Nobody likes buying equipment when a repair would do. So if something’s failing, the tech starts with what’s actually wrong and what it would cost to fix, and you see that number next to a replacement price.
R-22 tips things toward replacing. US production ended in 2020 and what’s sold now is reclaimed or old stock, so any refrigerant work on those systems keeps getting more expensive. A compressor failure on a unit that’s 15 or 20 years old pushes the same way, and so does a coil that’s already been patched for leaks. We wrote more about how to weigh it in when to repair and when to replace.
And sometimes the answer is to fix it. A five-year-old condensing unit with a bad fan motor gets a fan motor.
Sizing the system to the box
A refrigeration system is sized to how much heat it has to remove. That depends on the size of the box, how cold it runs, how often the door opens during a shift, how much warm product goes in at once, and how hot it gets where the condensing unit sits. A rooftop unit in an August afternoon is working in a lot hotter air than the thermometer on your phone says.
An undersized system runs nonstop and still can’t hold temperature on a busy summer weekend. Going too big causes its own trouble: the system short cycles, which is hard on the compressor, and a cooler ends up damp because the coil never runs long enough to pull moisture out of the air. Matching the old unit’s size is usually the right call. If the old unit always struggled, or you’re storing different product than when it went in, we’ll work out the load again before quoting.
Planning the changeover
The box can’t hold product while its system is being swapped, so plan around it. Equipment gets ordered first, and the work goes on the schedule once it’s in hand. Pick a slow day if you can and let inventory run down ahead of time. With a small cooler, your reach-ins and a couple of ice chests may hold what’s left. A big walk-in might call for a rented refrigerated trailer.
Refrigerant in the old system gets recovered before anything’s cut loose. It’s never vented.
Refrigerants in newer equipment
New walk-in systems commonly run on refrigerants like R-448A or R-449A, which took over a lot of the work R-404A used to do. Many new self-contained reach-ins and prep tables use R-290, which is propane in a small sealed charge. You don’t need to pick the refrigerant yourself. It’s still good to know what’s in your equipment, since it changes what a future repair involves.
After it’s running
Before the tech leaves, the box gets pulled down to temperature and the defrost schedule is set for how you use it, with pressures and superheat checked along the way. You get a service report with the model and serial numbers of what went in and the settings it was left on. New equipment still needs its coils cleaned, so put it on a maintenance schedule from day one. If something on an older system near the new one is acting up, like a walk-in freezer next door, the tech can look at it while they’re there.
