So, long story short : We have a central air unit at our house that, according to the man who inspected it last year, has a pin-hole leak of coolant, and is hard / impossible to find. He advised us that once a year or so, we should get more coolant put into our system, it will run fine. Reparing it wasn’t worthwhile, you’d just be better off buying a new system.
We call this year, and he won’t even bother returning calls (He’s the husband of a friend of my girlfriends mom, or HFGM). I’ve since called around to other repair places, and they so far only want to give me a new central air system (Our coolant is R-22, and they say that they cannot, legally, add more coolant, only replace). That is not gonna happen…we can’t pull a few K out of our butts to pay for that. We just want more coolant in the system, so that it actually cools the air in our house. 84 degrees in the living room is not pleasant. Does this sound legit? Will places NOT refill this coolant, or is it a licensing issue, and this guy just didn’t have a license?
On a side note, we need to find some solution to cooling off our middle floor, and we probably need a portable A/C (due to the sizes of our windows). Do these units work well? We’d probably need 12-14,000 BTU (Floor size is about 550 - 600 sq ft) so we’re looking to spend 500-600, and I would need to know what is a good brand to go with. A few sites I’ve visited have frigidaires in that range, along with another company I’ve never heard of (Danby). Are there any opinions out there about these units?
Hmmm are you going to be running your faulty AC along with the portable AC? That’s going to end up costing you a boatload in electricity costs + the price of the portable.
When I bought my central AC I was offered a 0% APR loan for one year to get it, right from the installers. No need to pull any money out of my butt, and I had a great summer (and paid it off within the year). Any way you could swing that? A more efficient AC for the whole house might lower your current electricity bill, too.
I have a rather poor credit history (currently being fixed…thank you, 21 year old self) and my GF doesn’t want to take on any more credit; we just fixed the floors, basement, roof, and walls in the house! So this is added expense we really can’t afford, one year out or not. And no, the central air wouldn’t be running with the indoor AC on, except maybe to circulate some air with the fans only.
AFAIK they can add more of the old refrigerant, it’s just very expensive. I had a similar problem and they added some stop-leak type stuff into my system for $80 or so. The guy said it was risky but often fixed the problem.