Why Topping Up Is Not a Repair
Recharging a leaking system is a bit like topping up a car that is losing oil. It works until it does not, and it costs you every time. Refrigerant is not cheap, R-410A prices have moved sharply through the phase-down, and each recharge is money spent on gas that is going straight into the atmosphere.
There is mechanical damage in it too. A system running under-charged returns liquid refrigerant to the compressor and starves it of the oil that travels with the gas, so a slow leak nobody chased eventually presents as a compressor failure — a far larger bill than the leak repair would have been.
Finding It Properly
Leak location is methodical work and it is where the time in this job goes. An electronic detector is swept slowly across the likely areas, because these instruments respond to concentration and hurrying past a small leak will miss it entirely.
Bubble solution confirms anything the detector flags at joints and fittings. Where a leak is very small or somewhere awkward, UV dye goes into the system and the house is revisited after a couple of weeks of running. For a coil suspected of leaking internally, the honest method is a nitrogen pressure test with the coil isolated and left to stand.
- Evaporator coils, where formicary corrosion perforates the tube wall from inside
- Brazed joints at the service valves and along the line set
- Schrader cores, which are a cheap and very common culprit
- Line set rub-throughs where copper has been vibrating against a strap or a stud
- Condenser coil bends, particularly on the windward face of a coastal unit
- Factory joints inside the outdoor cabinet that have been fatigued by vibration
Repair, or Replace the Component
A leaking Schrader core, a fitting or an accessible joint on the line set is a genuine repair: fix it, evacuate the system down to a deep vacuum, weigh in a fresh charge, and it is done properly for years.
A leaking evaporator or condenser coil is a different judgement. Corrosion that has perforated a coil in one place has usually thinned it everywhere else, so a spot repair tends to buy months. Coil replacement is the real fix, and on an older system carrying a phased-out refrigerant the arithmetic often points at replacing the system instead. We lay out the three costs and let you decide. Anyone who has dealt with AC Repair Estero before will tell you we do not push the largest of the three by default.
Doing the Recharge Correctly
After any repair that opens the sealed system, the system is evacuated to a deep vacuum with a micron gauge on it and held there, which removes both air and — more importantly in this climate — the moisture that would otherwise form acids inside the loop.
Then the charge is weighed in to the manufacturer figure rather than guessed at from a gauge reading, and verified against superheat and subcooling once the system has been running long enough to settle. A charge that is merely close is not correct.
Questions We Get Asked
- Can you just add gas to get me through the summer?
- We will, once, on a system where you understand the position and want time to plan. What we will not do is make it a routine — it is money spent on refrigerant that will be gone again, and on an under-charged system it is quietly damaging the compressor while it runs.
- How long does leak location take?
- A joint or valve leak is often found within the first hour. A slow leak in an evaporator can take a nitrogen test and a return visit. We will tell you when we have reached the point where further searching costs more than acting on the likeliest answer.
- My system uses R-22. What are my options?
- R-22 has not been produced or imported since 2020, so what remains is reclaimed stock at a price that reflects it. On an R-22 system a significant leak repair is rarely worth funding, and that money is almost always better put toward replacement.