Re: ihc-digest V5 #145 removing your own freon

[Steve Stegmann <stegmann@domain.elided>]

Scouters,

You can remove your own freon and save it for later.  Probably easier to 
have someone remove it for you.  They will keep it and sell you more 
later, at a profit.  Last time I priced freon it was $650 for a 30 lb 
jug.  I have a freon license, and while it is strictly illegal for you to 
remove your own, her is what you can do.

1- Get an empty freon tank (R-12 tanks, not R-22), needs to be an older
one without a check valve.  Shut off the engine and have someone evacuate
(pull a vacuum) on the tank to clean it out. 

2- Place the tank, with the vaccum still intact, in a big bucket and fill
around it with a mixture of ice and salt just like setting up an ice cream
freezer.  Be sure to tie the tank down as it will want to float to the top
*very much*. 

3- Connect the hose from the high pressure side of the compressor to the 
tank andopen the valve on the tank and the compressor.

4- Wait and keep the ice/salt mixture in the bucket in good shape.  This 
will take a while.

5- When the pressure in the system stabilizes at the saturation pressure 
for the temperature of the ice/water mixture for a half hour or so you 
have all the freon in the tank.  Close the valve and you're done.

Stricktly speaking this isn't a legal proceedure as you are required to 
pull a vacuum on the system to remove the last traces of freon from the 
system.  This requires that you make the transfer with a vacuum punp and 
not with my temperature gradient pump.  But this method will remove 
reasonably all of the freon.

You can see why you are better off just having someone remove it for you.

They probably won't want to just hold yours to put back in your system as 
this requires them to take a recovery tank out of service and hold it for 
you.  

The govt has done a job on this one.  And since the rest of the world has
excepted themselves from the freon regs (too much hardship for the
undeveloped countries like Germany, France and Great Britain)  The strict 
regs will probably not save the world from destruction.  But you will pay 
through the nose.

Just wait till you see the gas price increase from the "Clinton Global 
Warming Treaty"  The only way to cut the greenhouse gases is to cut the 
combustion of fuel.  The only way to do this is make it so fantastically 
expensive that people won't pay it.  Guess what, this applies to electric 
power generation, motor fuels, nat gas for your furnace... Are you 
getting the picture??????????  Many people think these energy taxes will 
cause a severe economic depression.  Most manufacturing companies will 
have to increase the price of goods to pay the taxes.  BTW, the rest of 
the world will exempt itself because of the economic hardhsip and we will 
be left holding the bag like fools.  Ref the freon treaties.

Anyway.. I've been on my soapbox long enough.

Steve

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Steven A. Stegmann
     _/_/_/    _/      _/_/_/ "'Necessity' is the plea for every 
   _/    _/   _/_/   _/    _/   infringement of human freedom.  It is the 
   _/        _/ _/   _/         argument of tyrants; it is the creed of 
    _/_/    _/  _/    _/_/      slaves."  
       _/  _/_/_//       _/    
 _/    _/ _/    _/ _/    _/          William Pitt, 1783
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