Air Conditioning Jobs - Four Reasons To Use A HVAC Vacuum Pump

When you are considering starting an air conditioning service business, or if you are just enjoying using HVAC tools and repairing a HVAC system in your car or in your house on your own, then in this article we will go over four different reasons why you must consider including a HVAC vacuum pump in your arsenal of HVAC repair tools. HVAC here stands for Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning. The four main reasons you need to use a HVAC vacuum pump are: Prevent Freeze-Up, Prevent Corrosion, Prevent mixing of refrigerants, and Detect leaks. Let us look at these in more detail.

HVAC vacuum pump will prevent freeze-up

Freeze-up inside your air conditioning system could occur due to water vapor present in the system. As the refrigerant goes through the normal process of compression, heating, evaporation and cooling, the water vapor could begin crystallizing at the coldest part around the expansion unit and the icy crystals cause a "freeze-up". In the best case, this can stop the system from operating. In the worst case, this can damage the compressor or the evaporator unit. Either way, to prevent freeze-ups, all the moisture must be removed from the system prior to recharging it with a new refrigerant. This will be done with a quality, high vacuum electric pump.

Prevent corrosion

Corrosion, besides the freeze-up is another consequence of too much water vapor residue inside the air conditioning system. The water itself will have corroding effect on the inside metal walls of the air conditioning system. Worse, when combined with other highly reactive substances inside such as chlorine compounds and fluorine compounds, water vapor can cause irreparable corrosion damage. And that kind of damage, since it is hidden from the eye, won't reveal itself until it is too late. A regularly employed high vacuum pump will prevent corrosion by removing the water vapor from the system.

Prevent mixing of old and new refrigerant

When upgrading the refrigerant to a new type of refrigerant, or when replacing the old refrigerant with a fresh refrigerant, using a HVAC pump will allow complete removal of the old refrigerant. That will allow the system to operate to the specs as they apply to the pure new refrigerant. The air conditioning system will be able to operate more effectively that way.

HVAC vacuum pump will help detect leaks

By measuring the vacuum retained over time in regular intervals, we can determine how well the air conditioning system is retaining the vacuum generated by an electric pump, and therefore, how leak-proof the system is. After achieving a significantly high vacuum using a HVAC pump, we measure the vacuum and let the system be on its own for five minutes. Any loss of vacuum in the short amount of time means that the AC vacuum pump has discovered a leak in the system.