Do-it-yourself refrigerator refilling with freon: instructions, safety rules

If the refrig­er­a­tor sud­den­ly breaks down, it may turn out that coolant has leaked out. This is per­haps the most com­mon rea­son for the fail­ure of a house­hold appli­ance. It is not nec­es­sary to call the mas­ter, you can fill the refrig­er­a­tor with fre­on with your own hands with­out any spe­cial skills. To do this, you must fol­low all safe­ty mea­sures and strict­ly fol­low the step-by-step instruc­tions.

Reasons for freon leaks

This sub­stance is the refrig­er­ant of many mod­els of refrig­er­a­tion devices. It is an odor­less gas. Its shelf life is unlim­it­ed, but in cer­tain cas­es it may require refu­el­ing.

Fre­on leak­age is pos­si­ble as a result of:

• fail­ure of the refrig­er­a­tor com­pres­sor;
• vio­la­tions of the tight­ness of the cap­il­lar­ies through which fre­on pass­es, as well as the sys­tem of its sup­ply as a whole;
• caus­ing inad­ver­tent blows to the con­den­sate and com­pres­sor. They can occur when the house­hold appli­ance is care­less­ly moved or when sharp objects are used in the freez­er;
• low qual­i­ty tubes (cap­il­lar­ies) through which fre­on cir­cu­lates, as well as the appear­ance of micro­c­racks on them;
• incor­rect or weak clamp­ing of pipeline con­nec­tions.

To under­stand that a leak has indeed occurred, pay atten­tion to the pres­ence or absence of cool­ing in the freez­er. The refrig­er­a­tor may not be cool­ing, but the com­pres­sor will con­tin­ue to oper­ate nor­mal­ly.

This can be done by your­self at home, if you adhere to the refu­el­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

Precautions

If it is decid­ed to car­ry out the work of replac­ing fre­on on your own, you must under­stand that this is a respon­si­ble and dan­ger­ous occu­pa­tion. When con­duct­ing it, you need to insure your­self and adhere to the fol­low­ing tips:

• the refrig­er­a­tor must be turned off before the process;
• when the fre­on in the device changes, it is impos­si­ble to turn on heat­ing devices and smoke near­by at this time;
• work must be per­formed on a spe­cial iso­lat­ed site, while the equip­ment is ground­ed;
• sol­der­ing of the joints of the joints is car­ried out, adher­ing to fire safe­ty;
• the room in which the repair was car­ried out, after the descent or injec­tion of gas, must be ven­ti­lat­ed for at least a quar­ter of an hour. Fre­on is odor­less, but its vapors can affect the con­di­tion of the per­son con­duct­ing the repair and his house­hold;
• for refu­el­ing, gas must be pur­chased only from well-known man­u­fac­tur­ers that pro­vide guar­an­tees for it;
• when test­ing a sys­tem that runs on fre­on, you need to study the instruc­tions for repair­ing refrig­er­a­tion units.

Rec­om­mend­ed read­ing:

Preparatory work before refueling freon

First, gas is bled from the sys­tem, while safe­ty mea­sures must be observed. A nee­dle grip is tak­en. It acts as a vise, it clamps the fil­ter dri­er, and then a punc­ture is made in the place where cop­per is vis­i­ble.

In order not to spoil the air in the room, the tube can be brought out the win­dow and the valve opened. After that, excess pres­sure is released from the sys­tem. Then the sys­tem is purged with nitro­gen, this tech­nique removes the remain­ing mois­ture. They put on a Schrad­er valve, which must be installed with a com­plete loss of fre­on. Fre­on will be pumped through it. Before con­nect­ing a gas cylin­der, make sure that the pres­sure in it is less than 6 atm. Oth­er­wise, you will have to use a gear­box that can low­er this fig­ure.

The algo­rithm of actions with it con­sists in the fol­low­ing steps:

• blow out the refrig­er­a­tor for 10 min­utes;
• close the valve on the nee­dle grip;
• cut off the fil­ter-dri­er at the cap­il­lary tube;
• repeat the flush­ing process.

Freon replenishment step by step instructions

To car­ry out the work, you will need two pres­sure gauges. One is red and the oth­er is blue. They come with 2 valves and 3 hoses. The blue gauge is for suc­tion pres­sure and the red gauge is for set­ting the dis­charge force. Their valves block the move­ment of fre­on in dif­fer­ent hoses.

The refu­el­ing pro­ce­dure con­sists of the fol­low­ing steps:

• The valves are closed on both gauges.
• A blue hose is con­nect­ed to the tube intend­ed for refu­el­ing through the fit­ting. And its yel­low coun­ter­part is twist­ed on a gas cylin­der.

• If it is required to mea­sure the pres­sure in the dis­charge direc­tion, then a spe­cial pipe (also known as a Schrad­er valve) is sol­dered into this pipeline. Then a red tube is brought to him.

• The blue pres­sure gauge valve opens. Slow­ly opens the con­tain­er con­tain­ing fre­on. The super­charg­er is filled with gas up to a pres­sure of 0.4–0.5 atm. When this indi­ca­tor is reached, two valves should be closed at once.

• The com­pres­sor starts for half a minute and then turns off again.
• The yel­low tube is dis­con­nect­ed from the cylin­der and a vac­u­um pump is con­nect­ed in its place.

• A blue valve is turned on on the pipeline and the pump­ing sta­tion is put into oper­a­tion, for about ten min­utes.
• The yel­low hose is dis­con­nect­ed from the pump and screwed to the gas cylin­der. A valve opens on it, while the yel­low tube is dis­con­nect­ed from the man­i­fold so that the fre­on squeezes out the air that acci­den­tal­ly got into the tube.
• After bleed­ing the yel­low hose wraps well. A blue valve opens on the col­lec­tor and the required amount of gas is filled into the house­hold appli­ance.

• The com­pres­sor turns on and the pres­sure is mon­i­tored. If it is nor­mal, then you need to bend the tubes and sol­der them, and unscrew the hoses.

How to fill refrigerant (video)

The video below shows in detail how to fill the refrig­er­a­tor with fre­on. The main steps are list­ed for bet­ter under­stand­ing.

Refu­el­ing the refrig­er­a­tor with fre­on with your own hands is quite fea­si­ble if you know how to do it cor­rect­ly. In order to sig­nif­i­cant­ly save on the call of the mas­ter, it is bet­ter to rent the nec­es­sary equip­ment for the refu­el­ing process, since its pur­chase will require seri­ous invest­ments. They will not pay off, because after the repair, fre­on will not have to be changed soon.