Freon costs

[MiniDave]

for the house, not the car......

We've started having temps in the mid to high 80's here, along with commensurate high humidity, so I decided to kick on the A/C. I'm not a novice at how A/C works so the first thing I do is clean the outside coil and check the A coil for obstructions, rust or evidence of leaks. I had just changed the filter recently so all systems were "go".

I hit the switch and it immediately came on, ran for 5 minutes and shut off again. In about 5 minutes it kicked on again, ran fine - made nice cool air and shut off again after 5 minutes. The third time it came on and ran fine from then on. The house cooled down nicely and after a while it shut off. It continued to cycle normally for the next couple of days.

My neighbor across the street's son has his HVAC license and he stopped by to see his dad today so I asked him to pop over and tell me what he thinks.....we both decided the short cycling is probably due to being a little low on freon. Last time I had to add any was more than 10 years ago so I wasn't surprised....what did surprise me was he said R22 now costs $250 lb, his cost!!!!

I did a little looking online and saw prices from low $20's to mid $30's per pound.

I don't know where he got his number, but I think I'll call someone else just to see.

[Brit_in_TX]

I got charged $150/lb in November last year. Which was up significant on the previous year of $90/lb. 

[MiniDave]

If I had to add Freon every year I'd be seriously looking to find the leak - that's a spendy service call when you add in labor and trip costs - to have to do it every year. Like I said, I haven't added any in 10 years or so, so it's not unexpected that I might need a top off.

[Brit_in_TX]

Agree, it was due to the work that I needed this time that it needed topping up - not a leak.