Find a competent HVAC repair house.
The odds are that the leaks are not in the units themselves but the joints used to attach them to the system, or other parts of the system that did not get replaced.
In any case it should not take more than 30 minutes with a tester to locate the leaks, particularly if they are this large.
Residential systems are under the limit that requires repair instead of just adding refrigerant.

Yes - Most leaks aren't in the Condensing units themselves, which is why nobody would warrant your 'system' for leaks - They didn't install the 'system'

Don

First, those leaks were probably the result of the tech brazing the install fittings.

Could even be leaking at service valves or valve cores.

Why would they charge you to repair a leak that they caused? It was a rare thing for me to have a leaking brazed fitting however, there would be NO charge to repair a leak I caused, - no matter how much time was involved, if it drew air in, - including pulling the charge evacuating, etc. My fault NO charge. They should be paid for the unnecessary inconvenience of NO AC.

Well, that was just me. I wonder if anyone else does that today? udarrell _ 2007

I just finished working on a system someone used an undersized torch on.
The joints all look bad, but the service valves on the condenser are cooked.
When the caps are removed the refrigerant is spraying from the condensate valve stem.
The packing is cooked, and the valve will not even back seat when fully opened.

If you purge a system with dry nitrogen at install, then pull it down hard there should not be any leaks.
I use a nitrogen leak detector after putting the system under pressure before even starting to pull it down.

Of course that means they might have to turn the vacuum pump off and actually wait 30 minutes to catch the small leaks if they do not test with nitrogen first, but they should have done this to check for remaining water anyway.

It really sounds like a bad install.
Demand they find the leak.

You have a great system brickeyee. I'm pleased to say I do the same things...whether I'm working on automotive systems or residential systems. Good habits are universal.

I have been reading over the past several months in regards to the quality of heating
and cooling equipment, and I just feel itÂs time to add my 2 cents to these discussions. I have been a designer and builder of metal stamping dies to this industry for several years, particularly Goodman. In my opinion, most condensers
That are built by the major manufacturers are manufactured with mostly purchased parts. Goodman mfg like most others, purchases their compressors, fans, valves and electrical components from other sources, and these components are usually the most reliable in the unit. The other parts, like the base panÂs , louver top, control
box , outside louver panel and access panels are all stamped in house and are usually
service free components. And last of all is the coil, which in my opinion is the heart
Of the unit. If most of you people out there observed the manufacturing of this one
component, you would probably wonder how can they make something like that and
not have leaks. Well letÂs go back apx. 30 years ago, Goodman mfg was started
by Harold Goodman in what used to be a old furniture warehouse and it was his
goal to produce the most reliable affordable residential hvac system available and
realized that he had to find the best tooling, product design, and manufacturing people around. The team of people that he assembled to bring his goals to reality
brought Goodman Mfg from dirt to the no 2 manufacturer in their industry. These were the golden years. Would you people like me to continue into the later yearÂs
And to what has brought down the quality of products in this entire industry.
Please adviseÂÂÂÂÂ

i don't know about others but i wouldn't mind getting into the history more, even more so since i work with these units alot at the steel mill i work in

Well let me start off just before Harold passed away, Goodman had moved their furnace mfg.
operation into a brand new building and their Quietflex flexible ducting into a brand new building. They continued to produce air handlers, evaporator coils and condenser units in
the original building. They did all this while still staying focused on the pursuit of implementing innovative manufacturing techniques and a continued effort to produce the
highest quality but yet affordable residential hvac equipment. Most all of the manufacturing
Brain trust that Harold hired to achieve this monumental task came from already successful
manufacturers within this industry, like Trane and Fedders. Most of these people were guys like most of you people reading this as well as myself that grew up from the trenches and
graduated from the university of hard knocks. After Harold passed away his son took command of the company and as well as predicted he needed to establish his own identity and
try to prove the he was worthy of basically taking over where his dad left off and this is where
Goodman started to change. It would appear that the son would not reflect on what his dad did
to achieve success because probably in his mind his dad was not successful enough. I would
have to say that the sons boldest move was the purchase of Amana corp. from Raytheon. I have often wondered that if Amana was a profitable unit of Raytheon It probably would not have been sold. Now this is the starting point where the son did not take notes on hiring successful
People from successful companies. Harold would probably have viewed the executive management at Amana as a group of underachievers and probably would not even considered
Hiring any of them even if they worked for free. TO BE CONTINUED

