These books are written for savvy homeowners, back yard mechanics, technicians, maintenance workers and those who possess the skill and knowledge to work with electricity, sheet metal and have the knowledge and skill to safely and responsibly work with refrigerants and refrigeration recovery that said the cost of replacing home appliances is one of the biggest turn-offs to purchasing a home that’s why I’ve put together this book which covers replacing a heating/cooling system, diagnosing residential air conditioning, hot water heater replacement and auto air conditioning repairs. I wrote this as a help for savvy home owner and since I was a Journeyman Tech myself so this could also be the first book and apprentice in the hvac trade would use to help him learn his trade. Commercial and residential hvac installations and diagnostic service work is essentially 90% electrical A technician with the right tools in his tool bag can tell so much about a unit by measuring refrigerant temperatures, ambient, indoor supply and return, super heat and amperages he can determine within a 98% degree of accuracy the whole story about what a unit was doing and predict its number of years of life left. In my life I’ve worked on residential split units as small as one ton (12000) BTU’s units up to two hundred ton and larger units self contained and high rise systems which use centrifugal chillers to chill water as the medium in it’s cooling systems. When the EPA began to regulate refrigerants and technicians doing recovery and handling refrigerants back in the early nineties. I was one of two men in our entire company of about fifteen technicians who was familiar with low pressure refrigeration systems and therefore after testing was complete I got my certification, I am one of a small group of technicians in the United States certified by the EPA for a universal license for refrigerants. The economy being what it is today and refrigerants costing ten times what it did a few years ago. Labor and parts too are on the rise, a friend of mine paid six hundreds just recently to have an indoor fan motor replaced. R -Twenty two refrigerants is said to be over a hundred dollars a pound now. Units built since 2002 are using the new refrigerant 134A, but R-22 is scheduled to be phased out in 2020.
The manufactures aren’t making as much and it costs more now. With this kind of squeeze being placed on hard working people who do a little of their own maintenance I thought perhaps I could help take the sting out of it for some.