Transcription
Hi everyone, I'm Dana, and welcome back to Inverter Always. In a very recent video, I just discussed a few error codes that will commonly pop up on VRV startups, especially on commercial projects where you have branch boxes. These are the heat recovery systems that can heat and cool at the same time. They're very cool, very efficient, very comfortable systems. I'll go ahead and I'll put a card in the corner for that video now, in case you missed it. It is packed full of information with lots of common error codes that you're probably going to see at some point or another.
In today's video, I want to build off of that video and go into more detail about the branch boxes themselves and show you guys how to set the dip switches before you do your startup, so that hopefully you can avoid a couple of the error codes that we just got done talking about in that video. So if you guys enjoyed today's video, please click the like button below. It really helps out my channel. If you enjoy this content and haven't already, please consider subscribing. Before we jump in, a quick shout out to all the channel members. You guys, thank you so much for your continued support. You guys are what makes this channel churn. We're still trying to grow, so thank you all so much for all of your support. All right, you guys, let's jump right in. [Music]
Now you guys, before we jump in, I do want to specify: today we are focused on Daikin's VRV heat recovery systems. It's the branch boxes we use on VRV4 and later. So if you have an older VRV3, VRV2 system that doesn't utilize these branch boxes, I'm sorry, we are not going to be talking about those in today's video. This is really going to be focused on the branch boxes that we use on VRV4, VRVx, VRV Amirion; so anything in that generation category and later. So it's important to know a couple of things as we jump in. There are multiple box sizes, and we're going to go through them real quick here. The smallest branch box is a single-port box. We're not talking about the single-port box in today's video. The whole purpose of today's video is when you have multi-port boxes and you have your line sets hooked up to all those boxes; sometimes you have empty ports, sometimes you're twinning a set of ports together, and we need to know: when do I turn on the dip switches, and when I need to turn on dip switches, which dip switch do I turn on? The smallest multi-port box that we could potentially utilize is a 4-port box. The 4-port box has one printed circuit board. That printed circuit board has dip switches for each port. Each board has up to four switches that signifies the four ports it's associated with. Bear with me.
You then have a six-port box. The six-port box has two printed circuit boards. That first board on the left-hand side of the box, as you're looking at the board, is your first four ports. The second board, which is then on the right-hand side of that box as you're looking at the boards, will take care of your two extra ports, ports five and port six, or ports uh, E and F. There are two more ports on the board because we just discussed there are up to four ports on each board. There are two ghost ports. The board has the capacity for four ports, but there are only two on that board, which means there are two ghost ports. Keep that in mind because we're going to come back and talk about it very shortly. The next size is an 8-port box. Your 8-port box then has two printed circuit boards. Both printed circuit boards are fully utilized with four ports for each board. The next size up is a 10-port box, and just like the six-port box, you're going to have a set of ghost ports. The far left-hand board takes care of the first four ports. The middle board takes care of the next set of four ports, and the far right-hand board is going to take care of your last two ports. That means that that right-hand board is going to have two ghost ports. The board has the capacity of hosting four ports, but the box physically does not have that many ports; there's only two on that end, so there's two ghost ports again. Just keep that in mind; we'll come back to it shortly. The largest box that we could utilize, at least as of the time of this recording, is a 12-port box, and the 12-port box will again have three printed circuit boards. This time we're going to utilize all 12 ports or 12 spots on those boards, so you'll have four ports for the first board on the left, you'll have four ports for the middle board, and then you'll have your four ports for the right-hand board.
Okay, so now that we understand how many ports are on each board, let's talk about the dip switches. Let's say, for example, let's keep things real simple: I just have a four-port box. That means I have one printed circuit board. Let's say my four ports are A, B, C, and D. You will actually see this on the board on the terminals where you land your communication wires; they are labeled ABCD, as are the pipes that you braze onto; they are also labeled A, B, C, D. When you pipe a unit to port A, you need to wire that same unit to terminal block A. It's very important you get this correct because if you cross-wire it, then when you do your startup you can have performance issues, and that's that's a conversation for another day, but it's something that we don't want, so just make sure that you pipe A and wire A, pipe B wire B, etc., etc. So let's say that I have ports A, B, C, and D all utilized, so I have a four-port box and I'm using all four ports, then I don't need to turn on any dip switches. The dip switches that you would turn on, you would only turn on in the event that you're not using a port, so you have an empty port. What you would then do is turn on a dip switch to disable that port. In the logic, on means off. Yeah, that's very logical; it's kind of backwards, I know, but that's how it works. All the switches are off. When you turn a switch on, that is to disable the port because you're not going to be using it. If you don't do this correctly, that's one of the reasons you get a UA 53, which we talked about in the last video.
