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By closing the service valves, you can isolate the halves of the system. Run it up to some pressure, close the valves. Wait over night (system turned off). Connect gages and open the valves. See if the leak is condenser or evaporator. Might be a fairly simple repair.

Makes me sooo glad I live in a part of the country that requires no AC. ;)

nb

As I reported

thats a great idea..

did you wire it up for a fixed speed or have some way to select speed taps or ?

I'd prolly just hard wire it for the highest speed and call it done.

Mark

Mark

It was the condenser fan and the original was single speed ECM, so no need to rewire it for speeds, etc.

One would think.

Unless they make a mistake on installation.

Well, only if you have AC skills.

Just talked to a friend who lives in Atlanta now. He used to live in a co-op on East 57th St. in NYC, until earlier this year. Said the room AC in the living room had been there since 1965 and was still working.

My thoughts are not mixed. She got screwed. Put some dye in it that shows up under a blacklight and come back in a couple of weeks. Can't find it? Put some sealer in it. Only of those things don't work do you think about replacing the system.

Especially one that's only five years old. I am sure they took into account that she was unlikely to investigate further or that it was unlikely she knew, as you and many other do, that leaks can be detected IF you use the proper equipment. Saddens me to see vendors try to rip people off like that. )-:

Reminds me of when I went to a different mechanic than I normally went to and they insisted that to change the fog light bulb on my Honda they had to remove the bumper. I told them NOT to change the bulb, had my wife drive me immediately to the shop and yanked my car then and there.

Remove the bumper to change a bulb? I really laced into the shop manager because such a claim doesn't even pass the smell/common sense test. Finally, he said "we looked it up and you're right - it takes removing two Phillips screws from the lamp housing to change the bulb." But by that time, considering how obstinate the original technician was about needing to pull the bumper, they could not reclaim any semblance of trust.

Reminds me of the time on the NJ Turnpike where during a gas-up and oil check I came back to the car very unexpectedly and caught the SOB standing with a oil can in his hands while he checked under the hood. Seems he was dribbling oil on the engine to make it seem it was leaking.

Apparently another favorite trick was to take some iron filings and put them in a place where it looks like bare metal is being scraped away. Or to take the same oilcan and spray some oil on the shocks to imply they're leaking.

If it leaks out in a month, should be a fairly slow leak. Ought to be possible to find and fix the leak.

I've got a couple "friends" who had a leaky system. I'd valved it off, and put in some test charge, to determine if it was indoor or outdoor leak. Called several times to follow up. No answer. Met them later, and they told me they "just had the system replaced". But aparently, not by me. Some friends, eh?

Suppose you're the HVAC guy, you put all the time into tracking down the leak, capturing the refrigerant, brazing in a new evaporator while flowing nitrogen, evacuating for an hour+, recharging..... and then it turns out there was another problem, eg the compressor is bad too, and it still doesn't work? Who eats the $1000? I suspect the HVAC guys have been down that road before.

It happens a lot. There seems to be some kind of dynamic going on where people don't like to see a friend making money if it's "off them". My Dad was a RE Broker and told his friends if they were buying a new house to go thru him and he could get them half the commission back. A few would but most would just go straight to the Home Sales Office and cut him out and also cut themselves out to the tune of thousand$ in lost commission they could have split. A lot of the time they's day 'Oh we didn't want to bother you" as if anyone would be bothered by spending a couple hours to make a couple thousand... not to mention the people themselves were also losing out on a couple thousand.

There's risks in any case. Though, replace the entire system has the most money pay out with the least risk to the HVAC guys.

Some people refuse to do business with close friends, figures it risks the friendship. One of the men I consider a close friend, just exactly that. Had AC put into his house, but not by me.

Sorry, no sale. Ed was 100% correct. You have to at least do a leak test. You wouldn't just toss your car if it developed a transmission leak, would you? A thousand dollar repair is better than a five thousand dollar cost of a new unit.

