R22 Refrigerant

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Our home A/C unit was not cooling. Our longtime A/C service company came out and said all it needs is some refrigerant. I appreciated their honesty, as the unit is about 15 years old, and they could have told me it had died and I wouldn't have doubted them. I felt I'd really dodged a bullet. Until I got the bill. The service charge was reasonable at $119, but the R22 refrigerant was $195 a pound! It needed two pounds, so the total bill was $509. :eek:

I know we have some home heating and cooling pros on the Forum, so is $195/lb. the going rate for R22 these days?
 
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I think wholesale price is up close to $50 a pound. I haven’t priced it in a few weeks and it continues to rise daily. I service mainly mobile temporary cooling units that have a couple of hundred pounds per circuit (X4 circuits), and we are converting our R-22 units to R-407c because they tend to spring leaks while being transported. We’re also in the process of phasing out the older models, but there is a several month lead time on getting newer R-134a units and then a couple more months fabricating them for over the road service. The market for temporary/emergency cooling has exploded over the past couple of years.

I’d be more concerned that they didn’t do a thorough leak check, find the leak, and repaired it. You don’t just have to add gas, it went somewhere. And now’s a good time to start considering a replacement R-410a system this fall.
 
Refrigerant is not a consumable! It does not get used up. IF (big if) some is missing, it either was leaked or was stolen or just plain released.

The price: I haven't bought any in 15 years, I am surprised it would only cost $50 a pound Wholesale.

R-22 is no longer made in the US. It is one of the most smuggled items into the country (by value) that isn't drug related. R-22 is still legally made in India, they ship to Mexico and smuggled in (by the shipping container full of 30-pound cans). It is made with false lot numbers to match what Union Carbide in the 90's.

Nobody in the service industry seems to be afraid of the $25,000 fine!

The only time I was ever Checked out for compliance by the EPA, was by accident. They were driving around looking for where chemicals had been dumped in a storm drain and saw me working on a unit. So they "Investigated", I had all the equipment hooked up correctly, any my license. And could demonstrate that I knew what I was doing!

Ivan
 
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Honestly, you would have been better off if they had said it needed to be replaced. I managed Public Works on a military base until last year and we would only repair R-22 systems as a last resort. Most of them are at least 15 years old and likely closer to 20 = end of life in a waterfront/salt air location. Like others have said, your leak is still there its just a matter of time.
 
I agree: they should have fixed the leak. I believe last time I was at a vendor it was over $1500 for a 30# tank. My BIL's compressor finally died in his 25 year old home system. The vendor had one replacement compressor in their whole company, and the piping would have to have been changed. Compressor was just under $600. Luckily I don't have my tools anymore! He didn't understand why the inside coil, the piping, and the outside unit would need replaced. And, the furnace was 25 years old also. It still works, is a 90+ efficiency rated furnace, but he may as well get all new equipment. He understood that part, but he was really getting annoying about the piping change, etc. I finally told him I'm no engineer, but that's what they almost always recommend, a different size for the R410A refrigerant. This is another reason why I never did residential service and why I'm glad to be retired. My recovery machine, torches, vacuum pump all belonged to the companies I worked for. I even gave my gauges to my son. People need to know this stuff ahead of time, and if you buy a house with an R22 A/C system, they should drop the price by about at least $6000 unless they specify they already did in the asking price.
Two pounds of R22? That's almost the total charge of the whole unit! I think there are some kind of EPA rules about that. It should've been repaired first. (It's been about 25 years since I got my universal CFC card; I don't remember the laws. But gas N go guys should be run outta the business.)
 
Friends with auto repair shop just replaced the AC compressor on my vehicle, Jack told me the cost has gone up 3 times in last year, IIRC he said was $750 for a small can for auto use.
If a home AC unit is loosing freon there is a serious leak caused my recklessness around lines outside house. Yard work ect damages many freon lines. Here in Florida if a unit is around 20 years old it needs to be replaced. Living close to the shore,beach salt really kills units.
 
For the heck of it, I called a couple of major supply houses when I got in this morning. Johnstone supply quoted $1370/30lb. jug or $45.67/lb. and United Refrigeration quoted $1500/30lb. jug or $50/lb. It’s getting so high, they just round it to a dollar, no cents. Kind of like the gas pumps at fuel docks that go by ten cents and not ones…lol.

As a comparison, R-407c was quoted by Johnstone at $457.86/25lb. jug or $18.31/lb. and United Refrigeration quoted it as $487.50/25lb. jug or $19.50/lb.

I’ve never done residential work, other than my own units and friends and family(thank goodness), so I don’t know if it would be feasible to convert it over. At the very least, the compressor would have to be cut out and removed to completely drain the mineral oil, flush the system to remove as much mineral oil from the system as possible and re-braze the compressor in place. R-407c uses POE oil(a synthetic) and most industrial R-22 systems already use POE, so the changeover isn’t as complex.
 
I feel your pain-had the old unit at my office refilled hoping to buy a summer. Gotta face facts-you probably should go ahead and pull the triger on a new unit-It WILL be cheaper in the long run. I consider ANY home with a R22 unit to have NO ac as the unit will need to be replaced (age and all that-they have not made an R22 system in years-in fact since 1-1-2010)
 
rbmac52 said:
Two weeks ago we had our home HVAC unit serviced. It took 3 pounds of R22 at $100 a pound. The service call was another $100. I feel I was treated more than fairly by a very honest technician.
Click to expand...

That does it. I'm moving to the Panhandle, home of cheap. R22. :D

Thanks, everyone, for your excellent info and advice. (Just another benefit of Forum membership!) Next time I'll replace the compressor/condenser unit. I've gotten my money's worth out of the old one, and there's no point in continuing patchwork refills at $500 per patch.
 
Yes, the R22 which has been discontinued for a while has gone up quite a bit. IMHO $200 per pound is ripping you off!! $100 per pound would have been a fair price. Freon is sort of a blind item and they know when it’s close to 100 degrees out people will pay anything to get their unit up and running again!

On another note, at 15 years old I’d start looking around at a new unit in the off season. You might want to consider replacing it soon. If refrigerant is low it’s obviously leaking. The joints in the unit start corroding and small leaks develop. It almost never pays to start repairing a unit 15 years old because if you repair one or two leaks, new ones appear shortly after. Anything over 15 years is imho the life expectancy of an AC unit. While you can obviously keep repairing it, the expense to do so just makes little sense. If you find a good off season price, that might be the time to replace it. NOT in the middle of AC season.
 
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When we changed out our old R22 unit the contractor gave us a significant credit, said he would recycle it refrigerant.
 
AND........ not for nothing, but the newer units operate at a higher Seer Rating and more efficiently - presumably saving you some coin on your electric bill.

AND......... there is something to be said for confidence in your unit to NOT fail on the hottest days of the Summer - we all know that's when they go bad (when you have guests staying there and the temp's are 100º) - lol.

Most of the time (maybe not all) being pro-active with these devises is prudent - especially when you plan on living there for the long run! Where I reside now, AC is mandatory - not an option!
 
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rbmac52 said:
Two weeks ago we had our home HVAC unit serviced. It took 3 pounds of R22 at $100 a pound. The service call was another $100. I feel I was treated more than fairly by a very honest technician.
Click to expand...

I'm not an A/C tech and haven't stayed at a Holiday Inn recently, but I reckon your A/C has some kind of problem.
 
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