So now let's say that I have that same four-port box, but now I'm not using all the ports. Let's say I'm not using port D. D is the last port on that box. When you look at the printed circuit board, you're going to have two dip switch banks. You'll have a dip switch bank labeled DS1 and a dip switch bank labeled DS2. For the time being, I want you to ignore DS2; we're really just going to focus on DS1 right now. DS1 has four switches: switches one, two, three, and four. Those four switches will correspond to ports A, B, C, D. So switch one is port A, switch two is port B, three is C, four is D. If we're not using port D, then that means we need to disable port D, so we need to turn on dip switch bank one because we're ignoring dip switch bank two, switch number four to represent port D. Make sure you do this with the branch box powered off; off. Don't have the don't have the box on and then try to change these switches. Turn the box off before you change any of these switches. So we have DS1 switch number four on because we're not using port D.
Okay, now let's take it up a notch. Now I have an 8-port box. You'll notice I'm skipping the 6-port box, and that's okay; we're going to come back to it. I have an 8-port box, and as you guys have been paying attention, an 8-port box has two printed circuit boards. You have a board for the first four ports, A, B, C, D. You have another board for the second set of ports; you have E, F, G, and H. So now let's say I am not going to use ports A and ports H. Typically on an installation, I like to leave the ends of the boxes open or empty for future additions, and that way it's just easier to pipe in and braze those added units. I don't want something right in the middle of the box where it's completely surrounded by line sets and insulation. I want as much access as I can have, so I'm going to leave ports A and ports H, sorry, port A and port H empty in this particular example. So what dip switch is, if any, do I need to turn on to disable those unused ports? So first let's focus on port A because we know that's on the left-hand board. I need to be focused on dip switch bank one. Remember, we are pretending dip switch bank number two does not exist. So dip switch bank one has four switches: switches one, two, three, and four. Port A is going to correspond with switch one, so we turn on the left-hand board DS1 switch number one. That goes ahead and disables port A, but now we need to also disable port H, so we need to go to the right-hand board. We're still looking at DS1 on that board, and because this is the last port on that board, this is going to be switch number four. So DS1 switch number four on the right-hand board also needs to be turned on, and now we've successfully disabled those two end ports.
So now let's do something even harder. How about we have a 12-port box, and on this 12-port box we have all the ports being utilized: ports A through H, so the first eight ports are all being utilized, but we did not use ports I, J, K, and L, the last four ports on the box. We didn't utilize; we're going to go ahead and add stuff later, maybe. Well, that is the entire board on the right-hand side because now I have my left-hand board which takes care of ports A, B, C, and D; that's totally being utilized, so I'm not going to turn on any dip switches. The middle board now takes care of the second set of ports, E, F, G, and H, and I'm using all four of those ports, so I'm not turning on any of those dip switches. On the right-hand board now of this 12-port box, I have four empty ports, which means I need to disable all four of those ports, so I'm going to turn on, on dip switch bank one, switches one, two, three, and four. All four of those switches are going to be turned on to disable the use of those ports.
Now you guys should hopefully have a better understanding of how to disable empty ports. We're going to go ahead; we're going to take it to the next level: those six and ten-port boxes that I skipped over. If you recall from the beginning of this section of the video, those boxes have what we call ghost ports. So let's talk about the six-port box. The six-port box has two boards, and each board has the capacity for four ports, so it has the capacity for eight ports, but there physically only exists six. So let's say I have a six-port box and I'm using all six of the ports; I don't have to turn on any dip switches on the DS1 bank of either board because I'm using all of my ports, but I still have two ports that are on the board that would be ports G and H that would hypothetically exist if it was a bigger box that don't physically exist on the box. You're going to notice, or you should notice, that from the factory dip switch bank 2, switch number 4, so DS2 switch 4 is on on the right-hand board. That switch disables internally the last two ports of that box, so that way you don't have to worry about trying to turn off DS1 switches three and four like you would if it was a bigger box and you just weren't using those ports. So the way that you tell the board, hey, these are ghost ports, they don't really exist, is to have DS2 switch 4 on. Now you guys should not have to turn on this dip switch; it should already be turned on from the factory, but it is a dip switch you want to at least verify; otherwise, the board is going to be looking for two more ender units that physically don't exist, therefore are not wired, and then you'll get a UA 53. So this is pretty common; it happens a lot. Same thing would happen then on a 10-port box; that far right-hand board will have DS2 switch number four on from the factory because there are two ghost ports that don't physically exist on the system, so you just want to verify that that switch is already set on six and ten-port boxes.
