My air conditioner uses R-22. What are my options?

What the phaseout actually changed

R-22 was the standard residential refrigerant for decades. Under the Montreal Protocol and the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency phased out its production and import, and that phaseout completed on the first of January 2020. Nothing became illegal to own or to run. It is entirely lawful to keep an R-22 system, to service it, and to recharge it with recovered or reclaimed refrigerant.

What changed is supply. The only R-22 that exists is what was already made. Reclaimed refrigerant has to be recovered from decommissioned systems, cleaned, and certified, and that is a smaller and more expensive pipeline than manufacture ever was. The practical consequence is that the cost of putting several pounds into a leaking system is both high and unpredictable from one year to the next, and no contractor can quote it far in advance with confidence.

Why a recharge is not a repair

A sealed refrigeration circuit does not consume refrigerant. If the charge is low, refrigerant left. It left through a leak, and that leak is still there after the recharge. A contractor who tops up a system without finding the leak has sold you a delay, and on an R-22 system that delay is now expensive.

This matters more than it used to for a second reason. Adding refrigerant to a leaking system and walking away is poor practice on any refrigerant and is restricted for larger equipment under the federal leak repair rules. For a homeowner the point is simpler: you are paying scarce-commodity prices for something that will be outdoors again by next season.

The three real options

Run it until it fails. If the system cools acceptably and holds its charge, this is a perfectly rational choice, and it is the cheapest one. Change filters, keep the condenser coil clean, and put money aside. Age alone is not a reason to replace equipment that works.

Repair the leak properly. Worth doing when the system is under roughly twelve years old, the leak is accessible, and the failure is a joint or a service valve rather than a coil. The labor figure above is what that work costs in wages before parts and refrigerant. It is not worth doing on a leaking evaporator coil in an old system, because coil replacement on obsolete equipment means matching parts that may no longer exist.

Replace the system. Not the outdoor unit alone. Modern refrigerants run at different pressures and use different oils, so a new condenser paired with an old R-22 indoor coil is a mismatch that voids warranties and performs badly. A replacement here means condenser, evaporator coil, and usually the metering device, plus a line set that is either flushed or replaced.

The trap to avoid

There are drop-in replacement refrigerants sold as R-22 substitutes. Some are legitimate and some are not, several are flammable blends never intended for residential retrofit, and using one usually voids what remains of the manufacturer warranty and changes the oil compatibility inside the compressor. If a contractor proposes one, ask which one by name, ask whether the equipment manufacturer approves it for this model, and ask what happens to the compressor warranty. If any of those answers is vague, decline.

What to ask before spending anything

Ask what the measured charge loss is and over what period, because that number decides everything. Ask where the leak was found and how. Ask whether the indoor coil is original, since evaporator coil corrosion is the most common terminal failure on systems of this vintage. And on a replacement quote, ask whether the sizing came from a room-by-room load calculation or from the tonnage of the existing unit. Replacing like for like inherits whatever mistake was made the first time.

What this site publishes

We publish the computed labor figure above with its hour assumption stated, and the contractors on record in your metro area in alphabetical order. We publish no equipment or refrigerant prices. The federal rules that drive this whole decision are linked below, at the agency that writes them.