Thank you, air conditioner.
You’ve been my rock this summer, always there when I needed you. You were up before dawn, keeping my home a nice 71 degrees so my family could sleep through the night. You worked to cool down the house before we got home from the pool. So it makes it a bit awkward to say this, but, umm, you’re being phased out.
It’s not you, it’s your refrigerant.
Turns out, since you were made before 2010, you still use a kind of refrigerant that, how do I put this delicately, is hurting the planet.
What’s that? You didn’t know?
Yeah, I didn’t either. But then I was cleaning around your outdoor condenser and noticed on the name plate that you use HCFC-22 (that’s short for hydrochlorofluorocarbon). And I’m sorry to break it to you, but the EPA now prohibits the manufacturing or installation of any air conditioners that use it.
The good news is that the EPA is still letting you live out your life. You can keep working, but as soon as you break down, we’re going to have to ask you to leave. You’ll be replaced with a new version that uses an ozone-friendly refrigerant called R-410A. As HCFC-22 is phased out of production, it will become more expensive and harder to find, so we might even need to part ways a little early.
In the meantime, the best thing we can do is keep you running as safely and efficiently as possible.That means addressing any leaks right away, keeping you clean, and getting routine maintenance checks.
Please don’t be too hard on yourself.
You didn’t mean to do it. But all the details are here on the EPA’s website, and I really can’t argue with the facts they provided. I hope we can still be friends.
Sincerely,
Black Hills Energy
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