Came across a stat that blew my mind about compressor failure rates

I was looking through some old service logs last night from a shop I used to work at back in 2013. We kept paper records for everything and I got curious about how many compressors we replaced in a year. Turns out it was about 40 units a year for just our three trucks. Fast forward to last week and I stumbled on a forum post from a guy in Florida who said his shop does over 100 compressor swaps a year. That shocked me because I thought we were busy. But then I checked manufacturer data from Copeland and it said nearly 80 percent of compressor failures are caused by liquid slugging or contamination. I had no idea the percentage was that high. It really made me think about how we diagnose things. Has anyone else looked at their own numbers and been surprised by what causes most callbacks?

2 comments

2 Comments

alice_harris3516d ago

Started digging into that same Copeland data after reading this and realized we were basically ignoring liquid line solenoid valves on like half our installs. Bet a ton of those "contamination" failures are really just bad piping practices nobody wants to admit to.

faithb7815d ago

Have you checked if the installers are actually brazing with nitrogen on those lines? I chased my tail for months on compressor failures until I realized the guys were skipping that step on solenoid valve installations. The heat from brazing without nitrogen creates so much scale and slag inside the lines, it gets into the oil and trashes the valves. A simple purge line and a flow meter saves more compressors than any fancy filter setup ever will.