On 7/16/2014 10:48 PM, nestork wrote:

Stormin:

Here in Canada, refrigerants are treated like toxic waste. You have to
have a license to work on AC and refrigeration systems in order to buy
refrigerants, and even then you have to meticulously document what
happened to the refrigerants you removed from equipment. You can't just
buy a piercing valve and "fill er up" like you could in the 1980's. If
I have a refrigerant leak, the service tech would have to evacuate the
remaining refrigerant in the fridge, find the leak and fix it,
re-evacuate the refrigeration lines in the fridge, and then add new
refrigerant. The cost for labour is roughly $300 to $400, and any parts
(like a new compressor) would be on top of that. It makes more economic
sense to buy a new fridge.

CY: The US has the same regulations. Or some what
similar. When I got my EPA card, we were told that
if the system has less than 50 pounds of refrigerant,
it's legal to keep topping it off. Might be expensive
and impractical, but it's legal. For household refrig,
I don't have any moral problem with adding a couple
ounces. I can imagine that many techs would want to go
the recovery and leak check route.

Trader:
You're wondering why I want to bother seeing how the frost builds up on
the evaporator, and why I just don't chuck the fridge?

It's because I'm old enough to have been wrong in my assumptions more
than once, and I don't want to be wrong on this fridge cuz a new fridge
will cost me about $400. If I can see that the frost isn't forming
uniformly over the whole evaporator coil, then I know it's a weak
refrigerant charge, and I have no hesitation to salvage old parts from
the fridge and phone a metal salvage company to pick up that fridge.
However, I don't feel comfortable throwing the fridge away unless and
until I see how the frost accumulates on the evaporator coil.


CY: You can also check for heat on the condenser
coils, that's a good indication of charge.

--
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Christopher A. Young
Learn about Jesus
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