We're seen a steep increase in the price of Freon at work, anybody else getting this?
We're seen a steep increase in the price of Freon at work, anybody else getting this?
The last time I paid attention to Freon pricing was 2000ish when it was $120/lb and we had security measures in place when moving 30lb tanks around.
R134a? Not much call for it in Canada right now...
123yf is silly money. And loves to escape
Isn't there a steep rise in the price of just about everything these days?
Run_Away said:R134a? Not much call for it in Canada right now...
123yf is silly money. And loves to escape
We bought the first 1234yf machine in the area. The vendor filled the machine "for us". Finger quotes. A full $900 10lb can.
Finally got to use the machine a year later, most of the refrigerant had escaped because they left the manual valves open.
Procedure with that machine now is to close all manual valves any time the machine is not in immediate use!
Pete. (l33t FS) said:Run_Away said:R134a? Not much call for it in Canada right now...
123yf is silly money. And loves to escape
We bought the first 1234yf machine in the area. The vendor filled the machine "for us". Finger quotes. A full $900 10lb can.
Finally got to use the machine a year later, most of the refrigerant had escaped because they left the manual valves open.
Procedure with that machine now is to close all manual valves any time the machine is not in immediate use!
That's good practice for just about anything with manual valves.
My experience is on the commercial HVAC side but there are a few applications (large building chilled water equipment) that use R 134a as the system refrigerant so we're seeing it. Some of what is going on is driven by a couple of key chemical manufacturing plants along the gulf coast suffering damage last summer during hurricanes. Similar to what happened to affect other industry pricing (paints, petroleum products) the shortage of raw manufacturing materials tightened up supply. Add some supply chain delivery delays as well as pent up demand and off we go. There were a few times last summer where our local suppliers were limiting the amounts available to purchase on any given day. It should start to improve but as with everything else time will tell.
As an aside to this, If anyone has older systems that use R-22 for air conditioning, I'd recommend looking into upgrading to new equipment. R-22 production ceased several years ago due to new environmental rules, at one time it was the "universal" refrigerant for both commercial and residential AC equipment. There were times this past summer that we were seeing wholesale prices over $1,000.00 for a 30 pound cylinder of R-22 and it wasn't easy to get even at that price.
Yes, I use a lot of R404 in our refrigeration units (that cool shipping containers) and it's over tripled in the last six to eight months!
Yes, a lot. The prices continuously have been rising as they are fazed out. We purchased a few year supply of the different refrigerants we use last year due to the trend of rising prices as they are fazing out. We have also been open to purchasing some of the older variants (R22) on craigslist/fb marketplace from people who no longer need the old stock.
I was looking this morning and our average age of a unit is 10 years old but some date back as far as 1982.
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