Gas for older A/C units

[Sunbeam]

Would Humpinghummer or J B kindly pm me the name of the engineer who carries the older style gas. Unfortunately I still don't have sufficient posts to qualify to send a pm to you.
Many thanks.

[J B]

Would Humpinghummer or J B kindly pm me the name of the engineer who carries the older style gas. Unfortunately I still don't have sufficient posts to qualify to send a pm to you.
Many thanks.

Well, as it was HH's recommendation, I will leave it to him ....

[humpinghummer]

Would Humpinghummer or J B kindly pm me the name of the engineer who carries the older style gas. Unfortunately I still don't have sufficient posts to qualify to send a pm to you.
Many thanks.

Hi, I have pm you the details. thanks.

[Bograt]

What counts as an "old" unit, please? Is it, for example, over 10 years, or is it more specific?

The reason I ask is that we are going to move into a new place next month. The downstairs aircon unit has been replaced, but the ones upstairs look very old. The rental agent did say the upstairs ones were much older, and she is going to get all the aircon serviced when the current tenants move out and before we move in.

From this thread, it is very apparent that not all aircon engineers are created equal, so if there is a way of knowing if a machine is old enough to be a problem, that would be useful to me.

My agent is very amenable, so if necessary I can approach her about. However, I would like a bit of concise backup before I do, so I can explain I am not just being a demanding tenant. I'm in the UK right now, so I would need to be able to tell her something like "oh, if it says ..... on the unit, it's past it's sell by date".

[Poppy]

I personally feel that at 10 years old they are getting to the end of their life and of course the older units are much more expensive to run. The ones in our last rental were particularly rusty on the outside compressors and were not very efficient. I would ask if the Landlord would consider replacing them or if not you could do like we did and replace them yourselves with the proviso that when you leave they are yours to take but this is an expensive option and not one I would recommend.

[PaphosAL]

If the downstairs A/C unit has already been replaced by the owner, then that's half the battle won, as THAT is the big boy in terms of capacity. (Usually 18,000 BTU/Hr).

Replacing the bedroom a/c units with new and much more energy-efficient units wouldn't break the owner's bank either, as these are smaller, typically 7,000 BTU/Hr. How many bedrooms, by the way? And would you be using all of them at the same time continuously? A bit more feedback, please, then I'll help you save a fortune on your leccy bills from EAC!

Cheers- AL

[Bograt]

Thank you both for your reply. Al, thanks for asking for more info - here goes as well as I can: There are two bedrooms upstairs in the house, one downstairs. All bedrooms are I guess an "average" size, the upstairs ones have en-suites, so I'd be using the air con to heat/cool both the room and the en suite. They upstairs ones could both be used at the same time. The house has no other form of heating, and we hate being cold, so they would have to be heating units. It's an older house but it does have a fairly decent form of double glazing.

I don't want to ask anything unreasonable of my landlord, but also don't want to pay a fortune to run old units.

If there was a way to be able to tell my agent that the existing units needed the "old" gas, for instance if there is a symbol or something to look out for that gives it away, it would be great.

[trevnhil]

Do they do 7,000 btu now. We have recently had a 9,000 btu installed in a bedroom.
The price was 269 euros. But don't forget the cost of installing. That can be 90 euros plus... depending on the circumstances. Our installation was 150 euros.

[Bograt]

Do they do 7,000 btu now. We have recently had a 9,000 btu installed in a bedroom.
The price was 269 euros. But don't forget the cost of installing. That can be 90 euros plus... depending on the circumstances. Our installation was 150 euros.

That doesn't sound too awful, we could always do what Poppy suggested and put in some new ones ourselves and take them with us. If we do need to do this, would you mind if I send you a pm for more info re who you used etc?

[Bograt]

How do the engineers know which gas goes in, I wonder......

[J B]

We have recently had a 9,000 btu installed in a bedroom.
The price was 269 euros.

Where did you get yours from Trev?

[Jim B]

I had 12,000 units fitted in the five bedrooms, a 24,000 in the lounge and an 18,000 unit in the kitchen plus another 12,000 in the upstairs lounge and there was no installation charge as the pipework was already installed and it was exchanging like for like.. Old Gas is available as most of the guys who do a/c maintenance or change out units are supposed to drain the old gas into a storage bottle so some sell it on.

Jim

[trevnhil]

Do they do 7,000 btu now. We have recently had a 9,000 btu installed in a bedroom.
The price was 269 euros. But don't forget the cost of installing. That can be 90 euros plus... depending on the circumstances. Our installation was 150 euros.

That doesn't sound too awful, we could always do what Poppy suggested and put in some new ones ourselves and take them with us. If we do need to do this, would you mind if I send you a pm for more info re who you used etc?

