My old boss told me to "just use more Freon" and I almost blew up a house

Worked for a guy named Dave back in 2018. He said if the pressure looks low, just dump more R-22 in. Told me to stop overthinking it. Turned out the condenser coil was cracked and I would have dumped $400 of refrigerant into the atmosphere. Walked off the job that afternoon. Anyone else had a "expert" give advice that was straight up dangerous?

3 comments

3 Comments

cora51811d ago

Dave from 2018 sounds like he was playing a REAL LIFE game of "guess the pressure" with your license on the line. I can just picture him squinting at the gauges saying "ehh close enough, dump it in." That's the same logic as telling someone to fix a leaky tire by just adding more air and hoping the hole magically heals. Good on you for walking off because that "just use more" mentality is how you end up on the 6 o'clock news with a fire truck in the driveway.

piper_kim11d ago

Wait, was Dave's strategy basically "if you can't pass the test, just overwhelm it with coolant"? I totally get the appeal of thinking more equals better, but that's how you turn a simple AC recharge into a $3,000 compressor replacement. I once tried to fix a low tire pressure light by just pumping air into a tire with a nail in it, and let's just say I learned the hard way that ignoring the real problem doesn't make it go away. Some people just refuse to learn until their wallet takes a direct hit. Dave probably moved on to fixing plumbing with duct tape after that.

mary_west11d ago

Duct tape on plumbing is oddly genius though, water pressure does the rest of the work.

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