Besides, there are at least some techs out there who deliberately sabatoge equipement or use scare tactics:

What $1000? I had two refrigeration repairs this year. One was an air dryer with a 19# charge. That was $640. Leak was easily found and repaired. The other was an older office AC, similar setup to a home unit and that was $500. Leak (second time) has not been found and a sealer was added. Yes, it is a bit of a crap shoot, but $500 and a chance it is fixed is better than just putting out $5000 with assurance of no leak.

Customer should have been given the option. Five years is not old. At

You are starting to sound like General Motors. I had a problem with a heated seat. It was less than 3 years, but over the 36,000 miles. They wanted $670 to replace the seat because the $10 element burned out. They suggested I buy a new car. A $35,000 solution to a $10 problem. BTW, I did eventually buy a new car, but that was my last GM.

What is it with the AC system that a simple leak can not be found ? Often traces of oil will be on the lines. Can't some dye be put in that glows under UV ? There are several kinds of leak detectors. The ultra sonic, and the chemical sniffer type. That is not including the very old propane cylinder type for the R-22. At 5 years old I would think there would be some kind of warrenty.

Guess it is like most anything else, just a general incompenent service people. I am not knocking all of them as I worked in a plant as an electrician and instrument man myself. Some of us were good and some were just along for the ride.

About 10 years ago I bought a house that had about a 15 or 20 year old heat pump. After 2 years it started freezing up outside in the winter. Called the man and he replaced the fan and capacitor. Two days later it froze up again. I don't know why he would replace the fan as it was running when I checked it. I was at work when he did the work and my wife was at home. Seemed to me like it was not going into the defrost cycle. Called him back out and he mentioned something about a board needed to be replaced but the sysem was obsolete. Ran him off and had the whole unit replaced except the duct work. Probably will save money in the long run due to a beter heating and cooling factor.

I raised the example of where the leak was a failed evaporator, which is a common failure. I would think that could be $1000. First you have to find the leak. Then you have to recover the refrigerant. Then you have to replace the evaporator, flow nitrogen through it while brazing it, then pressurize it with nitrogen to leak test, then evacuate which takes time just standing there, then recharge it. Besides all the time, you have the cost of the new evaporator, refrigerant, etc.

The other was an older office AC, similar setup to a home

If the above attempt at leak fixing didn't work, would you still have paid the $600?

I'm only trying to look at it from the HVAC guy's perspective. After doing all of the above, it could turn out that the system still has another problem and then what? Who eats all the work already done? I guess the HVAC guy could just price that in, that for every X systems where the leak fix works, there are Y where they wind up eating Z dollars, so cover that by increasing the price of the repair on all of them.

No one *has* to do anything.

No, but the typical transmission leak is just a gasket or hose and doesn't require the more complex and costly procedure involved with an AC either. And it's not the right analogy either, it would be tossing the transmission, not the car.

A thousand dollar repair is better than a five thousand dollar cost of

Try to stick to the facts. The cost was $3500, for a new and higher efficiency unit. So, using your example, it would be a $1000 repair versus ~$3000 for a new unit. And IDK what I'd do if faced with that. A common source of failure with an AC is incorrect installation to begin with. In this case, they had no history, knowledge of what was done in the past, etc.

Sure they do, but that's irrelevant. As reported, the unit developed a problem and stopped cooling on it's own. The tech recharged it and it worked again for a month. No evidence of sabotage.

Rest of sabotage rant deleted.

Nowadays, ripped off? That is your fault. Most every where they try to rip you off. I do most maintenance myself even if I have to invest some special tools. Gives me peace of mind. Only thing I am not good at is carpentry. Maybe because I am lefty.

I think they typically use the electronic sniffing type that detects the refrigerant itself. But how well they work, how easy or hard it is to find the leak, how long it takes, IDK. If the leak is in an inaccessible part of the evaporator, will it find it? Lines are not always all accessible either.

If it were me, I would have gone through the options, like how much will it cost to look for the leak, and assuming it's found, what are the range of repair costs, etc. But then we don't have the experience of the HVAC guys either to know how it typically turns out, the complications, how long the repairs last, etc.

Certainly the first HVAC guy that never went to look at the furnace half of the system meet the definition of incompetent. I think they wound up going with the Trane 16 Seer system. I recommended they find a Rheem/Ruud dealer and get a quote from them too, but they were in a hurry.