Beginning Jan. 1 of this year, all model numbers for new AC units begin with '4', indicating it requires A2L refrigerant. (Lauren Tucker/WTIU News)
Changing EPA regulations last month mean new coursework for students going into heating and cooling careers and higher costs for consumers.
At Ivy Tech, students come to room B-113 to learn about the HVAC industry from instructor Garrett Middleton. He’s adapting to a new class of refrigerants, called A2Ls, which are more environmentally friendly than the old R-410A group. The challenge is that they are more flammable and that requires more training.
“We've got a lot of residential equipment in here,” he said. “A lot of the legacy systems that we see are our traditional split systems. That’s going to be a fossil fuel furnace with an air conditioning coil sitting on top of it.”
Through this program, students see the inner workings of air conditioners, furnaces, and even newer geothermal systems.
Lately, the training has focused on that new refrigerant and its lower global warming potential.
“Seems like every 10 years there's a change to regulations in our refrigerants, all of them are designed to be a temporary solution until we get down to a zero, ultra-low…global warming potential,” he said.
“It's mildly flammable so when the students get that exposure to it, it's something that they need to understand is not commonplace at all,” he said.
This phaseout of old refrigerants comes with growing pains. Industry leaders such as Dustin Lilya with the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and AC Engineers expect the price of the older chemicals to increase 20 to 30 percent.
“Although nothing prevents you from servicing your equipment, if less of the refrigerant is being produced and supplied into the industry, that phase down schedule of the refrigerant likely will have some cost impact on maintaining and servicing existing equipment,” he said,
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After last month’s change, any new HVAC system must be compatible with A2L refrigerant. Anything before that cutoff is considered legacy equipment, and as the phaseout of producing R-410A goes on, the supply of that coolant will decrease.
Future-proofing to the new standard will also be a chunk of change, with some estimating a new unit will cost $6-8,000.
“There isn't really a retrofittable solution to just say, ‘Hey, we're going to switch out the refrigerant to the new refrigerant on the existing equipment,’” he said. “It isn't really a viable solution at this point.”
Lilya said that’s because the new flammable refrigerant requires safety equipment that can’t be installed on old systems.
Those in the HVAC industry are divided. On one hand, lowering environmental risk is viewed as a good thing. On the other, the short timeline and cost to implement this change has been challenging for some.
“The hardest part, I think, is for everybody to educate themselves on the new requirements and what is changed and what is allowed and what's not allowed,” he said.
Surprisingly, that expected price increase hasn’t happened yet. In fact, Charlie Laughlin with Commercial Services in Bloomington said the cost of R-410A has decreased since the start of the year.
“That refrigerant price has actually come down to what I would call historical levels,” he said. “We'll see it go back up. I'm confident of that, but that hasn't happened yet.”
Laughlin said that since 410 has been used since the late '90s in systems worldwide, the supply is massive for now. But as the phaseout of production continues, he believes that its price could increase up to 300 percent.
He added that with this new rule, a service call can involve working with one of four refrigerants.
“We've got different tools that interact with those different refrigerants, so while it's a pain, it boils down to it's just more involved,” he said. “And when things are more involved and more complicated, they naturally get more expensive.”
It all adds up to consumers having to choose between keeping older equipment at a higher maintenance cost, or swapping to new hardware at a steep buy-in.
Any equipment manufactured before Jan. 1 has a one-year grace period to be installed. After that, everything must be A2L compliant.
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