Some times I have injected the refrigerant dye into a system and have come
back at a later date and scanned the system with the black light to find a
leak.

--
Moe Jones
HVAC Service Technician
Energy Equalizers Inc.
Houston, Texas

"Howard Beale" wrote in message
...
We installed a new forced-air furnace and A/C system in our house 6 years
ago. The A/C system is Puron and until very late last summer the system
worked great; on the last cooling day of the year (more humid than hot),
the expansion coils iced up and the system would not cool.

We had it recharged right before memorial day and I asked the service guy
if loss of refrigerent was normal -- he said no, it's supposed to be a
sealed system but tiny leaks seem to happen and that I shouldn't worry too
much about it -- every 5-6 years needing a recharge isn't bad considering
the service life is probably around 20 years.

The system worked well until the past couple of weeks when it seems to
have trouble keeping up with very hot days (90F) and two days ago when it
iced up again, which leads me to believe the 5-6 year leak has become a 2
month leak I need to have more permanently fixed.

What's the industry best practice for solving these leaks? Is the supply
line itself a culprit or is it typically just the solder joints at the
expansion coil or the coil itself? Is it a soap-and-water mission over
all the joints, or is there some high-tech tool to check for pressure
losses?

What I'd like to avoid is a knee-jerk fix (like ripping apart sheet metal
to replace the coil when it doesn't need it).

The thing I'm most worried about is a leak in the line itself, since most
of it is soffited in an area of the basement that's been remodeled (a year
after the install, so likely not a source of a puncture).