
This is what it's all about. And once again, thank you for taking the time to watch and just check this out. I think just having an open mind to use, Hey, I, in refrigeration, it's going to be key. It's gonna help you be successful, honestly. You're gonna learn faster, you're gonna grow quicker. You can help your team.
Like this is what we do at Refrigeration Mentor. We're training the industry to help you grow and learn and get better, and that's what it's all about. Like how do we get better tomorrow? But it'll be a little bit better tomorrow than today. It's super awesome that you took the time to come and listen, watch, grow.
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