On Saturday, July 25, 2015 at 5:15:51 AM UTC-4, micky wrote:

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.

He shouldnt' have done all that work without knowing it would work when
he was done.


Good grief. There are all kinds of repairs where you don't
know for sure if it's going to work or if it's going to last.
A repair guy isn't superman with X-ray vision. You could fix
one leak and maybe they know from experience that with the
crap systems today that only last 10 to 15 years, that once
you have one leak, you typically have more in another year
or two. I'm not saying I know that for a fact, just that
just maybe the companies involved may know from experience more
than those of us that don't service these every day. Also, these
systems are greatly affected by the competence of the installers.
If you don't give a damn, contaminate the thing when you
install it, then they are not going to last, have a higher
failure rate, etc. How about the tech sees a tag on the eqpt that
says "XYZ HVAC" and he knows they are shysters and their systems
have lots of problems?



He should have explained the problem to the customer and told him the
customer has two choices, A) For the repairman to put enough
refrgerant in the system so he can test the system. If it tests good,
he'll be able to re-use what he uesd when he evacuates it and then puts
it back in. The customer will owe for the refridge and fixing the
leak. $m


As reported, he topped it off a month or so ago and it worked
for a month until apparently the refrigerant was gone, again.


Or, he should tell the customer at the same time, B) I can just fix the
leak I found, but the system might not work because of other problems.

And then after $500 or $1000 worth of work, the customer says
"you didn't fix it, I'm not paying". You obviously don't have
experience with how many people operate today. They forget
what was told to them and/or ignore what's in writing. Or you
fix it and six months later, it craps out again. Many customers
are going to be kind of like you..... "Mr. Repair guy, you
should have made sure that it was going to last before you fixed it."
With a new system, you avoid all that.



Don't tell me the right choice is to sell the man an AC he doesn't need.

You're jumping to the conclusion that a new system is totally
unjustified. It's possible the companies have
experience and know what often happens and are basing their advice
in part on that. And I never tried to tell you or anyone that the
right choice was a new system. In fact, in the original post, I said
that if it were my system, I would have insisted they search for
the source of the actual leak and then make the determination.
But on the other hand, these systems
seem to last 10 to 15 years today. This one was already 5 years old
with most of that previous history unknown.
I'm not sure how much more I'd put into it. That
original service call was probably $200+. Fixing a leak, even if
it doesn't involve a new evaporator, etc is going to cost hundreds
more.