But you can't take the new ones away when you move and leave NON at all there. So, what are you going to do, save the old ones and get them reinstalled (at what cost) and will there be any gas for them in X number of years time.

[trevnhil]

We have recently had a 9,000 btu installed in a bedroom.
The price was 269 euros.

Where did you get yours from Trev?

We used CMC Electrical.. http://www.cmcelectric.com/ We have used them before.
We chose a Pitsos 9,000btu inverter model and it has an A++ rating..

[Bograt]

That doesn't sound too awful, we could always do what Poppy suggested and put in some new ones ourselves and take them with us. If we do need to do this, would you mind if I send you a pm for more info re who you used etc?

But you can't take the new ones away when you move and leave NON at all there. So, what are you going to do, save the old ones and get them reinstalled (at what cost) and will there be any gas for them in X number of years time.
[/quote]

Yes, if we had to. We would discuss it with the landlord, keep the old units, and reinstall. Everything would be there, it would be swapping in/out. Not an ideal solution at all, but we are not at that stage and hopefully won't be.

[Poppy]

Our situation was slightly different as although the pipework was there there had never been an air con unit in the living room although they were in bedrooms and kitchen so we said we would just make good when we left if the landlord did not want it. In fact the landlord did buy it from us as they realised that the majority of people do require air con in the living area but the firm we bought it from also offered to buy it back so no problem.Incidentally we had a log burner in the Living room but we actually preferred to use the air con on heat as the trouble with log burners is that you cannot easily adjust the temperature of your room and logs are expensive!

[PaphosAL]

Apologies for my typo, when I wrote 7,000 BTU/Hr units for bedrooms, when I should have said 9,000 (doh...)

The marvelous thing about all these modern A/C domestic units (cool / dry / heat) is that they all seem to come pre-charged with the latest eco-friendly gas, with quick-couple (hence quick decouple) connections!

@Bograt: If the label says R12, then it is definately old, not environmentally friendly, and will give you hefty leccy bills (and colds and sneezes!)

More tomorrow, eh? Cheers- AL

[cyprusmax47]

Thank you both for your reply. Al, thanks for asking for more info - here goes as well as I can: There are two bedrooms upstairs in the house, one downstairs. All bedrooms are I guess an "average" size, the upstairs ones have en-suites, so I'd be using the air con to heat/cool both the room and the en suite. They upstairs ones could both be used at the same time. The house has no other form of heating, and we hate being cold, so they would have to be heating units. It's an older house but it does have a fairly decent form of double glazing.

I don't want to ask anything unreasonable of my landlord, but also don't want to pay a fortune to run old units.

If there was a way to be able to tell my agent that the existing units needed the "old" gas, for instance if there is a symbol or something to look out for that gives it away, it would be great.

Whatever you decide Bograt, don't forget that some Winter can be quite cold also near the sea, and humid! Don't go for something cheap because it will be more expensive in the long run for heating and cooling. You said you hate being cold, so you have to run the split units on heating for many hours every day in Winter to avoid that the house is too cold and the side effect is you will have drafts near the windows. Be sure you buy Inverter ones, minimum 12ooo BTU to heat also en suite as electric heaters there would be dangerous. After the first year living in the house you will find out how much you pay for electricity bills and perhaps think about investing in Solar PV which you could move to any other place like furniture if necessary.

Max

[Bograt]

Apologies for my typo, when I wrote 7,000 BTU/Hr units for bedrooms, when I should have said 9,000 (doh...)

The marvelous thing about all these modern A/C domestic units (cool / dry / heat) is that they all seem to come pre-charged with the latest eco-friendly gas, with quick-couple (hence quick decouple) connections!

@Bograt: If the label says R12, then it is definately old, not environmentally friendly, and will give you hefty leccy bills (and colds and sneezes!)

More tomorrow, eh? Cheers- AL

Thank you PaphosAl (Alan?) for that input, so useful. I am sure others will find that helpful as well.

[Bograt]

Whatever you decide Bograt, don't forget that some Winter can be quite cold also near the sea, and humid! Don't go for something cheap because it will be more expensive in the long run for heating and cooling. You said you hate being cold, so you have to run the split units on heating for many hours every day in Winter to avoid that the house is too cold and the side effect is you will have drafts near the windows. Be sure you buy Inverter ones, minimum 12ooo BTU to heat also en suite as electric heaters there would be dangerous. After the first year living in the house you will find out how much you pay for electricity bills and perhaps think about investing in Solar PV which you could move to any other place like furniture if necessary.

Max

Thank you Mr Max, I was looking forward to hearing from you. Solar PV is something that we are very interested in. We were put off because we did not know you could move them around, so that is really good to hear. We will take your advice, check we are happy in our new place, and then hopefully invest. I am sure I will be asking you again in the future about this if that is ok.

Thank you for mentioning it, as I had no idea.