Window ac units

Originally Posted by hills

One good thing about having the Freon removed is that the tech usually pumps the oil out of the compressor as well. Still an oily job though. I think Mike may find that most of the compressor motors for the window AC's are wound in ali and not copper. 80 - 90% of all electric motors i see these days are ali wound. It's in everything. Even in generators. What a buzzkill to put in the work of breaking the motor down just to find an ali winding.

Every Condenser unit i get from the hvac shop, my tech buddy or a random find that have the freon removed always still have the oil. i wonder if removing the oil is an extra part of recovery that they leave the oil in to do the job faster.



I hear ya on the Alum units and motors. I had one of those 200lb S units i wanted to breakdown. i did 4 others in the past and when i did the last one it was alum windings. that was when i retired from opening sealed units. I also have found alum motors from generators. Its like i got 12lbs of copper coming to go to nothing but shred.

Originally Posted by greytruck

Every Condenser unit i get from the hvac shop, my tech buddy or a random find that have the freon removed always still have the oil. i wonder if removing the oil is an extra part of recovery that they leave the oil in to do the job faster.

Ummm ... i dunno. My understanding of their part is limited. If i were to take a guess .... it might be that your HVAC shop and the Freon recycling company we're using have different end goals.

The HVAC shop and your tech buddy are just looking to vacuum out the Freon into a steel refrigerant tank and dispose of it somehow. They're prime gig is new refrigeration installation and repair. That's where they make the bulk of their money. Evacuating Freon at end of life would just be a sideline for them.

The Freon recycling company that we have been using is a different kind of animal. They're based two states away in Massachusetts and have a tech with a van full of equipment that travels hundreds of miles every week around the state of Maine. He goes from Transfer Station to Transfer Station processing fridges,freezers, AC's, and dehumidifiers once they've been sent to the dump. That's all this company does and they're pretty good at it. They bang the work out like nobody's business. He can tear through something like 50 or 60 units an hour if i have the job set up right for him.

I was talking with him the last time he came through .... about a month ago. All of the Freon and oil he collects goes back to their shop in Massachusetts. The different kinds of mixed Freon in his tanks gets run through a separation tower and sorted out. Each kind is lab tested to ensure purity and is re-sold to be used over & over again. Their shop is something like 50,000 sqft. It gets cold here in the Northeast here in the winter. All the compressor oil he collects is used as heating oil in their waste oil furnace and heats the building for free.

I guess it's a pretty big recycling outfit. They've got techs with vans running all over creation in this part of the country. The changeover to a newer way of doing things made for a bit more work on my end but i can't say i'm opposed to it. I try to support all of the different kinds of recyclers coming through the place as long as they're doing a good job.