Guys - aware that we have quite a few business owners/landlords on here, the below may be of interest to some.


The Issue

As most business operators and landlords seem unaware, there is a looming issue, which is going to affect businesses, and involve potentially huge bills.

This will affect most Air Conditioning systems installed before 2000, and smaller systems installed before 2004, where it is likely that a Liquid Gas Refrigerant known as R22 has been used.

Because this gas is harmful to the environment it has been illegal to put ‘virgin’ R22 into AC systems since 2010. From 1st January 2015 it will be illegal to introduce even recycled or recovered R22 into AC systems.
This means that any leaks in the system, or any maintenance that involves removing refrigerant would leave the system incapable of being restored to an operating condition.

The fix

There are replacement gasses. They will not mix well however with residues of R22. The effect of this is as a minimum seals and some equipment within the system would have to be replaced. Bearing in mind that the systems are often elderly it’s often more sensible to replace the whole system.

Replacing the seals or the system is disruptive to a business and expensive. In all but the smallest systems carrying out the work in working hours, unless the area is empty is most likely impossible.

Actions to take

Any business that is reliant on Air Conditioning for its processes needs to make a plan how to deal with this before January 2015.

Where the system is providing ‘comfort cooling’ a tenant/building owner may choose to forgoe the system. Tenants should be aware that after 1st January 2015 when a lease expires, a Landlord would have several arguments that would leave them footing the bill for conversion to a different refrigerant.

Other things to think about:

If you are acquiring premises ask the question. Take account of the cost of the work in your bid. My advice would be to convert any system before taking occupation.

Rent Reviews. If the system requires replacing would a tenant reflect the cost/liability of that in their rental bid?

The cost of the recycled refrigerant is already rising, and this will continue as it becomes scarcer.

Interesting. It's certainly not the information that I've been given, or other surveyors come to that. Are you an AC man? A conversation would be of interest at some point.

What about the seals with the 'drop in' replacement?

I don't know what seals you are talking about, it might be that whoever came up with your info was confusing some elements of car a/c. The seals in car a/c can dry out if the system is not used, e.g in the winter, then come summer you go to turn the a/c on and it doesn't work.

But other than on possibly some cars, that is not a consideration in a/c.

Certainly in commercial systems the pipes are all brazed copper to copper joints and the only few mechanical joints will most likey be a flare between copper and brass, which has no sealing gasket or anything as the copper and brass are the seal.

Only other situaution with seals may be from changing to a higher pressure gas such as R410A, but that again wouldn't involve changing seals, just leak testing and tghtening and flares etc that may be a problem.

There has been quite a bit of debate about this and it's my understanding that if the system runs on R22 and is running correctly at lease end past 1/1/15, then it is not in "disrepair" and a Tenant can't be forced to replace it (or give something back to the LL that is better than what was taken on at the start of the lease).

If it is knackered then that's another cost to consider.

Some more info here: http://www.koolit.co.uk/service_legislation.html

Agreed that for all but some of the oldest/largest systems that may use open type drive compressors (and car A/C) the 'seals' issue doesn't exist. The text you quoted may have been from a USA source where these types of systems are/were more common.