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- From: rl@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (roger.h.levy)
- Newsgroups: misc.consumers
- Subject: air conditioner longevity
- Keywords: refigeration
- Message-ID: <1992Jul21.195716.7304@cbnewsl.cb.att.com>
- Date: 21 Jul 92 19:57:16 GMT
- Distribution: na
- Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
- Lines: 29
-
- How long does the refigerant last in a typical window air conditioner? It
- occured to me that longevity of the refigerant for three refrigeration
- machines is something like:
-
- kitchen refrigerator - forever
- room air conditioner - 5-10 years?
- auto air conditioner - 3-4 years?
-
- The declining lifetime of the refrigerant as you go down the list may
- correlate to harshness of operating conditions. The refrigerator lives in
- a relatively constant ambient temperature and is not subject to much shock
- or vibration. The auto air conditioner is at the other end of the environ-
- mental harshness scale. Do thermal expansion of seals and vibration
- effects cause the refrigerant to leak out?
-
- I have two identical Freidrich 9800 BTU window air conditioners. I remove
- them for the winter and neither gets used more than 20 days a year because
- I live in a relatively cool house. One of the machines quit cooling this
- year and the repair shop informed me it needed to be charged but they found
- no leak in the system. Both units are in their 8th season and the other is
- doing fine. Is my experience about what one should expect?
-
- BTW, I was charged $85.00 for diagnosis and recharge. I don't know how
- much freon was needed except to say that the 9800 BTU unit wasn't cooling
- very much. Does that seem like a fair price? I've heard that EPA regu-
- lations make this a costly and undesirable business.
-
- Roger Levy
- roger@allegra.att.com
-