Hey Ed, Is It Possible to Hold a 500-Micron Vacuum on a Line Set if There Is Moisture in the System?

In this edition of "Hey Ed", Ed discusses if it is possible to hold a 500-Micron vacuum on a line set if there is moisture in the system

Hey Ed, is it possible to hold a 500-micron vacuum on a line set if there is moisture in the system? That is a very interesting question and I could answer it either way depending on my mood at any given time. If there's moisture in the system, we're gonna have to quantify the moisture, if there's a very very very tiny amount of moisture, yeah we could probably hold a 500-micron vacuum, but if we have bulk moisture we haven't achieved that deep vacuum that we desire, then no it's not going to. Ultimately what we can do is valve off the pump and do what they call a decay test and we can look for rate of rise, essentially we're gonna see how much that vacuum rises in a short period of time and there’s again a lot of bulb parking that can be done with that, I’m a big fan of a couple manufacturers have apps and within a second or two it can measure the rate of rise and I like technology to do my measurements possible but if I’m gonna throw some actual numbers at it if I ain’t get a system down to 500 microns and it doesn't rise above 1000 microns in five minutes, I'm gonna call it to go. Again, always go back to looking at the app for guidance but get it down to 500 as long as it’s not going above that thousand number in five minutes we’re good to go and that’s the way I see it.

In this edition of “Hey Ed”, Ed discusses if it is possible to hold a 500-Micron vacuum on a line set if there is moisture in the system

Ed Janowiak is the Manager of HVAC Design Education at ACCA.