Your Association and Member-Owned HVACs are Almost Obsolete
Richard Williamson Treasurer, San Lorenzo Community HOA, Yorba Linda
Deferring maintenance or choosing the wrong replacement will be extremely costly for you association and its members. It’s 2023 and older air conditioning (AC) systems owned by associations and members will potentially be obsolete in a few years because of legislative changes in permitted refrigerant gas.
Depending on the availability of recycled older refrigerant gas and the availability of legacy parts, the current and future phase out dates on ozone depleting or global warming gases could severely shorten the anticipated 15-year AC life cited in most reserve studies. Even newer ACs using current refrigerants with end of production dates in the next seven to ten years will potentially face the end of their useful life as early as 2030. This has the potential to impact more than 14.3 million people living in almost fi ve million homes across 50,000 California associations.
The following information may seem very technical, but you will need to understand it when planning to replace your association’s AC and refrigeration systems.
First, a little background.
Air conditioning and refrigeration systems 100 years ago used natural refrigerants such as ammonia R-717, carbon dioxide (CO2) R-744, methyl ether, or other gases. The technical challenges or dangers associated with these gases and systems limited their broad adoption in residential housing and offi ces. These dangers include fi re from highly fl ammable gas, explosions, poisoning, etc. Not until the development of Freon R-12 in the 1930s was there a suitable and more widely acceptable refrigerant for AC systems for homes and association common facilities.
What was not understood at the time about Freon-based refrigerants and replacements was the damage they would cause to the Earth’s ozone layer or the atmospheric heat-trapping potential of the gases. While removal of the
20 September | October 2023 Associations should:
Have ACs serviced annually to extend the life of the system for maximum ROI and delay the need to replace the unit.
Change the system air fi lter annually. Use a MERV 13 class fi lter for the best small particle fi ltration if not equipped with a HEPA fi ltration system.
Use only EPA-certifi ed, licensed, and insured contractors to ensure correct refrigerant is being added or captured during system replacement.
Obtain a quote from an HVAC company on a modern heat pump system to replace AC and gas furnace systems with R-454B- based refrigerant such as Opteon XL41 or Puron Advance.
Provide the heat pump quote to the reserve study analyst for baselining HVAC future replacement costs and funding over time profi le to enable associations to properly fund replacements.
chlorine atom from Chlorofl uorocarbon (CFCs) refrigerant
gas virtually eliminated the Ozone Depleting Potential (ODP) of the refrigerant, in many cases the resulting compounds made the Global Warming Potential (GWP) much, much worse compared to carbon dioxide (CO2 GWP=1).
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
