Automotive Air Conditioning Information Forum

Any solid truth about damage to systems and/or tools like recovery machines other than rumors?

Overheard a HVAC tech from a local large company tell my neighbor that he installed stop leak in her outdated R-22 system. I checked and there are all kinds of stop leak offered for HVAC systems including R134A. If there was a possibility of damage to the system and/or their recovery machine if they had to return to service the system, why would they use stop leak??

Personally, I would never use any stop leak in any customers system. This becomes the issue, when, not if, you go to change out your system at some point to the new 410A refrigerant, you will have that mess in your copper line-set. A service tech can usually tell if this stuff has been injected into a system when removes the service valve cap. I had a church about 4 years ago call me out on a no a/c call, I had noticed right away this stuff was injected into this system, told them I cannot service it, because I don't want that stuff in my gauges. There may be some snake oil products out there today that do work, I'm just old school, I will not use any of these products, that way I don't have to have a customer calling me up at a later date, telling me that stuff messed up their system.

Mr. Bill - this is off topic, but I saw your signature line "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards" -Vernon Law

Well, Vernon Law rented a house a few up from my family in 1959 and 1960 on Gilmore Drive in Eastmont (an area east of the Pittsburgh through the Squirrel Hill tunnel), and we played with his oldest kid Veldon. In 1960 after the WS Game #1, we decorated his house to celebrate the victory (I attended the 7th World series game, was 7 years old).

Nu-Calgon, a big name in AC products has one advertised for MVAC/HVAC use: http://www.nucalgon.com/products/tsp/a-c-easyseal

Cusser wrote:Mr. Bill - this is off topic, but I saw your signature line "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards" -Vernon Law

Well, Vernon Law rented a house a few up from my family in 1959 and 1960 on Gilmore Drive in Eastmont (an area east of the Pittsburgh through the Squirrel Hill tunnel), and we played with his oldest kid Veldon. In 1960 after the WS Game #1, we decorated his house to celebrate the victory (I attended the 7th World series game, was 7 years old).

What an awesome story, thanks so much for sharing that with me.

Easy seal sometimes it works sometimes not. It is a last ditch effort before replacement. It is best for micro leaks. There are different sealers out there. Some work some mess up systems and parts. I have used Easy Seal 4 times. One time it did not work. 2 times I know it worked. The other one I have no idea.

Best method is to buy a real leak detector and find the leak and repair it.

Dougflas wrote:Easy seal sometimes it works sometimes not. It is a last ditch effort before replacement. It is best for micro leaks. There are different sealers out there. Some work some mess up systems and parts. I have used Easy Seal 4 times. One time it did not work. 2 times I know it worked. The other one I have no idea.

Best method is to buy a real leak detector and find the leak and repair it.

You weren't worried about it damaging your equipment or are you using a "stop leak" filter?