Refrigeration Fundamentals

Most technicians can follow a checklist. Fewer can look at a set of gauge readings and know what the system is telling them. This course closes that gap. You'll start with the refrigeration cycle itself — how refrigerant moves through a compressor, condenser, metering device, and evaporator, and why heat flows the way it does — then build outward into refrigerants, system components, and the two measurements that define a system's operating condition: superheat and subcooling. By the middle of the course, you'll be reading pressure-temperature charts and interpreting diagnostic combinations that point to specific faults. By the end, you'll be working through real scenarios — manifold gauges in hand, deciding whether a system is overcharged, undercharged, restricted, or something else entirely. The course also covers the refrigerant transitions happening right now in the field: R-22 to R-410A, and R-410A to the newer A2L refrigerants like R-32 and R-454B, so you know what you're working with regardless of when the equipment was installed. This is a fundamentals course, which means it's built for people early in their HVAC/R training as well as working technicians who want to fill in gaps and sharpen their diagnostic thinking. No prior refrigeration knowledge is assumed. What you will need is a willingness to think through how systems behave, not just memorize how they're supposed to look.