At about the time of the Amana acquisition the son was feeling the need to present Goodman
mfg. With a wall street aura rather than a lurking in the shadows family owned and operated
player in their industry with practically no full national identity. Remember, all their major
competitors advertise on t.v. So this was also about the time the stock market was going crazy
with dot com companies with no identity selling an office full of pc.s for millions of dollars.
During the acquisition of Amana the son was from what I hear, was mesmerized by the president of Amana and the way that he presented himself. So this is when the son decided
to hire Chuck to take his company into the future. This is the moment when the son broke
away from HaroldÂs tradition of not hiring mediocre managers from looser companies.
At this time also Goodman was continuing to gain market share and steamroll the competition utilizing the entire staff that Harold had assembled. The one person that also deserves credit
and was HaroldÂs right hand was Garland. He was extremely instrumental in GoodmanÂs
explosive growth. It wasnÂt very long into Chucks tenure that he concluded that Garland, although guided Goodman to the number two manufacturer in their industry wasnÂt fashionable
enough to take Goodman toward the wall street stratosphere. Chuck needed his own boy to
to lead the company toward the future so he himself a disciple of a looser company hires a
a guy from an even more looser company and his name is Bill. Well it didnÂt take long for Bill
to make his presence known, a self proclaimed legend in is own mind and self-proclaimed manufacturing and efficiency genius. He would in his first several days at Goodman hold staff
meetings and tell people that he was only going to be there no more than a couple of years
to fix all the alleged problems and than he, like some super hero be summoned to another
manufacturer to fix all their problems. He even said that the past administration at Goodman
was only good enough to take them to number two and that him and his people would take them
to number one. Now this is a guy that I donÂt believe is worthy of shining the shoeÂs of Harold
or Garland when you compare successes. I will continue with more. Rest assured, as I continue
you will be able see how this one company has had an impact on quality and service because of their actions across the industry.

Any unit regardless of the brand will leak freon if the line set joints are not brazed properly or the schrader valve cores defective or not properly seated. Electronic leak detecting equipment will detect the smallest leak. If a company does not have the proper equipment to locate and repair ;eaks they should not be servicing units, the EPA is very clear about this. I suggest you contact the licensing authority in your area for hvac dealers, tell them your story as you posted it here, you just possibly might get some help. Good luck Iggie

toolman210, hey thats interesting stuff,, cmon, next episode please. Hey iggie, how you doin? Long time no see you in here?

Thanks mr. havac for the interest. I should have it ready tomorrow, as the saga continues I
need to make sure that everything that write is accurate and understandable without a
lot of generalizations or exaggerations. Every one reading
this forum tonite, have a plesant evening.

Well itÂs time for another:
The new Goodman, managed by a whole lot smarter people, so as typical the new head of manufacturing, Bill, had to show immediate results in the form of increased profits, so as it goÂs the first and easiest place to have a short term success is to reduce labor costs. Now remember, Bill is of this new breed of self proclaimed manufacturing geniuses that could live 10 life times and still never achieve the level of success as
Harold Goodman. So to get back on track, the first coarse of action was to change the
way they hire people, so as you guessed they went to temporary labor from a temporary
labor source. Every time I went over there on a service call, I saw fewer people that I
knew and a whole lot of new faces. The people that I had seen over the years were all
suddenly disappearing. As this was taking place, I was receiving phone calls at all hours to assess and repair pre mature stamping die failures. They would bring a temporary worker in and put him or her to run a progressive die, with practically no
experience. As you can imagine the beating that the dies took was becoming evident as
seen on the finished parts coming off of them. Then to make matters worse, they decided to operate their coil fin dies with a water soluble lubricant rather than the
recommended lubricant that is recommended by the fin die manufacturer. Well it seemed as if quality and production were suffering, so rather looking for the manufacturing experts that can put the wheels back on the track, they chose to hire these
alleged new, cheep wizards of manufacturing from India as well as the United States. So, I found myself teaching
these people all that they needed to know to perform their jobs. Apparently, these
highly accredited Indian,Bangladesh and U.S. universityÂs left out of their manufacturing engineering curriculum anything that had to do with manufacturing equiptment. So you ask, what credentials do they need to earn these positions? Well guyÂs I am sorry to say
that all of you out there as well as my self that are shop and hands on trained people
mechanical experts in or relative fields are no match to these types of people that tout
there college degreeÂs as their merit badge of superiority over us. And the use of these
new wave manufacturing terms like lean manufacturing, kaisan , six sigma, black belt
mba, iso 9000 and so on. These goofy inadequate engineers end up taking these kinds of correspondent courses and then for some reason believe that they carry the same credentials as a Harold Goodman. So letÂs start to add all this up so far, we have Bill
from the looser company, we have inexperienced temporary seasonal labor and we
have some inadequate manufacturing engineering people. I have more to come so stay
tuned because as Bill paves this type road to the companies alleged success the competition starts to pave the same type of road.

