Abstract Pool boiling process is frequently encountered in a number of engineering applications. However, it is difficult to exactly predict the heat transfer coefficient. This is because the boiling phenomenon is rather complex and influenced by many factors, such as surface condition, heater size, geometry, material, arrangement of heated rods, and refrigerants, etc. The key boiling parameters (bubble dynamics data) such as bubble departure diameter, frequency and nucleation site density will be varied in such different heated surface resulting in the different effect of heat transfer. The present study is ain at providing the pool boiling data for plasma coating and helical wire wrapped enhanced tubes. Furthermore, more fundamental of the physical phenomenon can be obtained. This study was performed experimentally. R-134a and R-600a were used as refrigerants. The surface condition will be changed with plasma spray coating and helical wire wrapped. It is expected that the surface condition can affect the nucleate boiling heat transfer in certain degree. In addition, boiling visualization was also made to broaden our basic understanding of the bubble diameter and dynamics while growing. Thermal design data of a flooded type evaporator of high performance as well as more and further physical insight of the above-stated nucleate boiling heat transfer can be acquired. The results will hopefully be helpful not only for the academia but for the industry.