Okay, so the last thing we need to talk about is what happens if I'm going to twin a set of ports. So each port in and of itself has the capacity of 54,000 BTUs, four and a half tons, and you can connect one indoor unit, two units, three, four, five indoor units, but the sum of the indoor units that are all piped back to a single port cannot exceed 54,000 BTUs. So what happens when I have a 5-ton air handler, 6-ton fan coil, 8-ton fan coil, or the sum of the capacity of indoor units exceeds 54,000 BTUs? I have to twin a set of ports. Now there is a very important rule: when you are twinning a set of ports, you have to twin ports A and B together or C and D together, but you cannot twin ports B and C together. So you have to go A and B, you have to go C and D, you have to go E and F, you have to go G and H, you have to go I and J, you have to go K and L. So you have to make sure that you're twinning the correct ports together, and then you would just land, let's say you're twinning ports A and B together, you would just land that column wire on port A. Now you need to tell that board, so in this case if it was a four-port box and I was twinning ports A and B together, I would only have one printed circuit board in that branch box; I'd land my wire for port, or I'd line my wire on port A or terminal A, and I'd go to dip switch bank two. So on dip switch bank two, switches one and two twin ports; DS2 switch one is going to twin ports A and B together; DS2 switch number two is going to twin ports C and D together. Well, I'm twinning A and B, so I'm going to turn on DS2 switch number one, and that will tell the board to drive the electronic expansion valves for ports A and B together as one. So now let's say I had an 8-port box; I'm going to build it up a little bit. I have two printed circuit boards in my branch box, and again, let's say this time I'm going to twin ports E and F. So this time I'm going to go to DS2 on the right-hand board; I'm going to turn on switch 1. So DS2 switch number one on the right-hand board because E and F are the first pair of ports on that board. If it was G and H being P being twinned, then it would be DS2 switch number two on the right-hand board. So now let's say I have a 12-port box. On a 12-port box, let's say I'm twinning, I don't know, let's say I'm twinning ports A and B and K, L. So let's say the very end ports are being twinned. So what dip switches, if any, would need to be turned on? Well, ports A and B are the left-hand board of the box, and it's the first set of ports, so it should be DS2 switch number one gets turned on. Ports K and L being twinned are going to be on the right-hand board of the box, and they're the second set of ports, so it's a DS2 switch number two. So hopefully you guys are able to follow along. Now I'm going to throw you guys like the final test, if you will. Let's say I have a box; let's say it's a 10-port box, and let's say on that 10-port box I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to leave ports A and B empty. Okay, A and B is empty; I'm using all the rest of the ports; however, ports E and F are twinned. Let's think about that for a minute: 10-port box, A and B empty; we're going to use those later, maybe. Ports E and F are twinned, and all the rest of the ports are just used normally, single ender unit to port type of install. So which dip switches, if any, would need to be turned on? Well, let's start with our empty ports. The empty ports were ports A and B; that is the far left-hand board of the box. A and B is DS1 because we're going to disable those two ports; should be DS1 switch 1 and DS1 switch 2. That disables ports A and B. Now we need to take care of our twinning, so our two ports that were twinned were ports E and F. On a 10-port box, that's the middle board, but it's the first set of ports, so it should be DS2 switch number one on to twin ports E and F. Now we're using all the rest of the ports, so are there any other dip switches that should be turned on? This is kind of a trick question because there is one more dip switch that should be on. If you recall, we still have our ghost port, so on the right-hand board you should have, from the factory, DS2 switch number four already on, but you still need to verify that it's actually on. Did you guys get it correct? Let me know in the comments below.
So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. It's kind of a long-winded explanation of how these dip switches work, but it is so important that you do this before you go through the entire power-up startup process because you're going to get UA 53s, potentially some U4s, and it just adds a lot of time to the project. So if you're lucky, your vendor, whoever you're working with, your supplier, your rep has already given you a list of switches that need to be turned on based on the as-built you've provided to them. We've talked about this a lot in past videos, especially with as-built, but if you are in a pinch and you do not know which dip switches you're supposed to be turning on, go ahead and look at what units are piped to what ports, and hopefully this video helps explain what those dip switch banks are and how they're utilized. So if you guys enjoyed today's video, please click the like button below; it really helps out my channel. If you haven't already and you're enjoying this content, please consider subscribing. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching Inverter Always. I hope you all have an awesome day. [Music]