Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Wicked
I have a leak in mine and has always been there. I have fought with the builder on this, and they have brought techs out, and I have hired techs, who can't pinpoint the leak. Best answer so far is "it is probably in the wall somewhere".
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Depending on the rate of leakage, the constant loss of refrigerant is eventually going to send your compressor to an early grave. ($1K+ repair)
Here's the way to go at the fix...
1) Recover all refrigerant from the system & kill all electrical power.
2) Cut (tubing cutter) the two copper refrigerant lines (liquid and suction
lines) going into your air handler or evaporator coil.
3) Cut the two copper refrigerant lines going into your heat pump or A/C unit.
4) Silver-braze access fittings (Schrader valves) into one end of the
copper liquid line, one end of the suction line, one of the copper lines for
heat pump or A/C and one of the copper lines for the air
handler/evaporator coil.
5) Crimp and silver braze the remaining ends of the copper lines (4)
6) Charge each of the 4 components (liquid/suction lines & A/C or heat pump)
with 300 psi of nitrogen.
5) From there you just watch which of the 4 items loses pressure.
The above process takes me about 45 minutes once I'm at the job site.
If it is one of the refrigerant lines running in the wall you WILL KNOW which one it is and which one you need to re-run. There are esthetically pleasing line-set covers for running lines down the building's exterior. You can always open up the wall(s) to find the leak in the respective line if running a new refrigerant line is out of the question. A good builder would have gotten this done for you.