I agree Toolman, also try to talk to one of these hot shots and get some help is like pulling teeth. You may remember a few years back before I retired there were a lot of of the GUPS 120 series furnaces put out with a brand of gas valve very prone to failure. That year we had one of the coldest winters in years, and those gas valves gave us fits. The warranty replacements were as bad as the originals. Someone. if I remember correctly, think his name was George Barron started issuing Honeywell valves as replacements, this solved the problem and I personally know of several units that have operated trouble free for several years. Iggie

Very good reading toolman, keep it coming. I hope all the people in this forum who inquire about one brand over another are following this saga too.

Thanks for insight Iggie, one of the best decisions that the pre Bill management of Goodman
made was the acquisition of Amana. It basically was the move that got Goodman in to
the tubular heat exchanger style furnaces and away of their antiquated clam shell style, and
brought a new level of credibility to Goodman as a quality furnace manufacturer. And thank
you Mr. havac for your words of encouragement. I hope that there are more people interested
in reading about the nature of what goes on in these manufacturing plants, and what kinds of
characters are involved with the manufacturing of probably the single largest appliance investment in their house.

Good evening fellas, one thing that I would like to mention, at this point in time as all the
changes were going on, there were still several employees of the old regime that knew how
to get things made rite. Today, most these guys are gone. Anyways lets go back about 3 to 4
years ago, apparently late shipments were starting to get out of control and quality issues were causing significant component shortages and in Bills eyes this was due probably to a less than stellar shop floor management rather than the new hiring practices that his administration had
implemented. I was called to a meeting overthere one afternoon on how to make the tooling more
robust and more prone to premature failure and when it was my turn to add my to sense I simply
suggested that they start hiring real press operators rather than general unskilled labor. I was
obviously shot down for having such an absurd and narrow minded way to improve the situation and
was told basically any monkey can do this type of work. So there you have it, your condensor
units may actually be constructed by monkeys. Shortly their after, Bill decided that he needed a
more aggressive manufacturing manager that can get the results that he is demanding, so, as all
you plumbers out there can clearly relate to this,water truly does seek its own level and as you guessed,yep, executive managers from looser companies end up usually hiring people from equally or an even more looser company, and in this case this manager came from one of all time looser companies and that is Delphi electronics. This particular individual apparently had to have
been degreed out the wazoo but didÂt know squat about managing an air conditioner manufacturing plant. I was perplexed, under what rock did Bill find this guy? This guy called
me into a tooling meeting, on short notice one night at 7 pm. to find a solution to a tooling problem and there were several other tooling guys in there. This guy weighed about 400 pounds
and was woofing down a submarine sandwich in front of all of us and as he in his assertive and
demanding tone tried to act as though he was a respected tooling athourity. The only thing that
I remember from that meeting was the chewed projectiles coming out of his face as he yelled
and tried to make us feel inferior. I left that meeting thinking to myself, this hire makes no sense.
What could Bill possibly see in this guy accept maybe a future fall guy. To be continuedÂÂÂ
Have a pleasant evening everyone toolman210

Hey this is great, I kinda feel like Im reading the skript for a Soap Opera that takes place in an air conditioner making factory!

I'm glued to the computer screen. Keep going, Toolman.

Toolman there might be a book in here somewhere. You would need a ghost writer (no offense meant). This might be a story partly of the loss of machining expertise thanks to the flight of capital to cheap foreign shores and in some measure, in other areas the advance of robotics. I wonder if we as consumers are also to blame to demand lower prices. I know there is a common complaint in the maintenance field that all customers want to hear is low price. I can attest to the appointment of Indian engineers in positions where practical experience was more important. I know years ago when cars were first being assembled in that country, and since engineers were plentiful, you would find an engineer-supervisor in the service area instead of a guy who had actually worked on cars.

Good job Toolman, keep going..

Sorry guys for the delay on my saga about the inside view of an hvac manufacturer but I have been real busy closing
out the month. I do have more to go so keep posted, I am going to start a new thread and call it seer madness. See
you there . toolman210