Effective January 1st 2020, the common “R-22 Freon” found in most AC systems made and installed prior to 2010 will become illegal to sell in the US.
How this affects you:
When we perform routine maintenance, service calls or repairs involving R22 Freon, we’ll need to remove all Freon from the unit and install a new supplemental Freon called “NU-22”. Unfortunately, this process will make associated repairs an estimated 2-4 times what they normally are in costs. We’ll essentially be performing a “blood-transfusion” on each of these systems in order to make common repairs and to do something as simple as “add a few pounds of Freon to the system”.
For example, we find a unit low on Freon and need to add 3 pounds to the system; we’ll first have to evacuate all 15 pounds of old R22 and replace it with “Nu-22” so instead of a service invoice for something around $300, it will run around $900.
Currently, our trigger for quoting replacement RTU’s is when the cost to repair is approximately 40-50% that of entire replacement. With factoring in these Freon conversions their may be more recommendations for replacement as a result of the inflated costs of repair.