Around the beginning of the AC system, customers start to ask a lot of questions about the performance of their air conditioning system. They want to know when they should change the filter (once a month), whether they should schedule professional maintenance (yes!), and one complex question: when should refrigerant be added?
If you’ve been getting refrigerant added to your AC system every year, you might want to get a second opinion. Air conditioning systems are not supposed to leak refrigerant—ever. If they do, you have a problem in need of repair, and a component technician should fix or recommend fixing that leak first and foremost.
How Refrigerant Works
Refrigerant (which you may hear people refer to as “Freon”) is a chemical blend that travels between the inside and outside portions of your AC system. Indoors, it absorbs heat as it turns into a gas. Outside, it releases heat into the air around the outside unit.
This is the way refrigeration works. Heat moves from one area to another, since the way to effectively cool a space is to take heat out. As you can see, refrigerant is extremely important to this process.
Refrigerant Should Not Leak
So, since refrigerant is key to the cooling process, an air conditioner is designed so that refrigerant will not leak out of the line or the compressor. If it does, one of these issues is at fault.
- Your air conditioner did not have enough refrigerant added to it in the first place.
- Refrigerant is leaking out of a hole that should be sealed.
You should not have to refill refrigerant once a year or more. If you are, you’re spending too much money, and your technician has not told you the whole truth. Your air conditioner is operating inefficiently and it has a much higher risk of breaking down.
Call Robbins Heating & Air Conditioning for AC services in Colorado Springs, CO and the surrounding areas.
