June Meeting:

David  introduced our first guest, Gus Christy, who spoke on Ozone Depleting Chemicals (ODC). Gus said that Austin has tighter controls on ODC's than does the EPA. EPA regulates leaks on systems that use 150 pounds or more of refrigerant. Austin believes that no system is too small to fix. The rule is if it leaks more than 10% of the refrigerant in one year, it must be repaired before recharging. There are some new monitoring equipment requirements. If you take out a permit for A/C work, you will have to install leak monitoring equipment.

Most of the new cars come with R134A. If your car develops a leak and you just keep adding more R134A, there will come a time when you will have to flush and fill. R134A is composed of chemicals with slightly different boiling points. The lower boiling point gas will escape first. After a while, your mixture will not be a mixture. People wanting to service R134A based equipment must still get an EPA certificate or state license. It doesn't cause holes in the ozone, but it does contribute to global warming. For those of us with older cars, the price of Freon is increasing exponentially. Recently, I paid $14 a can in another city. To change to R134, a service center has to flush all the old R12 and oil and replace the o-rings.

The next speaker was Jon Luden from Austin's Commercial Energy Service. They have just increased their rebate program by 50%. All work must be done by September 15th which is the end of their peak season. Another service that they intend to start is an air conditioning replacement financing program. They expect the monthly savings to pay the loan payments. They are working hard to cut the peaks. Jon also mentioned a rebate program that's available from Southern Union Gas. Their rebate is $100 per ton of AC when you switch to a gas fired chiller. (How do cool with heat?). The wagon master showed up and herded us out the door at 6 past one.

By J. Robert Howard